Continuation

From around the 1760s, we enter into the Age of the Atlantic Revolutions with the corresponding growing opposition in many quarters to slavery and the slave trade. The pivotal date is 1807 when Britain abolished the slave trade. But on the local scene, little changed initially. Dahomey continued to be immersed in crisis and its rulers proved utterly unable to conquer any new territory – although the Dahomeans did manage at times to send raiding parties into the Eastern Slave Coast. On the other hand, the Huedan exiles were finally wiped out, and the once mighty Oyo empire, Dahomey’s overlord, began slowly to fall apart, as did also Glidji, another of Dahomey’s foes. In the middle of it all, in 1797, the Dahomean king Agonglo expressed his intention to convert to Christianity. This led to a coup in which Agonglo lost his life, and then to a counter-coup, both extremely bloody. On the Western Slave Coast the Danes, up until 1793, tried but failed to carve out a colony for themselves.