The King of Dahomey's Levée

Description

This engraving depicts the king of Dahomey, likely Ahosu Tegbessou (1740-1774), in the Bight of Benin hinterland. The levee, or receptions, shows the king seated on his throne, with female "amazon" soldiers and other members of his royal court. On the right, British visitors and slave traders were being entertained. Archibald Dalzel (1740–1811) was a Scottish governor at Ouidah (1767 -1770) and twice at the Gold Coast (1792-1798; 1800-1802). He advocated against abolitionism and justified slavery because it saved people from the greater evil of being human sacrifices in the kingdom of Dahomey.

Source

Archibald Dalzel, The History of Dahomey: An Inland Kingdom of Africa (London: T. Spilsbury and Son, 1793), facing p. viii.

Creator

Dalzel, Archibald

Language

English

Rights

Image is in the public domain. Metadata is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

Identifier

B012

Spatial Coverage

Africa--Western Bight

Item sets

Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture

Citation

"The King of Dahomey's Levée", Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed July 30, 2021, http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/2232
This engraving depicts the king of Dahomey, likely Ahosu Tegbessou (1740-1774), in the Bight of Benin hinterland. The levee, or receptions, shows the king seated on his throne, with female "amazon" soldiers and other members of his royal court. On the right, British visitors and slave traders were being entertained. Archibald Dalzel (1740–1811) was a Scottish governor at Ouidah (1767 -1770) and twice at the Gold Coast (1792-1798; 1800-1802). He advocated against abolitionism and justified slavery because it saved people from the greater evil of being human sacrifices in the kingdom of Dahomey.
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