Wegbaja and his successors, based in his…

Wegbaja and his successors, based in his capital of Agbome, have established a highly centralized state with a deep-rooted kingship cult of sacrificial offerings.

These include an emphasis on human sacrifices in large numbers, to the ancestors of the monarch.

Human sacrifices are not only made in time of war, pestilence, calamity, and on the death of kings and chiefs, they are also made regularly in the Annual Customs, believed to supply deceased kings with a fresh group of servants.

Four thousand Whydahs, for example, had been sacrificed when Dahomey conquered the Kingdom of Whydah in 1727.

Five hundred had been sacrificed for Adanzu II in 1791.

Sacrifices for Ghezo, who rules from 1818 to 1858, had gone on for days.

Human sacrifice is usually by beheading, except in the case of the king's wives, who are buried alive.

The king directly owns all land and collects taxes from all crops.

Economically, however, Wegbaja and his successors profit mainly from the slave trade and relations with slavers along the coast.

As Dahomey's kings embark on wars to expand their territory, they had begun using muskets and other firearms traded with French and Spanish slave traders for young men captured in battle, who fetch a very high price from the European slave merchants.