Dahomey’s organized military and economy made its conquest brutally difficult for the French.

Evidence

Also successfully “pacified” by 1895 were the ancient Fon kingdoms of southern Dahomey and its tributary portkingdom of Porto Novo. In the late r 88o’s, the French had sought to bring these kingdoms under their influence as well, so as to ensure a link between the coast and their new possessions on the bend of the Niger River. Despite the small size of Dahomey, this conquest had proven much more difficult than the French expected. Dahomey, earlier an active participant in the Atlantic slave trade, had converted to palm oil production in the second half of the nineteenth century. Large, efficiently run plantations worked by slaves had impressed the Europeans who traded there; Dahomey boasted a superbly disciplined army as well. Not surprisingly, Dahomey’s monarch, Behanzin, had refused French “protection” when first offered it in 1890. The French army finally subdued him in 1892. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 118

Categorization

• BMF: The disciplined slave-worked plantations and superb army of Dahomey faintly echo the Nwoye/Okonkwo world of Things Fall Apart — the structured precolonial state as a proud, formidable counterweight before colonial force breaks it.