 European historiography of Dahomey has been significant for its use in debates about the morality of the slave trade and for its importance to fields outside African history.Many of the early histories and descriptions were written by 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.