The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by conquering key cities on the Atlantic coast.

The Kingdom of Dahomey was one of the most well-known African nations of the 18th and 19th centuries, and European visitors extensively documented the kingdom in many different publications. For much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Kingdom of Dahomey was a key regional state, eventually ending tributary status to the Oyo Empire. The Kingdom of Dahomey was an important regional power that had an organized domestic economy built on conquest and slave labor, significant international trade and diplomatic relations with Europeans, a centralized administration, taxation systems, and an organized military. Notable in the kingdom were significant artwork, an all-female military unit called the Dahomey Amazons by European observers, and the elaborate religious practices of Vodun.The growth of Dahomey coincided with the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, and it became known to European traders as a major supplier of slaves, allowing the royal elites of Dahomey to gain prestige and consolidated authority. Dahomey was a highly militaristic kingdom that was constantly organised for warfare; it captured children, women, and men during wars and raids against weaker societies, and sold them to European slave traders in exchange for European goods such as rifles, gunpowder, fabrics, cowrie shells, tobacco, pipes, and alcohol. Other remaining captives became slaves in Dahomey, where they worked on royal plantations and were routinely mass executed in large-scale human sacrifices during the festival celebrations known as the Annual Customs of Dahomey. The Annual Customs of Dahomey involved significant collection and distribution of gifts and tribute, religious Vodun ceremonies, military parades, and discussions by dignitaries about the future for the kingdom.

In the 1840s, Dahomey began to face decline with British pressure to abolish the slave trade, which included the British Royal Navy imposing a naval blockade against the kingdom and enforcing anti-slavery patrols near its coast. During this time period, Dahomey was also weakened by military defeat from Abeokuta, a Yoruba city-state which was founded as a safe haven for refugees escaping slave raids from Dahomey. After the 1850s, Dahomey began experiencing territorial tensions with France which led to the First Franco-Dahomean War in 1890, resulting in French victory. The kingdom finally fell when the last king, Béhanzin, was defeated by France in the Second Franco-Dahomean War, leading to the country being annexed into French West Africa as the colony of French Dahomey.