Editing Adandozan (section)

==Legacy==
Evidence of Adandozan after the coup are not clear but there were reports in the 1860s that he was left alive and lived until 1861 (three years after Ghezo).<ref name=Decalo-1987>{{cite book|last=Decalo|first=Samuel|title=Historical Dictionary of Benin|year=1987|publisher=Scarecrow Press|location=Metuchen, NJ|pages=22–23}}</ref> He lived much of his later life confined to the palaces, while his descendants changed their name to avoid association, and when he died he was buried quickly but with full royal honors.<ref name=Bay /><ref name="PiquéRainer1999">{{cite book|last1=Piqué|first1=Francesca|last2=Rainer|first2=Leslie H.|title=Palace sculptures of Abomey: history told on walls|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8hg3AQAAIAAJ|access-date=15 April 2011|year=1999|publisher=Getty Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum|isbn=978-0-89236-569-2|page=33}}</ref> Historian Edna Bay writes that after the coup "Adandozan suffered a bizarre punishment that was perhaps worse than assassination--to watch history be reworked as though he had never lived."<ref name=Bay />

Adandozan's legacy was reworked significantly by Ghezo and [[Glele]] who depicted the former king as a cruel and incompetent ruler who had usurped his throne and [[Damnatio memoriae|erased all official history]] of Adandozan.<ref name=Akinjogbin /> His name was largely erased from the history of Dahomey, and to this day is generally not spoken aloud in the city of [[Abomey]]. He is not referred to in kings' lists and is not included in the cloth applique of the kingdom.<ref>{{cite book|title=African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power|author= Suzanne Preston Blier|year=1995|publisher=University of Chicago|isbn=978-0-226-05858-0 |pages=424|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oOuQ53FMdGcC&dq=Adandozan&pg=PA424}}</ref> The traditional stories about Adandozan's rule (which are retold, with some changing of names, in [[Bruce Chatwin]]'s novel [[The Viceroy of Ouidah]]) portray him as extremely cruel: he is said to have raised [[hyena]]s to which he would throw live subjects for amusement; he is pictured slitting a pregnant woman's abdomen open on a bet to see whether he could predict the sex of the fetus.

Many historians question the negative portrayal of Adandozan in the official history and common stories about the king and believe that it is the attempt to remove his claim to history.  A similar process may have occurred earlier with [[Hangbe|Queen Hangbe]] who may have ruled for a brief period in the 1700s.<ref name=Alpern>{{cite journal|last=Alpern|first=Stanley B.|title=On the Origins of the Amazons of Dahomey|journal=History in Africa|year=1998|volume=25|pages=9–25|doi=10.2307/3172178|jstor=3172178|s2cid=162412301 }}</ref>

Although tradition has not been kind to Adandozan, the letters he wrote to various outsiders, especially the kings and other officials of Portugal (who fled to Brazil following the conquest of Portugal by Napoleon) have shown a different picture of his rule.  In these letters, Adandozan outlines substantial military campaigns, which he presents as victories, as well as detailing his negotiations with Europeans.  Some of these letters were published in work by Pierre Verger in the 1960s.<ref>Pierre Verger, ''Flux et reflux de la traite des nègres entre le Golfe de Bénin et Bahia de Todos os Santos du dix-septième au dix-neuvième siècle'' (Paris, 1968).  Portuguese translation ''(Fluxo e refluxo do tráfico de escravos entre o Golfo do Benin e a Bahia de Todos os Santos dos séculos XVII a XIX'' (1987, revised 4th edition, Salvador, 2002)</ref>  A large cache, found in the Instituto Historico e Geografico Brasileiro and Biblioteca Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, and several of the letters in this collection were examined in an article published by historian [[Ana Lucia Araujo]] in the British journal ''Slavery and Abolition.''<ref>Araujo, Ana Lucia. “Dahomey, Portugal, and Bahia: King Adandozan and the Atlantic Slave Trade.” ''Slavery and Abolition'' (2012). http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144039X.2011.604562</ref>  The full text of Adandozan's letters, both from the Institute cache and other repositories, as well as a few from his predecessor Agongolo and his successor Gezo were published in (the original) Portuguese in 2013.<ref>Luis  Pares, ed. "As Cartas do Daome" ''Afro Asia'' 47 (Rio de Janeiro) (2013) pp. 295-390.</ref>