This polity was centered on Abomey, whence its armies subjugated the surrounding territories for slaves to trade to Portuguese and English merchants in the Bight of Benin.
Accounts of this polity dating to the early nineteenth century claim that its corps of female soldiers held pride of place in the army, with the honor of making the first charge, and Richard Burton wrote of the "masculine physique of the women, enabling them to compete with men in enduring toil, hardship and privations." This polity had an inland orientation, to the point that the settlement through which it carried out its chief trade before the mid-nineteenth century had no port, and today that settlement contains the Door of No Return. That settlement, Whydah, was made subject to this polity under King Agaja in 1727. This polity was centered on Abomey, whence its armies subjugated the surrounding territories for slaves to trade to Portuguese and English merchants in the Bight of Benin. For ten points, name this polity, annexed by the French in the late nineteenth century and independent under this name before it became Benin in 1972.
Accounts of this polity dating to the early nineteenth century claim that its corps of female soldiers held pride of place in the army, with the honor of making the first charge, and Richard Burton wrote of the "masculine physique of the women, enabling them to compete with men in enduring toil, hardship and privations.
{Dahomey}