Aftermath and General Considerations

This chapter explores how Dahomey did not really manage to stabilize the situation and especially failed to conquer new regions, a negative mark for a warrior state whose raison d’être was precisely conquest. The slave trade declined, due in part to the counterproductive regulations imposed by the new authorities. The Dahomeans were faced with competition from a new quarter: the slow rise of the slave ports of the Eastern Slave Coast, a region which Oyo began to divert its slave trade to. The story of the Dutchman Hendrik Hertogh, in the middle of it all, is detailed. Hertogh managed to erect a considerable informal (and anti-Dahomean) polity in the east, until 1738, when he was assassinated. The beginnings of the Annual Customs in Dahomey is also noted, notorious for human sacrifices on a huge scale, formally in honor of the ancestors. Human sacrifices became an integral part of Dahomean customs.