The True Story of the Agojie Warriors Commanded by Viola Davis in ‘The Woman King’

The movie “The King Woman“, starring Viola Davis, arrived ravishing in theaters. It tells the story of the female warriors Agojie – or Ahosi, Mino, Minon and even Amazons. But is the film based on facts? Who were these powerful women?

The kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa had its heyday in the 1840s when it boasted an army of 6,000 women known throughout the region for their bravery. This force, known as the Agojie, invaded villages under cover of night, took prisoners and severed heads used as trophies of war, ensuring the survival of their people.

The warriors became known by European invaders as “Amazons”, who compared them to the women of Greek myth.

“The King Woman” (The Woman King) features Viola Davis as a fictional leader of the Agojie. Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, the film takes place as conflict engulfs the region and European colonization approaches.

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As Rebecca Keegan of the Hollywood Reporter“The Woman King” is “the product of a thousand battles” fought by Davis and Prince-Bythewood, who spoke about the obstacles the production team faced in releasing a historical epic centered on strong black women.

“The part of the movie that we love is also the part of the movie that is terrifying for Hollywood, meaning it’s different, it’s new,” Viola tells Rebecca Keegan of Hollywood Reporter. “We don’t always want different or new, unless you have a big star attached to it, a big male star. … [Hollywood] likes when women are pretty and blonde or almost pretty and blonde. All these women are dark. And they’re hitting… men. So there you go.”

Is it a real story?

Yes, but with poetic and dramatic license. While the film’s broad strokes are historically accurate, most of its characters are fictional, including Nanisca by Viola and Nawi by Thuso Mbedu, a young warrior-in-training.

King Ghezo (played by John Boyega) is the exception. According to Lynne Ellsworth Larsen, an architectural historian who studies gender dynamics in Dahomey, Ghezo (reigned from 1818 to 1858) and his son Glele (who reigned from 1858 to 1889) presided over what is seen as “the age of gold in the history of Dahomey”, ushering in an era of economic prosperity and political strength.

“The Woman King” begins in 1823 with a successful attack by the Agojie, who free men who would be destined for enslavement in the clutches of the Oyo Empire, a powerful Yoruba state now occupied in southwestern Nigeria.

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A parallel plotline follows Nanisca’s repudiation of the slave trade – primarily for having experienced its horrors personally – prompting Ghezo to end Dahomey’s close relationship with Portuguese slavers and switch to palm oil production as the kingdom’s main export. .

The real Ghezo, in fact, successfully freed Dahomey from his tributary status in 1823. But the kingdom’s involvement in the slave trade continued until 1852, after years of pressure from the British government, which had abolished slavery (for reasons not entirely altruists) in their own colonies in 1833.

Who were the Agojie?

The first recorded mention of the Agojie dates from 1729. But the army was possibly formed even earlier, early in Dahomey’s existence, when King Huegbadja (reigned circa 1645−85) created a corps of female elephant hunters.

The Agojie reached their peak in the 19th century, under the reign of Ghezo, who formally incorporated them into the Dahomey army. Thanks to the kingdom’s ongoing wars and the slave trade, Dahomey’s male population has dropped significantly, creating an opportunity for women to enter the battlefield.

“More perhaps than any other African state, Dahomey was dedicated to war and the plundering of slaves,” wrote Stanley B. Alpern in “Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey“, the first complete English-language study of Agojie. “It may also have been the most totalitarian, with the king controlling and marshalling virtually every aspect of social life.”

The Agojie included volunteers and forced recruits, some of them captured at the age of 10, but also poor, and rebellious girls. In “The Woman King”, Nawi ends up in the army after refusing to marry an elderly suitor.

All Dahomey women warriors were considered ahosi, or wives of the king. They lived in the royal palace alongside the king and his other wives, inhabiting a space largely dominated by women. Aside from the eunuchs and the king himself, no men were allowed in the palace after sunset.

As Alpern told Smithsonian magazine in 2011, the Agojies were considered the king’s “third-class” wives, as they did not normally share his bed or bear his children.

Because they were married to the king, they were barred from having sex with other men, although the degree to which this celibacy was enforced is subject to debate. In addition to privileged status, female warriors had access to a constant supply of tobacco and alcohol, as well as possessing their own enslaved serfs.

To become an Agojie, recruits underwent intensive training, including exercises designed to stand up to bloodshed.

In 1889, French naval officer Jean Bayol witnessed Nanisca (who likely inspired the name of Viola’s character), a teenager “who had not yet killed anyone”, easily pass a test. She would have decapitated a condemned prisoner, then squeezed and swallowed the blood from his sword.

The Agojie were divided into five branches: artillery women, elephant hunters, musketeers, razor women, and archers. Surprising the enemy was of the utmost importance.

While European accounts of the Agojie vary widely, what “is indisputable… is their consistently excellent performance in combat,” Alpern wrote in “Amazons of Black Sparta”.

Dahomey’s military dominance began to wane in the second half of the 19th century, when his army repeatedly failed to capture Abeokuta, a well-fortified Egba capital in what is now southwestern Nigeria.

Historically, Dahomey’s encounters with European settlers revolved primarily around the slave trade and religious missions. But in 1863, tensions with the French escalated.

The existence – and dominance – of Dahomey’s female warriors disturbs the “understanding of French gender roles and what women should do” in a “civilized” society.

the fall of the empire

After the attempt of a peace treaty and some battle losses, they ended up resuming the fighting. According to Alpern, upon receiving news of the French declaration of war, the Dahomean king said: “The first time I didn’t know how to make war, but now I know. … If you want war, I am ready”

Over the course of seven weeks in 1892, Dahomey’s army fought valiantly to repel the French. The Agojie participated in 23 combats, earning the enemy’s respect for their valor and dedication to the cause.

In the same year, the Agojie suffered probably their worst losses, with just 17 soldiers returning from an initial force of 434. The last day of combat, reported a colonel in the French navy, was “one of the most murderous” of the entire war, beginning with the dramatic entry of the “last Amazons … into the officers”.

The French officially took the capital of Dahomey, Abomey, on 17 November of that year.

The Agojie today

In 2021, Benin economist Leonard Wantchekon, who is leading searches to identify descendants of Agojie, told the Washington Post that French colonization has proven to be detrimental to women’s rights in Dahomey, with colonists barring women from political leadership and access to schools. .

“The French ensured that this story was not known,” he explained. “They said we were late, that they needed to ‘civilize’ us, but they destroyed opportunities for women that didn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”

Nawi, the last known surviving Agojie with battlefield experience (and the likely inspiration for Mbedu’s character), died in 1979, aged over 100. But the Agojie traditions continued long after Dahomey’s fall.

When actress Lupita Nyong’o visited Benin for a Smithsonian Channel In 2019, she met a woman identified by locals as an Agojie who had been trained by older warriors as a child and kept hidden in a palace for decades.