Hueda's diplomatic overture to the Portuguese authorities in Brazil coincided with the rise in the demand for enslaved labour in the wake of the discovery of gold in Brazil. The kingdom's coastal port of Ouidah played a critical role in the supply of enslaved labour to the Portuguese colony in South America. Fifty per cent of all enslaved Africans taken across the Atlantic between 1700 and 1730 were shipped from there. The capital of colonial Brazil, Salvador, both hosted a large, enslaved population and became an important entry point for enslaved Africans eventually taken to Minas Gerais, making its social and religious fabric distinctly African (Reis, 2013; Richardson, 2009, p.161).  
If Salvador became the centre for dispersal of captives in Portuguese America, Ouidah was converted into a multi-ethnic community and a centre of trans-imperial trade (Law, 2013b). Against the backdrop of fierce competition from British, French and Dutch merchants, the Portuguese managed to remain competitive in the slave trade by relying on two types of goods brought from their Brazilian colony: smuggled gold and tobacco, both highly sought after by Africans and Europeans along the African coast (Ferreira, 2014).  
The rise of Dahomey, the leading African polity in the region after the conquest of Allada (1724) and Ouidah (1727), marked a new chapter in the Afro-European relations in the Bight of Benin. However, trade relations along the Slave Coast were by no means dominated by Dahomey alone. The intensity of the slave trade prompted the rise of alternative commercial outlets at Badagry and Porto-Novo (the latter founded by refugees from the destruction of Allada). This, in turn, provided European merchants with a variety of business-friendly outlets to develop their business (Silva Jr., 2017, pp. 87-8). In the 1760s, large numbers of Africans made captive in wars waged by the inland kingdom of Oyo were deported through Badagry and Porto-Novo.