ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the destruction, restorations, and transformations of the Royal Palace of Dahomey in the years leading up to colonization and continuing throughout the colonial period (1894–1960). With the French army's arrival in 1892, King Behanzin (r. 1889–1894) set fire to the palace complex to destroy it, rather than have it fall into enemy hands. Agoli-agbo I (r. 1894–1900), his successor, worked to restore it. The first French governor of Dahomey, Victor Ballot, decided to exploit the palace's historic political importance by erecting a colonial administrative building within its walls to legitimize the French presence. Under a later governor and after a series of restorations, a portion of the palace complex was converted into a museum. This chapter considers the palace a historic text that underwent interpretations and revision by Dahomean and French colonial readers. French colonial philosophies and portrayals of Dahomey in the press and in public expositions contributed to the colonial appropriation and mistranslation of this architectural document. In each of the changes and interpretations throughout this period, there are complex layers of struggle – simultaneous acknowledgments of pre-colonial cultural history with superimpositions of foreign political power and western notions of restoration and museum preservation.
