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Benin
Benin, formerly Dahomey, is a country better known by its past than its present. Along its narrow tropical coast, precolonial kingdoms grew wealthy through participation in the transatlantic slave trade. They developed rich religious traditions, such as Vodou, and built formidable armies, which for years resisted French conquest. During the colonial era, Dahomey—a small palm oil exporter known for frequent uprisings—found itself on the periphery of France’s West African empire. In the years that followed independence in 1960, Dahomey maintained its reputation for political volatility while doing little to invigorate an economy still heavily dependent on palm oil exports. Since democratic reforms in the early 1990s, however, Benin’s political climate and economy have both improved considerably. Observers are now waiting to see if this progress continues after the 2001 reelection of former dictator Mathieu Kérékou.
Precolonial History
Benin
Franco-Dahomean Wars and the Fall of the Kingdom of Dahomey
Relations between Dahomey and France began to sour in 1889, when Ghezo’s successor, Glele, refused the proposal by the lieutenant governor of French West Africa, Jean Bayol, to allow France to improve the Cotonou port and recoup the costs by imposing its own tariffs on all goods shipped through it. Glele died shortly thereafter, and his successor, Behanzin, declared all previous treaties regarding the port illegal and sent Bayol a long list of complaints about French behavior on Dahomean soil. The French government urged Bayol to resolve the dispute quickly, while French missionaries, citing the use of human sacrifice in Dahomean Annual Customs, claimed the Fon were barbarous heathens who needed to be Christianized and “civilized.” The king of Porto-Novo, himself seeking respite from Dahomean attacks, also beseeched Bayol to take decisive action. In early 1890 the lieutenant governor did just that: he blockaded the coastline and declared war on Dahomey.Behanzin mobilized his army, including the fierce Amazon troops, and for more than a year deflected the attacks. By the end of 1891, the French appeared resigned to Dahomean sovereignty. But Behanzin, seeking to prepare his army for future attacks, arranged to exchange slaves for firearms with German and Portuguese merchants, who would then ship the slaves to the colonies of the Congo Free State (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo), Kamerun (present-day Cameroon), and São Tomé and Príncipe. The deals ultimately strained the Dahomey Kingdom, which was suffering a severe drought. The king’s subjects were reluctant to export slaves when their labor was desperately needed not only to tend to the king’s palm plantations, but also to counteract the crop failures that were threatening the kingdom’s food supply. In addition, the deals forced the Dahomey to raid neighboring peoples, such as the Gun, who had by then established close connections with the French. Finally, French missionaries used reports of these slave raids to rally French popular opinion in support of retaliation against the kingdom.Retaliation came in 1892 after the Dahomey raided the Whéme valley, by then a French protectorate. It took two years for French troops to capture Dahomey’s capital, Abomey, but Behanzin escaped into the bush; from there he led an armed resistance movement for another two years. In 1894 the French finally captured Behanzin and forced him to sign a peace treaty, ceding the Dahomean coastline and roads and abolishing the kingdom’s custom of human sacrifice, before allowing him to leave for exile in Martinique. The French installed a successor, Agboli-Agbo, but within six years they had deposed him as well. Soon afterward the French conquered the Bariba kingdoms in the north and by 1900 had formal control of the colony of Dahomey.French Colonial Rule
Although united under a single administration, northern and southern Dahomey experienced colonialism very differently. In the southern region, the transition to French Colonial rule was fairly smooth. There the French had a limited military presence and took full advantage of the Dahomean administrative structure, delegating the duties of tax collection and labor recruitment to local chiefs.In the north, however, the French faced a much greater challenge. The Bariba Kingdom had essentially disintegrated when the French abolished domestic slavery. The ruling wasangaris lost their primary source of income and status, and the former gandos formed “freedom” villages, where their small farms produced barely enough for subsistence, much less for trade. Hostilities between the two groups were soon superseded by resentment toward the heavy taxes and compulsory labor service imposed by the colonial administration. These resentments escalated during World War I, when forced military conscription became known in Dahomey as the “blood tax.” During this time resistance leaders such as Bio Guera and Gaba mobilized popular discontent to wage strikes and revolts throughout the region. The French managed to subdue the north after World War I, but by then unrest was spreading throughout the south.In 1923 major demonstrations broke out in Porto-Novo and neighboring areas. The French authorities blamed Islamic religious leaders, as well as intellectuals such as Louis Hunkanrin, but these figures had simply articulated the underlying causes of popular discontent: poverty compounded by harsh taxes. Even while Dahomey suffered depressed commodity prices after World War I, the administration of French West Africa funneled much of the colony’s revenue to its seat in Dakar, where it was used to support France’s less profitable colonies in Central Africa. What little revenue remained in Dahomey was used primarily to run the administration and support the colony’s French businesses. During World War II, the Dahomey colonial administration used land and conscripted labor, previously devoted to the palm oil industry, to produce maize and other crops for export to France. After the war ended, Dahomey’s export sector was in disarray, and the colony grew increasingly dependent on aid from France.
Prisoners. King Bihuazin (Behanzin) and his two wives are seen here as prisoners of the French in this stereo card from 1902.
(Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
(Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress)
Independence
For the first three years after independence, President Hubert Maga and his team of French advisers appeared to have firm control over the government, despite outspoken criticism from his opponents Apithy and Ahomadegbe. In October 1963, however, news that a National Assembly delegate had evaded a trial on murder charges provoked massive protests from student and civil servant unions throughout the southern region. Dahomeans saw the so-called “Bohiki Affair” as evidence of their leadership’s corruption and lack of accountability. With the purported aim of restoring peace to the riot-torn country, General Christophe Soglo seized control of the government. His coup d’état would be the first of many: during the next nine years Dahomey went through six military coups and twelve different governments.In 1972 a group of junior army officers with broad popular support, especially from students, overthrew the government of Ahomadegbe. One of the officers, Major Mathieu Kérékou, moved quickly to the forefront. Within a year he had restructured the army and dismissed senior army officers over the age of forty, imprisoned the three former presidents—Maga, Apithy, and Ahomadegbe—and channeled his student support into one “official” student organization. In 1973 Kérékou named himself president and began guiding Dahomey on a radically different course.The People’s Republic of Benin
In 1974 Kérékou declared Marxist-Leninism the official state ideology and renamed the country the People’s Republic of Benin. Shortly thereafter he strengthened diplomatic relations with China, North Korea, and Russia, and threatened to cut ties with France. In addition, Kérékou took steps to consolidate his power by weakening potential opposition in the country side. Kérékou disguised his intentions as a campaign to remove “traditional rulers” such as village chiefs, who Kérékou claimed were taking cuts from local taxes. Toward this goal, he installed “revolutionary committees” in each village and town to take responsibility for local administration and taxation. He later announced an “anti-feudalism” campaign, barring many landowners from holding local government positions. When these programs failed to sufficiently reduce the influence of rural chiefs, Kérékou tried a more radical policy: a crusade to eliminate witchcraft.Because many chiefs were also vodun priests, Kérékou believed that he could unseat them by declaring witchcraft illegal. At first, all went smoothly—only village headmen and chiefs that Kérékou wanted eliminated were named sorcerers. Within weeks, however, the accusations increased exponentially. Villagers began using the campaign to accuse their enemies and avenge vendettas. Public confessions, many of which were coerced by the military, aggravated the situation. During the next few months, accusations divided villages and families. Many innocent people were executed or imprisoned, and others fled the country in fear. Although Kérékou ended the campaign in 1975 after its devastating effects became apparent, in many areas it took years to recover from the divisions that remained.At this point Kérékou turned his attention to economic reforms, beginning with a program to collectivize agriculture. Villagers were required to join cooperatives and work on collective fields, while the state took over the trade in agricultural commodities. Yet despite support from foreign donors, Kérékou’s rural development programs did not make farming a more attractive livelihood to many of the Beninese who enrolled in school with the hope of obtaining employment in the burgeoning state bureaucracies.Benin’s already fragile economy was devastated by the end of Nigeria’s oil boom in the global recession of the early 1980s. Nigeria expelled almost 100,000 migrant workers and closed its borders. The effects for Benin were overwhelming; not only did Nigeria end all trade between the two countries, it sent thousands of laid-off Beninese and other migrant laborers across the border to Benin, where there were few jobs to be found. In 1985 the debt-ridden government of Benin stopped regular salary payments to its employees; two years later, state-owned banks began to collapse. In 1988 international donors, concerned that Benin would default on its loans, pressured Kérékou to adopt new austerity measures. The government enacted social service and payroll cuts that immediately provoked student and union protests. Kérékou, fearing a coup d’état, agreed to demands for democratic reforms, including a new constitution and free elections. In 1991, economist and former director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Nicéphore Soglo received 67 percent of the vote and became president of Benin.At first Soglo enjoyed broad support both in the National Assembly and among the public. His determination to adhere to the conditions of World Bank Structural Adjustment measures, however, provoked another wave of widespread demonstrations in 1992, which Soglo met with a military crackdown. As unrest continued, foreign firms, whose investments in manufacturing and construction were vital to Soglo’s plans to reinvigorate and diversify the national economy, began to pull out of the country. In 1996 Kérékou returned to power, winning reelection in 2001 and leaving office in 2006. He was succeeded by Thomas Yayi Boni, a political independent and reformer.See also African socialism; Decolonization in Africa: An Interpretation; French Dahomey.Sign up to recieve email alerts from African American Studies Center
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