Author: Archibald DalzelPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Benin
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The History of Dahomey
Author: Archibald DalzelDahomey and the Dahomans
Author: Frederick E. ForbesAfrica's Development in Historical Perspective
Author: Emmanuel AkyeampongPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107041155
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 541
Book Description
Why has Africa remained persistently poor over its recorded history? Has Africa always been poor? What has been the nature of Africa's poverty and how do we explain its origins? This volume takes a necessary interdisciplinary approach to these questions by bringing together perspectives from archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology, political science, and economics. Several contributors note that Africa's development was at par with many areas of Europe in the first millennium of the Common Era. Why Africa fell behind is a key theme in this volume, with insights that should inform Africa's developmental strategies.
Wives of the Leopard
Author: Edna G. BayPublisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813923864
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 396
Book Description
Wives of the Leopard explores power and culture in a pre-colonial West African state whose army of women and practice of human sacrifice earned it notoriety in the racist imagination of late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Tracing two hundred years of the history of Dahomey up to the French colonial conquest in 1894, the book follows change in two central institutions. One was the monarchy, the coalitions of men and women who seized and wielded power in the name of the king. The second was the palace, a household of several thousand wives of the king who supported and managed state functions. Looking at Dahomey against the backdrop of the Atlantic slave trade and the growth of European imperialism, Edan G. Bay reaches for a distinctly Dahomean perspective as she weaves together evidence drawn from travelers' memoirs and local oral accounts, from the religious practices of vodun, and from ethnographic studies of the twentieth century. Wives of the Leopard thoroughly integrates gender into the political analysis of state systems, effectively creating a social history of power. More broadly, it argues that women as a whole and men of the lower classes were gradually squeezed out of access to power as economic resources contracted with the decline of the slave trade in the nineteenth century. In these and other ways, the book provides an accessible portrait of Dahomey's complex and fascinating culture without exoticizing it.
Dahomey and the Slave Trade
Author: Polanyi KarlPublisher:
ISBN: 9781737276036
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The death of Karl Polanyi in 1964, at seventy-seven, curtailed a productive life in the fields economic history and economic anthropology. Some of his students-impressed with his erudition and disregard for the ordinary-described him as "otherworldly". He was founder of the Galilei Society in Budapest, the cradle of the liberal revolutions in Hungary in the first decades of the 20th. century. In the first World War, he was a cavalry officer and after that war he went to Vienna. There he became a columnist and commentator for the Oesterreichische Volkswirt, in charge of analysis of international affairs. For years he read daily The Times, Le Temps, the Frankfurter Zeitung, all the Vienna papers and those from Budapest and others as they were relevant. He emigrated to England where he became a tutor for Oxford University and the University of London and wrote re-analysis of English economic history: The Great Transformation. After World War II, Polanyi came to Columbia University to teach economic history. His courses were always popular and well attended. During his last years at Columbia, and during his early years of retirement, Polanyi was joined by Conrad Arensberg in heading a large interdisciplinary project for the comparative study of economic systems. The volume that resulted was Trade and Market in the Early Empires, a landmark in economic anthropology and economic history. Polanyi's interest in Dahomey stems from one of his students who had contributed two papers on Dahomey to Trade and Market. Polanyi grew interested and, with characteristic thoroughness, read the literature on that West African kingdom. The present book resulted from these last years of productive scholarship. Dahomey and the Slave Trade was prepared for the press by his widow, Ilona Duczynska Polanyi. Foreword vii This book is of vital importance to anthropology for several reasons, the most compelling being that the concerns of history and of anthropology are overlapped in it. Besides making available the economic history of one of the great West African kingdoms, it sets forth some new theory for economic anthropology-particularly Part III, in which Polanyi makes sense of the intricacies of trade between a people with a fully monetized economy, and one without, and those passages in which he adds "house-holding" as a concept to his ideas about the principles of economic integration. Polanyi's position in economic anthropology-not to mention the status he achieved as economic historian, translator of Hungarian literature, man of action, and inspiring teacher-is secure. He has enabled anthropologists to focus their studies of economy on processes of allocation rather than on processes of production, thereby bringing the studies into line with economic theory without merely "applying" economic theory to systems it was not designed to explain. The "release" that resulted from this great stride forward can be compared, for economic anthropology and studies in comparative economics, with the importance of the discovery in the late nineteenth century of the price mechanism itself. The more we know about the workings of other, and strange, economies, the more we can know of our own. Polanyi's work will stand as a major source of comparative insight-the core of anthropological purpose.
Amazons of Black Sparta, 2nd Edition
Author: Stanley B. AlpernPublisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814707726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
The only thoroughly documented Amazons in world history are the women warriors of Dahomey, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western African kingdom. Once dubbed a 'small black Sparta,' residents of Dahomey shared with the Spartans an intense militarism and sense of collectivism. Updated with a new preface by the author, Amazons of Black Sparta is the product of meticulous archival research and Alpern's gift for narrative. It will stand as the most comprehensive and accessible account of the woman warriors of Dahomey.
Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640-1960
Author: Patrick ManningPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521523073
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 472
Book Description
This book integrates into a single framework Dahomey's pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial economic history.
The Precolonial State in West Africa
Author: J. Cameron MonroePublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107040183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285
Book Description
This volume examines political life in the Kingdom of Dahomey, located in the Republic of Bénin.
The History of Dahomey
Author: Archibald DalzelKingdom of Dahomey
Author: Hourly HistoryPublisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Discover the remarkable history of the Kingdom of Dahomey... Imagine a fervently militaristic state with a feared professional army that included some of the only all-female military units ever seen. Imagine that same state with its own unique and sophisticated culture, religion, language, art, and society. Such a state did exist-not in the ancient past but as recently as the beginning of the twentieth century. The Kingdom of Dahomey was established in the seventeenth century and quickly rose to become one of the most powerful forces in West Africa. The society of this nation was based on conquest and the use of captives as slaves and human sacrifices. When the international slave trade expanded, Dahomey became one of the most significant slave trading centers in the world. This is the story of a unique kingdom that for more than two hundred years was one of the most influential in Africa. This is the story of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Discover a plethora of topics such as Expansion and Conquest Black Sparta: The Army of Dahomey Amazons: The Women Warriors of Dahomey Rivals: Dahomey Conquers Oyo Dahomey and the Slave Trade The Fall of Dahomey And much more! So if you want a concise and informative book on the Kingdom of Dahomey, simply scroll up and click the "Buy now" button for instant access!