Ghezo, also spelled Gezo, was King of Dahomey from 1818 until 1859. Ghezo replaced his brother Adandozan as king through a coup with the assistance of the Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Sousa. He ruled over the kingdom during a tumultuous period, punctuated by the British blockade of the ports of Dahomey in order to stop the Atlantic slave trade.
A depiction of King Ghezo in an 1851 publication
Symbol of Guezo on place goho
Procession of the wealth of King Ghezo, painted in 1851 by Frederick E. Forbes
Dahomey Amazons became a significant part of the military under Ghezo
The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. It developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental Atlantic Slave Trade.
"Victims for sacrifice" – from The history of Dahomy, an inland Kingdom of Africa, 1793
King Ghezo displayed with a royal umbrella
The reception of the Ah-Haussoo-Noh-Beh in Abomey drawn by Frederick E. Forbes in 1851
In 1894, the last King of Dahomey, Béhanzin, surrendered his person to Alfred-Amédée Dodds