Description : Porto-Novo (also known as Hogbonu and Ajashe; Fon: Xɔ̀gbónù) is the capital of Benin. The commune covers an area of 110 square kilometres (42 sq mi) and as of 2002 had a population of 223,552 people. As the name suggests, Porto-Novo (Portuguese: "New Port") was originally developed as a port for the slave trade led by the Portuguese Empire. Porto-Novo is a port on an inlet of the Gulf of Guinea, in the southeastern portion of the country. It is Benin's second-largest city, and although Porto-Novo is the official capital, where the national legislature sits, the larger city of Cotonou is the seat of government, where most of the government buildings are situated and government departments operate. Porto-Novo was once a tributary of the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, which had offered it protection from the neighbouring Fon, who were expanding their influence and power in the region. The Yoruba community in Porto-Novo today remains one of the two ethnicities aboriginal to the city. The city was originally called Ajashe by the Yorubas, and Hogbonu by the Gun. Although historically the original inhabitants of the area were Yoruba speaking, there seems to have been a wave of migration from the region of Allada further west in the 1600s, which brought Te-Agbalin (or Te Agdanlin) and his group to the region of Ajashein 1688. This new group brought with them their own language, and settled among the original Yoruba. It would appear that each ethnic group has since maintained their ethnic idenitites without one group being linguistically assimilated into the other. In 1730, the Portuguese Eucaristo de Campos named the city "Porto-Novo" because of its resemblance to the city of Porto. It was originally developed as a port for the slave trade. In 1861, the British, who were active in nearby Nigeria, bombarded the city, which persuaded the Kingdom of Porto-Novo to accept French protection in 1863. The neighbouring Kingdom of Dahomey objected to French involvement in the region and war broke out between the two states. In 1883, Porto-Novo was incorporated into the French "colony of Dahomey and its dependencies" and in 1900, it became Dahomey's capital city. As a consequence, a community that had previously exhibited endoglossic bilingualism now began to exhibit exoglossic bilingualism, with the addition of French to the language repertoire of the city's inhabitants. Unlike the city's earlier Gun migrants, however, the French sought to impose their language in all spheres of life and completely stamp out the use and proliferation of indigenous languages.
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