The Woman King, slavery and black-and-white guilt: times they are a-changin’?
How the latest progressive fantasy epic might change the debate on transatlantic slavery and its legacy.
As the Second Elizabethan era ends, the monarchy looks set to be swept up in the unabating rage of ‘the history wars’, cast as the perennial baddie in every colonial crime since…well - the First Elizabethan era. We got a foretaste of it with the now Prince and Princess of Wales’ not-as-disastrous-as-reported-by-some-media trip to the Caribbean in March, followed by a strange regurgitation on the passing of Her Late Majesty who — according to some — was personally responsible for torturing suspected Mau Mau in the small years of her reign. It was, as someone put it, as if Barack Obama died and everyone blamed him for the Vietnam War.
But chivalrously as ever leading the counter-charge for Queen, country and historical perspective was historian Andrew Roberts who crossed swords with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi, pointing out that lectures from Americans on slavery were ill-placed, given that the British ceased the hideous practice decades before the US, and without cause for a devastating civil war. But it was the rear-guard action from that most sneered-at sector of Albion’s cultural forces — the royal correspondent — which struck the boldest blow pro patria et veritas. Hilary Fordwich, on her own CNN turf, diverted the familiar gripe back to its source: “you always need to go back to the beginning of a supply chain”; where? Where else? Africa, of course.
“…the African kings were rounding up their own people. They had them on cages, waiting in the beaches. No-one was running into Africa to get them.”
That alone is something that is not said — or realised — half as much as is necessary. In our efforts to make amends for the past, we have elided any factors that complicate the narrative, like the fact that Europeans were not capturing and enslaving Africans, but buying already-enslaved Africans…from other Africans.
In a stunning coup de grace, Fordwich then inverted the clamour for ‘reparations’ (whatever that actually means) by bringing that too to the start of the supply chain. It is the successor states to the slave-trading African kingdoms that owe reparations…to the United Kingdom, whose Royal Navy gave so much blood and treasure between 1807 and 1860 to stymie their vile trafficking. (According to historians Chaim Kaufman & Robert Pape, the antislavery efforts of the West Africa Squadron were the costliest international moral action in history.) I use the term ‘stunning’ quite literally in the case of CNN host Don Lemon who was on the receiving end of this logic volley; he mumbled something about it being “a fascinating debate” and ended the interview.
Of course this caused the usual impotent Twitter fury, but it does not in itself signify anything beyond a masterclass in trolling jujitsu. That it came within a few days of another mass red-pilling on the very same topic might suggest otherwise: it may be a false dawn, but we could be on the verge of a much-needed, long-overdue and potentially exciting sea-change in our collective understanding of the slave trade.
(2) THE WOMAN KING — Official Trailer (HD) — YouTube
The Woman King was supposed to be the standout Hollywood blockbuster of the year; aside from the Top Gun challenge, it probably will be. And it tickles the woke fancies of the LA set and beyond: how could the true story of a powerful all-female regiment in a 19th century West Africa, beset by imperialism and misogyny, not do? Well…
The Maria Bello epic has caused a storm of controversy and not where you might think. Far from arousing the ire of Fox News or the Daily Wire, it’s a cultural hand-grenade dropped right at the heart of identitarian-left discourse.
The supreme girlboss fighting corps in question is the Agojie, the elite fighting unit of the kings of Dahomey, a West African kingdom in today’s Benin. The Agojie really existed, known by admiring enemies as Amazons in reference to their sex and “prodigious bravery”. They were also brutal: the 6,000-strong force was the nocturnal terror of villages that failed to pay homage to the Dahomey king, with victims whose throats went unslashed hauled away as captives.
So far, so unproblematic. We know history’s a messy business so we can glaze over a little local genocide in the interests of the greater good. Besides, it’s nothing we can’t see the stars of 300 doing, and just as Leonidas spearheads the fight for freedom against decadent Persian tyranny, so does the (fictional) General Nanisca face down the colonial threat to her own motherland.
But, as histrionic and questionable as 300 is (were Spartans really the ones to mock Athenians as boy-lovers…?), it doesn’t harbour any fundamental illusions about its subject matter. Imagine if Zack Snyder — not content with recounting the pass at Thermopylae — recast Leonidas as a cross between Spartacus and Oskar Schindler who convinces the Spartan Council to free the helots. That’s roughly what The Woman King does with the leader of the Agojie.
Not for the ferocity of their female fighters alone was Dahomey also dubbed ‘the Black Sparta’. Remember we established with the help of Ms Fordwich that the source of the transatlantic slave trade was as African as its victims? Dahomey was source central; by some estimates, almost a million people were trafficked through the port of Ouida, controlled by Dahomey from 1727 to 1892. One of the many liberties The Woman King takes with the history is depicting Ouida as controlled by the neighbouring Oyo kingdom, who quite unfairly are the film’s token local villains. The white devils of the piece are the Portuguese, which is accurate enough as most of those enslaved and sold by Dahomey ended up in Brazil. Set in the 1820s, the British are notable by their absence.
Consequently, the hashtag #BoycottTheWomanKing has come not from the likes of Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro but from people with Twitter IDs like Brotep The Inward Nerd:
And @nasescobar316:
Even high priestesses of the wokeratti have joined the fray, with New York Times journalist and avowed non-historian Nikole Hannah-Jones wondering publicly how TWK “deals with the fact that this kingdom derived its wealth from capturing Africans for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade”. TWK does deal with this inconvenient truth…sort of. It portrays Dahomey’s slaving as reluctant realpolitik, abandoned under the persuasion of the — I remind you — fictional Nanisca for the palm-oil trade instead (just in case environmentalists were enjoying themselves). There is no record of such persuasion of the real-life King Ghezo by one of his generals (who were also his wives, albeit celibate). Ghezo did briefly abandon the trade after years of pressure from the much-maligned British, and considered palm oil production as an alternative, but returned to the much more lucrative business of selling human beings soon afterwards.
By the far the most admirable of the reactions against TWK has been that of actress Lupita Nyong’o, who — it appears — was cast in the film as early as 2018 and presented a documentary on the Agojie the following year. The Channel 4 programme is a study in publicly changing one’s mind, as her enthusiasm for the “historic, almost glorious remembrance” of the Agojie gives way “to the hard, brutal truth”. Nyong’o left the film with no official reason, but it’s hard not to conclude this was at least a factor in her decision.
Of course, Davis, Bello, John Boyega — who plays Ghezo — defend their project and they aren’t wrong to. Film is storytelling first and foremost, not history. But it’s telling that Bello and her co-writer Dana Stevens even felt the need to whitewash their heroines to the extent they have. They couldn’t, as 300 does on the matter of the helots, just leave it. In 2022, in a story about Africa, the great moral nettle of slavery had to be grasped; that they’ve been stung is no bad thing. Firstly, the fact that it features the African trade at all will be a revelation to many viewers. Secondly, and most crucially, the flawed representation shifts the debate from one a tribal one between fuddy-duddy conservatives (like me) and trendy progressives, to a hopefully more empirical and self-reflective one within the latter camp. Either that, or the culture war just spawned its latest civil war.
If I’m wrong to see this as the paradigm shift I hope it is, then at least it has been a much-needed injection of nuance into a hitherto (forgive me) black-and-white narrative. But if I’m right, it won’t just be left to historians and royal correspondents to counter it.
