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Set in western Africa along the Gulf of Guinea, the Republic of Benin is a small, narrow country between Togo to the west and Nigeria to the east. To the north is Burkina Faso and Niger. Until 1975 Benin was called Dahomey, a name derived from the former kingdom of Dahomey, which dominated the slave trade between the interior and the Atlantic coast from the early eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Among the largest ethnic groups represented in Benin are the Fon, Aja, and Gun. The population also contains groups of Yoruba- and Ewe-speaking peoples....
