Benin

From the Aja kingdoms of Allada and Porto-Novo and the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey at Abomey, through conquest and the slave trade, to a pioneering African democracy.

The Republic of Benin — known until 1975 as Dahomey — occupies a narrow strip of West Africa between Nigeria and Togo. Its precolonial history was shaped by Aja-speaking peoples who, by tradition, migrated from Tado on the Mono River and founded the coastal kingdoms of Allada and, in the late sixteenth century, Porto-Novo (a town of mixed Aja and Yoruba character). Inland on the Abomey plateau, the Fon built the Kingdom of Dahomey, a centralised military state whose kings — among them Agaja, Ghezo and the last independent ruler Behanzin — were guarded by the famous all-female regiment Europeans called the Dahomey 'Amazons' (the Agojie or Mino). Dahomey grew rich and powerful through the Atlantic slave trade conducted from the port of Ouidah on the 'Slave Coast', through which more than a million enslaved Africans were deported. France conquered Dahomey in two wars between 1890 and 1894, exiling King Behanzin, and ruled it as a colony within French West Africa until independence on 1 August 1960. The Republic of Dahomey then endured more than a decade of coups, until Mathieu Kérékou seized power in 1972, adopted Marxism-Leninism and in 1975 renamed the country Benin. After his regime collapsed, Benin's landmark 1990 National Conference produced one of Africa's earliest peaceful transitions to multiparty democracy. This is the modern Republic of Benin, and is distinct from the historic Kingdom of Benin, an Edo state in present-day Nigeria.