ABSTRACT
The emergence of Dahomey into the European consciousness in the 1720s, it is important to note, coincided with the beginnings of serious public debate about the morality of the slave trade, and eighteenth-century perceptions of Dahomey were clearly coloured by the controversies between Abolitionists and Anti-Abolitionists. Stress on the military character of the Dahomian state, common to both Abolitionist and Anti-Abolitionist traditions in Dahomian historiography, is valid enough, but it raises difficulties in understanding the kingdom's success in achieving political stability. Already in the 1730s, interpretation of Dahomian history had become bound up with polemics over the slave trade, in a controversy over the motives of King Agaja in attacking the coastal kingdoms of Allada and Whydah. Eighteenth-century accounts of Dahomey present a consistent picture of it, characterized by three principal elements: militarism, brutality, and despotism in government.
