Early 19th Century–1860s: (Dahomey as Slave-State Par Excellence — Slavery Central to Economy, Politics, and Ritual, Manhunts Among the Yoruba After Oyo’s Co…

Early 19th Century–1860s: (Dahomey as Slave-State Par Excellence — Slavery Central to Economy, Politics, and Ritual, Manhunts Among the Yoruba After Oyo’s Collapse, Brazilian Slave-Buyers at the Coast, and the Forced Transition to Palm Oil Using the Very Slave Labor the Humanitarians Had Hoped to Abolish): The beginning of the nineteenth century found Dahomey a dynamic and expansionist state, able at last to throw off its long-standing subordination to Oyo and to launch incursions into Yoruba territory. Dahomey had been a successful slave-owning and slave-exporting state since at least the end of the seventeenth century — slaves were used extensively within the domestic economy, others were exported, and still others were sacrificed in ceremonies designed to honor the king and his ancestors. Slavery was central to Dahomey’s economic, political, and social systems, producing a deep-rooted military culture reflected in the fact that the army was almost continually in action. While the kingdom’s traditional raiding grounds lay to the north and west, the collapse of Oyo facilitated manhunts among the Yoruba to the east — a strategy necessitated by depopulation in Dahomey’s traditional hinterlands. In the 1850s and 1860s, however, the slave trade finally went into steep decline and Dahomey was compelled to consider alternatives — the result was palm-oil production, ironically using slave labor, which expanded dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth century. Commercial rivalry fueled further conflict across the region as states competed for access to the coast in the quest for guns and ammunition vital to political and economic dominance.