What it was like in Ancient Benin_SAMPLE by Collins

For the children and staff of Boxford School

Published by Barrington Stoke

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First published in 2026

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THE FOREST KINGDOM

Who Were the Ancient Edo?

The ancient Edo people lived in the Kingdom of Benin, a country on the west coast of Africa. The Kingdom of Benin was small but rich and powerful. It lasted for more than 700 years but disappeared in the nineteenth century when the land became part of Nigeria. This means the country described in this book is not the same as the modern one called Benin, which is further along the African coast.

A thousand years ago, this part of Africa was mostly hidden away in the dense

rainforest. It was known as Igodomigodo, and its rulers were called the Ogisos.

The people living in the forest at that time believed that their rulers were part king and part god, but we don’t know very much about the Ogisos because nothing was written down about them.

The details we do know come from the myths and legends that the Edo people used to tell each other. These stories were an important way of passing information down from one generation to the next, and the best storytellers were known as griots .

In the twelfth century, the Edo decided that they no longer wanted to be ruled by the Ogisos, and they were made to leave the kingdom. We don’t exactly know why this happened or what went wrong, but the chiefs of the forest people chose a new leader instead. Ogiso meant “ruler of the sky”, but the new leader was called the Oba, which is another word for “king”.

The first Oba was Eweka. He soon had complete power over every man, woman and child in the kingdom. All the land belonged to Eweka, and he was in charge of the army. He also controlled the buying and selling of goods between the Edo and all the neighbouring tribes.

Eweka became very rich as a result of this, and he went on to rule the kingdom for 35 years.

For a long time, most Edo families lived in villages and small settlements in clearings. There, they were surrounded by the trees and thick greenery of the rainforest. They worked as farmers and hunters, catching and killing things to eat.

Living in groups meant the Edo were able to defend themselves against attack from other tribes in the region. It may also have given them protection from the dangerous animals they lived alongside in the forest. These included man‑eating lions and leopards, crocodiles, poisonous snakes and ferocious wild pigs. As the villages grew in size, some of the larger ones began to take over other smaller settlements. These grew to become towns, and several of them came together to form a big city. This was first named Edo, then later Benin City, and it was the most important place in the kingdom.

The Oba lived in the centre of the city in a vast and luxurious palace. The palace was so large that it may have covered a third of the entire city. Behind its walls and towers, the Oba had hundreds of servants to look after him and his family. There were also chiefs

and senior army officers and advisers who helped the Oba to run the country.

Over many years, the kingdom expanded until it was one of the richest and most advanced empires in this part of Africa. This happened because the Oba’s army was large and very well trained, and the soldiers had much better weapons than any of their rivals. This meant Edo troops were able to conquer

more and more land, enslaving the men and women who lived there.

The Kingdom of Benin’s success continued when the Edo met Europeans for the first time. First came sailors, who arrived on ships from Portugal towards the end of the fifteenth century. The ships were called caravels, and the sailors were excited to see this strange, new land.

In particular, they were impressed by the enormous size of the capital city. Everything in it seemed much finer than anything else along the African coast: its wide straight roads, the Oba’s huge palace and the other grand buildings.

The Portuguese sailors were keen to trade with the Oba and his people. They wanted to fill their ships with unusual goods from Africa that they could sell for large sums of money when they got back home. The sailors

began buying sacks of exotic spices, gold and elephant ivory. They paid for them with guns and other things that the Edo people couldn’t find in Africa or make themselves.

Other traders began to arrive too – from Holland, France, Spain and England. They all wanted more and more goods from the Edo. For a while, this made the Oba even richer, but he refused to share his wealth with his people, and many ordinary Edo felt that this was unfair.

Increased trade also caused arguments between the Oba and the Europeans. Eventually this led to a violent tragedy, which you can read about later in this book. The violence led to the sudden end of the Kingdom of Benin.