Chapter Eleven
From a Port of the Slave Trade to an Urban Community:
Robin Law and the History of Ouidah
Elisée Soumonni
If Casimir Agbo[1], a son of Ouidah, is the “leading local historian” of his city’, Robin Law[2] is, in the academic sense, the real historian of the slaving ‘port’ which, in the era of the transatlantic slave trade, was the epicenter of the Slave Coast of West Africa. The history of this coast, so familiar to Robin Law, is therefore inseparable from that of Ouidah. Similarly, the history of Ouidah is an essential component of that of the kingdom of Dahomey and, to some extent, of that of the present-day Republic of Benin, heir of the notorious slave-trading polity. Both his training and social position prevented Casimir Agbo, unlike Robin Law, from taking into account this wider context in his History of Ouidah. The latter, by using and confronting various available sources, shed light on several aspects of the city’s past surveyed by the former, from the earliest times to the present.
If both of them attempted a comprehensive reconstruction of the history of an urban community, Robin Law’s contribution in this respect is unparalleled. His detailed account of this history successfully integrated the various dimensions of the impact of the transatlantic slave trade.
The transatlantic slave trade factor was so determining in the history of Ouidah that it cannot be overlooked in any meaningful reconstruction of its past. It is an inescapable starting point. It has been estimated that more than one million Africans were forcibly shipped from its shores, a sad record that made the notorious slaving port the epicenter of the Slave Coast[3] of West Africa. It is not surprising therefore that, as rightly observed by Law, “the prominence of Ouidah in the Atlantic slave trade is reflected in the occurrence of versions of its names in various contexts in the African diaspora in the Americas”[4]. Similarly, this prominence is attested in most, if not all, the works of scholars of the transatlantic slave trade and African diaspora. However, Law is the only one who addressed various aspects of the city’s development before, during, and after the slave trade era. Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving ‘Port’, his latest work, is a brilliant illustration in this respect. This chapter is largely inspired by the outstanding contribution of this work to a better grasp of the history of Ouidah.
In her review of this excellent study, Sandra E. Greene[5] observed that “the author uses European documentary sources and oral traditions most effectively to explore the origins of Ouidah, the conquest of the town by Dahomey and the character of Dahomeyan Ouidah, the operation of the slave trade during both its legal and illegal phases, and the transition from slaves to palm oil”. In my own review of the same work, I did similarly note that “the mass of detailed documentation deriving from this European commercial presence, combined with source material of local provenance, has been judiciously exploited to shed more light on the various stages of Ouidah’s historical development, from the Dahomian conquest of 1727 to the French conquest of 1892”[6].
An assessment of Robin Law’s contribution to the reconstruction of Ouidah’s history cannot overlook some preliminary considerations on his use of the available documentation for this history[7]. Because of the centrality of Ouidah in the slave-trading activities on the West African coast, “the greatest mass of detailed documentation for its history derives from the European commercial presence”[8]. Robin Law’s numerous publications on this presence and its impact on the states and societies of West Africa in the era of transatlantic slave trade attest to his familiarity with the diversity and dispersion of documentation from European sources[9]. However, the originality of his history of Ouidah is to be equally credited to his familiarity with indigenous sources of this history. As a result of his numerous visits to the historical city, virtually all aspects of its physical and socio-economic development have been meticulously investigated. With the assistance of Martine de Souza, probably the most reliable guide for a field-research in the city, he collected oral traditions from various families directly or indirectly involved in the operation of the slave trade. Robin Law’s use of indigenous sources includes written material, published or unpublished, originating from trained scholars as well as from amateur writers. He is aware of the growing local literature on slave trade and slavery and of research works on pre-colonial Dahomey at the Abomey-Calavi University. This familiarity with indigenous source material was particularly helpful in his treatment, not only of the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade in Ouidah, but also on the origins of the city and its development before and after the Dahomian conquest of 1727.
An investigation of the origins of Ouidah begins with the various forms of its names. Although ‘Ouidah’ is the spelling of the town’s name that is current nowadays, Robin Law reminded us of the various other forms of its occurrence in European sources between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries[10]: “Whydah” in English; “Fida” in Dutch; “Juda” in French; and “Ajuda” in Portuguese. These attempts to render an indigenous name (Hueda) have resulted in a misleading identity of Ouidah. As a matter of fact, Hueda was the name of the kingdom it belonged to and whose capital was Savi. Its use “to designate the town specifically is in origin a foreign, European terminology”[11]. This however does not imply that the locality was primarily established as a center of foreign trade. In fact, its indigenous name, Glehue (literally a farm-house) does suggest that farming was its initial economic function. This indigenous name, still used by its inhabitants, was not unknown to foreign traders. As noted by Robin Law, it “regularly occurs in contemporary European sources from the seventeenth century onwards”, although less commonly than Ouidah[12].
From the various forms of Ouidah’s names, Robin Law ventured into making sense of the contradictory stories of its foundation. If the identification of the original settlement with Tové, a quarter on the north-eastern side of the town “is consistent with a report of the early eighteenth century”, “Glehue Daho”(Great Glehue), a compound to the west “is also sometimes claimed to represent the original pre-Dahomian settlement”[13]. As for the founder, local tradition gives his name as Kpase, usually identified as a king of Hueda.. He is the central subject of a cult in the town still active today. The tree into which he is said to have metamorphosed after his death is the focus of his shrine in Kpase’s sacred forest, one the town’s tourist attractions today. There is however another tradition of the founding by Kposi, a Hula king. Despite “suspicions that these two similar names might be variants of a single name, they are understood locally to be philologically distinct”[14]. If the Hueda and the Hula were elements of Ouidah’s early population, the question of priority of settlement as between the two groups is difficult to resolve, Robin Law cautiously concludes. Similarly, any specific date for the foundation of the coastal city is speculative. Until archaeological investigations result in a breakthrough in this direction, “all that can be said with confidence is that the settlement of Ouidah predated the beginnings of European trade there in the seventeenth century”.
The coherent reconstruction of this early period took into account not only all the available source material from both European and indigenous source material, but also the location of the city[15], a reference helpful in clarifying the inaccurate term of port used to identify the city in the era of the transatlantic slave trade. As a matter of fact, a lagoon separates Ouidah from the seashore[16]. Properly speaking, it is not therefore a port since it is not located on the coast. Moreover, it was not equipped, in the era of the transatlantic slave trade, with any specific infrastructure such as is normally considered characteristic of a port. It was nothing but a point of embarkation of human beings for enslavement in the Americas. The presence of European factories and forts were the major features of the major ports of the slave trade on the West African coast. These establishments, however, could be abandoned or transferred to another locality depending on the fortune of the trade. Thus, an obscure village might become a major commercial center. This seems to be the story of Ouidah. Established as a farm (Glehue) of the Hueda kingdom, whose capital was Savi (or Sahe) a few miles inland, it was to become from the 1670s the most important port of the slave trade on the West African coast, a position which was to remain unchallenged till the mid-nineteenth century[17].
The establishment of the French trading post in 1671, followed by that of the British in the 1680s and that of the Portuguese in 1721, marked the beginnings of continuous European trade at Ouidah[18]. Robin Law has wonderfully reconstructed the history of the three European forts, carefully examining a variety of issues relating to the environments of their location, their administrative machinery and their predominantly African personnel. The composition of people living in the quarters constituted by these European forts is of interest to the understanding of the local operation of the slave trade and its impact on the immediate environment. Thus, as noted by Robin Law, “to the present day, these quarters are largely occupied by descendents of persons associated with the forts, including some Europeans who fathered families by local women, but mainly free African employees and slaves”[19]. Those persons associated with the forts also included a large non-indigenous African element. As a matter of fact, “many of the fort slaves employed in Ouidah were from the Gold Coast to the west”, while, conversely, “slaves purchased in Ouidah and Allada were employed by Europeans in their factories on the Gold Coast”[20]. The heterogeneity of Ouidah’s population, one of the characteristic features of the city today therefore predates the Dahomian conquest of 1727.
The mass of detailed documentation deriving from European commercial presence is particularly helpful for the study of the various stages of Ouidah’s historical development, from its conquest by Dahomey in 1727 to that of Dahomey itself by France in 1892. Robin Law’s reconstruction of this period is not limited to the operation of the Atlantic slave trade. The Dahomian conquest and its aftermath have been examined in detail, thereby improving our knowledge about a diversity of issues such as population movements, the growth of the city, the character of urban and religious life, the nature of Dahomi administration, the emergence of a private merchant sector, and the position of Ouidah within Dahomey itself.
The motivation for the Dahomian conquest is a matter of debate[21] but there is no doubt about the little resistance the conquest was met with as a result of the prevailing chaotic internal political situation[22]. European traders established in the city did apparently play a role in this situation. I. A. Akinjogbin observed that “every European nation trading at Whydah had important chiefs attached to its interest. A fight between any two European directors was therefore easily transferred to their Whydah supporters”[23].
The establishment of Dahomian rule opened a new era and introduced fundamental changes in the administration of Ouidah and the organization of the slave trade. Despite the king’s strict control over trade through his agents and official merchants, there was room for coexistence with a private sector. Robin Law’s study of the origins and evolution of the merchant community in Ouidah is illuminating in this respect. A distinction is to be made between indigenous merchants and merchants of foreign origin. While the former, generally kept under suspicion by the Dahomian monarchy, were relatively modest with respect to their wealth and influence, the latter, particularly the Brazilians among them who settled and married locally, played an important role in the development of Ouidah from the nineteenth century[24], a critical period in the history of the city.
The nineteenth century, generally referred to as the abolitionist era, was characterized by the British-led international crusade for the suppression of the Atlantic slave trade. As Dahomey’s principal outlet to the trade, Ouidah was, on the Slave Coast, the major target of the crusade. After unsuccessful negotiations[25], its blockade by the British Navy was seen as the best strategy for convincing Dahomian authorities to give up slave trading and devote their energy to the development of legitimate commerce in agricultural products, such as palm oil. That is why the transition from the slave trade to legitimate commerce is one of the central issues in the history of both Dahomey and Ouidah in the nineteenth century[26]. The dimensions and implications of this transition cannot be adequately grasped without taking into account the role and influence of the Afro-Brazilian community established in Ouidah. Surprisingly, insignificant place is devoted to this Afro-Brazilian factor and to efforts to bring an end to slave-trading activities in local history writing in present-day Republic of Benin, heir of pre-colonial and colonial Dahomey[27]. The following considerations on the treatment of the issue by a few pioneers and leading authors are intended, by way of comparison, to highlight Robin Law’s outstanding contribution to the study of this critical period of the history of Ouidah and its Afro-Brazilian community.
The pioneer indigenous author in the colonial period was undoubtedly Paul Hazoumè. If his two major works, Le Pacte de sang au Dahomey and Doguicimi[28] were an ethnographic and a historical novel, he did touch upon the history of the Atlantic slave trade through journal articles on the history of Ouidah and of its conquest by Dahomey in the eighteenth century[29] .His references to the slave trade, as Robin Law has pointed out[30], are rather indirect. The major item of European trade, namely human beings, is hardly mentioned. Thus, while he emphasized guns as what king Agaja wished to obtain through trading with Europeans, he remained almost silent on what he sought to sell to obtain these guns.
Casimir Agbo, the pre-eminent historian of Ouidah, a city that was the focus of the transatlantic slave trade on the West African coast for more than two centuries, could not overlook this critical factor in his Histoire de Ouidah[31], even though one would expect him to elaborate much more on it. In fact, the primary interest and originality of his work was his own position vis-à-vis Ouidah, both his native town and the subject of his study. He wrote as an indigenous Hueda, the original population of the city prior its conquest by Dahomey in 1727, not as a representative of the regime installed subsequently, perceived as external rule just as the French administration that took over from 1892[32]. Obviously, Agbo was more sympathetic to the latter rule than to the former. Echoing the French mission civilisatrice propaganda, he opined that the long association of Ouidah with the French played a leading role in the introduction of European culture. In this perspective, he considered the French fort, built for slave trading, as a monument of Ouidah history, and deplored its destruction by the French authorities in 1908.
Agbo’s background clearly impacted his Histoire de Ouidah, both in its perspectives and limitations. His Hueda identity and his French loyalty reflected his personal/family situation in Ouidah. His family’s tradition claimed descent from Hueda royalty and leading resistance to the Dahomian conquest. Members of the family have also served as servants to the French fort in Ouidah. Both the claim and the connection with the French explain why the family was identified with the opposition to the Dahomian monarchy[33].
The family background does also inform Maurice Ahanhanzo Glèlè’s treatment of the history of Ouidah in the abolitionist era[34]. Unlike Agbo, Glèlè wrote about the expanding kingdom of Dahomey that established its rule over Ouidah between 1727 and 1892. If the former claims descent from the Hueda royalty, the latter is an undisputable descendent of the ruling dynasties that were so deeply involved in the operation of the Atlantic slave trade on the West African coast. Though the focus of his study is on the political institutions of the kingdom, these institutions were so influenced by the transatlantic slave trade that he could not escape considering it, in one way or the other. And the little he had to write on the issue is as significant as all that he left out. Not only he did not question the official tradition of the deposition of Adandozan by Guezo in 1818, he is silent about Francisco Felix de Souza’s complicity in the coup d’état. Such a significant omission gives the impression that the transatlantic slave trade factor did not play any role in Guezo’s accession to the throne, an impression that contradicts de Souza’s influential position in Ouidah from 1818 onwards. As a matter of fact, the famous Brazilian slave trader, invested with the title of Chacha, became the king’s principal commercial agent in Ouidah, the actual chief intermediary between the king and European traders, and the leader of a growing Afro-Brazilian community in the city[35]. In view of such an influential position, the omission of his name in Maurice Ahanhanzo’s account of Guezo’s accession to the throne is incomprehensible, to say the least. The only one brief reference to Francisco Felix de Souza’s friendship with Guezo is related to the mission entrusted to the former to find the latter’s mother sold into slavery by Adandozan[36]. But no reference is made to the fact that de Souza was, in Ouidah, the king’s representative in the transatlantic slave trade.