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
Dahomey Dahomey during the reign of King Ghezo. The anthropologist Judith Gleason wrote a novel, "Agõtĩme: Her Legend" (1970), centered on one of the wives of a king of Dahomey in the late 18th century, who offends her husband who sells her to slavery in Brazil; she makes a bargain with a "vodu" (deity), putting her son on the throne of Dahomey and bringing her home. Another novel tracing the background of a slave, this time in the United States, was "The Dahomean", or "The Man from Dahomey" (1971), by the African-American novelist Frank Yerby; its hero is an aristocratic warrior.