1848: (King Gezo of Dahomey Tells a British Official He Cannot Possibly Give Up the Slave Trade — The Army Must Be Kept Active and Altering the Sentiments of…

1848: (King Gezo of Dahomey Tells a British Official He Cannot Possibly Give Up the Slave Trade — The Army Must Be Kept Active and Altering the Sentiments of a Whole People Would Deprive Him of His Throne): In 1848, Gezo, the king of Dahomey, told a British official that he could not possibly give up the slave trade — the army had to be kept active, and if Gezo himself tried to alter the sentiments of a whole people, Dahomey would be thrown into anarchy and revolution, which would deprive him of his throne. These comments may have been disingenuous: in Dahomey it was not in the interests of the ruling class to abolish the slave trade — over which it had complete control — and lose the privileges that went with it, encouraging palm-oil production that would open access to the lucrative overseas market for ordinary peasant producers. Gezo was an example of the recalcitrant ruler who in the 1840s and 1850s became the focus of much attention in the British Foreign Office; his refusal or inability to stop trading in slaves led to diplomatic missions and heightened political pressure. Between the 1810s and the 1850s, under King Gezo, Dahomey financed wars of expansion through its dealings with slave-buyers at the coast, Brazilians among them, and defied British pressure to embrace the legitimate commerce being vigorously promoted on other parts of the coast. Gezo also took advantage of relative lack of pressure from the French, whose own anti-slavery squadron’s efforts were frequently undermined by official ambivalence and by the presence of French slave dealers on the coast itself.