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Whereas Europeans slave traders established lucrative trading posts along the aptly named "Slave Coast" as early as the seventeenth century, the powerful kingdom of Dahomey (Danxomè) exerted its influence over the other Fon kingdoms until the late nineteenth century in a frenetic bid to corner the slave trade and control European traffic on the Atlantic coast.
The Dahomey kingdom developed a veritable court art to the glory of the Fon dynasty and its kings, who were great patrons of the arts. Created by families of artists, the prestige objects, weapons and instruments of power, heraldic statues or low reliefs decorating the Abomey Palace still preserve the memory of the Dahomey kings. These great ancestors are celebrated as gods in the vodun cult in Benin.
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