AH chalenge Make Dahomey as big and as powerfull as possible

Is it that you don't know where benin is, or that no one finds the idea of a tirranical militarist slave running regime wit an all female elite military unit and a polyteist official religion interesting?
 
Is it that you don't know where benin is, or that no one finds the idea of a tirranical militarist slave running regime wit an all female elite military unit and a polyteist official religion interesting?

Medieval southwestern Africa is probably an area most (or many) on this site are not very familiar with.
 
I don't know that much about it. But in other threads here people have discussed a king of Mali sending ships to Brazil around 1400 AD. So if Western Africans had made contact with the Incas and Aztecs, and gotten rich off trade with the Americas, that could do it. (Would the empire still be called Dahomey?)
 
Is it that you don't know where benin is, or that no one finds the idea of a tirranical militarist slave running regime wit an all female elite military unit and a polyteist official religion interesting?

Well, I did think about it, but my thought was that early Christianization and closer contacts with Europe were it's best hopes for avoiding being colonized in the 19th century: since that would give us a quite different Dahomey, I thought you wouldn't be interested.

Bruce
 
i was thinking more on the line of an alternate ending of the french-dahomey wars in the 1890is
dahomey monarchy lost mainly as a result of poor tactics and ignoring the krup artilery and german machineguns they bought just before the start of the wars, after the port royal incidents
if they decided to go for guerrilla warfare instead of charging into concentrated rifle fire and pitting clubs against bajonetes they could of had much more succes against the french senegalese forces and foreing legion, especially given the number of winchesters and manlichers they got of german traders, and the shere size and organisation of the kings army

it would seem they didnt quite get how artilery and machineguns worked, as they had no trained personel, but as it was comonplace to pay mercenaries to operate such mashines and train crews this could of gone much diferent

probbably a few PODs before the 1800eds would make ewen more diference

then in the historical context of WWI such a nation is a natural ally ot the central powers, getting ewen more weapons and equipment, as well as experienced instructors, and possibly expanding its territory

after being on the losing side it might lose much of its territorial gains but would still be a important factor in the region
then WWII comes and gods know what might happen
 
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