History of the Kingdom of Dahomey History of the Kingdom of Dahomey The History of the Kingdom of Dahomey spans 300 years from around 1600 until 1904 with the rise of the Kingdom of Dahomey as a major power on the Atlantic coast of modern-day Benin until French conquest. The kingdom became a major regional power in the 1720s when it conquered the coastal kingdoms of Allada and Whydah. With control over these key coastal cities, Dahomey became a major center in the Atlantic Slave Trade until 1852 when the British imposed a naval blockade to stop the trade. War with the French began in 1892
In Dahomey a synopsis in February, 1903 generally concurs with the scenes depicted in extant scripts. The recovered synopsis reads: "In Dahomey" marked an important milestone in the evolution of the American musical comedy. Its composer Will Marion Cook combined the "high operetta style" he had studied with the relatively new form of ragtime in the finale "The Czar of Dixie." According to John Graziano, author of "Black Theatre USA", it was "the first African American show. The score made use of the "high operetta style" that synthesized successfully the various genres of American musical theatre popular at the beginning of the