Dahomey's conquest of Whydah under King Agaja in March 1727 was unquestionably a major event. Dahomian tradition remembered it, with some simplification, as the moment the kingdom entered the Atlantic slave trade and as the high point of his reign, recalled in his surname Hunyito, taker of ships, and in the ship he took as an emblem.

Europeans on the scene were struck by it too, one eyewitness calling it a great revolution. Part of the impression came from the scale of destruction, described at the time as desolation by sword, fire, and famine visited on a country that had lately been populous and prosperous. The outcome had also been unforeseen: Bulfinch Lamb, an English trader held captive in Dahomey, had warned Agaja against attacking, arguing that Whydah's numbers and its imported European firearms made success unlikely.

Law introduces a neglected French account of the war, the Relation de la guerre de Juda by the Sieur Ringard of Nantes.