Dahomey

Located in present-day southern Benin, the early kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful partner in the slave trade for much of its history, with the height of its power coinciding with the apex of the transatlantic slave trade.

Originally subjects of the Adja kingdom, which developed in response to European trading activity on the coast and to pressures from the YoRUBA state of Oyo to the north, the Fon established their own kingdom at Allada early in the 17th century under the leadership of Agasu (see FoN for the legend of Agasu). Succession disputes ensued after Agasu’s death, forcing his son Dogbari to flee to the city of Abomey in 1620, which became the capital of the new kingdom of Dahomey. By mid-century Dahomey was a powerful kingdom controlled by a strong monarch compelled by law to increase the kingdom’s territory and supported by a large, sophisticated army, which included 2,000 female warriors (known as Amazons). Much of the kingdom’s power rested on its control of the region’s slave trade from the main port city of Whydah, from which more than 2 million slaves were shipped to the Americas. Dahomey’s economy went into decline after the closing of the slave trade in 1804 and increasingly relied on the less lucrative trade in palm oil.

Further reading: “Dahomey, Early Kingdom of,” in Afri-cana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, eds. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 550-551; “Dahomey Kingdom, rulers of,” in Dictionary of African Historical Biography, eds. Mark R. Lipschutz and R. Kent Rasmussen, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 52.

—Lisa M. Brady