Jessica Catherine Reuther, "The Bonds of Kinship in Dahomey: Portraits of West African Girlhood, 1720–1940" (Indiana UP, 2025)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Interview with Dr. Jessica Catherine Reuther: "The Bonds of Kinship in Dahomey: Portraits of West African Girlhood, 1720–1940"

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Overview

In this episode of New Books in African Studies (Nov 15, 2025), host Dr. Afua Befikwashi speaks with historian Dr. Jessica Catherine Reuther about her forthcoming book, "The Bonds of Kinship in Dahomey: Portraits of West African Girlhood, 1720–1940" (Indiana UP, 2025). The discussion explores how notions of girlhood, systems of social dependence, and practices of child transfer both shaped and reflected political, economic, and familial developments in Dahomey (modern-day Benin) over two centuries. Through a series of vivid case studies and methodological innovation, Dr. Reuther centers girls' perspectives and agency within broader histories of Atlantic and colonial West Africa.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Reuther’s Academic Journey & Entry to Dahomean Studies

• Reuther came to Dahomey studies somewhat indirectly, beginning with North Africa and trans-Saharan interests before shifting due to both personal and political circumstances (01:34–04:52).
  • “I became a mother for the first time shortly before I began my PhD. So doing doctoral research in a place that was politically stable was very important.” – Dr. Reuther [03:17]

2. Book’s Scope, Setting, and Central Argument

• The book is a series of “portraits” tracing the experiences of girls (both named and unnamed) in southern Benin, focusing on how norms of girlhood and systems of child transfer changed in relation to the Atlantic slave trade, colonial conquest, and economic transformation (05:16–08:19).
• Reuther emphasizes collective and individual stories to reframe the history of girlhood beyond anonymity and statistical abstraction:
  • “I have tried to really keep the focus on individual lives and developing connections with these girls.” – Dr. Reuther [07:47]

3. Defining ‘Girlhood’ in Dahomey

• Dahomean girlhood was defined less by chronological age and more by social roles and markers: intellectual maturity, freedom of movement, early economic participation (hawking), and later, marriage and motherhood (09:17–14:34).
  • "It’s not as straightforward as European definitions of chronological age...Chronological age wasn’t actually that important." [12:24]
• The period spans approximately ages 7–14 but is “flexible and situational.”

4. Systems of Child Transfer: Entrustment, Dashing, and Pawning

• Reuther maps out a spectrum of child dependency:
  • Entrustment: Culturally valued; placing children (esp. girls) in other households for support, discipline, and opportunity.
  • Dashing: The gifting of children (often girls, sometimes boys) to foreigners as human gifts, particularly as European involvement in the slave trade was restricted.
  • Pawning: Transfer of a child as collateral for debt, later reintroduced by women as new credit systems emerged in the 19th century (14:34–22:32).
  • “Beninese think it’s absolutely hubris to think two biological parents can give a child everything they need.” [15:23]

5. Methodological Innovations: Portraits as Method

• Early archives are overwhelmingly white male-centric; Reuther describes her “portraits” methodology as a way to center girls’ experiences by refracting archival narratives, using visual and oral sources, and fully acknowledging the speculative nature of recovery (23:53–29:19).
  • “I needed to bend [archival sources] to really privilege and tell the story of the historic subjects that I wanted to – the girls and the relationships these girls were placed within.” [25:38]
  • The use of images, oral testimony, and even fragmented documentary mentions helped reconstruct lived realities.

6. Eighteenth Century: Collections, Palaces, and Girl Transfers

• The royal palaces of Dahomey were female-centered environments with regular “collections” of girls from newly conquered territories; these collections ramped up due to warfare and disease, fueling administrative and economic needs (30:45–36:24).
• The ideology of communal child-rearing and state claims to all children, particularly under King Tegbessou (mid-late 1700s).

7. Atlanticization & Economic Transformation in the 19th Century

• Shifts in the Atlantic economy (abolition, palm oil production) saw girl transfers become more visible and gendered, with European documentation focusing especially on the transfer and labor of girls for both local and foreign households.
• Reuther discusses the integration and adaptation of pawning and other credit practices as women seized new entrepreneurial opportunities (37:15–47:49).

8. Portraits of Agency and Precarity: Case Studies of Girls' Lives

• Agbasipe: A powerful woman leveraging pawning in economic transition, evidencing both opportunity and backlash as politics changed (43:37–47:49).
• Aholope: Ran away from an entrusted, unwanted relationship during the French conquest, illustrating both limited choices and resistance (50:13–54:50).
• Fovey, Akwele, Saba, Mahun: Girls whose voices and daily realities are captured in colonial court records, often in traumatic circumstances (sexual exploitation, hawking accidents) but also in testimony about networks of female support and caregiving (54:50–62:05).
  • “I didn’t want the document and the power of the archive to overshadow the girls’ stories...I have tried to really place these girls in their everyday lives.” [56:54]

9. The Tale Affair: Modern Exploitation and Lasting Legacies

• The book closes with the disappearance of Tale, a girl at the center of a sensational colonial-era case tied to rituals, exploitation, and royal power. Two conflicting narratives persist—one official, one popular—underscoring enduring anxieties about girl transfers and exploitation (62:05–70:50).
  • “One of the things that this book has for the Beninese is a longer history of issues of exploitation, that it’s not just contemporary at this very moment, that girls have always been vulnerable to the whims of individual mistresses.” [69:35]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Girlhood as Socially Constructed:
  “Girlhood is this period of gendered childhood from the age of awareness at about the age of what foreign ethnographers say is about seven...Chronological age wasn’t actually that important.” – Dr. Reuther [11:22–12:24]
• On Breaking Binary Thinking:
  “There was this whole spectrum and girls understood their dependence in different terms depending if their parents arranged the transfer or if the transfer was one of violence and due to the slave trade.” – Dr. Reuther [21:55]
• On Recovering Girls’ Voices:
  “I had to decide that I was okay with...speculative history...if this was the only way to tell that story.” – Dr. Reuther [28:39]
• On Market Women’s Views of Kinship:
  “Beninese think it’s absolutely hubris to think two biological parents can give a child everything they need.” – Dr. Reuther [15:23]
• On Colonial Archive(s):
  “One of the richest sources of girls’ everyday lives are the transcripts of their depositions after sexual assault...that’s in part why it skews to the traumatic, even though I have tried to really place these girls in their everyday lives.” – Dr. Reuther [56:54]
• On Legacies of Exploitation:
  “It’s not just contemporary at this very moment, that girls have always been vulnerable to the whims of individual mistresses.” – Dr. Reuther [69:35]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:30–04:52 — Dr. Reuther's background, entry into Dahomey studies.
• 05:16–08:19 — Structure and main arguments of the book.
• 09:17–14:34 — Defining girlhood in Dahomey, social markers, and transitions.
• 14:34–22:32 — Systems of transfer: entrustment, pawning, dashing; breaking Western binaries.
• 23:53–29:19 — Archival challenges and methodological innovation.
• 30:45–36:24 — Collections and royal palaces in the 18th century.
• 37:15–47:49 — Economic transition, pawning, and case study of Agbasipe.
• 50:13–54:50 — Colonial conquest, agency, and the story of Aholope.
• 54:50–62:05 — Colonial period case studies: violence, support networks, testimonial records.
• 62:05–70:50 — Tale affair, ritual, exploitation, and debates over the legacy of girl transfer.
• 71:07–73:51 — Dr. Reuther’s next projects: policing gender, Vodun, comparative Atlantic histories.

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Final Thoughts

Dr. Reuther’s book and this interview provide a wide-ranging, deeply-researched, and reflective window onto the lives, voices, and agency of West African girls, challenging both archival silences and binary thinking about childhood, gender, and dependency in Dahomey. By reconstructing complex systems of kinship—rooted as much in care as in struggle—and foregrounding individual stories, she offers a vital corrective to both colonial and contemporary views on African childhood, family, and exploitation.

Listeners interested in West African history, colonialism, gender studies, or the Atlantic world will find this episode exceptionally insightful and rich—particularly for its blend of rigorous scholarship and attention to the meanings of kinship, care, and agency in African societies.

Transcript

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[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

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[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

To the New Books Network.

[Host]

Welcome to the New Books in African Studies. My name is Ifwa Befikwashi, your host. Today I'm talking to Dr. Jessica Ruther about her book the Bonds of Kinship in Dahomey Portraits of African Girlhood, 1720-1940. Dr. Reuther is an associate professor of history and a teaching affiliate in the African American Studies program at Ball State University. She specializes in the history of West Africa and the Atlantic world, gender and sexuality, and colonial law. Jessica, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Thank you for having me.

[Host]

Afua so to start, I wonder if you could say a few words about yourself, your academic journey, and how you came to the study of Africa and then Dahomey specifically.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Okay, certainly my academic journey was not at all straightforward. I am embarrassed to admit I did not take an African history class devoted to Sub Saharan Africa until my PhD at Emory University. I did get a bachelor's in History and French at Saint Louis University and and My master's is actually from the University of Arizona, and it's in specializing in North Africa. So I think part of my academic journey reflects how until very recently, it was even hard to get education in history in Africa. And so I think we have come a long way in the decades since I did my bachelor's and master's now. So you asked about how I came to study Dahomey. That's interesting. I actually started my PhD thinking I would do a trans Saharan project that built off my master's dissertation about the southern territories of Algeria, as well as, you know, going across the Sahara into Mali. But political instability made that really impossible. Right as I was starting my PhD. Especially since something that's really shaped this book is I became a mother for the first time shortly before I began my PhD. So doing doctoral research in a place that was politically stable was very important. So as soon as it became clear that Mali was not going to work out, I really looked at francophone West Africa and the diverse histories that there and Benin really popped out for being politically stable. And because I was also increasingly interested in the Atlantic world, and it's one of those pre colonial Atlantic kingdoms that continually engaged with the Atlantic world, which became very fundamental to the book in the end. It also didn't hurt that my Advisor for my PhD at Emory was Kristin Mann, and she was an expert in colonial Lagos. So very close with some Yoruba overlap between Benin and Nigeria as well.

[Host]

Well, we're happy to have you in sub Saharan Africa and the Atlantic world. And thank you for giving us this book and just, I guess, continuing on. Can you tell us about the book now? What is it about? Where are we? Who are we meeting? What are people doing? And what's the main sort of argument interventions that you're making here?

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Yeah, so as the subtitle says, it's really a series of portraits of West African girlhood. And I do say West African, because some of these girls are actually coming from outside the kingdom of Dahomey through slave trading and that sort of thing, as well as entrustment networks during the colonial period that paid no attention to these constructed national borders. And so we're really looking at what is modern day Benin, the southern portion, the northern portion has a very rich history of child transfer as well, but fundamentally different since we're looking at norms established in the southern kingdom of Dahomey and its predecessors. Norms. So we're really looking at a little north of Abomay, which is sort of midway in the modern day Benin, south all the way to the coast. From the 18th century and the expansion of Dahomey from an inland kingdom into an Atlantic kingdom in the 1720s is really when we enter the story and we're meeting girls both named and anonymous. The chapters really try and center around a single or multiple girls as sort of a prototype in incorporating data from anonymous girls as well. And then we go through the transformations of the Atlantic Kingdom from a major slave trading kingdom into the legitimate trade, which greatly affects girls lives and their labor, into the colonial period. So those are some of the major shifts that are happening between the 18th and 20th century. And the girls we meet, the ones that we have the names for, As I said, we can't ignore the anonymous girls who also contribute. But we encounter girls such as Sarah Forbes Bonetta, who is famous in the Anglophone world for being Queen Victoria's goddaughter. We also encounter Agulepe, a girl who runs away from an entrustment relationship that also overlapped with an arranged marriage. Right. During the conquest, we encounter Agbacepe and her mother as well as Fovey. I mean, Thale. We encountered lots of different girls. And I think that's one of the reasons why this book stands out is I have tried to really keep the focus on individual lives and developing connections with these girls.

[Host]

And that really comes through. I'm looking forward to talking a bit more as we go on about these girls that you've named, like Aholope and Fulvi and the others. But right now I want to ask about this category that you're focused on, Girls. Right. So why girls? What does the sort of focus on girls as a specific historical category here? What does it tell us about this place and this time that we're in? And then perhaps this might also be a good time to talk about sort of the categories of transfair, I guess, that come up here. Right. Like fond girls, dashed girls and trusted girls and all these different systems of transfer that you discuss in the book.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Okay, I will start with the category of girls and why it's important to me as a scholar and important to the book. You know, the study of girlhood in Africa in the last five to 10 years has experienced a surge in attention, and it's been wonderful. Abosetti George's book Making Modern Girls in Lagos, Shahidadoranto's book also on when sex threatened the state. Broadly beyond West Africa. There are lots of other people who have looked at how colonialism is transforming girlhood. But one of the things I really wanted to get down to in this book was how Dahomeans defined girlhood and how this definition evolves and what are important facets of it. Because really the thing that holds all of these chapters together is, is the development of norms in the 18th and 19th century, their transformations due to the political economy associated with first the Atlantic slave trade and then palm oil and then the colonial era. And I saw continuity in this while also seeing transformations. But at the heart, the definition of girlhood basically remains the same. It's not as straightforward as European definitions of chronicological age, even though ethnographers would eventually impose these distinctions. But by mid teen years you're usually starting the transition from girlhood to womanhood. And I say transition because Dahomeyens looked at several markers for full female adulthood. And really girlhood is this period of gendered childhood from the age of awareness at about the age of what foreign ethnographers say is about seven. And there is a definite shift as you're approaching six, seven, maybe eight, as a child starts showing signs of intellectual maturity and responsibility, they're allowed to really leave the compound more freely, be largely unsupervised and engaged in some low stakes door to door selling of goods, marketing what we would call hawking until about 14 or 15, when Dahomean society would start really thinking of these girls as marriageable as well as they're menstruating, so they're also of childbearing age. And full adulthood will come through wifehood, motherhood and getting more responsibility, entrepreneurship in hawking to establish your own venture. So those are all signs that transitioned. And that's why it was hard to really define age, even though roughly I settled on 7 to 14 ish. And I say ish because chronological age wasn't actually that important. Even now I think there's about 25% of Beninese citizens who are cited as not having a recorded birth date. And so a lot of this dating was referential and by maturation as well. So that's the definition of girlhood that I use. And why is it important? Well, you know, it's sort of like why is gender important? Gender, you know, is widely accepted as important. But what female gendered or gender aligning individuals are doing changes dramatically from this not yet mature womanhood. So girlhood and then maturation and then of course postmenopausal women, as other scholars have really focused on recently, such as Laura Griot, become very take on even more responsibility in the community. The focus on girlhood also is on girlhood. So it's on girls, but also the women that shape their lives. And that's why I didn't just put, you know, a history of girls, because it's really not. Because particularly in Dahomey, since girls are dependent, as all children are on some form of support and they're bonded to not only individuals but households, it was really important to understand their lived experiences through the adults who are really shaping some of the decisions they're making and the circumstances they're in. Okay, and then the next part of the question.

[Host]

So talking about the systems of transfer that we're going to, we encounter in the book. So entrustment, dashing, you know.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Yeah, so I'm going to sort of do a backstory there. A lot of the studies of dependence have really, from western scholars at the very least have really looked at this dichotomy of slave or free and looking at how this definition changes over time. And I have to admit I sort of went into the research, you know, knowing about pawning and things like that. But often the default is very cynical, that these transfers are exploitative. And I got a lot of pushback in my dissertation for the sympathy I showed to saying, well, maybe it's not slavery, which is for colonial history, especially not a popular opinion. And I should preface this. My dissertation was very much focused on just the colonial period. But what really guided me to look at the forms of dependence were some day to day interactions and some contemporary events happening in Benin. When I first did research in 2012, 2013 and 14. And that's when I would take my young child with me to the market and market women would approach me and tell me, give me your child. You know, first they would do it in fawn, then they would do it in French, but give me your child, I will give you one of mine. And as a first time mother, I was horrified at the idea of giving away my child, which is what it literally translated as. But as you know, this exchange happened over and over. I started asking women like, why are you asking for my child? And understanding that to them entrustment is an important and valued historic practice. They admit contemporary vidomigons in Benin are exploited and the custom has been manipulated for economic benefit, but they still see it as valuable. And one of the things that I really treasure the insight from my experiences doing research in Benin and is benignees think it's absolutely hubris to think two biological parents can give a child everything they need. And so that's what really steered me towards looking beyond this binary and really looking in the atlantic and colonial texts for variation and shades. And once you're aware of that, the african voice comes out that there are valued forms of dependency. That are positive for girls, Even if they do experience exploitation or abuse. And that is really the work that you see here. And what I ended up really trying to uncover. Is what they were flat out telling me, Even though one UN human report, Human rights report, While I was doing research, Even stated that, you know, these customs Are just exploitation, disguising slavery. So this was my attempt to listen and find in the archives what beninese were confident was the history, Even if they couldn't tell me the exact chronology. So the different forms of dependence and, you know, how they're named, changed. Unfortunately, the recording of the faun words Was not often done. Few europeans who resided in the kingdom spoke fong. But I did try and see through the different choice of words europeans. And as I show in chapter two, really did use and document the terms under which they were given children to either take to sometimes sao tome, Sometimes Europe to educate, and the times in which they were given enslaved dependence. And so you do see this difference between entrusted and placed as well as enslaved. Pawning is an interesting term for anyone who doesn't know what it means. It's basically where to secure a loan. You give a dependent to a household or individual until that loan is repaid. It's interesting because in dahomey, in the kingdom, the king expressly forbidded this practice. And it's not until the 19th century, at an economic and political moment of transition, where women are needing new forms of credit, that pawning is reintroduced by formerly enslaved women or descendants of enslaved women who bring the idea of pawning, I argue, from Nigeria and the gold coast. Other than that entrustment is really the ideal customer. And even royal children, which didn't fully make it in the book. But in the kingdoms that preceded dahomey and aladda and ouida, Royal princes were expected to leave the royal households and not grow up because there was this fear of spoiling them or not disciplining them appropriately. I mean, famously, king hafon avuida Grew up in an agricultural household and tended pigs. And then suddenly, when it's time for him to be king, they're like, oh, you're a prince. So then he goes back to the royal palaces. And, you know, the whedons thought this was great. Because he could understand their lives better Than someone who had grown up in the palaces. And so, yeah, entrusting becomes a very gendered practice, at least in the documentation, we where it is girls who are being entrusted. We also have dashed, which is a term that rises up in the documentation and transfers from dashing things as gifts in Atlantic exchanges to dashing primarily girls, but some boys as well, to Europeans who can no longer accept slave presence. But it's also they're in the situation where they need laborers to wash their clothes, run errands, and these are tasks that are done by children in the kingdom. So they still accept dashed gifts, even if they're kind of morally uncertain about this. And they bring up the word dashed into human gifts. So I think that introduces a lot of of the terminology. But one of the things, you know, I would like to say is that, you know, sometimes it's not always clear what the exact status was. And I think it's important to recognize that there was this whole spectrum and that girls understood their dependence in very different terms depending if their parents arranged the transfer or if the transfer was one of violence and due to the slave trade.

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[Host]

And I think, you know, again, I feel like as we keep talking, the contours of all of these relationships will sort of, you know, become clearer to the listener. But for now, I was wondering, especially since you're talking about sort of your. You mentioned your archives briefly. Can you talk about the archives that you consulted and then the methodologies that you use? Because portraits in the. In the title functions also as a methodology for you in this book. And so I want to invite you to sort of just discuss that a bit more. These archives that you use that are, you know, they're very male centric, so you have to.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

White male centric until the 1930s. Yeah, right.

[Host]

So you. It. So you have to, you know, like, you have to find your. Your subjects and then you have to, like you said, listen for the voices. So can you talk a bit more about what you found and how you found these stories that you lay out here?

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Okay. So the biggest transformation that occurred from my dissertation to the book was that when I looked back at the dissertation, I was so unhappy. The girls voices were not at the center. It was completely dominated by French colonial administrative views. And, you know, it took me, I won't admit how long, but, you know, a couple years to really push back against that narrative. And the only way I was able to. To begin to recover the voices and lived experiences of colonial girls was through really going back hundreds of years. And so that's why over half this book was not part of my dissertation. Honestly, one of the comments on my dissertation was it had a very flat view of the pre colonial period. So that's really what transformed my views. Taking that, that pre colonial history, in conjunction with what oral informants and those, you know, everyday exchanges in Benin told me was the history. It was not the history the archives told whatsoever. At least the colonial or Atlantic archives. It really took the process of just gathering every little fragment that I could on girlhood, and then, you know, reading them and hearing men's voices. I had to come up with a way to. And I explained it in the introduction, refract these, you know, more than deconstruct them. I needed to bend them to really privilege and tell the story of the historic subjects that I wanted to the girls and the relationships that these girls were placed within. And it became clear that these relationships of dependence were often girls being entrusted, purchased, placed, borrowed, pawned to other women. So it became very much a gendered phenomenon. And so that's what I went with. And I, you know, after I had all the documents, I started thinking about, you know, researchers throughout the Atlantic world investigating black Atlantic women or girls, such as Marissa Fuentes, Jennifer Morgan. I mean, the list could go on and on because there's been a lot of really vibrant work on that even since I graduated with my PhD about a decade ago. And. And so this really. I started reading this literature. And that encouraged me to think about that there are ways to do this, Even if you feel like there's huge silences. And what worked for me is actually looking at the images of girls. You know, they're not prominent in a lot of the literature. And I had to read up a lot about how to analyze visual sources. But they gave me sort of a touchstone. To really remember that this was the story of who I was telling. And all this information I had gathered. Needed to be centered on the girl named or unnamed. And I used the images to refract, to really develop empathy. And bend the sources. To see and hear girls. And I admit in the conclusion. That sometimes this is more of a speculative history. And I had to decide that I was okay with that. That if this was the only way to tell that story, that even if I'm sort of pushing the limits of the discipline of history, I was okay with that. Because I had done due diligence. To get as many sources as I possibly could.

[Host]

I think it's interesting that you mentioned. Some of these Other scholars. Of the Atlantic world. And enslaved women, Black women like Fuentes and others, because the methodology really sort of sits within that tradition I found just reading it, and I think so then it speaks to the broad Atlantic world, Bringing it into African history, Which I think is such a great thing. And so, speaking of the Atlantic world, When we start in the 18th century, we're very much sort of, like, in the midst of everything that's happening at this time. The slave trade, you know, the consolidation. And, you know, of Dahomey as a kingdom. And so that is where the story begins. So that is where you begin this story. To sort of set the stage, if you will, show the ideological foundations. Of these institutions that you're going to be talking about. So I want to invite you. To sort of walk us through this period and sort of. And I think you've gestured to that already a little bit. But the how and why, right? How are girls being transferred. And why are they being transferred in this period? And then we can sort of walk through the rest. As. As the systems evolve over time.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

So I want to just emphasize that in the kingdoms predating Dahomey. And in the 18th century, even in Dahomey, we have vast evidence. That boys were transferred as well. And this practice was seen to be good for both genders of children. We don't have a lot of information on male child transfers. And as you can tell from the first, really, two chapters of the book, A lot of the information, since it is supported By European derived sources, Is centered on the royal court. Because europeans had very limited mobility. Within the kingdom of dahomey. They basically landed in ouidah to trade. And then they were always forced to visit the king in a bome. It was very carefully orchestrated. So what you get the clearest picture of Is the royal family and its castles, which, I'm sorry, it's palaces, which varied from, you know, between 8 and about 11. And so you get a fascination with europeans, with dahomey and palaces, because these are female centered environments. You have thousands of women and girls in residence at these palaces. And so they are an interesting entree into girlhood. In part because the royal family's economic basis, you know, we think of it as being based purely on the slave export trade, and it most definitely is. But for thousands of enslaved peoples, Women and girls, they're brought into one of these palaces. You know, how their condition stays While they're in these palaces varies. It is an open slave society. So there is upward mobility. And we do have evidence of, you know, A couple dozen elite women becoming. Who have slave origins, Becoming the royal mother, you might call her enfant. It's. The name is a jovi. No, that's. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I'm forgetting the phone term entirely right now. It's slipping my head. If you had asked me when I was in the midst of writing it, I would have it on the tip of it right now.

[Host]

That's okay. I'm sure a lot of people have that same experience.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Yeah. But the queen mother in dahomey had enslaved origins. And so you get the royal family, you, know, collecting, particularly from newly conquered territories, Initially, Hundreds of captive girls and women. And then what's interesting in the 18th century is, even beyond the initial subjugation period, the kingdom of dahomey is subject to a collection of children. Brought in to be boys or pages in the army. Every soldier is supposed to have one. And girls either become servants in the palaces. Or enter what is colloquially called the Amazon corps of female warriors. Very famously documented recently in the woman king. Kind of historically based. And what you have to remember Is these girls and women who enter the palace. Are majority between, like, 6 and 8 years old. So it tells you that, you know, any girl in the kingdom of dahomey. And could be brought in through these collections. Initially, they're done sporadically. By the time of king tegvesu in the end of the 18th century. They're done every three years, and eventually they'll be done annually Just to recruit the labor needed to operate the royal palace. And so particularly, we have good records on tegbesu's reign, that he's the one who really says all children belong to the state. And so. So there's this idea that child transfers are likely. And the state has a role in dictating them. What's interesting about tegbesu, and it depends. It's a historical debate, but it's believed he was actually impotent. And so part of what if that, in fact, is the case, which I lean towards the evidence saying it is, Part of what he had to do Was really downplay biological parenthood. And that seems to have influenced how transfers are made. And really, as the palace needs more and more girls, Girls become more and more valuable for their other labor value Outside the palace. And really, it becomes A popularly embraced norm.

[Host]

Yeah. And I think what surprised me Was the vastness of the collection. You know, as you mentioned, there's so many girls collected in this time period. Right.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

And it fluctuates. But it's clear that dahomey experienced Several outbreaks of smallpox. Anytime it was defeated in a war, it necessitated even greater collection. You know, particularly by the 19th century, when Dahomey is fighting abeokuta, there's several devastating defeats. Where they lose thousands of female warriors. And there's very much that's really, when you go to the annual collections, Meeting More and more girls in the palace structure to staff it.

[Host]

And then as we sort of go into the 19th century, you, talk about the atlanticization of guess, the. Of entrustment of collection. Girl collecting. Right.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Girl transfers.

[Host]

Girl transfers, yes. So can you talk about this for process and the role of language and sort of helping you access this history, which came through so clearly. And I was also. I may have read this wrong. I'm going to ask you, so you can tell me if I completely read this wrong. But this seems to be here, because you mentioned boys being transferred as well. And there was sort of like a. Almost like a dichotomy of boys being entrusted and then girls being dashed. The word that sort of, like, develops here in this process. Can you talk a little bit more about this era and what is atlanticization of girl transfers and what's happening here?

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Well, dahomey is involved in the atlantic world from really as soon as europeans regularly begin visiting it in just the post sugar revolution in the caribbean, Once they have enough relationships to get the gold coast canoe men. To get them ashore regularly at dahomey. And so what is happening, really, during this period of exchange. Is also Dahomeans are very aware of the changing politics. In the atlantic world, Particularly as some powers, First Britain in the US and then others, Abolish the slave trade. And so they're aware of that, and we very clearly see that. And Europeans are aware that Dahomey are aware through their interactions with interpreters. And so what you get is a richer description. Of exchanges happening. Between dahomeans, Particularly the royal palace and Europeans. And so Europeans very carefully craft this language. In consultation with their interpreters, because their interpreters, you know, the Europeans even comment, Are known for, quote, unquote, softening the words. And so I argue that this impacts Even the way Dahomeans exchange and transfer children in dahomey. They very clearly want, you know, to see legitimate transfers of free children. As distinct from the transfer of enslaved children. One of the reasons why it emerges at this time. As a very gendered phenomenon, at least in the documentation, Is that in dahomey, you, have a very distinct way of processing palm oil. And the gender norms are manipulated, but not entirely cast aside. Because they sell the full fatty acid Rather than the lower, which is artisanal production. So without getting into the woods of economic production, Girls have a disproportionately large responsibility. For doing a lot of the palm oil processing at various stages, in part because you need an immense amount of firewood to build, boil, to refine the oil, to process it. So girls are gathering that firewood. That's traditionally something girls do in many African societies, as well as bringing the water. This isn't. Indoor plumbing is not a thing yet in the kingdom. And so they have to haul all the water on their head. And in the book, I talk about what pace they were said to go. And how long it would take. And this really affects where palm oil is massively produced. And why the palace needs so many more girls and women. Once they're producing palm oil on plantations in the abome plateau. Because it takes women in certain. At the palace at Cana, all day to bring water back. Because of how carefully you have to walk. And how slow the process is. And how far the springs are. So that's why transfers, at least visible ones. I still believe that Europeans just wouldn't observe the boy transfers, in part because they were oftentimes from my beninese informants. You wanted to start by the 19th century, you start keeping boys within the family. So really going through extended family Transfers. And because of that, any disputes are very rarely made public. As long as you're within familial circles, you're not going to take your uncle to court. You're going to resolve that with either the compound head or the lineage head. And so I think that's in part why Europeans are just unaware of boy transfers. And we have almost no archival documentation, Even though oral sources do indeed say boys were transferred.

[Host]

So in this same period. Right. You introduce us to Agbasipe and her mother. And she is a fascinating character that we meet here, Whose life history is very much sort of like, indicative or tied to the changes in political economy that are going on. So can you tell us about her, about her mother, her life history, and what her particular life history reveals about this time period? And this is when you argue pawning sort of makes its re. Entrance. Big entrance into. Into this space.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Well, I have to tell you that this might be. Be the most controversial chapter among experts on dahomey, in part because Robin law has written on pawning, and he doesn't say it disappears. Paul lovejoy is the one who has said, you know, Ouida was an exception on Pawnee. And from all evidence I can see, I agree with him completely. Particularly because of formal economic policies by kings. However, we know economic policies are not always followed. So Pawnee may have occurred just more covertly. And so it just may not be visible. What we do definitely see in the 19th century is a European country wife, or the African partner of a European trader, is said to have built her wealth through engaging on pawning and pawning. I explained earlier. But it's just the practice of basically giving a loan to someone in an exchange. They give the labor of usually a child, though sometimes an adult woman, in exchange for. As security for that loan until it's repaid. Dahomey is relatively unique in many of the Atlantic ports in the fact that it really disappears while the monarchy is strong. But with palm oil, you get women needing new credit giving mechanisms, because it's women who are doing a lot of the processing. They're working as independent entrepreneurs. They're wanting to expand the amount of dependence they have at their access. And so I argue that agba sepe was this unnamed European country wife who, while her husband was in residency in Ouidah, she chose to engage in pawning rather than slave trading. Because we're the post abolition period for Europeans. And in order to save face. And this is just further evidence that dahomeans followed the politics of the Atlantic world. And she was willing to do pawning. And she likely learned about it from either her mother, who was known as a Yoruba enslaved woman, Yoruba practiced pawning throughout the Atlantic era, or perhaps from her father, who was known to be a Gold coast canoe, in which, once again, pawning was prevalent in Atlantic ports there. And so this was her solution to the fact that she could not access capital through the traditional mechanisms because they had grown up on, you know, the slave trade and the Dahomean kings selected merchants. So, you know, I think this was something, you know, she was familiar with and decided to engage with. It's not clear if she was aware of the formal prohibition or perhaps this was something that just everyone did, even if they did it more covertly. But yeah, she is fascinating. She becomes one of the wealthiest traitors in mid 19th century Ouida. Her downfall, though, is rapid with a change in the Dahomean monarchy, who, you know, one king is said to, you know, really be lax about enforcing these economic policies and it's much more free trade environment. But once you get his son coming to the throne, it's actually believed that he cracks down on all Wido merchants. And she is profoundly affected. And her house is broken, her goods and labors confiscated.

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[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

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[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Oh, yeah.

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[Host]

Yeah, and it's, it's interesting because, you know, she's set up the, you know, one of the first stories that you give about female agency, if you will, in this story. And sort of within this. The constraint of empire, Multiple empires crisscrossing in this place. And then as we sort of move into the period of colonial conquest and consolidation, we meet aho lupe, who is another person, another girl, Another who you sort of profile as someone who gives us a picture of female agency in this. Within this space. So can you talk a little bit more about her story, her circumstances, and how girls sort of navigated the instability and precarity of this moment?

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Yeah. So ajo lope was actually one of the last girls I came across. By just chance, these particular documents Weren't available to me in any of my trips to benin because they were being digitized. And then when I finally got around to writing the book, I was like, I should see if they actually digitized those documents. And they did. And lo and behold, I was able to find ajo lopez story, but it was really only because she had been entrusted to one of the royal family members households. Otherwise, we likely would have nothing on her. And really, the documents focus on whether this prince, who was her betrothed and whose female family members she was entrusted to, you, know, without him playing a role, we probably wouldn't have gotten any information on her. And so it's just very. Her story is interesting. It's also the one that I had the hardest time with. Because of the overabundance of sources from this time period, really focus on military conquest, early colonial politics, the attempt to dismantle the apomean royal family and its power. So there was this whole period Where I hadn't really had any evidence for girls. And so I did come across aholepe, and I did the best that I could with her story, Even though it's probably one of the least rich Empirically Based on what we have in the archive. But I argue, and, you know, I think the literature bears out, as well as comparative study, that she ran away. And we do know she ran away to porto novo, and she did so to escape an arranged marriage that she was unhappy with and a domestic situation that she did not find amenable. Do we know exactly what it was? No, not really. We know very little about that. But we do know she ran away successfully. During the chaos of the french conquest, King behanson, the last independent king of dahomey, Will set abome aflame before he retreats into the marshy areas around abome. And while it's burning, she leaves, and she just doesn't come back. Most people Come back within a few weeks. She never does. So her family appealed to the French administration, saying that her betrothed husband actually sold her in slavery. And it's part of this larger investigation of this prince who. It is said that one of the ways in which Behanson and his successor, Agile Agbo, raised money for the treasury is by selling children as laborers. And so we do have evidence that he did do this. And so it's just assumed because she never returned, she was enslaved. But then once they finally locate her, she is able to give testimony that she wasn't sold, just like he had said, that she had basically set up a life for herself in Porto Novo, this new colonial entrepot that had recently been put under the protection of the French in the late 1880s. And we just. We don't know anything. You know, I've had to just speculate on what her travel was like in 1892, once the apple May is burning and what she does. But it's obvious she's able to find work and be incorporated into a household that she stays in for years until she gives her deposition to the French authorities. So, you know, we do know that girls and women run away from circumstances that are not of their choosing and not of their liking. And this is just the one example that I have to clearly show that at this particular moment in time.

[Host]

And it's. It's sort of a nice transition, I would say, into the next phase, if you will, of this story, where now we start to hear more from. From the girls from, you know, their social mothers. We sort of move into this period where we meet Fovey, we meet Akwella. Akwele. Akwele. We meet Saba, we meet Mahun, we meet all these other girls whose voices. Their names are recorded and, you know, their voices are recorded along with their social mothers. It's also a bit of a difficult, you know, especially chapter six is a hard chapter.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Yeah, I guess we should flag that for everyone. A trigger warning for.

[Host]

But I do think it's. But it's a. It's such an important chapter, but I think. So I want to invite you to sort of talk about this period, the colonial period, because now we're in the colonial period proper, and we are really with these girls as they perform their labors. They're in the streets, you know, in their neighborhoods, hawking goods, working for their social mothers and encountering danger. And so can you talk about that? But then one thing that I found really comforting, I would say, because we flagged the Danger. But I also want to ask you to talk about the networks of female support and care that do exist. Right. And do work very hard to protect these girls and care for them. So can you talk about this and you know about Akwele and Fovee and Mahun and others?

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Yeah. So these later chapters are about colonial girlhood and they skew towards the traumatic, the children who are the girls who are exploited, who are assaulted while they're working. Because I relied heavily on legal documents. However, I didn't want the document and the power of the archive to overshadow the girls stories. And excuse me, unfortunately, one of the richest sources of girls everyday lives are the transcripts of their depositions after sexual assault because they go through and describe their day to day life before this traumatic event happened. And so that's how, you know, I know how much they sold a product for if they sold repeatedly to the same customer and all of these sorts of. So that's in part why it skews to the traumatic. Even though I have tried to really place these girls in their everyday lives and one of the things that I've tried to lift up where it's visible is that these women defended the practice of entrusting as being distinct from enslavement. And they really highlight their caregiving roles. And we see that with Fovey in particular and her social mother. And you know, they describe, you know, taking these girls to the doctor, healing them, bathing with them, giving them clothes, you know, asking questions if they're not eating food or if they're not behaving in their normal way. So we do get that caregiving role and we do at least get hints of the fact that fostering relationships through entrustment could be positive for the girls and that these women took their role seriously. And that's really the crux of the argument in chapter six, that, you know, even after you get almost no convictions for rape of street hawkers after 1931, women still take these cases to French courts and support the claims of the girls in their employ as part of their caregiving responsibility. And we see that clear most clearly in the earlier documents, in part because elder women, regardless of their background before 1931, were given a voice as experts in girls bodies because of the intimate acts of bathing and observations that they saw day to day. After that, the social mothers disappear or go into the background of rape and assault cases a little more because the expertise now is being shifted to the techno scientific medicine, the doctor who is employed by the French state. But I mean, it's really these stories in the two chapters where women speak for themselves and girls speak for themselves that you do at least get some instances testifying to the intimacy of these relationships and their importance in girls and women's lives and get the Dahomean perspective rather than the colonial perspective. And I think that's in part because A, the French were trying to get rid of slavery. So these cases that are entrustment and trying to determine if it's actually enslavement, as well as the assault cases, just give you a lot more information in depth of information that you don't get elsewhere. One of the things that's unique about the French colonial legal system is they value what's called a pro se verbal, which is basically the transcribed testimonies. And yes, these are mediated, yes, they're edited, but they do give women and girls a place to have their voices recorded in the historical record. And some of these include very misogynistic commentary by the French administrators and others. You know, very clearly whatever the French administrator has asked is not what the girl wants to answer. So we do get to see some agency there, too. And I'm just, you know, these were a key portion of what I looked for, what guided what I was looking for in pre colonial sources, since I had gathered them already, as well as the oral histories that, you know, really emphasized certain things.

[Host]

And so you end the book with a girl whose voice we don't hear, but whose name is everywhere, really, as you. As you show, because she becomes, you know, part of this sensational story in the colonial period with her disappearance. So Tilly and what becomes the Tayly affair, which you argue, sort of sheds light onto some of the perhaps not so great ways that girl transfers are evolving in this period. So can you talk about the Tilly affair and who she was, what happened? But also, again, the story that sort of comes up, or what makes this story sensational, is that it is, again, tied to.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Yeah, we come full circle.

[Host]

We come full circle, right, to sort of political economy, what's going on here? So can you talk about that? And of course, that it's tied to the royal family, which is, you know, as you say, full circle. So can you talk about that? And then you mentioned this at the beginning when we started talking with market women, sort of, you know, saying, give me your child and, you know, I'll give you one of mine. But then also gesturing to some of the ways in which girl transfers are exploited by. By not so great actors. So can you talk about The Taylor affair and then the current state of girl transfers in what is now Benin and what you found during your research.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

So I'm going to give a little note to your comment that, you know, her name is everywhere. Well, that's actually not the case in Benin, the National Archives, everything about her has been like, expunged. I found one document, whereas in Dakar or the French West African Federation's archives, there's reams of paper, hundreds of pages, investigating Talay, the royal family in Abome. And I was told, and I'm not going to disclose by whom, because they probably don't want their name attached to gossip, but I was told with great certainty by a well placed person that the royal family had someone involved in the moving of the papers in the 1990s from their original location in sort of downtown Porto Novo to Wando, where the archives are today. And this person or person strategically removed anything that was unfavorable to the royal family, including the documentation on the Tele affair, except this one letter that says Tele was found.

[Host]

This is great tea that we're getting and we're here for it.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

So I'm not sure what else may have been extracted from the archives, but I can testify that in general, you would have carbon copies of correspondence in both Benin and Dakar, and there's none of that. So it is odd that so much is missing on Tellay, at least in Benin. And there's been an attempt by the royal family to really make sure their narrative is the narrative that's being told, that this girl was not a victim of ritual sacrifice and that nothing tarnishes the reputation of particularly one particular branch of the royal family.

[Host]

However.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Popularly, elders who are not associated with this branch of the royal family universally said, oh yeah, she was sacrificed. How else could his fortunes of Justin Ajo turn so favorably so quickly? And so these are sort of the two narratives that we have, that Tellay ran away because of an abusive mistress, or Telay was abducted and ritually sacrificed for the royal family to send a messenger to the ancestors to improve their status. And it is right at this time that you have a shift in French policy to reinstate members of the royal family as part of the French colonial bureaucracy. And it is widespread even beyond the abomain plateau. So, I mean, I'm not trying to weigh in on which controversy is true, which narrative. And I think part of what makes it fascinating is that there are these two narratives and they both reveal anxieties about girl transfers and, you know, what can become of A girl if the parents who are entrusting her don't stay in contact with her, which is the case with Tale. And so, you know, I was told both versions, as I said, it was a very divided over which one was quote, unquote, true. And in the end, in at least the book, I decided, since I'm trying to tell Tale's story, what actually happened to her isn't all that important because it's so steeped in controversy and it is very neat and tidy in the end, what is resolved and no, no allies of the French government are seen in a bad light by the fact that Telle is found and she testifies that, you know, she ran away. She, you know, was lured away by a male companion. And very much the narrative the French and the royal family want to produce. But, you know, this is the late 1930s. We're starting to recover from the Great Depression, but it is still very much affecting the West African economy. And so it is believed and testified to that child transfers, particularly girl transfers, are less closely monitored by parents and oftentimes closer to pawnship or even what we might call slavery at this time period. And they basically lose complete touch with their girls. And that's when exploitation is said to occur. And that's part of the reason why the contemporary controversy about placed children or really placed girls, what's called enfant vie d', amigant, is seen as so controversial because those ties with your natal family aren't strengthened or kept. It's not as big of a networking opportunity. It's really about economic gain, even if it's momentarily for a loan, and the economic exploitation of girls labor, who still remain a crucial part of the unpaid labor force in Benin. And universally, everyone condemns the practice of Vito Migon, but they say it's because a corruption of the historic practice of entrustment has happened oftentimes. When I asked when this corruption happened, most people pointed to, you know, the 1990s, the end of the Cold War, civil War, structural adjustment. All sorts of things are happening. But one of the things that this book has for the Beninese is a longer history of issues of exploitation, that it's not just contemporary at this very moment, that girls have always been vulnerable to the whims of individual mistresses.

[Host]

It's a really just a fascinating look at this history. Billy. So we've taken up a lot of your time, but before we sort of wrap up, can you tell us what we can expect from you next? What are you currently working on?

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Well, I am working on an article that changes the narrative on the Agba Sepe to really focus on her and other female headed householders in Wida. I'm not exactly sure when I'll be done with that. I think I do need to do some more oral research there, or I would like to. The book length project though, that I'm now working on is tentatively entitled Taboos and Tribunals in the Atlantic African Bodies, Supernatural Authority and Legal Power. And it's a decolonial feminist history of the policing of bodily behaviors, especially those that produce gender identity and sexual norms. I am further ahead on that on the portion. It's a comparative study of the Atlantic world and I've done the research. A lot of the archival research in Benin. It's a lot of what came out of my dissertation that I didn't use. But it's about entrustment to Vodun cult houses and the history of girls involvement in Vodun spiritual practices, as well as the controversies in the 1930s and 1950s about practices within what they call convents in the training of girls. So it has sort of that through line. These are older girls in their teens than what I discussed. But I'm going to really take that from a comparative angle and look at not just Atlantic Africa, but also Guadeloupe and Martinique and hopefully which that research is still really at the initial stages, but look at, you know, these longer histories and how colonialism foreclosed on certain gender norms and sexual identities that had once been commonplace in the Atlantic world. And so. So it's less fully situated in Dahomey, even though it will include it. I'm hoping to also from initial research, compare Ouida with Caplajo in Cote d' Ivoire and some other places. But very early on, just applying for funding to make this a comparative project. But like I said, Taboos and Tribunals in the Atlantic World, African Bodies, Supernatural Authority and Legal Power.

[Host]

So great. Well, that sounds like another fascinating book. So we look forward to seeing it whenever it makes its way into the world. So, Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a great book. I enjoy chatting with you.

[Dr. Jessica Ruther]

Oh, it was my pleasure.

[Host]

Again, the book is the Bonds of Kinship in Dahomey Portraits of West African Girlhood, 1720-1940. And we have been talking to Dr. Jessica Rutherford.