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African Chronology, Lagos (2026)

08/01/2026

Cheif M.K.O Abiola(1937-1998)

Born in Abeokuta and educated at the University of Glasgow, Abiola was a
Yoruba Muslim who became one of the wealthiest businessmen in Nigeria.

His companies covered newspaper publishing, banking, air transportation,oil drilling, and the book trade. Through his wealth, Abiola also becameone of the leading philanthropists in Nigeria. He had been an important backer of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) government during the Second Republic, and won the nomination of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to stand for the presidency in the election of June 12, 1993.

Abiola won the election of 1993 but the results were annulled. When Abiola declared himself president anyway a year later, head of state Sani Abacha had him put in prison, where he died four years later.

02/01/2026

RISE OF THE OYO EMPIRE

The empire of Oyo was based around the city of Oyo Ile, situated south of the river Niger in the savanna zone near its convergence with the forest zone in what is today the northeastern corner of Oyo State.

It is unclear when exactly the town of Oyo Ile was founded, but archaeological testing indicates that the town was inhabited as early as the eighth century AD. Oyo Ile was a well-established urban center by the fifteenth century, when the neighboring Nupe sacked the city. The Oyo monarchy sought refuge among the Borgu, another neighboring people, to the west, where it reconstituted itself.

By the early sixteenth century, Oyo had moved its capital to Igboho, roughly forty miles west of Oyo Ile, and sometime in the late sixteenth century, under the reign of Ajiboyede, the Oyo defeated the Nupe and reclaimed Oyo Ile.

From about 1600, Oyo underwent rapid expansion into the forest zone to the south and southeast, becoming one of the largest empires in the Nigerian region. At its largest size in the eighteenth century, the Oyo empire stretched from the river Moshi in the north down the river Niger in the east to Ogudu, which was a Nupe settlement.

In the east, Oyo may have stretched as far as the river Osin in Igbomina territory, while, in the southeast, Oyo bordered on the lands of the Ekiti and the state of Ife. Oyo reached as far south as the present town of Oyo, while the river Opara marked the western boundary of the empire. In all, the area of the empire was somewhere in the range of 18,000 square miles. Although Oyo Ile stood in the savanna and cohabited with middle belt neighbors such as the Nupe and Borgu, Oyo was essentially a Yoruba state, although some political and cultural exchanges did occur between Oyo and its neighbors.

As was the case with most Yoruba states, the leader of Oyo, known as the alafin, traced his authority back to descendants of Oduduwa, the founder of the Yoruba people, who spread out from Ife. Oyo’s tradition claims that the city was founded by Oranmiyan, a son of Oduduwa. This link to Oduduwa and Ife was not the only foundation upon which the alafin’s authority rested, however. The alafin also claimed descent from Sango, an early King of Oyo later deified as the god of thunder, further mystifying the office of alafin and connecting it to the realm of the gods.

The office of alafin apparently had supreme authority, and only the alafin or one of his proxies could make policy decisions, order executions, and create and confer titles. Over time, the royal lineage also took more and more direct control over the functioning of the slave trade, one of Oyo’s most prosperous enterprises. Despite this supreme authority, however, the alafin did have several checks on his authority. The main political unit of Oyo was the lineage, and the alafin’s lineage was just one of many, although undoubtedly the most powerful. Each lineage had a head, and the head of each important lineage had a duty to perform for the state.

Lineage heads held political, religious, or military offices in the city or in the provinces of the empire and were responsible for the day-to-day administration of their purview. Local lineage heads often served as patrons for communities in the provinces of the empire. In return for tribute, these chiefs would lobby on behalf of their constituent communities for favors from the alafin. The most important lineage heads, aside from the alafin himself, held positions in the Oyo Mesi, a non-royal organization that served as the chief advisory body to the alafin.

The Oyo Mesi led the army of Oyo Ile, and its members served as the custodians of many religious centers for the city, among other duties. The Oyo Mesi also had the prerogative to approve of the royal lineage’s choice of a new alafin and could enact regime change by ordering disgraced or ineffective alafins to commit su***de. Such powers made it possible for the Oyo Mesi to exert significant, sometimes even disruptive, control over the office of alafin. The most famous example is the case of Gaha, who, as the basorun, or leader, of the Oyo Mesi from 1754 to 1774, secured the su***des of two alafins, Labisi and Awonbioju.

Gaha then forced Awonbioju’s successor, Agboluaje, to accede to Gaha’s authority, over which issue Agboluaje eventually committed su***de. It is speculated that Gaha may also have been responsible for the death of Agboluaje’s successor, Majeogbe, supposedly through magic or poisoning. Gaha was eventually overthrown by Alafin Abiodun, who called upon aid from the provinces of Oyo to end Gaha’s tyrannical rule. That the office of alafin did not crumble under the instability created by Basorun Gaha and the Oyo Mesi is a testament to the organization of the alafin’s palace administration, which rested heavily on slaves with positions of high authority and responsibility.

It is clear that, from the reconquest of Oyo Ile in the late sixteenth century, slaves had performed integral duties within the palace administration, not only in the everyday affairs of running the palace but also in ruling the city of Oyo Ile and the provinces of the Oyo empire.

Three eu**chs, known as the ona iwefa (eu**ch of the middle), otun iwefa (eu**ch of the right), and osi iwefa (eu**ch of the left), were the most senior titled slaves and were the highest authority next to the alafin himself in judicial, religious, and administrative matters respectively. The ona iwefa stood as proxy for the alafin in handing down legal rulings, while the otun iwefa was in charge of the cult of Sango, through which the alafin’s office was mystified.

The osi iwefa collected revenues and served as the alafin’s proxy in dealings with lineage heads such as the members of the Oyo Mesi. Beneath these three titled eu**chs was a larger class of palace slaves known as the ilari, meaning ‘‘scar-heads,’’ a reference to the incisions made in their heads into which magical substances were rubbed, initiating them into their new rank. These slaves numbered several hundred if not thousands, and were under the purview of the osi iwefa. Ilari served the alafin as tax collectors, messengers, and bodyguards.

To enable the alafin to keep an eye on events in the provinces of the empire, a group of slaves known as the ajele or asoju oba (eyes of the king) were placed throughout the Oyo empire and reported directly to the alafin on matters affecting their assigned province. The reliance on slaves for the overseeing of the alafin’s affairs stabilized royal authority in two ways. First, since the duties of slaves were so diffused and carried such importance, royal authority could be maintained even if the alafin himself was ineffective or was suffering through periods of instability, as in the period of Basorun Gaha.

Second, since slaves had no lineage of their own and therefore no power to gain, other than that which could be conferred upon them by the alafin, their dependent status made them particularly stable and trustworthy underlings. In this way, the Oyo empire managed to thrive on a series of checks and balances between royal and non-royal lineages, propped up by a fairly dense bureaucracy based on slave labor. Slaves also served much the same functions in Oyo as they did in other regions of the greater Nigerian area during the 1500–1800 period. Slaves performed agricultural work, performed domestic duties, trained as artisans, and served in the military.

With slaves such an important aspect of the politics and economy of Oyo, it is no surprise that the trade in slaves was also a central element in the rise of Oyo. Oyo traded slaves captured in war, and to a smaller extent convicted criminals, as well as European goods attained through southern trade, to Hausa states in exchange for Hausa slaves and, perhaps most importantly, the horses upon which Oyo built the cavalry it used to dominate the region militarily. Oyo also traded slaves south to the coast after 1650 in exchange for European luxury goods, cowry shells, which were the standard currency of Oyo, and, during the eighteenth century, a limited supply of fi****ms.

Oyo’s involvement in the slave trade was not restricted to the slaves acquired in Oyo’s own military campaigns. Oyo’s strategic position between the southern forest zone and the Hausa states put Oyo in a prime position to capitalize on the flow of goods between the two regions. Oyo thus served as a middleman, imposing heavy financial burdens on traders wishing to pass through Oyo territory to sell their wares on the other side. Hausa merchants wishing to move south and forest zone traders wishing to trade north found that they were forced to pay heavy dues when passing through Oyo territory.

Ultimately, most merchants found it in their own economic interest simply to sell their wares in Oyo, rather than pay the dues necessary to pass through Oyo. Oyo merchants could then re-export these goods in whatever direction they chose, at inflated prices. Government traders within Oyo did not pay the fees to pass through Oyo and as such they were at a competitive advantage over other traders in the region. This was particularly true of the trade in slaves, which the royal lineage of Oyo itself dominated in the eighteenth century.

23/08/2022

Tutankhamun became pharaoh at the age of eight ornine and died at about the age of 18. He was married toAnkhesenamun, one of the six daughters of AKHENATENand Queen NEFERTITI.

Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamunproduced no male heirs.The young royal couple began their lives inAkhenaten’s new capital at Amarna. But, after Akhenaten’sdeath, they fell under the influence of AY and HOREMHEB, Tutankhamun’s successors, and moved to MEMPHIS. ThereTutankhamun was crowned king, and steps were taken toreestablish the old RELIGION abandoned by Akhenaten. By
changing their royal names so that they ended in -amun instead of -aten, Tutankhamun and his queen gave a clearsign of their dedication to the restoration of the traditionalreligion. It was during this time that Thebes once again became the religious capital of EGYPT.There is a great deal of speculation as to the cause of
Tutankhamun’s death. It was once commonly believed thathe had succumbed totuberculosis, and it has also beensuggested that he died of a brain hemorrhage. However,based on the examination of Tutankhamun’s MUMMY, most
scholars agree that he died as a result of a blow to thehead. Whether this wound was caused by an accident, ablow sustained during battle, or was the result of an assassination remains a mystery.After Tutankhamun’s death, Ankhesenamun took theunusual action of seeking the help of the Hittite king, Suppiluliumas I. Without a son to succeed her late husband as pharaoh and continue the royal line, she asked tomarry one of the Suppiluliumas’s many sons. The king assented and sent one of his sons to Egypt. But the prince never reached his destination, as he was murdered just as he reached the border, possibly on orders from Horemheb.

Tutankhamun’s reign was unremarkable. His mostimportant legacy is his tomb, which British archaeologistHoward Carter discovered in 1922, practically untouchedmore than 3,200 years after his burial. Its contents included magnificent artifacts of GOLD and precious jewels,intricately carved furniture and weapons, luxurious clothing, and, perhaps best known to the modern world, thelife-like gold mummy. This tomb was probably not intended as Tutankhamun’s final resting place. There is evidence to suggest that it was intended for his predecessor, SMENKHARE, or possibly his VIZIER and successor.

Image : Tutankhamun Golden Mask

22/08/2022

SAHARA DESERT

Sahara desert The world’s largest desert and the onlytrue desert found at 0˚ longitude. The Sahara, which meanssimply “desert” in Arabic, covers one-third of Africa, including most of North Africa, and extends approximately 3,320,000 square miles (8,598,800 sq km), an arearoughly the size of the continental United States. Thegreat desert measures 3,000 miles (4,827 km) from eastto west and between 800 to 1,200 miles (1,287 to 1,931km) from north to south. It stretches from the AtlanticOcean in the west to the RED SEA in the east.

Its northern boundaries are the ATLAS MOUNTAINS and the MEDITERRANEAN SEA; its southern boundary lies along latitude 16˚
N and extends through parts of CHAD, NIGER, and theRepublic of the SUDAN. The Sahara is one of the harshestenvironments on earth.
Geography The Sahara is crossed by the NILE RIVERand the NIGER RIVER, which sustain most of the region’shuman population. Only 2.5 percent (80,000 square miles/200,000 sq km) of the Sahara are oases, which are areas of farming and settlement. The water in an OASIS (which is almost always below sea level)comes from wells or springsfed by underground basins.

The Sahara has about 90 largeoases and many small ones that may support only one ortwo families. Some large oases have thousands of date palmtrees planted, and farmers grow barley, wheat, and othercrops. However, even the largest settlements on the oasessustain fewer than 2,000 inhabitants.

The main geographic features of the Sahara include shallow basins called chotts and dayas; gravel-coveredplains called regs; rock-strewn plateaus; and sheets,dunes, and seas of sand, collectively called ergs, whichcover about one-quarter of the desert’s surface. The shifting, wind-blown sands in an erg can form dunes as highas 600 feet (183 m). (Scientists have yet to explain the“singing” or booming of the sand dunes.) Mountains and uplands cover the central portion ofthe Sahara. The plateaus of the Sahara, such as the Tademait Plateau in ALGERIA and the ENNEDI Plateau in Chad,are covered with angular weathered rocks. The AhaggarMountains in Algeria rise 9,573 feet (2,918 m) high.Mount Koussi in the Tibesti Mountains of Chad reaches aheight of 11,204 feet (3415 m). The lowest point in thedesert is Egypt’s QATTARA DEPRESSION, 436 feet (133 m)below sea level.Climate The highest temperature recorded is 136˚F (58˚ C) at al-Aziziyah in LIBYA; yet in other places, frost can be seen in the wintertime. The annual rainfall measures no more than 0.08 inches (2 mm), and some areasmay go for years with no rainfall at all.

Due to ocean currents a narrow strip of the western coast enjoys a relatively cool, uniform temperature year-round. Most of theSahara, however, experiences a cycle of extremely hotsummers and mild to cool winters.

Climatologists estimate that the Sahara has been a desert since the Early Pliocene epoch, or for roughly 5million years. It has been subject over time to a cycle of drier and more humid conditions, though for the past2,000 years, its CLIMATE has been very stable. Strong winds, given such names as sirocco, khamsin,and shahali, can blow unpredictably for days. They movevast amounts of sand and create an ever-changing landscape, burying everything in their path and decreasingvisibility to hazardous levels. Animal Life Most desert animals can go for longperiods without drinking and are able to take some waterfrom the plants in their diet. The smaller animals are nocturnal, staying in their burrows during the heat of the dayand exiting during the cooler night to find FOOD. Thes eanimals include gerbils, snakes, lizards, and small foxescalled fennecs. Among the larger animals living in theSahara are white gazelles and a rare antelope called anaddax, an extremely hardy animal that resembles itsmuch larger relative, the oryx. Barbary sheep live in the rocky plateaus.

Image Credit : Britannicia

27/05/2022

The Land Of Zenj : The East African Coast to 1000AD (Part 1)

Indian Ocean trade was given a great boost by the spread of Islam in thethe east African seventh and eighth centuries. The shift of the Islamic capital to Baghdad incoast to 1000 ad 750 ad brought the Persian Gulf more firmly into Indian Ocean tradingnetworks. A number of Shi'ite refugees from southern Arabia settled alongthe northern half of the east African coastline during the eighth century.
They intermarried with the African population and learnt the local language. The increasing presence of Arabic-speaking peoples on the offshoreislands greatly eased trading relations between the east African coast and
the rest of the Muslim world. Arabic writers of the time referred to themain central region of the east African coast as 'the Land of Zenj' (sometimes spelt 'Zanj').In the western Indian Ocean the monsoon winds blow towards eastAfrica between November and March and towards India and the Persian
Gulf between April and October. This seasonal pattern of monsoon windslargely influenced the pattern of cross-ocean trade that developed betweenthe east African coast and the Islamic world of western Asia. Most of the
long-distance trade of the western Indian Ocean was carried in Arab sailingships known as dhows. The journey across the ocean could take severalmonths. This did not leave them much time for trading along the eastAfrican coast before they had to turn for home on the southwest monsoon.The more northerly ports of Mogadishu, Barawa and the Lamu islands
thus became their most common ports of call. Local coastal trading wasgenerally left in the hands of east African traders who brought their goodsto the principal market towns. This enabled merchants from across the
ocean to complete their business quickly. without wasting valuable timecalling between one tiny settlement and the next.

As the demand for African ivory and later gold rose, so more MuslimArabs settled in the east African island towns to try and direct the local
trade to their advantage. These early Muslim settlers developed goodrelations, often through intermarriage, with the local African ruling family.In this way they were able to ensure that their Muslim relatives, the overseas merchants, would be well-received within the town.By the ninth century there were a number of well-established markettowns along the coast of the 'Land of Zenj' . Most weresituated on the offshore islands. There were several on the Lamu islands off the northern Kenyan coast and others further south on Zanzibar, Kilwaand the Comoro islands. Though clearly involved in overseas trade, theywere nevertheless primarily local African towns. They housed cattlekeeping, mixed-farming communities who had added trade to their basicagricultural economy. Cattle were kept in central fenced enclosures anddomestic houses were generally built on a circular pattern, made of mudbrick and thatch. Most of the pottery which archaeologists have found inthese sites was locally made, on a general east African Iron Age pattern.Small quantities of imported pottery from the Persian Gulf, western Indiaand China confirm the trading link. The style of local pottery is remarkably similar through the three-thousand-kilometre stretch of coastland
from Mogadishu to Mozambique. This suggests close cultural links andregular sailing contacts between the various trading settlements along the
coastal region.

23/05/2022

Lucky Dube: The Rastafari Champion

Lucky Philip Dube was born in 1964 in Ermelo, South Africa. He was given the name lucky because his single mother saw his birth as a miracle.

He, however, spent much of his childhood with his grandmother alongside his two siblings.

During this time, he worked as a gardener. Upon the realization that the money he made was not sufficient to feed his family, he decided to attend school. In school, he joined the choir and formed a group, The Skyway Band. It was during this time that he had his first encounter with the Rastafari movement. When he clocked 18, he joined his cousin’s “Zulu” pop music band, The Love Brothers, and worked as a security guard.

The band signed with “Teal Record Company” and released Lucky Dube and the Supersoul. He only started to learn English then and adopted reggae. After his fifth album, he noticed that fans began to respond to his songs and decided to infuse the Jamaican socio-political messages into his songs for his racist society.

In 1984, he released his first reggae album, Rastas Never Die which was banned in 1985 because of its government-critical lyrics. The following year, he released Think About The Children which attained platinum status.

He went on to release internationally acclaimed albums including Prisoner, Captured Live, House of Exile, and Victims. In 1995 he became signed with Motown. In 1996, he released Serious Reggae Business earning him the “Best Selling African Recording Artist” at the “World Music Awards”. He went on to release Respect which got him a European release deal with Warner Music. He also landed acting roles in Voice in the Dark, Getting Lucky and Lucky Strikes Back.

He was shot by assailants in Johannesburg who supposed him to be Nigerian on this day in 2007.

Image: Lucky Dube

19/05/2022

The Hausa city-states

The Hausa city-states first emerged between 1000 and 1200 ad. The Hausadeveloped from a mixture of southern Saharan nomads and local mixedfarmers of the northern Nigerian savannah. Their basic political unit was a compact walled village. The wooden stockades of the early Hausa villageswere to protect themselves from southern Saharan raiders. The stockadescovered a large area enclosing not only the principal dwellings of the settlement, but also a considerable extent of cultivable land. In times oftrouble the village enclosure could protect the Hausa of the district andtheir livestock through a lengthy siege. As the population increased, villages grouped together under the protection of the largest local Hausatown. In time these developed into walled cities which became the capitalsof states.

The economic basis of the Hausa city-states was agriculture, manufacturing and trade, though each had its own particular specialisation. Gobir, thenorthernmost, had originally developed at Air though it moved south toGobir under Tuareg pressure in the fifteenth century. From an early stage
Gobir's strength came from its trans-Saharan trading contacts on the east- ern fringes of the Mali and Songhay empires. Katsina, founded in thetwelfth or thirteenth century, was also an important trading centre. Kanobuilt its wealth on its craftsmen and manufacturing skills, especially in theweaving of cotton cloth. Later the Hausa of Kano developed the further
skills of cloth-dying and leatherwork. Dark blue cotton cloth from Kanwas much sought-after among the peoples of west Africa. And a large
amount of so-called 'Moroccan' leather sold from north Africa to Europe,originated from the Hausa craftsmen of Kano. Zamfara and Kebbi wereother important Hausa states. The southernmost Hausa state, Zazzau, with
its capital at Zaria, was founded in the sixteenth century. It was to become
a major supplier of slaves to the other Hausa states, raided from theKwararafa in the region of the Benue river. Some of these slaves were forinternal Hausa use, others were for export to Borno and North Africa inexchange for horses, harness and guns.

Slavery was important in Hausa society. The Hausa of the cities wereengaged in trade, warfare, manufacture and the elaborate bureaucracy ofgovernment. Slave labour, imported from outside, was used to build and
maintain the city walls and to grow the food to feed the teeming cities. Inaddition, beyond the city walls were numerous free cultivators and herderswho paid taxes to the state. Growing trading contacts introduced the
Hausa to the world of Islam. The ruling elite of the city-states becameMuslim in the fourteenth century, though the bulk of the common peoplewere as yet untouched by the Muslim faith.The Hausa city-states flourished from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
century. There was great rivalry between them and states rose and fell inrelative importance. But no one Hausa state managed to subdue all theothers. There was no single Hausa 'empire'.

The Hausa played an important role in the development of long-distancetrade: at first between Songhay and Borno and later between the Akangoldfields, Borno and Air. But increasing rivalry and rising levels of warfare between the city-states had important consequences for their internal
development. Warfare devastated the countrysidee, and yet to finance their
wars the ruling class overtaxed the peasantry. And in their efforts toincrease the supply of slaves the Hausa ruling elite resorted to 'illegally'enslaving Muslim commoners, often selling them to north Africa in ex- change for fi****ms and horses.With the eighteenth-century spread of Islam among the Hausa masses,there was a greater awareness of the principles of Islamic law, the shari'a.
The corruption, oppression and Islamically 'illegal' actions of the Hausarulers were called into question by Islamic religious leaders. The stage wasset for the 'holy revolution' which was to sweep the region in the early
nineteenth century.

Image : A Hausa man and Hausa woman

13/05/2022

THE KINGDOM OF KONGO

Within the kingdom of Kongo, the Portuguese presence on the coastKongo stimulated a dynastic dispute between those in favor of greater foreign contact and those against it. The former emerged victorious, with Portuguesehelp, and in 1506 a Kongolese Christian convert seized the throne and took the title Afonso I (1506-43). Afonso exchanged letters with his 'brother monarch', the king of Por-Portugal, and open communication with the Pope in Rome. Within the Kongoo Afonso developed Christianity along the lines of a royal religious cult. In this way, he increased his authority and undermined that of regional religious leaders. On the one hand, this rid him of the need for local regional support. On the other hand, he now became heavily dependent upon the support of the Portuguese. Afonso used Portuguese mercenaries and guns to exert direct control over tribute collection and long-distance trade, and he expanded the kingdom by conquest as far as Malebo Pool. Afonso's wars of conquest produced plenty of captives and these were sold as slaves for export to Sao Tome. In exchange, Afonso imported Portuguese priests, soldiers, and metal manufactured goods. For a while, the Portuguese government was undecided as to whether it should continue to treat the Kongo as a friendly ally or simply exploit the region as a source of slaves. The settlers of Sao Tome had no such doubts. They even promoted local wars of resistance to Afonso to increase the supply of captives. With the development of the trans-Atlantic trade from the 1530s, there was further pressure on the king of Kongo to produce more captives for export.

In 1568-69 the kingdom of Kongo suffered an invasion from the east. The invaders, known as the Jaga, quickly overran the kingdom, laying
waste to the country and forcing the king into exile. There has been much historical dispute in recent years as to who exactly the Jaga was and why they invaded Kongo in 1568. It seems probable that a period of prolonged drought had prompted the settled farming peoples of the Kwango river region to resort to a life of raid and devastation. They may also have been
reacting to increasingly heavy Kongolese demands for tribute or raids for
slaves.

In 1574 the Kongo king Alvaro I was reinstated by the Portuguese with the aid of Sao Tome mercenaries. But thereafter the king's authority among his people declined. He became ever more dependent upon the export of captives in exchange for the Portuguese military support. Dutch competition in the seventeenth century stimulated a further expansion in the demand for captives at the coast. Professional African and Afro-European slavers at Malebo Pool developed an alternative northern slaving route between the internal and the Atlantic coast. They became known as bearers, after the Malebo port Palumbombo. Later the name pombeiro came to be used as a general term for most of the professional traders of westerncentral Africa. In the seventeenth-century central authority in Kongo collapsed and the kingdom disintegrated into rival regional factions, each fighting one another in the pursuit of war-captive

Image: King of Kongo giving audience to his subject and the Portuguese

30/04/2022

The Rise of Dahomey ( Present Benin Republic)

One of those neighboring states forced to pay tribute to the Alaafin of Oyowas the kingdom of Dahomey in the modern republic of Benin. (Note thatthe modern republic of Benin, which changed its name from Dahomey in1975, bears no direct relationship to the ancient forest kingdom of Benin.)

Dahomey was founded in the early seventeenth century. A small group ofAja from the coastal kingdom of Allada moved northwards and settledamong the Fon. The latter had hitherto lived in a collection of 'stateless'rural villages such as those described in Chapter. Within a fewyears the Aja began to assert their authority over the 'stateless' Fon. In doing so they founded the new kingdom of Dahomey with its capital at Agbome. It was Wegbaja, who became king in about 1650, who organizedDahomey is a powerful centralized state. Wegbaja declared that he as king was the ultimate 'owner of the land'.This entitled him to introduce direct taxation on the produce of the land,which was only 'lent' to its residents. Royal power was strengthened with
the establishment of royal succession by primogeniture, that is, succession
by the king's eldest male heir. This prevented traditional village chiefs fromhaving any say in the succession, and so reduced their potential power. Atthe same time a 'cult of kingship' was developed. It was promoted by the
introduction of annual human sacrifices to honor the royal ancestors. Thevictims of the sacrifices were usually captives taken in warfare.Having come from the coastal 'slaving' state of Allada, the kings of
Dahomey was determined to exploit to the full the profits to be gainedfrom the slave trade. Fi****ms imported from the coast were exchanged forcaptives taken in Dahomey's wars of expansion. In the 1720s Dahomey
conquered Allada and Whydah and so gained more direct access to the
Europeans at the coast.

It has been suggested by at least one historian that in making thesecoastal conquests the Dahomean king, Agaja (1716-40), was tryingto suppress the export of slaves out of Africa. According to this accountAgaja is reported to have asked Europeans to establish plantations inDahomey, used slave labor so that the labor of these slaves would notactually be lost to Africa. But Europeans at the time were not interested inthe scheme. The trans-Atlantic system was already very profitable for themand plantations in Dahomey would be beyond their control. Agaja did not
press this policy and Dahomey's need for fi****ms was so great that he and
his successors continued to sell captives to Europeans.

The hinterland of the 'Slave Coast' in the eighteenth century wasdominated by Oyo and Dahomey. The rivalry between the two states,
particularly over control of the coastal trade in captives, soon led toconflict. Oyo invaded Dahomey four times in the late 1720s. Agaja wasunable to repulse the Oyo cavalry and in 1730 he agreed to pay tribute tothe Alaafin of Oyo.Despite its new subservient position to Oyo, the kingdomof Dahomey continued to expand and thrive during the eighteenth century.Most of the slaves exported from the state came from beyond the country'sboundaries. The king himself was not the only dealer in slaves, he was justthe largest. Other Dahomean slave dealers were heavily taxed from theirprofits. Taxes were mostly paid in cowrie shells which, by the eighteenthcentury, had become the most widespread currency in west Africa.

The majority of the Dahomean population remained little affected by theslave trade. They were mostly peasant farmers living in small rural villages.But the king's tax collectors were thorough. They toured regularly throughthe countryside, assessing for taxation by making censuses of people,livestock, crops, and possessions. There were taxes on just about everything.The royal household itself was fed from the produce of large plantationsworked by slave labor. In due course, in the nineteenth century, these wereturned to producing palm oil for sale to Europeans instead of slaves -
the realization, perhaps, of Agaja's eighteenth-century dream

Image: Dahomey Amazons

African Chronology

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