The Kingdom of Dahomey (c. 1600–1894) was a tightly centralized West African state of the Fon people, ruled from Abomey in present-day Benin. It built a standing army that included the all-female Agojie regiments, grew rich and then dependent on supplying captives to the Atlantic slave trade through the port of Ouidah, and fell to French conquest in the 1890s. The entry asks what kind of state Dahomey was, holding its real organizational power and its role in the slave trade together rather than choosing between them.
Dahomey kept a census, taxed its subjects through appointed officials, and fielded a professional army that European observers could not stop writing about. It was, by any measure, one of the most deliberately organized states in West Africa. It was also a kingdom that fought wars to capture people and sell them at the coast. Understanding Dahomey means holding both facts at once, without using its sophistication to soften the trade or the trade to deny the sophistication.