Dynastic History|Musée Historique d'Abomey — The Capital the Court Burned

The French column under Colonel Alfred Dodds entered Abomey on 17 November 1892 and found the capital of Danxomè — the kingdom Europe called Dahomey — empty. French army records say the palaces had been set alight before the withdrawal and attribute the order to King Béhanzin. That account of the day is the conquering army's own, and it is the record this memory works from.

What burned was an administrative apparatus as much as a residence. Ten palace compounds stood inside a single earthen enclosure of about 47 hectares, raised between the 1620s and 1900 by twelve successive kings, each building beside his predecessor rather than over him. The walls are cob: laterite, water and straw, packed by labour the court commanded, including people it held as captives. Moulded and painted bas-reliefs on the reception halls recorded reigns, alliances and campaigns in the version the palace approved. The revenue behind the whole complex came first from captives sold at Ouidah on the coast, later from palm oil.

Béhanzin surrendered in January 1894 and was deported to Martinique. In the 1940s the French colonial administration opened a museum inside the palaces of Guézo and Glèlè, and that is still the entrance visitors use. A tornado in 1984 wrecked the Guézo portico and other structures; UNESCO inscribed the site in 1985 and placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger in the same year, removing it only in 2007 after repairs. The red earth wall behind the museum sign has been rebuilt more than once.

📸 Cover: the entrance to the Musée Historique d'Abomey, in the palace of Guézo, Fawaz.tairou, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons