Benin

Benin: Kings and Rituals

Published to accompany the major international touring exhibition which comes to Chicago in the summer of 2008, this monumental volume features more than 500 stunning reproductions alongside important new scholarship on the prized sculptures and carvings of the Benin Kingdom of sixteenth- through nineteenth-century West Africa (pre-colonial Nigeria). It brings together for the first time masterpieces that have been scattered all over the world since the end of the nineteenth century, while simultaneously documenting the fall of the independent Kingdom, its reconstitution in the twentieth century and its continued existence through today.
From elaborate bas-relief plaques to stately commemorative king's heads and towering elephant tusks embellished with detailed figurative scenes illustrating life at court and the heroic deeds of kings and warriors, the artworks gathered here glorified the king as the political and spiritual head of his people and honored his ancestors. The detailed workmanship and outstanding aesthetic quality of Benin's royal sculptures have been compared to the work of the celebrated Renaissance artist, Benvenuto Cellini. And their wealth of iconographic detail conveys the sumptuousness of the royal court and its historical importance as a regional powerhouse in the Benin (or Edo) era.

Rethinking the African Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and Brazil (Studies in Slave and Post-Slave Societies and Cultures)

One of the most heavily travelled migration routes from Old World to New was the trajectory of slave ships that left the coast of West Africa along the Bight of Benin and landed their human cargo in Brazil. An estimated two million persons over the course of some 250 years were forced migrants along this route, arriving mainly in the Brazilian province of Bahia. Earlier generations of scholars studied this southern portion of the slave trade simply as an east-west movement of enslaved persons stripped of identity and culture, or they looked for possible "retentions" of Africa among descendants of slaves in the Americas.
As a result of new research, we can now paint a more complex picture of peoples and cultures in the south Atlantic, from the earliest period of the slave trade up to the present. The nine papers in this volume indicate that a dynamic and continuous movement of peoples east as well as west across the Atlantic forged diverse and vibrant re-inventions and re-interpretations of the rich mix of cultures represented by Africans and peoples of African descent on both continents.

Oyo, Benin, Ashanti: The Guinea Coast (African Kingdoms of the Past)

Ouidah: Social History Of West African (Western African Studies)

Wives of the Leopard

Wives of the Leopard explores power and culture in a precolonial West African state, Dahomey, whose army of women and practice of human sacrifice earned it notoriety in the racist imagination of late nineteenth-century Europe and America.

Art, Innovation, and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Benin

"The wealth of historiographic resources, the command of relevant literature, the ethnographic research and prudent use of oral traditions give this work a high degree of . . . intellectual excitement. . . . a landmark in the field." --Warren d'Azevedo

Making use of archival and oral resources in this extensively researched book, Paula Girshick Ben-Amos questions to what extent art operates as political strategy. How do objects acquire political meaning? How does the use of art enhance and embody power and authority?

Royal Art of Benin: The Perls Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Benincasa Name in History

The Benincasa Name in History is a customized book offering a unique blend of fascinating facts, statistics and commentary about the Benincasa name. The book is just one of an entire series of family name books in the Our Name in History collection. Each book in the collection is printed on demand and is compiled from hundreds of millions of records from the world's largest online resource of family history, Ancestry.com. This particular book follows the Benincasa family name through history and makes the perfect gift for your family members and anyone interested in the Benincasa name. In the book you'll find out about where people with the Benincasa last name originated. You may discover the countries and ports they left behind, the ships they sailed and more. You'll get a better idea of where people sharing the Benincasa name settled and where they may reside today in the United States, Canada, England and other countries. You'll get all this information and much more in your Benincasa family name book. If your last name is not Benincasa, then check out our collection of nearly 300,000 family name books to find other available names in the series.

Amazons of Black Sparta : The Women Warriors of Dahomey

"Alpern, a former Agency for International Development official long-stationed in Africa and now an independent scholar, draws together the available material on this peculiar institution into an interesting and readable book."—Choice

History is rife with tales of fighting women. More often than not, these stories prove more legend than history. Dating back to the amazons of ancient Asia Minor, myths of fierce, autonomous women of martial excellence abound.

And yet, the only thoroughly documented amazons in world history are the women warriors of Dahomy, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western African kingdom. Once dubbed a "small black Sparta," residents of Dahomy shared with the Spartans an intense militarism and sense of collectivism. Moreover, the women of both kingdoms prided themselves on bodies hardened from childhood by rigorous physical exercise. But Spartan women kept in shape to breed male warriors, Dahomean amazons to kill them. Originally a praetorian guard, the Dahomeans developed into a force 6,000 strong and were granted semi-sacred status. They lusted for battle, fighting with fury and valor until the kingdom's final defeat by France in 1892.

Stanley B. Alpern has chronicled this remarkable history in depth for the first time. The product of meticulous archival research, Amazons of Black Sparta is defined by Alpern's gift for narrative and will stand as the most comprehensive and accessible account of the woman warriors of Dahomy.

Palace Sculptures of Abomey: History Told on Walls (Conservation and Cultural Heritage)

The Fon, who are the largest ethnic group in the Republic of Benin in West Africa, established the powerful kingdom of Dahomey in the early seventeenth century. In their capital city of Abomey, they built a remarkable complex of palaces, featuring walls decorated with colorful low-relief sculptures, or bas-reliefs, which recount legends and battles and glorify the history of their royal dynasty's reign. Over the centuries, these visual stories have represented and perpetuated the history and myths of the Fon people.
Palace Sculptures of Abomey combines lavish color photographs of the bas-reliefs with a lively history of the Dahomey kingdom, complemented by period drawings, rare historical photographs, and colorful textile art. The book provides a vivid portrait of these exceptional narrative sculptures and the equally remarkable people who crafted them. Also included is a discussion of the continuing popularity of bas-reliefs in contemporary West African art, a reading of the stories on the walls, and details of the four-year collaboration between the Benin Ministry of Culture and Communications and the Getty Conservation Institute to conserve the bas-reliefs of Abomey.