Edited by the Scottish surgeon and enslaver, Archibald Dalzel (1740-1811), this book builds upon Robert Norris’s Memoirs of the reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomy, a history of the West African kingdom of Dahomey (now part of Benin) during the reign of Tegbesu (1740-74), published in 1789.
Norris had begun to made additions to his work in order to compile a more comprehensive history of the country but died before it could be published. Dalzel edited Norris’s notes and made his own additions, publishing The History of Dahomy in 1793. However, since both men were heavily involved in the slave trade, writing at a time of increasing agitation for abolition in Britain, the history was distorted, and descriptions of Dahomeyan cultural practices (particularly human sacrifice) were used by the authors to justify the continued enslavement and transportation of Africans to plantations in the Americas.