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
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.