King Gezo of Dahomey: West Africa’s most notorious slave-trading monarch who had an all-female army

Historians perceived him as a notorious slave-trader who terrorised several communities in Nigeria and Benin Republic in the 18th Century, raiding towns, capturing natives who he traded and exchanged with Europeans for goods such as bayonets, firearms, fabrics, and spirits. His 40 years reign from 1918 to 1958 was of mixed attitude of terror for neighbouring towns and of liberation for his Fon people in Dahomey.

The story of King Gezo of Dahomey (present day Benin Republic) as documented by several historians and Western media is of notoriety and cruelty just like his elder brother and predecessor, King Adandozan, described as a chronic drunk, unpopular and cruel monarch.

Named Prince Madagungung, in 1818 Gezo seized the throne of his father Agonglo (who died in 1879) after conniving with Brazillian slave merchants to stage a coup against Adandozan. When he became King, Dahomey was under the authority of the Oyo Empire. The Oyo Empire was so powerful at that time but it lost grip of Dahomey years after Gezo became king.

He took advantage of the Yoruba civil wars to reclaim Dahomey territories under the control of the Oyo Empire. He liberated Dahomey after defeating the Oyo Empire in 1823. After the victory, Dahomey moved to expand the kingdom eastward, this move brought it up against the powerful Egba (Abeokuta) army in 1851 and 1864.

In the early 18th century, Kings of Dahomey were big slave traders who made a fortune from the illicit trade. To acquire slaves, they waged bitter wars against their neighbours, resulting in the capture of tens of thousands of prisoners who they constantly sold to European slave merchants. Another prominent slave trader, the King of Whydah (now a city in Southern Benin) was also captured during one of their expeditions.

Among all Dahomey kings who ruled during the era of slave trade boom, Gezo was reputed to have hunted and traded more slaves. He constantly ravaged the interior and neighbouring towns to hunt prisoners he would supply waiting slave merchants in the Bight of Benin.

“When Gezo succeeded to his patrimonial throne, the adjacent country was inhabited by independent communities of the Egbas, and it was on them he perpetrated his earlier atrocities,” The Bradford Observer of Thursday March 24, 1859 reported. “He attacked them, burnt their towns, carried off their choicest people, and when his own violence was unsuccessful, his intrigues introduced civil war, which completed their ruin.”

American missionary, Jacob Bower, who also bore witness to Gezo’s notoriety, wrote that he counted 18 desolated towns with a distance of 60 miles between Badagry and Abeokuta – the legitimate result of Gezo’s raid for slaves. “The whole Yoruba country is full of depopulated towns, some of which were even larger than Abeokuta is at present,” he wrote.

Just as crude oil forms the integral part of Nigeria’s revenue today, Gezo contended that the slave trade was the central part of Dahomey revenue and it would be difficult to stop it. BBC Africa story quoted Gezo to have said, in the 1840’s, that he would do anything the British wanted him to do apart from giving up slave trade: “The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…”

One major impediment which frustrated efforts to end hundreds of years of slavery in Africa was, no doubt, the complicity of African leaders and elites in the trade. It made the abolition difficult.

To carry out his atrocities, Gezo had an all-female army who went into the interiors to hunt for prisoners sold as slaves. According to The Times, London, report of Monday April 8, 1850, “Gezo had an army entirely made up of 8,000 Amazon built women. These women were his bodyguards and his chief slave catchers and were forbidden to marry. King Gezo made many of them one of his untold number of wives.”

When the Atlantic slave trade was eventually abolished, it changed the fortune of Gezo’s wealth and Dahomey kingdom. He transited to palm oil exports which was far less lucrative than slaves; but he didn’t stop hunting slaves, with no merchant to buy them, he kept them to work on palm plantations.

When Gezo died in 1858, The Bradford Observer described his death as the end of a ‘dismal reign’.

“The death of one of the scourges of the human race, Gezo, the slave hunting and slave trading King of the Dahomey, is announced,” the newspaper reported on Thursday March 24, 1859. “This monster has caused as many deaths in the carrying out of his nefarious designs as some of his brethren, the white despots of Europe, in the gratification of their ambition.”

The Bury and Norwich Post of Tuesday March 22, 1859 also wrote: “Accounts have arrived of the death of Gezo, the monster King of the Dahomey, who for 25 years ravaged the interior to supply the Spanish and Portuguese slave dealers in the Bight of Benin”.

Two years after Gezo’s death, his son and successor King Badahung was said to have massacred 800 slaves in his memory in 1860. According to The Constitution Cork Advertiser of Friday November 2, 1860 “the new King of Dahomey decided that in honour of his father’s memory, a “grand custom” must be made.

“A ‘grand custom’ was the ceremonial sacrifice of hundreds of slaves. A pit was dug in order to collect enough blood to float a canoe. Some 2,000 persons were to be sacrificed, they were to be beheaded and thrown into the pit to bleed out.”

When he could not find 2,000 slaves, Badahung was said to have settled for 800, contributed, as ceremonial tribute, by other slave dealers.