African World History

Dahomey was just a tiny fishing settlement in the Bight of Benin. With the advent of the transatlantic slave trade, the region was became the primary target of slave raids from surrounding powerful kingdoms. So they organized themselves into a small polity to stop the slave raids. When they were strong enough, they launched a daring attack on the most powerful slave state in the region. They killed the entire ruling elite, captured a European slave fort, killed all the European slave traders & liberated all the slaves. They tried outlawed slave trading in the region, but Europeans just moved to other coast, armed other African kingdoms to continue raiding Dahomey. Instead of folding, they organized their kingdom wholly for the purpose of waging war on their neighbors. They subdued most of their neighbors, seized control of all trade & became an absolute terror in the region