One of the central issues of West African history in the anti-slave trade era is the transition from the slave trade to ‘legitimate’ trade. Dahomey, a major exporter of slaves and later of palm oil, has often been used as an illustrative case-study of the problems and implications of that transition. In Dahomey, the reign of King Ghezo, 1818–1858, is of especial significance in this process of the substitution of palm produce exports for slaves.

In fact, Ghezo came to power through a coup d'état with the assistance of a famous slave-trader, the Brazilian Francisco Felix de Souza, at a time when the British were leading an international crusade for the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. Throughout the forty years of Ghezo's reign, the British relentlessly put pressure on him to give up slaving and human sacrifices, two basic features of Dahomey's history. Though this pressure was resisted, palm oil progressively emerged as Dahomey's major export in place of slaves. Ghezo was therefore able to overcome the ‘crisis of adaptation’ resulting from the change from the slave trade to the palm oil trade, thereby proving, contrary to contemporary philanthropist assumption, that trade in human beings and in agricultural goods were compatible.

In the historiography of nineteenth-century Dahomey, the totality of factors in Ghezo's policy has not hitherto been properly assessed. Beninese scholars have perceived his reign as a turning point in the kingdom's political and economic history for two main reasons.