Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Geography, settlement, and politics on the slave coast; 3. Dahomey and the Atlantic world: the royal palace sphere; 4. Capturing the countryside; 5. The city as history; 6. Power by design; 7. Building Dahomey.

Promotional Information

This volume examines political life in the Kingdom of Dahomey, located in the Republic of Bénin.

About the Author

J. Cameron Monroe is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Director of the Abomey Plateau Research Project in the Republic of Bénin, West Africa. He is the recipient of the Society for Historical Archaeology Dissertation Prize for 2005 and held a position as a postdoctoral fellow in African and African-American Studies, Anthropology, and History at Washington University in St Louis (2004–6). His research broadly addresses the political, economic, and cultural transformation in West Africa and the diaspora in the era of the slave trade. His research project (the Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project, Bénin) examines the political economy of landscape and the built environment, and the nature of urban transformation in West Africa in the Atlantic Era. He has published in Historical Archaeology, the Journal of African History, the Journal of Social Archaeology, Current Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, and American Scientist Magazine. He is co-editor of Power and Landscape in Atlantic West Africa: Archaeological Perspectives. Monroe currently serves on the editorial board of Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa.

Reviews

'A groundbreaking study of state formation along the West African coast during the period of European contact.' S. MacEachern, Choice

'The Precolonial State is an accessible and interesting book and adds considerably to our understanding of Dahomey … Monroe's statement of the problems and assertion of solutions are sure to transform how the kingdom is discussed in the future.' John K. Thornton, International Journal of African Historical Studies