Dahomey's geopolitical interest in the Atlantic trade drove intense diplomacy along the coast as well as across the Atlantic and Europe. To channel the slave trade away from rival ports on the Slave Coast and back to Ouidah, Dahomey ruler Tegbesu dispatched an embassy to Salvador in 1750 (Lara, 2001, pp. 15165; Sweet, 2011, chapter 10). Other embassies followed in 1795, 1805 and 1811 (Araújo, 2011; Parés, 2013; Soares, 2014). Interestingly, other African polities also engaged in diplomatic exchanges, inviting Portuguese authorities to build fortresses in their territories and sending envoys to Brazil to discuss the trade in human beings at a time of nascent abolitionism. Similarly, the increasing participation of Onim (Lagos) in the Atlantic trade resulted in attempts at establishing diplomatic relations with colonial and independent Brazil (Verger, 1987; Santos, 2012; Guizelin, 2015).  
Another outcome of the increased slave trade was the emergence of AfroAtlantic communities along the Slave Coast. While first established by agents of merchants based out of Brazil, these communities would later comprise a wide variety of individuals, including both enslaved and freed individuals. Some had first gone to Africa as crew members of slave ships or to work as translators at trading stations along the African coast (Fayer, 2003, pp. 281-95; Christopher, 2006, pp. 85, 66; Rodrigues, 2005, pp. 191, 205; Klein, 2010, p. 86). One example was João de Oliveira, an enslaved African from Brazil who settled in the Bight of Benin in the 1730s. As an ambassador of sorts for Portuguese interests, Oliveira played an important role in the opening of two major enslaving ports, Porto-Novo and Lagos. When he returned to Salvador in 1770, Oliveira had become a wealthy man and the owner of a considerable number of captives (Silva Jr., 2017, pp. 82-3).