The only documented all-female army in modern history did not begin as an ideological experiment. It began as demographic arithmetic. The Kingdom of Dahomey, in what is now Benin, was locked in constant warfare and paying heavy annual tribute in male captives to the larger Oyo Empire, bleeding men faster than it could replace them. What it did have was the gbeto, a corps of female elephant hunters established under King Houegbadja in the 1600s. Hunting an animal that weighs several tons demands silent movement through dense brush, coordinated flanking without a spoken word, and the nerve to hold position under a charge. Those are the same requirements as 18th-century infantry skirmishing in that terrain, and Dahomey's kings recognized it. Queen Hangbe formalized them as a royal guard, and King Agaja deployed them to conquer Whydah in 1727.

 ...