A Short History of Benin (4th ed.)

#174
Title: A Short History of Benin (4th ed.)
Author: Jacob U. Egharevba
Publisher: Ibadan University Press
Year: 1968 (orig. 1934)
118 pages

Unfortunately, the Benin Empire described in this book is now part of Nigeria and is unrelated to the country called Benin, formerly Dahomey. Thus, this book does me no good in my Books of the World Challenge (I already have Nigeria covered). Nonetheless, this was a fascinating read, though largely composed of several-paragraph to several-page descriptions of successive rulers, whom they invaded or killed, and what inventions and sayings are attributed to them or events in their reign. Still, there are enough vivid anecdotes to bring this history alive, and this chronology provides a good sense of the region, in particular its warfare. It is interesting to see the shift from more mythic and anecdotal accounts to documented historical relationships; I would have liked to know more about the author's sources, particularly the nature of the oral transmission of history in the region.

I found myself frequently thinking about Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and the public response to it. There, international outrage was evoked by Beah's and others' stories of impressed servitude in warring armies; here, the author speaks positively and uncritically of the territory conquered and humans sacrificed by Benin. I found this to be a reminder that we seem to be at war more often as not, and that inhumanity and brutality are nothing new. I also found myself thinking about Elizabeth Wayland Barber's Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years, which tracks the history of weaving and textiles and the evidence their artifacts provide about culture. Though only 100 pages of text, A Short History of Benin makes one long for an account in which agriculture, arts, religion, or peaceful resolution of disputes were accorded the status of conflict and conquest, or indeed figured at all.