Behanzin

Béhanzin was the eleventh and last sovereign of the Kingdom of Dahomey — the centralized West African state on the Bight of Benin whose army included the Mino, the corps of female soldiers Europeans called the Dahomey Amazons. He ascended the throne in 1889 and reigned for five years.

His reign was the final African resistance to French colonial conquest in the region. In 1890 France imposed a protectorate over the coastal kingdom of Porto-Novo, traditionally tributary to Dahomey, and demanded that Béhanzin acknowledge French sovereignty. He refused. War followed.

The First and Second Franco-Dahomean Wars, fought 1890 and 1892 to 1894, were among the most strategically capable resistance campaigns mounted against any European colonial power in nineteenth-century Africa. Dahomean armies under Béhanzin's command, employing modern firearms purchased through coastal trade and incorporating the Mino in front-line combat formations, inflicted significant casualties on French expeditionary forces. The French eventually prevailed through superior numbers, artillery, and the cutting of Dahomey's supply lines.

Béhanzin surrendered in 1894 and was deported to Martinique and later to Algeria, where he died in exile in 1906. The Kingdom of Dahomey was dissolved and incorporated into French West Africa. His remains were returned to Benin in 1928.

The bronze sculptures, brass altars, and royal regalia of Dahomey — the artistic patrimony of his kingdom — were taken by French troops in 1892 and held in the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris until 2021, when twenty-six pieces were returned to Benin under President Patrice Talon.

He is honored here as the last sovereign of an unconquered West African kingdom.