Agoli-agbo
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Agoli-agbo is considered to have been the twelfth and final King of Dahomey. He was in power from 1894 to 1900.
Biography
[edit]He took the throne after the previous king, Béhanzin, went into exile after being defeated in the invasion of Dahomey by France in the Second Franco-Dahomean War.
The exile of Béhanzin did not legalize the French colonization. The French general Alfred-Amédée Dodds offered the throne to every one of the immediate royal family, in return for a signature on a treaty establishing a French protectorate over the Kingdom; all refused.
Finally, on January 15, 1894, Béhanzin's Army Chief of Staff Prince Agoli-agbo (whose name meaning "the dynasty has not fallen"[1]), brother of Béhanzin and son of King Glélé, signed. He was appointed to the throne, as a 'traditional chief' rather than head of state of a sovereign nation, by the French when he agreed to sign the instrument of surrender.
He 'reigned' for only six years, assisted by a French Viceroy. The French prepared for direct administration, which they achieved on 12 February 1900. As the Indigénat exacerbated the exploitation, Agoli-agbo went into exile in Gabon.[1]
In 1910, he was allowed to return and to live in the Save Region. He occasionally returned to Abomey in order to perform ancestor worship for the departed kings.
Agoli-agbo's symbols are a leg kicking a rock, a bow (a symbol of the return to traditional weapons under the new rules established by the colonial administrators), and a broom, and the last king of Dahomey.
References
[edit]- ^ a b Hargreaves, John D. (1985). West Africa Partitioned: Volume II The Elephants and the Grass. Springer. pp. 178–180. ISBN 9781349028252.
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