This bullshit is trending on Twitter:
Bow down to the most exceptional female warrior to ever live. See #TheWomanKing rise exclusively in movie theaters September 16. pic.twitter.com/VnyuH9nPVr
— The Woman King (@WomanKingMovie) July 6, 2022
How could the Wokies not love the shit out of this movie?
It has proud Black African women fighting and killing lots of White European men.
It’s Woke porn in theater across America.
Actual, factual, real life Wakanda!
Except it’s not.
The real African nation of Dahome was an empire built on conquest and slavery.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was established in the 1720s. Dahomey was built on the slave trade; kings used profits from the slave trade to acquire guns, which in turn were used to expand their kingdom by conquest and incorporation of smaller kingdoms. Most slaves were acquired either by trade with the interior or by raids into the north and west into Nigeria; Dahomey took advantage of the civil wars among the Yoruba to gain access to a ready source of captives.
They didn’t fight Europeans until late in their empire, and when they did, they lost.
Earlier, Dahome conquered neighboring tribes and sold them into slavery to European traders.
They also engaged in an annual rutual known as the Yearly Custom, which involved ritualistic human sacrifice.
His Majesty Badahung, King of Dahomey, is about to make the ‘Grand Custom in honour of the late King Gezo. Determined to surpass all former monarchs in the magnitude of the cere- monies to be performed on this occasion, Badahung has made the most extensive preparations for the celebration of the Grand Custom. A great pit has been dug, which is to contain human blood enough to float a canoe. Two thousand persons will be sacrificed on this occasion. The expedition to Abbeokuta is postponed, hut the King has sent his army to make some excursions at the expense of some weaker tribes, and has succeeded in capturing many unfortunate creatures. The young-people among these prisoners will be sold into slavery, and the old persons will be killed at the Grand Custom.
It wasn’t only the victims of conquest who were sacrificed.
The guide continues in saying that when the king dies his wives are meant to die with him. The temple, in which I’m allowed walk around, is the tomb of the former king’s wives. While he is said to have had as many as 200 wives, when he died they decided to sacrifice 41 of them to the afterlife. They were lowered into the basin of the temple, drank a glass of poison and died there below where my feet now stand.
Even Dahome soldiers were not spared.
Casually, she points at the costume of a man holding a saber She explains that this was the executioner, and that he may have had the most stressful job in the world. If he didn’t cut the head of the enemy clean off in one single chop, he himself would have his head removed as punishment. Soldiers also had to live by high standards. Prior to leaving to fight they were to promise to return with a certain number of heads. If they came back with even one short, they had to give their own to make up the difference.
When the British outlawed slavery, the British navy patrolled the slave coast to force an embargo on slave ports.
This significantly weakened the economy and prowess of Dahome.
It was eventually conquered by the French, much to the support of other local tribes.
The best parallel in America is the Aztec empire built of slavery and sacrifice, and how the Conquistadors were seen as liberators by the tribes preyed upon by the Aztec.
But the story of an African nation built on slavery and sacrifice that sold its Black neighbors to White European slave traders until it was conquered by the French wouldn’t have the same appeal.
So they rewrite the entire history of Dahomey to focus on the female warriors and make up the rest.
So brace yourself for bombardment about a movie about “real life Wakanda” which is as fictional as Wakanda.
Maybe I should Kickstarter a sequel about the heroes of the British Navy that battled African slave traders?
The typically accepted story is that Europeans invaded interior Africa, hell bent on capturing slaves for shipment to the Caribbean Islands south America and the English Colonies of North America. The truth is a bit different. Yes European slave traders were acquiring slave in Africa and transporting them to the New World. However, the Europeans almost never left the West African port cities that were the hubs of the slave trade. They bought slaves from local chieftains, who in turn bought or took slaves from interior tribes who captured the slaves, typically in the near constant intertribal wars. The Atlantic slave trade would not have existed without the demand for labor for sugar plantations, tobacco plantations, coffee plantations, and other labor intensive activities in the New World. How ever it also would not have existed if not for the interior slave trade within the continent of Africa ran by Africans. Note that slavery and slave trading was well established in Africa for centuries before Europeans began trading manufactured goods for people in the 1500s.
It’s interesting that the large scale colonization of Africa only really took off after the European powers outlawed the slave trade which weakened the powerful African kingdoms enough that they would fall to a combination of inner turmoil and smaller tribes, which they had previously exploited, that were supported by European countries.
We where kings – but only with slaves.
That is similar to the Kingdom of Benin (not the country) which only was that powerful because of the slave trade and exploitation of smaller tribes for resources like gold and ivory.
If I remember right, there was significant Arab involvement in the slave trade (within Africa) as well. Yet another detail that’s typically hidden from view.