Prior to 1600, present-day Benin comprised a variety of areas with different political systems and ethnicities. These included city-states along the coast (primarily of the Aja ethnic group and also including Yoruba and Gbe peoples) and tribal regions inland (composed of Bariba, Mahi, Gedevi, and Kabye peoples). The Oyo Empire, located primarily to the east of Benin, was a military force in the region, conducting raids and exacting tribute from the coastal kingdoms and tribal regions.[20] The situation changed in the 17th and 18th centuries as the Kingdom of Dahomey, consisting mostly of Fon people, was founded on the Abomey plateau and began taking over areas along the coast.[21] By 1727, King Agaja of the Kingdom of Dahomey had conquered the coastal cities of Allada and Whydah. Dahomey had become a tributary of the Oyo Empire, and rivaled but did not directly attack the Oyo-allied city-state of Porto-Novo.[22] The rise of Dahomey, its rivalry with Porto-Novo, and tribal politics in the northern region persisted into the colonial and post-colonial periods.[23] In the Dahomey, some younger people were apprenticed to older soldiers and taught the kingdom's military customs until they were old enough to join the army.[24] Dahomey instituted an elite female soldier corps variously called Ahosi (the king's wives), Mino ("our mothers" in Fongbe) or the "Dahomean Amazons". This emphasis on military preparation and achievement earned Dahomey the nickname of "Black Sparta", from European observers and 19th-century explorers such as Sir Richard Burton.[25] The Portuguese Empire was the longest European presence in Benin, beginning in 1680 and ending in 1961 when the last forces left Ajudá. The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery[26] or killed them ritually in a ceremony known as the Annual Customs. By about 1750, the King of Dahomey was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling African captives to European slave-traders.[27] The area was named the "Slave Coast" because of a flourishing slave trade. Court protocols which demanded that a portion of war captives from the kingdom's battles be decapitated, decreased the number of enslaved people exported from the area. The number went from 102,000 people per decade in the 1780s to 24,000 per decade by the 1860s.[28] The decline was partly due to the Slave Trade Act 1807 banning the trans-Atlantic slave trade by Britain in 1808, followed by other countries.[27] This decline continued until 1885 when the last slave ship departed the modern Benin Republic for Brazil, which had yet to abolish slavery. The capital Porto-Novo ("New Port" in Portuguese) was originally developed as a port for the slave trade. Dahomey Amazons with the King at their head, going to war, 1793 Among the goods the Portuguese sought were carved items of ivory made by Benin's artisans in the form of carved saltcellars, spoons, and hunting horns – pieces of African art produced for sale abroad as exotic objects.[29] Another major good sought by European settlers was palm oil. In 1856 approximately 2,500 tons of palm oil was exported by British companies which was valued at £112,500.[30] Colonial[edit] See also: Second Franco-Dahomean War A French depiction of the conquest of Dahomey in 1893 By the middle of the 19th century, Dahomey had "begun to weaken and lose its status as the regional power". The French took over the area in 1892. In 1899, the French included the land called French Dahomey within the larger French West Africa colonial region.[citation needed] France sought to benefit from Dahomey and the region "appeared to lack the necessary agricultural or mineral resources for large-scale capitalist development". As a result, France treated Dahomey as a sort of preserve in case future discoveries revealed resources worth developing.[31] The French government outlawed the capture and sale of slaves. Previous slaveowners sought to redefine their control over slaves as control over land, tenants, and lineage members. This provoked a struggle among Dahomeans, "concentrated in the period from 1895 to 1920, for the redistribution of control over land and labor. Villages sought to redefine boundaries of lands and fishing preserves. Religious disputes scarcely veiled the factional struggles over control of land and commerce which underlay them. Factions struggled for the leadership of great families".[28] In 1958, France granted autonomy to the Republic of Dahomey, and full independence on 1 August 1960 which is celebrated each year as Independence Day, a national holiday.[32] The president who led the country to independence was Hubert Maga.[33][34] Post-colonial[edit] After 1960, there were coups and regime changes, with the figures of Hubert Maga, Sourou Migan Apithy, Justin Ahomadégbé, and Émile Derlin Zinsou dominating; the first three each represented a different area and ethnicity of the country. These three agreed to form a Presidential Council after violence marred the 1970 elections.[citation needed] On 7 May 1972, Maga ceded power to Ahomadégbé On 26 October 1972, Lt. Col. Mathieu Kérékou overthrew the ruling triumvirate, becoming president and stating that the country would not "burden itself by copying foreign ideology, and wants neither Capitalism, Communism, nor Socialism". On 30 November 1974, he announced that the country was officially Marxist, under control of the Military Council of the Revolution (CMR), which nationalized the petroleum industry and banks. On 30 November 1975, he renamed the country the People's Republic of Benin.[35][36] The regime of the People's Republic of Benin underwent changes over the course of its existence: a nationalist period (1972–1974); a socialist phase (1974–1982); and a phase involving an opening to Western countries and economic liberalism (1982–1990).[37] In 1974, the government embarked on a program to nationalize strategic sectors of the economy, reform the education system, establish agricultural cooperatives and new local government structures, and a campaign to eradicate "feudal forces" including tribalism. The regime banned opposition activities. Mathieu Kérékou was elected president by the National Revolutionary Assembly in 1980, re-elected in 1984. Establishing relations with China, North Korea, and Libya, he put "nearly all" businesses and economic activities under state control, causing foreign investment in Benin to dry up.[38] Kérékou attempted to reorganize education, pushing his own aphorisms such as "Poverty is not a fatality".[38] The regime financed itself by contracting to take nuclear waste, first from the Soviet Union and later from France.[38] In the 1980s, Benin experienced higher economic growth rates (15.6% in 1982, 4.6% in 1983 and 8.2% in 1984), until the closure of the Nigerian border with Benin led to a drop in customs and tax revenues. The government was no longer able to pay civil servants' salaries.[37] In 1989, riots broke out when the regime did not have enough money to pay its army. The banking system collapsed. Eventually, Kérékou renounced Marxism, and a convention forced Kérékou to release political prisoners and arrange elections.[38] Marxism–Leninism was abolished as the country's form of government.[39] The country's name was officially changed to the Republic of Benin on 1 March 1990, after the newly formed government's constitution was completed.[40] Kérékou lost to Nicéphore Soglo in a 1991 election and became the first President on the African mainland to lose power through an election.[41] Kérékou returned to power after winning the 1996 vote. In 2001, an election resulted in Kérékou winning another term, after which his opponents claimed election irregularities.[42] In 1999, Kérékou issued a national apology for the substantial role that Africans had played in the Atlantic slave trade.[43]