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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.
Carried across the Atlantic in the wake of slavery, African vodun, in its many different forms, was originally practised in the ancient kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, but also among the Ewe in Togo and the Yoruba in Nigeria.
The term vodun is thought to derive from a Fongbe expression "to take time to draw water", which praises a calm attitude in adversity. Vodun is a complex religious system based on a supreme force governing everything that exists. Followers of vodun honour a pantheon of powers, natural forces (the land, the sea, lightning, fertility), or deified royal or common ancestors.
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