Portugal's lasting legacy for Nigeria, in the end, is its initiation of the transatlantic slave trade.

By 1471 Portuguese ships have reconnoitered the West African coast south as far as the Niger Delta, although they do not know that it is the delta, and in 1481 emissaries from the king of Portugal visitthe court of the oba of Benin.

For a time, Portugal and Benin maintain close relations.

Portuguese soldiers aid Benin in its wars; Portuguese even comes to be spoken at the oba's court.

Gwatto, the port of Benin, becomes the depot to handle the peppers, ivory, and increasing numbers of slaves offered by the oba in exchange for coral beads; textile imports from India; European-manufactured articles, including tools and weapons; and manillas (brass and bronze bracelets that are used as currency, also melted down for objets d'art).

Portugal also may be the first European power to import cowrie shells, which are the currency of the far interior.

Benin profits from its close ties with the Portuguese and exploit the firearms bought from them to tighten its hold on the lower Niger area.

Two factors check the spread of Portuguese influence and the continued expansion of Benin, however.

First, Portugal stops buying pepper because of the availability of other spices in the Indian Ocean region.

Second, Benin places an embargo on the export of slaves, thereby isolating itself from the growth of what is to become the major export from the Nigerian coast for three hundred years.

Benin continues to capture slaves and to employ them in its domestic economy, but the Edo state remains unique among Nigerian polities in refusing to participate in the transatlantic trade.

In the long run, Benin remains relatively isolated from the major changes along the Nigerian coast.

Benin was already a well-established agricultural community in the Edo-speaking area, east of Ife, when it became a dependency of Ife at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

By the fifteenth century, it takes an independent course and became a major trading power in its own right, blocking Ife's access to the coastal ports as Oyo had cut off the mother city from the savanna.

Political power and religious authority reside in the oba (king), who according to tradition is descended from the Ife dynasty.

The oba is advised by a council of six hereditary chiefs, who also nominate his successor.

Benin, which may have housed one hundred thousand inhabitants at its height, spreads over twenty-five square kilometers that are enclosed by three concentric rings of earthworks.

Responsibility for administering the urban complex lies with sixty trade guilds, each with its own quarter, whose membership cuts across clan affiliations and owes its loyalty directly to the oba.

At his wooden, steepled palace, the oba presides over a large court richly adorned with brass, bronze, and ivory objects.

Like Ife and the other Yoruba states, Benin, too, is famous for its sculpture.

Unlike the Yoruba kingdoms, however, Benin develops a centralized regime to oversee the administration of its expanding territories.

By the late fifteenth century, Benin is in contact with Portugal.

Portuguese mariner João Afonso de Aviero becomes, in 1485, the first European to reach the Kingdom of Benin, an exceptionally vigorous West African state in existence from probably the thirteenth century and located in the rain-forest area of present southern Nigeria, west of the Niger River.

Aviero, who is greatly impressed by the wealth of the oba's (king's) court, notes that Benin is a trading state with commercial colonies stretching west as far as modern Benin.

At Aviero's urging, some of the local Edo, or Bini, princes are sent to Lisbon to study, and the Portuguese establish a Christian mission in the state.

Benin, at its apogee in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even encompasses parts of southeastern Yorubaland and the small Igbo area on the western bank of the Niger.

Dependencies are governed by members of the royal family, who are assigned several towns or villages scattered throughout the realm rather than a block of territory that can be used as a base for revolt against the oba.

As is evident from this brief survey, Yoruba and Benin history are interconnected.

In fact, areas to the west of Nigeria, in the modern Republic of Benin, are also closely associated with this history, both in the period before 1500 and afterward.

The Atlantic Slave Trade is the result of labor shortage in the New World, among other causes.

Western Africa (part of which, a fertile and densely populated region of coastal Western Africa along the Bight of Benin, is to become known as 'the Slave Coast'), and later Central Africa, has become the source for enslaved people to meet the demand for labor.

European guns, exchanged for enslaved people, give the West African forest kingdoms new power over their neighbors and assist the rise to power of Benin and ...

Christianity had been introduced at Benin in the fifteenth century by Portuguese Roman Catholic priests who accompanied traders and officials to the West African coast.

Several churches had been built to serve the Portuguese community and a small number of African converts.

When direct Portuguese contacts in the region were withdrawn, however, the influence of the Catholic missionaries waned and by the eighteenth century had disappeared.

Continued expansion of the Lagos and Oil Rivers Protectorate is accomplished largely by diplomatic means, although military force is employed to bring the kingdoms of Ijebu, Oyo, and Benin into compliance with dictated treaty obligations.

The conquest of Benin in 1897 completes the British occupation of southwestern Nigeria.

The incident that sparks the expedition is the massacre of a British consul and his party, who had been on their way—despite being told not to come, the king being occupied in a religious ceremony—to investigate reports of ritual human sacrifice in Benin City.

In reprisal, a marine detachment promptly storms the city and destroys the oba's palace, engaging in widespread looting of what will become known as the Benin Bronzes, consisting of brass plaques, elaborately carved wooden ceremonial masks, and ivory sculptures, including two matching lions ultimately given to Queen Victoria.

The reigning oba is sent into exile, and Benin is administered indirectly under the protectorate through a council of chiefs.