Dahomey and Asante
Dahomey's rise at Abomey, King Agaja and the capture of Ouidah (1727), tribute to Oyo, the Agojie women soldiers, the slave trade and the annual customs, the French conquest; Asante's founding under Osei Tutu and Okomfo Anokye, the Golden Stool, Kumasi and the gold economy, Asante's administration, the Anglo-Asante wars and Yaa Asantewaa.
Two states on the edge of the Atlantic
Both Dahomey and Asante were centralised, bureaucratic states whose power was entangled with the Atlantic slave trade: they sold war captives to European traders while fighting to control the routes and ports. Historians debate how far the trade shaped them: Akinjogbin argued Dahomey initially sought to end the trade's disruption; Robin Law argued the state was built around profiting from it.
Asante's wealth came first from gold, mined and panned in its forests, and kola nuts traded north. Its capital Kumasi had a sophisticated administration with record-keeping in Arabic by Muslim scribes and a road network radiating to the provinces.
I.A. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbours 1708-1818 (1967); Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa 1550-1750 (1991); Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (1975); Stanley Alpern, Amazons of Black Sparta (1998).