Fon

The Fon are a Gbe-speaking people of the Guinea coast, settled on the Abomey plateau and around Allada and Ouidah in southern Benin. Oral tradition traces them to the Aja kingdom of Tado; a branch moved to Allada and then under Do-Aklin onto the Abomey plateau around 1620, mixing with the Gedevi.

There they built Dahomey, with Abomey as capital of a highly centralized military state. Under King Agaja in the 1720s Dahomey conquered Allada and Whydah and reached the Atlantic, though becoming a tributary of the Oyo Empire.

Control of Ouidah made the Fon central to the slave trade on the so-called Slave Coast, captives sold to European ships as tribute and merchandise. Dahomey was famed for its female regiment, the Agoji or Mino, and the Vodun cult of Mawu-Lisa and Legba, whose rites crossed the Atlantic with enslaved captives and shaped Voodoo in the Americas.