Among the many autonomous nation-states in Africa, one of the least well-known is Benin, home to slightly over 5 million people living in a republic that has been independent of colonial influence since 1960 (Crystal, 1994). Benin was, in the pre-colonial era, a collection of small, warring principalities, including the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey, founded in the seventeenth century. Portuguese colonial activities centered on the slave trace, but the Portuguese were subjugated by the French and the area that is now Benin became the French Protectorate of Dahomey in 1892 (Crystal, 1994).
In this report, the historical and political dynamics in Benin will be analyzed up to the present day. Though there are those authorities who consider Benin today to represent a constitutional democracy functioning under the rule of law, there are also those who would argue that political stability is more of an illusion than a reality in this country and that Benin continues to be engaged in a dynamic process of political as well as economic development (Lefort, 1999).
Williams (2002) stated that Benin has history as colorful, complex, and at times brutal as any African country. The history of the Dahomey Kingdom is complex. These kingdoms can be traced to the thirteenth century when the ancestors of the Fon, a close relative of the Yoruba, migrated south from the Niger River to occupy most of present-day Benin and neighboring Togo. By the early seventeenth century, there were three rival groupings that engaged in intermittent and internecine warfare for about 100 years. One royal line, under King Houegbadja, was established in the city of Abomey, which became a central power base. Houegbadja conquered among others, the Gedebi people. King Akaba succeeded Houegbadja in 1685, leaving an expanded kingdom to his son, Agaja, who ruled over a Dahomey extended to the coast and under whose regime, the first contact with Europeans oc...