Dahomey Republic of Dahomey and gained full independence in 1960. It was renamed in 1975 the People's Republic of Benin, and in 1991 the Republic of Benin. The Dahomey kingship exists as a ceremonial role to this day. Early writings, predominantly written by European slave traders, often presented the kingdom as an absolute monarchy led by a despotic king. However, these depictions were often deployed as arguments by different sides in the slave trade debates, mainly in the United Kingdom, and as such were probably exaggerations. Recent historical work has emphasized the limits of monarchical power in the Kingdom of Dahomey.
History of the Kingdom of Dahomey slave traders and the conclusions were that the slave trade was a process of freeing the population from the highly militarized, very brutal, and despotic Kingdom of Dahomey. William Snelgrave and Archibald Dalzel wrote key histories and memoirs of Dahomey presenting the case for the slave trade to save the population from human sacrifice. Abolitionist historians, in contrast, argued that the brutality of the Dahomey state was the result of the slave trade itself. Dahomey was thus portrayed with a host of very negative stereotypes, with significant exaggeration, by European historians in the 18th and 19th century. With increasing debates