Kingdom of Whydah
which included Ouidah but was headquartered in Savi
The Kingdom of Whydah () was a kingdom on the coast of West Africa in what is now Benin. It was a major slave trading area which exported more than one million Africans to the United States, the Caribbean and Brazil before closing its trade in the 1860s. In 1700, it had a coastline of around 16 kilometres (10 mi); under King Haffon, this was expanded to 64 km (40 mi), and stretching 40 km (25 mi) inland.
The Kingdom of Whydah was centered in Savi. It also had connection to the city of Whydah. The last ruler of Whydah was King Haffon, who was deposed in 1727, when Whydah was conquered (and annexed) by the Kingdom of Dahomey.
Name
The name Whydah is an anglicised form of Xwéda (pronounced Xʷi-dah), from the Xweda Gbe language and people of Benin. Today, the Beninese city of Ouidah bears the kingdom's name. To the west of it is the former Popo Kingdom, where most of the European slave traders lived and worked.
The area gives its name to the native whydah bird, and to Whydah Gally, a slave ship turned pirate ship owned by pirate captain Samuel Bellamy.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kingdom of Whydah” as which included Ouidah but was headquartered in Savi. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as which included Ouidah but was headquartered in Savi. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1716449. Authority coordinates are 6.417, 2.100. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1700 and 1727.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kingdom of Whydah” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.