for those who dont know african history the kingdom of dahomey were some really pieces of shit:
Both domestic slavery and the Atlantic slave trade were important to the economy of Dahomey. Men, women, and children captured by Dahomey in wars and slave raids were sold to European slave traders in exchange for various goods such as rifles, gunpowder, textiles, cowry shells, and alcohol. Dahomey used magical rituals for slave trading. Prior to being sold to Europeans, slaves were forced to march in circles around the "Tree of Forgetfulness" so they would lose memories of their culture, family, and homeland. The purpose of this ritual was to prevent the spirits of the slaves from returning and seeking revenge against the royalty of Dahomey.
Other war captives who were not intended to be sold to Europeans remained in Dahomey as slaves. There, they worked on royal plantations that supplied food for the army and royal court, and they were reserved for human sacrifice in the Annual Customs of Dahomey**.**
what were those customs?
Since Dahomey was a significant military power involved in the slave trade, slaves and human sacrifice became crucial aspects of the ceremony. Captives from war and criminals were killed for the deceased kings of Dahomey. During the ceremony, around 500 prisoners would be sacrificed. As many as 4,000 were reported killed In one of these ceremonies in 1727. Most of the victims were sacrificed through decapitation, a tradition widely used by Dahomean kings, and the literal translation for the Fon name for the ceremony Xwetanu is "yearly head business". In later years this ceremony also included the spilling of human blood from the sacrificed.
of course the whiteys had to show up and take their freedom away:
Dahomey became an adversary to the British Empire after the abolition of slavery during the 19th century. The British sent diplomatic missions to Dahomey, in an effort to convince King Ghezo to abolish human sacrifice and slave trading.
In 1851, the Royal Navy imposed a naval blockade against Dahomey, forcing Ghezo to sign a treaty in 1852 that immediately abolished the export of slaves. However, the treaty was broken and slave trading efforts continued in 1857 and 1858.
this ghezo guy was totally not a fucking asshole:
The slave trade has been the ruling principle of my people. It is the source of their glory and wealth. Their songs celebrate their victories and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery.
but at the end they got fucked by the french, because there's always a bigger fish. before that they had great relations with the portuguese because as much as current idpol brainrot resorts to race reductionism in reality the blacks of dahomey and the whites from portugal were all buddy-buddy because both were slave traders and wanted to make money. the dahomeys didnt give a single fuck about the slaves in question being black
now I know hollywood has a bad history of whitewashing history, but consider how insane this black female power fantasy shit is when most of the black slave in the united states were enslaved and sold by dahomey. thats like jews making a whitewashed movie about hitler, or mexico making a movie about how cool cortez and the conquistadors were
tl;dr: some woke broads who dont know history are making a movie about how militaristic greedy human-sacrificing slavers were heckin cute and valid because girl power
https://web.archive.org/web/20220701170052/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8093700/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey
This, if anything a Mexican equivalent to The Woman King would be the opposite. Starring some Aztec kween heroically battling the evil huwhite conquistadors to uphold her people's liberty to keep attacking their neighbors to gather human sacrifices to butcher in the name of their demonic gods.
As for the Dahomey Amazons themselves, the stronk black wimmin at the center of John Boyega's and Viola Davis' newest historical fantasy piece got their asses beat by the Europeans every time they fought the latter (and they fought whitey with guns, not machetes). So in fact they fit the role of 'comically evil but also equally hilariously incompetent and impotent pop-up bad guys to be effortlessly destroyed by the heroes' vastly better than the British and/or French who they'll presumably be slaughtering in this movie.
Best part of this saga is that the greatest example of an actually strong and heroic black female to have come out of colonial-era Dahomey was Sara Forbes Bonetta, a slave given by King Ghezo to the British envoy (who took her in because the alternative was that the Dahomey would've sacrificed her). Despite her horrific background, she became a goddaughter to Queen Victoria herself, married another self-made freedman business tycoon in British Nigeria and had kids with him, and got to live her life in wealth & luxury which her former tormentors could only dream of while their blight of a kingdom was rightfully burned down by the French.
This movie should've been about her instead.
Would have been interesting if the writers were competent.