
The legend of Benin’s fearless female warriors - MiriamWeiner
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180826-the-legend-of-benins-fearless-female-warriors
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danielvf
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
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.

~~~
bergoid
> 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-
Europe...](https://www.quora.com/Who-did-most-of-the-slave-trade-Europeans-or-
Arabs) [3] [https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Arabic-slave-trade-more-
humane...](https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Arabic-slave-trade-more-humane-than-
the-Western-one)

~~~
mirimir
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.

~~~
reacweb
It is difficult to compare aggregates also because you should take into
account population density.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_populati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Past_population).
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.

