King Béhanzin

Who is King Béhanzin?

Béhanzin, born Kondo and also rendered Gbehanzin, was the eleventh king of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, ruling from 1890 until 1894 as its last independent monarch under the kingdom's traditional power structure. He ascended the throne after the death of his father, King Glele, taking the throne name Béhanzin and later becoming known by the symbolic title "King Shark." His reign was defined by fierce, determined resistance to French colonial expansion. Anticipating conflict, Béhanzin modernized his army with European firearms, including repeating rifles and Krupp artillery purchased from German merchants, and mobilized the kingdom's full military strength, including the renowned Mino women warriors, to resist advancing French forces in the Second Franco-Dahomean War. As French troops closed in on his capital, Abomey, in November 1892, Béhanzin ordered the city burned rather than let it fall intact into enemy hands, then retreated into the interior and waged guerrilla warfare for more than a year before finally surrendering in January 1894. The French exiled him first to Martinique and later to Algeria, where he died in 1906 without ever returning home. Today Béhanzin is honored in Benin as a national hero and an enduring symbol of African resistance to colonial conquest.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Behanzin, king of Dahomey" · Wikipedia, "Béhanzin" · Face2Face Africa, "The heroic colonial resistance of the last King of Dahomey who was defeated by the French and exiled in 1894"