Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division

Frederick E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1851)

The Bight of Benin was the second largest exporter of captives, after West Central Africa. King Gezo, like his predecessors, was feared for his military power and his numerous slave raids. He had an army of several thousand female warriors, the famous Amazons. From the 1720s to the 1860s, Dahomey's trade was conducted mainly through the port of Whydah and was oriented principally toward Brazil. In the 1830s, numerous freed Africans migrated from Brazil and settled in the port city from which they had left Africa decades earlier.