The Fon people, also called Fon nû, and historically called Dahomeans in colonial French literature, are the largest ethnic group in Benin Republic, accounting for approximately 33.2% of the total population, more than 4,800,000 million people (39.2% if including the Gouns/Eguns, an offshoot ethnic group).
In addition to the main branch, mainly established in major cities like Cotonou, Abomey, Ouidah, Allada, Bohicon, Calavi, Lokossa, etc., there are several sub-groups, including the Kotafons and the Aïzos (Ayizos), across the southern part of Benin Republic. They are also established in southwest Togo, in the Atakpamé region. They speak Fongbe, one of the Gbe languages found in the Bight of Benin, which covers the coastal areas of Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria.
Although their geographic range is smaller compared to that of the Ewes, Akans, Fulanis, Yorubas, Igbos and other major ethnic groups in West Africa, the Fons people have an important cultural and sociological impact in the Bight of Benin. This is mainly due to the ancient Dahomey kingdom which they founded by the 17th century, and which were for several decades one of the main economic hubs, as well as a key military power in the coastal region, only second the Oyo Empire.
The Fons, who trace their roots back to the Aja people
Notable Fons figures include the five time Grammy Awards winner singer and choreographer Angelique Kidjo, the film actor Djimon Hounsou, the former head of state Patrice Talon, and the economist Lionel Zinsou.
Origin
thumb|left|The [[Gbe languages|Gbe language area. Map of the Fon (purple) and other ethnic groups, according to Capo (1998). Since the seventeenth century, the Fon have been concentrated in the Benin region and the southwestern part of Togo and Nigeria.]]
The Fon people, like neighboring ethnic groups in West Africa, remained an oral tradition society through the late medieval era, without ancient historical records. According to these oral histories and legends, the Fon people originated in present-day Tado, an Aja kingdom now situated near the Togo–Benin border. Their earliest ancestors, called Agassouvis, were originally a part of the ruling class in Tado.
The Aja people had a major dispute ; one group broke off and these people came to be the Fon people, who migrated to Allada with king Lande Ajahouto. The sons of king Ajahouto disputed who should succeed him after his death, and the group split again. This time, a Fon group migrated with Ajahouto's middle son Do-Aklin northwards to the Abomey's plateau, where they founded the kingdom of Dahomey sometime about 1620 CE, The Fon people have been settled there since, while the kingdom of Dahomey expanded in southeast Benin by conquering neighboring kingdoms.
But these sources are highly controversed. The claim to any origin from within Allada is not recorded in contemporary sources before the late eighteenth century, and is very likely an attempt by the ruling dynasty in the Dahomean kingdom's capital of Agbome to legitimize its conquest of the independent coastal kingdom of Allada in the 1720s. These claims can also be interpreted as a metaphorical expressions of cultural and political influences between kingdoms rather than actual kinship.
History
thumb|"Amazon King Apron", Dahomey : the nineteenth century
While references and documented history about the Fon people are scant before the 17th century, there are abundant documents on them from the 17th century, particularly written by European travelers and traders to West African coasts. These memoirs mention such cities as Ouidah and Abomey. Among the most circulated texts are those of Archibald Dalzel, a slave trader who in 1793 wrote the legends, history and slave trading practices of the Fon people in a book titled the History of Dahomey. Modern era scholars have questioned the objectivity and accuracy of Dalzel, and to what extent his pioneering book on Fon people was a polemic or dispassionate scholarship. N. Savariau, Le Herisse and M.J. Herskovits' anthropological study on Fon people published in 1938.
Slavery, Bight of Benin
The Fon people did not invent slavery in Africa, nor did they have a monopoly on slavery nor exclusive slave trading activity. The institution of slavery long predates the origins of the Fon people in the Aja kingdom and the formation of the kingdom of Dahomey. The sub-Saharan and the Red Sea region, states Herbert Klein – a professor of history, was already trading between 5,000 and 10,000 African slaves per year between 800 and 1600 CE, with a majority of these slaves being women and children. According to John Donnelly Fage – a professor of history specializing in Africa, a "slave economy was generally established in the Western and Central Sudan by about the fourteenth century at least, and had certainly spread to the coasts around the Senegal and in Lower Guinea by the fifteenth century".
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|+ style="text-align: center;" | Slave shipment between 1501 and 1867, by region