ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the construction, political function, and history of the palace complex from its founding to the end of King Agadja’s reign in 1740. This constitutes roughly the first half of the pre-colonial period, a time of political establishment, foreign invasion, internal contestation, and rapid expansion of the kingdom’s borders. It ended with the palace’s temporary abandonment, as Agadja moved south to administer the kingdom’s tenuous expansion to the sea. This chapter argues that the structures and spaces that make up the Royal Palace of Dahomey had certain cultural standards coded within them that both affected and were manipulated by Dahomey’s early rulers: King Huegbadja (r. circa 1645-1685), King Akaba (r. 1685-1708), the regent Hangbe (r. 1708-1711), and King Agadja (r. 1711-1740). This architectural code was written by a combination of sources: the supernatural origins of the Dahomean dynasty, the Guedevian architectural forms already present in Abomey, the gendering of space, and the immediate history of the then on-going dynasty of Dahomean kings. From the kingdom’s supernatural roots, to its political conquests, from its incorporation of local architectural forms to its gendered space, this palace was both a product of and a player within kingdom.
