7 ms·

The kingdom of Dahomey, modern-day Benin, was the biggest slaving kingdom on the West African coast. Almost 20% of all slaves shipped to the new world from Afri

The kingdom of Dahomey, modern-day Benin, was the biggest slaving kingdom on the West African coast. Almost 20% of all slaves shipped to the new world from African went through just one port in this tiny kingdom. When England and France switched to trying to stop the slave trade in the 1800's, Dahomey was the place to go for covert slave purchases. In fact, the last slave ship to US, complete with outrunning warships on the way, was a one way dash from Dahomey.

tptacek 8y ago
1. This has nothing to do with the story. 2. The Kingdom of Dahomey is not modern-day Benin. In fact, Benin was deliberately renamed from Dahomey (the French had used that name for it as a colony). 3. It's probably not productive to single out any one African people in the slave trade. What seems to be the truth is that the slave trade was a vicious cycle driven by demand from outside the continent: great world powers would trade military technology for slaves, meaning that most tribe/states in Africa were essentially locked in an arms race to avoid themselves being enslaved. There was slavery in Africa (like basically everywhere else in the world at one point or another) before the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but the Trans-Atlantic Trade was a sui generis world-historical event, at a whole new scale (by percentage perhaps the largest forced movement in human history) and it wasn't caused by Benin.
- danielvf 8y ago
  1) The slave trade is extremely relevant to the article about the “amazons”. In the nation’s annual festival in those days, the Dahomey “amazons” would reenact capturing slaves. The Dahomey military (and the “amazons”) spent most of their fighting time attacking neighboring nations to get slaves to sell. 2) We agree. The place was called Dahomey. The place is now called Benin. 3) The kingdom of Dahomey was less than one third of one percent of the land area of Africa, and yet sold twenty percent of africa’s slaves that went to the new world. If ever there was a nation in Africa that could be discussed in the context of the slave trade, this is it.
  - tptacek 8y ago
    Again, that is true of many African states. To get arms, you dealt with slave trading nations for them. To get the slaves to get the arms, you raided other nations. To defend themselves, those other nations needed arms. To get the arms, they dealt with slave trading nations for them. All you're point out is that eventually "winners" emerged. And? Later (The comment I replied to was drastically edited after I responded to it.)
    - danielvf 8y ago
      Yes, for completeness I added responses to #2 and #3 from your first comment. Good luck - always fun either agreeing with you, or discussing our disagreements.
  - sorich87 8y ago
    Some corrections: The place was wrongly called Dahomey, that's why it was changed to Benin. Also the actual place that performed the raids on their neighbors was less than 10% of modern-day Benin. Most of the area of the kingdom (some 1/4 of modern-day Benin), were vassals who would provide slaves as tribute. Source: born there, lives there.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      What was the actual place that performed the raids called?
      - sorich87 8y ago
        Abomey
        mirimir 8y ago
        Well, then. This is where Hangbe ruled, where the Royal Palaces of Abomey are located, and where her descendents live. So the point about slavery stands, no?
- BadassFractal 8y ago
  Regarding 3, it seems that 70%+ of the African slave trade went to the Middle East, not across the Atlantic. Also regarding 3, I wonder if, comparatively, the Soviet Union forcefully moved a lot more people (even percentage-wise) through its network of concentration camps. African slaves going over the Atlantic were what.. 2-3M deaths over 300 years, whereas the USSR easily disposed of 10-30M between 1917 and the 50s and later in its various GULAGs. Much better organized, more ruthless, exterminating its own lawful citizens, thanks to the wonders of ideology. All for the greater good of society and the working class. No ethnic difference necessary to justify unprecedented genocide. Neighbors reporting neighbors to the authorities with almost total certainty of execution, for many decades.
  - Cyph0n 8y ago
    > 2-3M deaths over 300 years It's not just about the deaths, but also about the suffering and degradation spanning generations, for the sole purpose of making "superior people" more money. I have no clue whatsoever about how much Africans suffered under slavery, but I would think that some would prefer death to watching their offspring born into slavery and ultimately die as slaves.
    - BadassFractal 8y ago
      > It's not just about the deaths, but also about the suffering and degradation spanning generations, for the sole purpose of making "superior people" more money. Absolutely, I don't see anybody making the claim that slavery is wonderful, and devoid of suffering and degradation for generations to come. Maybe the folks walking around with tiki torches, but, let's be real. You and I, and most of Hacker News interlocutors are not spending much time around that crowd day-in and day-out, so we can all safely assume nobody is advocating for that here. The fact however is that slavery has been with us, as a species, for the entirety of our recorded history, and is still alive and well as of today, in one form or another. As horrible as the Atlantic slave trade has been for centuries, we can learn more history, transcend a US-centric, exceptionalist world view, and realize that what we're talking about was not an isolated, special and rare phenomenon, never seen before, or that never happened again since.
- bergoid 8y ago
  > the Trans-Atlantic Trade was a sui generis world-historical event, at a whole new scale (by percentage perhaps the largest forced movement in human history) Wrong. The Arab slave trade [1] exceeded the Western one both in scale [2] and in cruelty [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade [2] https://www.quora.com/Who-did-most-of-the-slave-trade-Europeans-or-Arabs https://www.quora.com/Who-did-most-of-the-slave-trade-Europe... [3] https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Arabic-slave-trade-more-humane-than-the-Western-one https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Arabic-slave-trade-more-humane...
  - mirimir 8y ago
    So it seems. But the aggregate estimates are similar, about 10-20 million slaves. And the estimate for the Arab slave trade covers a much longer period, ~1300 years vs ~400 years for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. So the mean rate for that was correspondingly greater.
    - dogma1138 8y ago
      The Arab slave trade unfortunately persists even today.
    - reacweb 8y ago
      It is difficult to compare aggregates also because you should take into account population density. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_populati.... trans-Atlantic slave trade was very huge (it had an impact on demography). Arab slave trade was already huge and has been lenghty. Both are terrible.
  - aedron 8y ago
    The Quora answers (your [2] and [3]) are biased and full of factual errors and misrepresentations, of course without references to sources. Stick with Wikipedia.
    - bergoid 8y ago
hyumin 8y ago
Sources? (Please provide something more credible than a wikipedia link)

tptacek 8y ago

1. This has nothing to do with the story. 2. The Kingdom of Dahomey is not modern-day Benin. In fact, Benin was deliberately renamed from Dahomey (the French had used that name for it as a colony). 3. It's probably not productive to single out any one African people in the slave trade. What seems to be the truth is that the slave trade was a vicious cycle driven by demand from outside the continent: great world powers would trade military technology for slaves, meaning that most tribe/states in Africa were essentially locked in an arms race to avoid themselves being enslaved. There was slavery in Africa (like basically everywhere else in the world at one point or another) before the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but the Trans-Atlantic Trade was a sui generis world-historical event, at a whole new scale (by percentage perhaps the largest forced movement in human history) and it wasn't caused by Benin.

danielvf 8y ago
1) The slave trade is extremely relevant to the article about the “amazons”. In the nation’s annual festival in those days, the Dahomey “amazons” would reenact capturing slaves. The Dahomey military (and the “amazons”) spent most of their fighting time attacking neighboring nations to get slaves to sell. 2) We agree. The place was called Dahomey. The place is now called Benin. 3) The kingdom of Dahomey was less than one third of one percent of the land area of Africa, and yet sold twenty percent of africa’s slaves that went to the new world. If ever there was a nation in Africa that could be discussed in the context of the slave trade, this is it.
- tptacek 8y ago
  Again, that is true of many African states. To get arms, you dealt with slave trading nations for them. To get the slaves to get the arms, you raided other nations. To defend themselves, those other nations needed arms. To get the arms, they dealt with slave trading nations for them. All you're point out is that eventually "winners" emerged. And? Later (The comment I replied to was drastically edited after I responded to it.)
  - danielvf 8y ago
    Yes, for completeness I added responses to #2 and #3 from your first comment. Good luck - always fun either agreeing with you, or discussing our disagreements.
- sorich87 8y ago
  Some corrections: The place was wrongly called Dahomey, that's why it was changed to Benin. Also the actual place that performed the raids on their neighbors was less than 10% of modern-day Benin. Most of the area of the kingdom (some 1/4 of modern-day Benin), were vassals who would provide slaves as tribute. Source: born there, lives there.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    What was the actual place that performed the raids called?
    - sorich87 8y ago
      Abomey
      - mirimir 8y ago
        Well, then. This is where Hangbe ruled, where the Royal Palaces of Abomey are located, and where her descendents live. So the point about slavery stands, no?
BadassFractal 8y ago
Regarding 3, it seems that 70%+ of the African slave trade went to the Middle East, not across the Atlantic. Also regarding 3, I wonder if, comparatively, the Soviet Union forcefully moved a lot more people (even percentage-wise) through its network of concentration camps. African slaves going over the Atlantic were what.. 2-3M deaths over 300 years, whereas the USSR easily disposed of 10-30M between 1917 and the 50s and later in its various GULAGs. Much better organized, more ruthless, exterminating its own lawful citizens, thanks to the wonders of ideology. All for the greater good of society and the working class. No ethnic difference necessary to justify unprecedented genocide. Neighbors reporting neighbors to the authorities with almost total certainty of execution, for many decades.
- Cyph0n 8y ago
  > 2-3M deaths over 300 years It's not just about the deaths, but also about the suffering and degradation spanning generations, for the sole purpose of making "superior people" more money. I have no clue whatsoever about how much Africans suffered under slavery, but I would think that some would prefer death to watching their offspring born into slavery and ultimately die as slaves.
  - BadassFractal 8y ago
    > It's not just about the deaths, but also about the suffering and degradation spanning generations, for the sole purpose of making "superior people" more money. Absolutely, I don't see anybody making the claim that slavery is wonderful, and devoid of suffering and degradation for generations to come. Maybe the folks walking around with tiki torches, but, let's be real. You and I, and most of Hacker News interlocutors are not spending much time around that crowd day-in and day-out, so we can all safely assume nobody is advocating for that here. The fact however is that slavery has been with us, as a species, for the entirety of our recorded history, and is still alive and well as of today, in one form or another. As horrible as the Atlantic slave trade has been for centuries, we can learn more history, transcend a US-centric, exceptionalist world view, and realize that what we're talking about was not an isolated, special and rare phenomenon, never seen before, or that never happened again since.
bergoid 8y ago
> the Trans-Atlantic Trade was a sui generis world-historical event, at a whole new scale (by percentage perhaps the largest forced movement in human history) Wrong. The Arab slave trade [1] exceeded the Western one both in scale [2] and in cruelty [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade [2] https://www.quora.com/Who-did-most-of-the-slave-trade-Europeans-or-Arabs https://www.quora.com/Who-did-most-of-the-slave-trade-Europe... [3] https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Arabic-slave-trade-more-humane-than-the-Western-one https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Arabic-slave-trade-more-humane...
- mirimir 8y ago
  So it seems. But the aggregate estimates are similar, about 10-20 million slaves. And the estimate for the Arab slave trade covers a much longer period, ~1300 years vs ~400 years for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. So the mean rate for that was correspondingly greater.
  - dogma1138 8y ago
    The Arab slave trade unfortunately persists even today.
  - reacweb 8y ago
    It is difficult to compare aggregates also because you should take into account population density. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_populati.... trans-Atlantic slave trade was very huge (it had an impact on demography). Arab slave trade was already huge and has been lenghty. Both are terrible.
- aedron 8y ago
  The Quora answers (your [2] and [3]) are biased and full of factual errors and misrepresentations, of course without references to sources. Stick with Wikipedia.
  - bergoid 8y ago

hyumin 8y ago

Sources? (Please provide something more credible than a wikipedia link)