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This chapter on elections and electoral systems in Benin (formerly Dahomey) follows the same format as all the other country chapters in the book. The first section is introductory and contains a historical overview, discussion of the evolution of electoral provisions, an account of the current electoral provisions, and a comment on the electoral statistics. The second section consists of ten tables. These are: 2.1 Dates of National Elections, Referendums, and Coups d’Etat; 2.2 Electoral Body 1958–1996 (data on population size, registered voters, and votes cast); 2.3 Abbreviations (abbreviations and full names of political parties and alliances used in tables 2.6, 2.7 and 2.9); 2.4 Electoral Participation of Parties and Alliances 1959–1996 (participation of political parties and alliances in chronological order and including the years and number of contested elections); 2.5 Referendums 1958–1990 (details of registered voters and votes cast); 2.6 Elections for Constitutional Assembly (none held); 2.7 Parliamentary Elections 1959–1995 (details of registered voters and votes cast); 2.8 Composition of Parliament 1959–1995; 2.9 Presidential Elections 1968–1996 (details of registered voters and votes cast nationally and regionally); and 2.10 List of Power Holders 1960–1998.

This chapter explores the impacts of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the European settlements of the New World on two settings along the West African coast. The Atlantic slave trade engaged societies ranging from complexly organised ‘states’ to loosely organised societies based on diverse local leadership. The chapter discusses archaeological investigations of one complex setting, that of the seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Hueda and Dahomey societies of the Bight of Benin, and contrasts those findings with preliminary results from the nineteenth-century sites along the Rio Pongo, Guinea, where the slave trade was conducted by a range of societies of less complex organisation. These investigations demonstrate that the specific responses of local African people to the Atlantic slave trade were highly variable.

This chapter focuses on the shift in attention of the London avant-garde towards visual art from West Africa and the Pacific islands from late 1912 into the war years. New evidence is presented showing that Epstein's first African experiments occurred no earlier than 1913. They are shown to have begun with an adaptation of aesthetics derived from the art of Benin City before engaging with Yoruba and Akan sculpture. The presentation of African art in institutions such as the British Museum is considered alongside its availability in various commercial galleries of the time and its reception by other members of the avant-garde such as D. H. Lawrence. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska is shown to have developed around the same time an interest in the Oceanic pieces in the British Museum that would inform works such as the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound.

This chapter shows that while promoting European colonies in the Americas, Atlantic contacts created cultural and economic opportunities for some coastal Africans. Although those in a position to benefit were fewer in number than those shipped into slavery from these shores and made up only a very small percentage of West Africa's population, their lives illuminate two important themes that deserve to be understood apart from the miseries of the slave trade and slavery. In the first place, their lives show that coastal West Africans were eager to participate in the Atlantic economy and succeeded in doing so effectively before, during, and after the transatlantic slave trade. The second theme of these early encounters, Africans's cultural discovery of Europe, also continued and expanded after 1800.

This chapter provides a survey of Benin City and the Edo kingdom to convey some of the local means of social organisation with regard to the rural and urban areas. It underlies the importance of the institutions of the Oba of Benin, and offers a schematic outline with some suggestions as to how the Oba of Benin is situated within these localised social relations.

Too often, research on unfree labour is speculative, inaccurate and downright damaging to the individuals labelled as ‘victims’. This Chapter will make the case that, in order to overcome these serious failings, we need to conduct in-depth qualitative research with victims themselves. This means giving voice to their analyses and experiences and it means spending time learning from and with them. In making this case, the Chapter will draw on the author’s research between 2005 and 2012 into ‘child trafficking’ and youth labour mobility between rural Benin and Nigeria.

This chapter investigates the harem and the political roles played by royal wives at the Benin royal court in Nigeria. Benin resembles many early accounts of palace women in the Middle East, China, India, and elsewhere up to the twentieth century. On rare occasion, such as the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu from Turkey (1763), Western women have written personal accounts of their glimpses of harems. This chapter also looks at sources of power and influence available to royal women, and assesses what impact, if any, royal women had on the lives of ordinary women and men beyond the walls of the harem. Politics in this African harem is broadly defined to mean observable decision making and makers acting in public arenas to direct the control and distribution of resources perceived as scarce. This chapter also examines the reign of the Obas, the Oba's palace, seclusion of the Oba's wives, the role of eunuchs in the royal harem, and the queen mother.

This chapter explores the history and conditions of Omada art at the crossroads of different colonialisms. It focuses on the court art of the Edo Kingdom of Benin in present-day Nigeria during the last half of the nineteenth century, a period of historical transition when that kingdom, an imperial power in its own right, fell to British colonial domination. It investigates the artistic implications of the transition from colonizer to colonized and outlines the artistic contexts in which the issues of colonial power and identity were explored.

This book shifts the focus of attention from the world-famous royal art associated with the Edo kingdom, most notably ‘the Benin bronzes’, to the art traditions produced by the local Edo religion that underpins the legitimacy and power of kingship. It is a study of the art of urban contemporary shrines and the creative processes by which they are realised, visually and in performance. Fundamental to understanding these visual traditions is the need to relate the practices of this rich and complex Edo religion to the practices of art.

This chapter examines the institution of urban contemporary cult shrines in Benin City, introducing the forms of organisation and strategies used by shrine priests and considering some of the ideas and practices that are integral to this institution. The word ohen is used in the Edo language to describe a priest who worships on behalf of a community or as a Christian minister. The achievement of the privileged relationship to a deity confers power upon the ohen, influence in the spirit world through the intervention of that deity, and thus the ability to shape the outcome of events in agbon (the material world). In some circumstances, it is possible for ohen to acquire shrines through the direct intervention of the deity. In these cases, the deity usually takes the individual to its spiritual domain, often for lengthy periods of time, to be instructed in the required rites.

This chapter cites a number of biographies of various priests, a sample of those related in conversation with the author and chosen partly to demonstrate the diversity of individuals engaged in this profession. The biographies present salient events selected by the priest as pertinent to his or her situation at the time of the interviews. They are a means of exploring local ideas and practices relevant to these urban shrines, and to understanding local ideas of personhood and possession by the deities which are worshipped at them. In this way, the making of meaning by individuals participating in these institutions can be understood. A further dimension is provided by the many networks of ohens in Benin City, who participate in the round of annual festivals that commemorate the first induction of the celebrating ohen into a formal relationship with his or her deities.

This chapter explores the biographies of some artists working in the different art worlds of Benin City, highlighting some of the forms of patronage, the processes of commissioning at urban shrines, and the possibilities available to artists. It discusses some of the strategies they use in the production of their work. They are selected to indicate a diversity of production and use of strategies, as well as to situate the role of each individual artist and the artefacts they produce in local conditions at these urban cult shrines.

This chapter examines the use of a particular artefact, the red tail feather of the African grey parrot. This feather adorns the heads of priests and priestesses as a marker of full initiation into the rites of the particular deities they serve. The chapter analyses its imagery, comparing it to that of other feathers which feature in the ideas and practices of these shrines, and examines how individuals establish different, and sometimes opposing, significances in relation to it. This has implications for other artefacts and also for the more customary objects of Benin art history such as, for example, the plaques and other leaded brasses.

This chapter looks at various contributions to a history of art. It uses Ryder's conceptual distinctions of the field material available to researchers to explore some of the assumptions upon which research has been based. The chapter broadens this examination to look at various contributions to the art history of the Edo-speaking area, arguing that limitations inherent in theoretical models developed in relation to Benin have become underlying and uncritical assumptions in many studies of Edo society and its art history. The chapter concludes by suggesting that a deeper understanding of the Edo-speaking area will have to explore regional and local histories, to further an understanding of the region and to gain a deeper insight into the historical processes at the urban centre of Benin City. It is by these means that the local and regional art histories can be developed.

In the 1990s, analysts were almost unanimous in considering Benin to be one of the most important aid recipients among the newly democratizing African countries. After more than two decades of democratic practice, the country has clearly completed the phase of democratic transition. In this study, I argue that the present-day political challenges in Benin are related both to the quality of democracy and to poverty reduction. Foreign aid has changed as donors have reoriented their assistance in order to target specific issues like the strengthening of civil society. Thanks to donors, success has been achieved in some sectors but it is far from certain that these positive experiences are enough to prevent political tensions between incumbents and opposition parties around issues of governance. Moreover, when it comes to more substantial aspects of democracy, such as enhancing accountability and fighting corruption, Benin still has a long way to go

The Lower Guinea coasts named by maritime traders as the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, and the Slave Coast on the Bight of Benin were major sources of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas. This chapter discusses the transatlantic slave trade voyages from these regions of the Lower Guinea across the Atlantic. It demonstrates how using databases and traditional documents generated by transatlantic slave voyages can help us to explore the roots of African-descended peoples in the Americas.