Chapter Two

The Economic Significance of Inland Coastal Fishing in

Seventeenth-Century Lagos

Sandra T. Barnes

Lagos was a puzzling place during the seventeenth century. It was not directly involved in the Atlantic trade, and yet it was described in a Dutch pilot book as the largest of all settlements along West Africa’s Bight of Benin coastline with the best laws and policies.[1] Its reputation was maintained into the next century when English navigators continued to portray Lagos as a “great town.”[2] Much earlier a German surgeon traveling on a Dutch ship in 1603 wrote admiringly of Lagos markets that were filled with “beautiful cotton cloths woven in all kinds of colours and patterns…handsome fish, as much as one desires…all kinds of victuals [and] good fruits.”[3] Despite these exceptional qualities, Lagos only became directly involved in overseas commerce three centuries after earliest contact. During these centuries trade with European merchants was regularly conducted elsewhere on the coast.

When the flow of West Africa’s trade shifted from the north—a flow that had dominated long-distance commerce for a millennium and more—to the south, it was in response to the arrival of European merchants along the Atlantic coastline. It was then, at the end of the fifteenth century, that overseas commerce brought about a marked increase in inter-African trade in coastal regions and their hinterlands. Until this point the coast was sparsely populated and relatively isolated. Opportunities for social, political, and economic advancement accelerated and with them populations expanded.[4] Lagos was clearly a beneficiary of these changes, and rather surprisingly so.

The glowing reports of seventeenth-century visitors to Lagos presented a challenge. How could this town have grown larger than others and enjoyed a thriving market without direct access to the valued European commodities that were credited with stimulating coastal trade and population growth? Its authorities did not receive the customs and duties that accompanied the Atlantic trade—a source of income and power that was highly prized, so prized that it sparked untold competition and violence along the coast. Yet its population maintained, at least to European eyes, a vibrant economic life in spite of being removed from the significant sources of income that nearby ports were receiving. What was behind Lagos’ achievements? The answers come from circumstantial evidence that can be pieced together from scant documentary information, and from latter-day practices and oral traditions that provide retrospective clues as to what was significant in Lagos’ past. Together these sources reveal the importance of local resources and the ability of early Lagosians to use one of them—namely fish—to gain economic advantages and to participate effectively in large and regionally significant trade networks.

Early Lagos

The commercial origins of Lagos were rooted in a struggle between Portuguese merchants and the ancient Kingdom of Benin. When the Portuguese found their way to this area of West Africa c.1470, Benin was its most powerful coastal state, and as such it had already developed a large internal trade network into which the overseas trade was quickly integrated. The Portuguese initially wished to purchase pepper for consumption at home, but soon found that slaves, stone beads, and locally-woven cotton cloth could be purchased from Benin and then sold for gold elsewhere along the Gold Coast. Much of this cloth was produced northeast of Lagos Island by Ijebu weavers with whomthe Portuguese initially made contact in the late fifteenthto early sixteenth century. Butdirect trade with Ijebu lapsed and its clothappears to have been transported through inland trade networks to Benin where it was then sold to the Portuguese.[5] The Portuguese attempted to regain direct contact with Ijebu cloth producers in 1553 when they sent two ships into the Lagos Lagoon where there were Ijebu settlements on its far side. Not only would this save middleman costs, it would save the Portuguese more than 160 miles of travel. But it was not to be. Benin was trying to “seal off the Lagos Lagoon” at this time—an action that may well have been to prevent Portuguese from direct access to the Ijebu.[6] Portuguese factors based at Sao Tome responded by boycotting trade with Benin and establishing trade relationships at coastal settlements west of Lagos. Not wishing to lose its trade with the Portuguese, Benin countered by expanding its sphere of operations far to its west and functioning, if not trying to assert some form of control, in or near the settlements that had begun trading with Europeans.[7]

It was about this time, c. 1560–70, that Lagos came into existence as a Benin military camp. Thanks to the thorough and careful work of Robin Law, we know that Benin settlements or tributaries stretched to the west of Lagos as far as the Kingdom of Allada (in the southeast of today’s Benin Republic). For more than a century, from 1560 to 1670, Benin engaged in countless battles to assert authority over coastal communities where Europeans were doing business, and particularly over Allada since its role in the Atlantic trade had now dominated the region for a century and more. In 1659 and again in 1670 Allada was described as “a vassal or tributary” to Benin. Yet two documents of 1670 and 1682 described the two kingdoms as “irreconcilable enemies” and “often at war.”[8]

Benin’s choice of Lagos had several advantages. The Lagos Channel was the only navigable waterway along the Bight of Benin coastline that was open year-round and that could provide access to a 400-mile stretch of inland waterways and lagoons that paralleled the coastline between the Volta and the westernmost outlet of the Niger River.[9] The settlement was established at a point overlooking the narrowest point of the Lagos Lagoon. This meant all vessels had to pass under the watchful eyes of Lagos whether they were traveling from east to west along the inland waterways or from the Atlantic through the channel into the Lagos Lagoon. Lagos Island was an ideal point from which to establish a protected camp for a military force since the only access to the settlement was by water. It was also an ideal location for traders who could converge from all directions and market their goods.

That Lagos was portrayed as both a military outpost and trade center was not unusual. They were two sides of the same coin. Oral traditions agree that at the same time military action was used to secure and protect trade advantages, military chiefs were themselves serving as traders. Theirs was a singular occupation with several responsibilities. This was made clear by a descendant of a former Lagos ruler:

Warrior chiefs had double roles: trade agents and law enforcers. War chiefs were usually agents and not the other way…. They had the duty of protecting, bringing wealth, and fighting wars for [the king].[10]

Thus it was Benin’s warrior-traders who, through their own commercial endeavors, laid the foundation for a flourishing inter-coastal trade that extended long after their military endeavors faded away. As much as through their military operations, they established themselves with trade alliances stretching across large areas of the coastline between the Volta and Niger Rivers.[11]

Despite Benin’s desire to expand its trading opportunities, Europeans seldom stopped at Lagos. Europeans complained that the entrance to the Lagos Channel was exceptionally difficult to navigate. In this area of the coast, the sea produced what were regarded as “heavens high breakers” along with moving sand bars and dangerously shifting shallow waters.[12] These impediments deterred all but the most intrepid navigators and, for these and other reasons that were unclear, it would not be until 1760 that Lagos began to be a relatively frequent port of call for European merchants.

Nevertheless Lagos prospered as a regional trading center, attracting many neighboring peoples who came “by water and by land, with their wares,”[13] and who appeared to have been well protected in their endeavors. In 1603 the community was “surrounded by a strong fence.”[14] By the 1660s it had more elaborate fortifications consisting of “dubble pallisades and many sentry boxes, and on every gate a Guarde du Corp, where they keep watch…”[15]

In its markets and trading endeavors, three commodities stood out at this time. The first was fish, as already indicated. Salt that was produced locally or secured from nearby seacoast villages was a second profitable commodity for Lagos in regional trade that was especially targeted toward inland distribution. The third consisted of large quantities of cloth that were not produced in Lagos but secured by Lagos traders from inland producers and sold at, or relayed to, ports visited by European merchants. Similarly some ivory and an unknown number of slaves were secured elsewhere and taken by Lagos traders to ports that had direct access to the Atlantic trade, but if records are not deceiving they appear not to have taken a dominant role during this period.

Inland Fishing

Lagos was the richest site for inland fishing[16] in a coastal region that was believed in the nineteenth century to have “the most prolific inland fisheries” in West Africa.”[17] The extensive stretch of coastal land that fronted the Bight of Benin contained an interconnected string of creeks and lagoons that not only provided an abundance of fish but also an almost uninterrupted transportation and communication route from west to east. So plentiful and varied were the inland fishing possibilities in these waters that the residents did not develop seagoing capabilities.[18] The people from Popo to Old Calabar, as a late eighteenth century observer put it, saw no advantages from the sea.[19] Much of what is known about fishing technologies and practices in the Lagos area came from the nineteenth century and in some cases twentieth century reports, which means there may well have been differences in earlier periods. What this latter-day information gives us is a vantage point from which to gain some understanding of what was once a vital part of the local economy.

Lagos was favored in this inland water system because saltwater fish could enter the lagoon through the channel that connected it to the Atlantic Ocean. A constant supply of freshwater fish were deposited into these same waters through twelve inland rivers that emptied into the lagoon,[20] and of course the lagoon itself was home to a perpetually replenishing variety of locally spawned fish. Supplies varied but there were year-round possibilities for profitable fishing. Fishing varied with water levels. Low tides, especially during the rainy season, fed the lagoon with freshwater fish whereas high tides brought ocean fish. Supplies changed with salinity levels that rose from November to February when the Lagos Harbor became almost as salty as the open sea, and remained so until the middle of April. The salinity level of the lagoon did not rise as high as the Harbor and, needless to say, it varied with each area of water depending on water flows and distance from the Lagos Channel.[21]

Fishing also varied with the weather. Two major fishing seasons, when fish populations moved, corresponded to the tropical weather cycles of rain and dry. During the latter, December to April, the lagoon was relatively salty and fishermen[22] caught middle-sized fish, particularly ikekere (Pomadasyidaw, grunter), and shellfish such as ede (shrimp, prawns, crayfish), akan, (crabs), and ison (oysters).[23] During this season, fishermen worked primarily at night, setting their nets at about 6 p.m. and collecting fish until 2 a.m. It was a time when ocean fish predominated because they were able to tolerate a higher salinity level than the freshwater fish that as a consequence tended to move away during the dry season.

The most satisfying period, in the view of some present-day Lagos fishermen, was during the rainy season, May to August, when shrimp were caught in abundance in raffia nets strung between fishing stakes that had been pounded into the lagoon floor. During this period they worked day and night in twelve-hour shifts. Even in the late twentieth century when the western end of the lagoon became over-fished, six large raffia nets, placed in the waters surrounding the most populated parts of Lagos Island, could fill within two hours. The largest freshwater fish were also caught in this period and even into October and November. During the last months of this season the most productive time for fishing was late afternoon, from 4 to 7 p.m., especially for catching efolo (a collective term for small fish) in nets that also were strung between stakes driven into the lagoon bottom.[24]

There was a large variety of fish. At least fifty species could be found in the Lagos Lagoon in recent times. Some 66 percent were marine species and 34 percent freshwater species.[25] Some of the most prized fish in the twentieth century, and noted as existing in the latter eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies, were shawa (Clupeidae, Sardinella eba, sardines)[26] because they were plentiful and easily preserved for the inland trade, andobokun (Ariidae, catfish) which could be caught up to ten at a time and which brought great profit to fishermen. Travelers also remarked on the abundance of mullet (Mugilidae) throughout the entire inland coastal water system.[27]

Fishing and the Expansion of Benin

The prominence of fishing in Lagos was made clear on the earliest maps. The Portuguese early-on saw canoes on the Lagos Lagoon,[28] and a Portuguese atlas located what was probably a fishing village near Lagos c.1550–60.[29] The Dutch cartographer, Arent Roggeveen, had been made aware of the unique appearance of the Lagos Lagoon when he wrote in his famous pilot book for the West African coast, c. 1668, that it was “all over full of Fishers nets fastened with stakes.” He warned that stakes were so abundant that it was difficult to sail through the lagoon except in sloops.[30] A map published in Amsterdam soon thereafter included a drawing of a fish trap in the “Lago de Curamo” (Lagos Lagoon) with the note that, Alhier Staat veel visscherye (“in this locale there is much fishing”).[31]

Fishing in Lagos preceded the arrival of Benin’s settlers.[32] Oral traditions agree that when Benin established a presence on Lagos Island it found two groups of people living in the area. On Lagos Island was a settlement known as Aromire, “lover of water.” As first settlers, the Aromire family group controlled and allocated the land on Lagos Island, and as such it allowed Benin’s representatives to establish a camp on a large piece of land that exists today as the site on which the palace of the Lagos oba (king) is located. Aromire also controlled fishing rights in a large segment of the lagoon. It did not allocate these rights to Benin, for according to customary law they were inalienable.[33] To this day the rights to fish in lagoon waters surrounding the north shore of Lagos Island reside primarily with the Aromire family; several small segments are controlled by latter-day groups that were related to the Aromire family through marriage. What this meant in practice was that anyone could fish in waters controlled by a family group, but they were required to have permission and to pay a fee in kind or in cash, and usually both. The second group, the Oto family,[34] lived on Iddo Island, situated in the lagoon between Lagos Island and the mainland, and directly across from the Benin settlement. The Oto people also held, and continue to hold, fishing rights in waters surrounding Iddo Island. The Oto group claimed to have preceded any other people in the area, and traditions agreed on this point. However if size was an indication, the span of water controlled by the Aromire family was larger—in recent years some 300 members of this group fished in family-controlled waters—than that of the Oto group—which had roughly eighty-nine or ninety fishermen. The family groups related to Aromire and Oto that also controlled small segments of the lagoon’s fishing waters could accommodate up to ten or fifteen fishermen each.[35] These numbers did not include many independent fishermen who were not members of families that controlled water rights but who paid fees in order to fish. There were clear protocols for individual fishing, and the waters were managed and patrolled by members of the controlling families.[36] Local fishermen had secret signals and passwords that they used on the water to detect and apprehend interlopers. People who fished without permission were treated like thieves; their equipment was seized, and they were fined.[37]