Dahomey

The Kingdom of Dahomey was a major West African state on the Bight of Benin whose expansion drove the slave trade into Saint-Domingue and shaped the religious and cultural foundations of Haitian Vodou. Dahomey's Fon people and their neighbors were exported in such numbers that Arada, Fon, and Nago became the dominant cultural presences in colonial Saint-Domingue, embedding the lwa and ritual practices now central to Vodou. The kingdom's name — 'the house built in Da's belly' — points to a political order built on conquest and incorporation.