Politics of Benin century until the colonial period, the Kingdom of Dahomey (whose borders encompassed more than present day Benin) was ruled by an "Oba". The French were the colonial power from 1892 to 1960, when independence was finally achieved. Between 1960 and 1972, a series of military coups in Benin (known until 1975 as the Republic of Dahomey) brought about many changes of government. The last of these brought Major Mathieu Kérékou to power as the head of a regime professing strict Marxist-Leninist principles. The Revolutionary Party of the People of Benin (PRPB) remained in complete power until the beginning of the
History of the Kingdom of Dahomey about the morality or immorality of the slave trade, Dahomey became a key aspect of the debate with significant attention. The key role of Dahomey with the slave trade had a significant impact on a range of other scholars. Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel used the funeral ceremonies after the death of the King of Dahomey in his Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837). Karl Polanyi's last written book "Dahomey and the Slave Trade" (1966) explored the economic relationships in the kingdom. The Kingdom of Dahomey has been depicted in a number of different literary works of fiction or