Fascinating people,

Fascinating Places.

Precisely 200 years ago,

Prince Pedro declared independence

for the Portuguese colony of Brazil,

the first country in the world to officially acknowledge the vast nation's independence

was a tiny African kingdom that developed relations with the South American country over

the prior 70 years.

The Home, a kingdom that once existed in what today we call Benin,

made its mark in the history books of South America. But seven decades later, the Homemade disappeared from the maps, having been swallowed up as part of the French Empire during the so-called scramble for Africa. While chasing new territory

and resources, the European powers claimed they were motivated by a desire to bring

Christianity to the supposedly undeveloped continent.

The Western visitors often described Dahomey in unflattering terms as a pagan nation where human sacrifice was practiced and where

slavery which had recently been outlawed in Europe was central to the economy. It was also a land where an all-powerful monarch was kept in power

with a support of 6,000 female the Goji warriors that the Europeans dubbed as Amazons. The reality was much more nuanced. While horrific acts most

certainly occurred in Dahome Western chroniclers were inclined to focus on the kingdom in isolation

and failed to draw parallels with the horrors happening elsewhere in the world.

In this episode I explore the story of the homeme. Before

examining the particulars of the society I wanted to get an idea of what an outsider would have seen upon arriving at the kingdom's

capital, Abome, during the height of the Dahome Empire.

For answers, I turned to Dr. Lynn Larson of the University of Arkansas.

She has visited and extensively researched to Homie

...