The Woman King was supposed to be another woke Hollywood black nationalist pandering exercise. Everyone involved the problem with glamorizing “matriarchal” black slavers.
“The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and written by Maria Bello and Dana Stevens, portrays the ancient West African Kingdom of Dahomey (today’s Republic of Benin) and its legendary all-women regiment, the Agodjie. The film, which opens this weekend, is a vision of Black female power, starring Viola Davis, Sheila Atim, Thuso Mbedu, and Lashana Lynch; its promotional material blurbs a review from Variety that calls the movie “the Gladiator of our time.” But how does The Woman King handle another part of Dahomey’s history—the kingdom’s involvement in the slave trade? At a time when the participation of African rulers and middlemen in the Atlantic slave trade gets described by Americans who want to divert attention from their own responsibility for the history of slavery as “African complicity,” this film’s task is delicate, indeed.”
Delicate indeed.
While the media has relentlessly promoted and defended The Woman King, black social media users aware of the actual history called for a boycott.
I wrote about Dahomey during the crackdown on The Dukes of Hazzard in an article that I was honored to have Rep. Louie Gohmert partly read in Congress.
The endless stories about the “Amazons” of the African kingdom of Dahomey neatly fit into the leftist myth of a peaceful matriarchal Africa disrupted by European colonialism, but Dahomey ran on slavery.
The “Amazons” helped capture slaves for the Atlantic slave trade. White and black liberals are romanticizing the very culture that captured and sold their forefathers into slavery. “In Dahomey,” the first major mainstream black musical was about African-Americans moving to Dahomey. By then the French had taken over old Dahomey and together with the British had put an end to the slave trade.
The French dismantled the “Amazons” and freed many of Dahomey’s slaves only for the idiot descendants of both groups to romanticize the noble last stand of Dahomey fighting for the right to export black slaves to Cuba and condemn the European liberators who put a stop to that atrocity.
Beyond selling hundreds of thousands of slaves, Dahomey engaged in brutal atrocities.
Africans rescued from Spanish and Portuguese slaver ships, by the British navy or its privateers, then liberated on the shores of the Bahamas, were more than likely captured by King Gezo and the slave hunters of Benin.
When King Gezo, the great slave King of the Dahomey, died in 1858, some 800 slaves were massacred in his memory.
800 captured Africans were contributed, as ceremonial tribute, to the deceased King, by other African slave dealers from the Kingdom of Whydah, in what is now southern Benin, West Africa.
In 1860, two years after the death of King Gezo, his son, King Badahung, 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.
Untold numbers of Bahamian families today are the descendants of the slaves caught by Gezo and his Amazon all female army, then sold to the Europeans for plantations in Cuba, Brazil and America. It was only by luck and mere chance that the slave ship their ancestors were on happened to be stopped on the high seas by the British Navy.
The real movie ought to be made about the British battle against Islamic and African slavery.
Thanks! Great article.
A few of my trivial thoughts from the last few days that are somewhat related: JFC Fuller said Alexander the Great was the first to reject the use of female warriors, when he was presented with a gift by some king of a troop of female warriors, which Alexander rejected. Before that, apparently use of female warriors was apparently considered acceptable. I find descriptions of female warriors in ancient scripture, etc.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans, I think, to get involved in the slave trade from West Africa (“Beware, take care, the Bight of Benin. There’s one comes out, for 40 goes in.”) Basically the Europeans bought slaves from the African rulers, who were often prisoners of wars between African tribes. The Europeans sometimes gave military help to one tribe or another, which gave that tribe a decisive advantage in their wars with other tribes. Apparently war between tribes was incessant.
The Portuguese were also the toughest of the Europeans (or most brutal). They had excellent ships and an excellent navy, I guess they didn’t remain a great power because they had a small land area compared to Spain, or maybe that area was hard to defend. I have to put that in my bucket list of historical instances for future study 🙂
Slaves were a very valuable commodity in the New World (called “black gold”) which attracted European slave traders. The indigenous peoples of the New World didn’t make good slaves for some reason (maybe because they were liable to escape if they got the chance, amongst other explanations I have read).
“Apparently war between tribes was incessant.” And it’s moved here, to cities like Philly, NYC, Atlanta, St Louis, Chicago, Detroit, etc.
I saw a long coming attraction for that idiotic movie. Mighty black Mary Sues leaping through the air and chopping up evil colonial whitey, when they aren’t proving their physical superiority over the black men of Dahomey. I wasn’t surprised, though. Viola Davis is an anti white racist and she seems to specialize in roles of stwong bwack women who don’t put up with any shit from menfolk, especially not whitey. I can’t think of a single movie she’s been in that’s any different.
And Benin is STILL exporting slaves. Real heroes.
Yeah, thanks Jeff! Gang warfare between one black gang and another was the primary source of shootings and killings in my former SF Bay Area city. MSM never covers that for some reason.
Probably the same nationwide, such as one black gang vs another black gang fighting over drug turf or whatever other sources of income they have.
Good points. I had read that the natives of the Americas made bad slaves because, once enslaved, they lost the will to live and quickly died. Very inconsiderate of them, wasn’t it? (//sarc off//)
Thanks, good point.
I realized after posting that I had neglected to mention that the vast majority of the slave trade was to New Spain (the Spanish colonies in the New World), not to North America.
Also that mosquitos were the main killers of Europeans, not Africans.
The mortality rate of British soldiers in India was also incredibly high, I guess dysentery and such should be added to mosquitos in that case.
Yes, Sub Saharan Africa used to be called “the white man’s grave” because of all the mosquito borne diseases and filthy living conditions. They had less tolerance for malaria, dengue fever and so forth than the natives did. You know how it is with diseases. Until the modern era they were mostly regional and the tropics were the worst and still are. Over thousands of years the people of different regions had built up tolerance to their particular diseases.
But you know all that. It makes me wonder how many black Africans died from diseases the whites brought, like the Indians here did? I’m sure nobody will ever know.
Good points, thanks Jeff!
Oddly, I never wondered before about how many black Africans died from diseases that the whites brought.
I read where the New World indigenous peoples did not live long in captivity, probably due to weakness to the Old World diseases they were exposed to.
“The real movie ought to be made about the British battle against Islamic and African slavery.”
With the state of Hollywood today, I wouldn’t hold my breath Daniel.
Nor would I, but the British efforts to end the slave trade were very heroic. It’s too bad that the sheeple can’t see DWEM’s (dead white European men) in the role of protectors of the innocent rather than the constant drumbeat showing their brutality.
Oikophobic leftists hate their own culture so they hate the people who created it most of all. Sick and detestable people, for the most part.
Nope. Did you see that shitty remake of “The Four Feathers” that came out after 911? Ever since that attack, American leftists have been kissing islamopithecine ass.
Yes, movies need to be made. But the Big Lies about the evil caused by whites ( a proxy for Christians ) has been spewed from so many outlets for so long that even those on ‘our’ side would think the facts are lies and the truth is propaganda.
Had you a billion dollar movie studio, you would need a documentary mini-series featuring the same actors as re-enactors and on-location shoots and deep dives into archives and archeology to cover the questions. The movie would then be an ‘advert’ for the documentary-series.
I’m no expert, and no little about the African Slave Trade, but I remember that the Portuguese and Spanish merchants lost so many ships on the west African coast that only pirates would sail there. That little known fact says all you need to know about people who had NO rule of law, NO roads, NO irrigation, and NO wheels.
G-d bless everyone here and Daniel and his family …
Thanks Dan, great info!
Slavery has been part of humanity, since dawn of time. If you think today’s illegal immigration/human trafficking is any different than 19th century African slave trade. You are either stupid or benefiting from it.
Good point.
In 1975 I was stationed to the American Embassy in Dahomey. The country was called Dahomey when I arrived and the Republic of Benin when I left two years later.
It was a difficult post — few American interests to defend, a decidedly anti-French (and by extension, anti-American) government and intellectual class — but culturally it was fascinating. We were able to attend several traditional dances, which were a real learning experience.
We visited the cultural heritage site of Wydah several times. It was about an hour’s drive west on the coast road, and had been nicely “restored” by (presumably) French researchers. No reluctance to recount the killing of hundreds of black slaves, although I would not be surprised if that has since changed. Interpretive panels pointed out where various kings were crowned and where their slaves were ritually murdered.
People seem to forget that various coastal African countries were named for their exports: Ghana was Gold Coast, Cote d’Ivoire was Ivory Coast, Liberia was Wood Coast, and Dahomey was Slave Coast. Portuguese traders landed at Wydah to trade for black slaves, which were carried mainly to Brazil and the Caribbean. Many cultural and religious practices that still exist in those new world locations were directly imported from Dahomey, including especially “Voudoun”, which we now write as “Voodoo”.
I could write pages about Dahomey — in fact did, in a book I published for my daughters, who lived there with us. The bottom line was that of nine Foreign Service assignments I had over 28 years, Dahomey was professionally the most difficult.
Final note: we were there (in fact I was Charge d’Affaires of our embassy) when a couple dozen European mercenaries landed and tried to take over the government. That resulted in some of my finest reporting and I received an award for it.
If your book is published, can you cite its title for people here to read? If it is not published, why not?
Thanks for the question. I self-published through Lulu. If you’re interested in a Foreign Service life, send me a note at Fred Lasor with a dot in the middle, you know where the at mark goes for google.. I have about three left.
Thanks Fred, very interesting!
Very interesting!
Yes. The mess at the border is the modern face of slavery. It’s not just happening in China.