Fon people

Fon people
"Dahomey Amazon" by Élisée Reclus (1905)
Total population
5 million
(including related groups like; Gun, Mahi, Ayizo, Weme)[1]
Languages
Fon, French
Related ethnic groups
Other Gbe peoples
PersonFon
PeopleFon-nu
Language fɔ̀ngbè
CountryDahomey

The Fon people, also called Dahomeans, Fon nu or Agadja are a Gbe ethnic group.[2][3] They are the largest ethnic group in Benin, found particularly in its south region; they are also found in southwest Nigeria and Togo. Their total population is estimated to be about 3,500,000 people, and they speak the Fon language, a member of the Gbe languages.[2][4]

The history of the Fon people is linked to the Dahomey kingdom, a well-organized kingdom by the 17th century but one that shared more ancient roots with the Aja people.[3] The Fon people traditionally were a culture of an oral tradition and had a well-developed polytheistic religious system.[5] They were noted by early 19th-century European traders for their N'Nonmiton practice, or Dahomey Amazons – which empowered their women to serve in the military, who decades later fought the French colonial forces in 1890.[6][7]

Cities built by the Fon include Abomey, the historical capital city of Dahomey on what was historically referred to by Europeans as the Slave Coast. These cities became major commercial centres for the slave trade. A significant portion of the sugar plantations in the French West Indies, particularly Haiti, Suriname and Trinidad, were populated with slaves that came from the Slave Coast, through the lands of Ewe and Fon people.[8]

  1. ^ "Université Laval, Collection Rapport de recherche de l'ODSEF" (in French). Retrieved September 24, 2022.
  2. ^ a b Fon people, Encyclopædia Britannica, undated, 1.7 million population, Retrieved June 29, 2019
  3. ^ a b Elizabeth Heath (2010). Anthony Appiah; Henry Louis Gates (eds.). Encyclopedia of Africa. Oxford University Press. pp. 482–483. ISBN 978-0-19-533770-9.
  4. ^ III, John A. Shoup (2011). Ethnic Groups of Africa and the Middle East: An Encyclopedia: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-59884-363-7.
  5. ^ Molefi Kete Asante; Ama Mazama (2009). Encyclopedia of African Religion. Sage Publications. pp. 270–273, 257, 412. ISBN 978-1-4129-3636-1.
  6. ^ Robin Law (1993), The 'Amazons' of Dahomey, Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde, Bd. 39 (1993), pp. 245–260
  7. ^ Alpern, Stanley B. (1998). "On the Origins of the Amazons of Dahomey". History in Africa. 25. Cambridge University Press: 9–25. doi:10.2307/3172178. JSTOR 3172178. S2CID 162412301.
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference TaylorCase2013p742 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).