Traditional Africa seems strange. Dahomey was conquered by the French to end the slave trade. To do that, they had to defeat the Dahomey Kingdom’s army of female Amazon warriors. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp issue from Dahomey during it’s French period show National Geographic style views of Dahomey. In doing so, I think they make the point that it is not an important place to the French. It was perhaps a little to foreign.
The stamp today is issue A7, a 2 Centime stamp issued by French Dahomey in 1941. It was part of 22 stamp issue in various denominations. There are further issues that lack this stamps RF. These are considered fake and were issued by the German puppet Vichy government but not sold for postage in Dahomey. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents whether it is mint or used.
Dahomey was a kingdom in west Africa in modern day Benin. The King employed an all female army. To European armies that encountered them, they were known as Dahomey Amazons. Locally the female warriors were known as ahosi, which means King’s wives. The main industry was the slave trade and the army was used for slave raids. In the 1850s, the British tried to get Dahomey away from the slave trade and get them to stop raiding nearby outposts in Nigeria looking for slaves. They tried to get the King to get involved in the palm oil trade. When Dahomey refused to end their participation in the trade, Britain eventually blockaded Dahomey’s ports.
Dahomey than reached out to the French who got the British blockade lifted in exchange for trade concessions. The French than built a new port but at this point the Dahomey tax system was still in place and the Dahomey army was still raiding for slaves. In the 1890s, the French decided to bring Dahomey under control directly and 2 wars were fought with the Dahomey army. At first the French refused to fire on the female warriors who only had bayonets and no guns. The hesitation allowed the Amazons to aggressively attack French officers. Eventually in 1892 the Amazon warriors were engaged in a Bayonet charge where 500 were killed at the loss of only 6 French. The King was captured soon afterwards and the once 6000 strong Amazons officially disbanded, although French colonial officials were attacked repeatedly by knife wielding females throughout the colonial era. The last female veteran of the Kingdom of Dahomey died in 1979 at over a hundred years old.
By then Dahomey had been independent for 18 years and had renamed itself the Peoples Republic of Benin. There are two current pretenders to the old Throne of Dahomey. The modern Benin armed forces is only about 4000 and has no all female units.
Well my drink is empty and I am rendered speechless by this previously unknown to me history. Thirsty, but still speechless. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.