Thread by @Histofafrica

So I just saw the Woman King, and yeah from a historical perspective the movie was pretty reprehensible. The way that the movie depicts the King of Dahomey's participation is so far removed from reality that it borders on unethical disinformation.

The film opens with the Mino attacking a camp of Mahi soldiers in an effort to rescue women who had been enslaved. The Mahi soldiers are beaten and the Mino instead enslave the Mahi. This opening scene is the beginning of the films need to justify slave trading by Dahomey

This is the only time in the film we see the Mino enslave anybody, while throughout the film they make numerous references to and examples of the Mino freeing enslaved Fon. Essentially, the film frames the Mino as liberators, who only enslave people who "deserve it"

In actuality, by 1820, Mahi people had by then been the victims of upwards of 70 years of intermittent wars started by Dahomey, typically with the intent of extracting tribute or replacing rulers to more subservient vassals. The film disturbingly whitewashes this reality.

The film also completely erases domestic slavery. At one point, we see the protagonist, Nanisca, show Ghezo a palm oil farm. Nanisca implies that this industry is an ethical alternative to slave trading. What they leave out is that the Palm oil industry was powered by slave labor

So, the film's ethical alternative to slave trading? Palm oil slave plantations. But when we visit a palm oil plantation in the film, there is no mention of how the workers are enslaved, and the workers don't appear to be suffering.

So, if you were to watch the film uncritically, the impression you would get is:
Dahomey participated in the slave trade reluctantly

The people they enslaved had brought it on themselves by attacking Dahomey

There was no domestic slavery in Dahomey

All of these points are lies

Beyond the issue of slavery in the film, the movie also has a weird relationship with two of the key historical figures within it: Ghezo, king of Dahomey, and Francisco De Souza, a Brazilian slave merchant/Dahomean statesman. Let's start with Ghezo.

Ghezo, portrayed by John Boyega, is presented in the film as a reluctant participant in the slave trade. The film begins at the start of his reign, with the opening crawl saying he recently "rose to power." They conveniently reject to mention how he rose to power, cause it's bad.

Ghezo's predecessor, his brother Adandozan, also has a less than stellar reputation. At this time, Dahomey had been in a multi-decade economic slump in part due to the decline of the transatlantic slave trade due to tbe Napoleonic wars and abolition of the trade in some countries

At first, Adandozan tried to revive the trade through closer relations with Portugal and trying to increase the significance of Dahomey's major port, Whydah, as a European slave trading hub. However, when this effort failed, he instead tried to move Dahomey away from the trade

This was out of economic need, not moral consideration, but the effect was the same. However, it didn't last. For multiple reasons, with his shift away from slave trading being one of them, Ghezo was able to rally many factions within the Dahomean court to overthrow Adandozan.

Ghezo's rule, not surprisingly, saw a surge in slave trading. To illustrate how messed up this was, Ghezo's reign is the ONLY period of Dahomean history where the volume of slave trading in Ouidah increased by a substantial margin.

One of Adandozan's enemies who assisted Ghezo in his coup was Francisco Felix de Souza, a Brazilian slave trader. I went into him a bit in my review on the films trailer, but I honestly wasn't expecting what they actually did to the dude in the movie.

If you were thinking that Felix de Souza was not in the film, then you'd be right in a literal sense. However, I'm pretty sure that he played a major role in inspiring the films two Brazilian characters, Santo Ferreira and Malik.

Santo Ferreira is a Brazilian slave merchant, while Malik is his mixed race...buddy? The movie seemingly isn't sure on if they are business partners or if Malik's just his bro who used the slave trading mission as an excuse for a vacation back to his mom's ancestral home

These two each contain elements of De Souza, who was mixed race (white and Amerindian in his case), spoke Fongbe, practiced Vodun, married several Fon women with whom he had free descendants, and traded slaves out of Ouidah.

I hate this decision because De Souza is an interesting figure BECAUSE of his contradictions. He assimilated into Don culture, married and had legitimate children with African women, he practiced a religion which venerates African spirits, yet had no issue selling African slaves.

Instead of exploring this contradictory, fascinating character, instead they split him into two bland, straightforward characters. It is so unbelievably LAME!

Speaking in moments where the film changes history to be less interesting, that scene where the Agojie declare war on Oyo by revealing severed heads is fictional. The actual story is better in my opinion. In reality, relations between Oyo and Dahomey broke down before Ghezos rule

Adandozan was hesitant to send tribute to Oyo, which itself was a declining empire embroiled in constant civil war by this time. When Oyo demand tribute, Adandozan sent a hilariously passive aggressive engraving of a fat monkey eating too many bananas. The absolute mad lad.

Regardless, the war between Oyo and Dahomey is a real event and is definitely what Ghezo is most famous for. The war is actually far more impressive than in the film when you consider that Ghezo inherited a war which his brother was losing and managed to turn it around

The movies conclusion where Ghezo decides to invest in palm oil and end his participation in the slave trade is, as you might expect, a lie. Ghezo continued his participation in the slave trade for multiple decades after the war.

Eventually, Ghezo did acquiesce and begin investing in alternative industries, but only after heavy diplomatic and economic pressure by the British. The film's depiction as Ghezo simply changing his mind and ending the slave trade for moral reasons is feel-good nonsense.

Apart from that, the film has some other issues. For instance, the film uses Oyo as a descriptive term, as if it was the name of an ethnic group. The dominant people in Oyo were Yoruba. Chanting "We are Oyo" before battle would be like having Germans chant "we are Germany"

The battle cries in the film are basically all like that. "We are ______". So lame. Yoruba and Fon cultures both have a wonderful tradition of martial poetry. This is somewhat reflected for the Fon, but the Yoruba characters are stuck chanting "we are Oyo."

The movies handling of guns is weird too. The Mino use guns relatively sparingly, which is weird considering that the military of Dahomey was one of the most firearm heavy within West Africa at the time. Rapid reloading skills was one of the groups proudest talents to show off.

In the film, we see the Mino practice with some muskets, and they fire them once in battle. The main protagonist Nanisca makes some weird comments about them too, like saying that "the Oyo" are "slow like their guns", and scolding Nawi for preferring firearms.

Stereotypical depictions of early modern Africa consistently downplay the importance and prevalence of firearms within African militaries, so I guess I'm not too surprised.

Also it seems like the palace in the movie is based on the current Abomey palace not the one burnt in 1892

Some inaccuracy is to be expected with Hollywood, but what I think makes The Woman King different is A) these inaccuracies exist to whitewash Dahomey's participation in the slave trade and slavery generally and B) the changed story is less interesting than the true story

The notion that Dahomey is a nation with no history outside of slavery is wrong, as are the efforts to shift blame of slavery onto Africans. But I don't think the solution is to whitewash guilt, but rather question why we are blaming in the first place?

Studying history is valuable because it helps us understand the present and future. It can help us formulate ideas of how to heal wounds of the past and prevent wounds from forming in the future. Which institutions exist today will have our descendants condemn or whitewash us?