Americas 250th Birthday Cinemathon #4: The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

 

The Last of the Mohicans is the best known of James Fennimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. Cooper was the first American novelist to achieve international popularity, and for an author writing in the early 19^th Century was notably fait and complex in portraying American Indian characters, though sometimes slipping into noble savage tropes. Last of the Mohicans has been widely adapted onto screen, but Michael Mann’s 1992 offering is the most popular and enduring, thanks to its great cast, good music by Trevor Jones, and well-shot scenery.

The setting is the French and Indian War, which was a colonial theater of the global Seven Years War. The British and French fought each other with a mix of regular troops, militia, and Indian allies. Last of the Mohicans in particular focuses on events around the Siege of Fort William Henry. Colonel Edmund Monro put up a dogged defense against the Franco-Native force under General Louis-Joseph Montcalm. Reinforcements failed to arrive, so Munro surrendered under generous terms from Montcalm. However, the French’s Indian allies then set upon the disarmed soldiers and the civilians (women and children included), massacring them in one of the most controversial moments of the war.

A Very Short History of Dahomey V: The Fall of Dahomey

 

Gezo had tried to appease the British by moving away from the slave trade. However, he had soon reinstituted Dahomey’s man-selling traditions, among other things. This was done to restore Dahomey’s economy, but international events, as well as happenings among customer nations, set slavery well on the path to extinction. Dahomey’s failure to adapt would lead to its decline and justify its conquest by an even greater imperial power.

Chapter V: The Fall of Dahomey

Glele represented as a lion (Wikimedia)

Attempt at Resurgence

The resurgent slave trade out of Ouidah proved short-lived. With the United States sundered by civil war over the issues pertaining to slavery, Britain found a more amenable anti-slavery party in the Republican-led Union. A new treaty prevented slavers from using the United States flag as protection. As it happens the last slave ship to sell in America, the Clotilda, came out of Ouidah. It arrived in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in 1860. At the same time the Spanish colony of Cuba was pressured to stop purchasing human lives. Despite these closing markets, Dahomey still found many places abroad to sell its human goods.

On the positive side, Dahomey revitalized their trade in agricultural exports. Though not as profitable as slaves or palm oil, agricultural goods did compensate for lower sales of these two economic staples. With the palm oil trade recovering in the mid-1860s, buyers from anti-slavery nations, foremost Britain, were drawn to Dahomey’s ports. European business firms competed with ex-slaving Brazilians and Portuguese for control of the agricultural trade. The firms had the advantage of secure financial backing.