06/10/2024
Egba dahomey war🧙♂️
The Egba-Dahomey war, as the name suggests, was a war that broke out between the two neighboring kingdoms of Egba and Dahomey (now the Republic of Benin) over territorial expansion caused by the quest of the latter to stabilize her economy. The Egba-Dahomey war was the third of the destructive wars that plagued the Yoruba nation in the nineteenth century, proceeding the Owu-Ife war: 1821-1828 ; and the 1840 Osogbo war .
In the 1820s and 1830s, the old Oyo empire, also called Oyo-Ile , witnessed a lot of political unrest which gradually faded her leadership role in Yorubaland. The Dahomey kingdom, which was then part of the Oyo empire, seized the opportunity to declare herself independent from Oyo in 1930 but soon discovered that the independence wasn’t worth it because of her extremely low economy caused by her barren northern land where probably only plantain could grow, and the crumbling slave trade at the coast which the kingdom had really depended on for several years.
These agonizing situations made the Dahomeans reach an unconsidering conclusion that expanding their territory is the only solution to their economic problems, and the only place where this expansion was possible was in the east towards Egbado and Ajase-Ipo which were part of Egbaland, and in the south towards the port of Badagry.
A good look at the positions of these kingdoms on a map will show how uncomfortable this expansion would be to the Egbas who instantly opposed the idea, stating the inconveniences it would bring to them. On the other hand, the Dahomeans failed or refused to reason with the Egbas probably because of their desperation to resurrect their collapsed economy. It was on these ground that the disastrous Egba-Dahomey war broke out.
In 1851, the Dahomean army (which was made up of women), under the rule of King Gezo , marched into the heart of Abeokuta , the capital of Egba and unleashed havoc on the unsuspecting Egbas. However, the heavily armed Egba ar