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Agaja and the Slave Trade: Another Look at the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

David Henige  and
Marion Johnson
David Henige
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
Marion Johnson
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

The Atlantic slave trade in its various manifestations has never lacked scholarly attention, be it disinterested or selfish. The major focus has often been on the motivations and roles of those who participated in the trade other than as victims. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, interest tended to be confined either to the apologists for the trade or to its critics; but in recent years, the matter has not failed to engage the attention of more serious enquiry.

As a major center of the trade throughout the period, Dahomey has been studied extensively from the very beginning. Much of the work has regarded Dahomey as the slave trading state par excellence. Recently, however, I.A. Akinjogbin has advanced the stimulating and appealing argument that the Dahomey state was created partially, but explicitly, in defensive reaction to early signs of European interest in slaves on the Guinea coast. Akinjogbin further argues that–although Dahomey did in fact eventually develop into an important slave trading polity–it did so reluctantly and only because the Europeans trading along the coast demanded slaves–and only slaves–for their own goods.

Needless to say, attractive arguments rather have a way of being more readily (and less discriminatingly) accepted, and Akinjogbin's interpretation of early Dahomey history has already re-appeared in several important recent works on the history of west Africa. With this in mind, the present paper has two purposes. First, it proposes to examine the validity of Akinjogbin's thesis by examining one particular aspect of his argument: the motives of the Dahomey ruler Agaja (ca. 1708 to 1740) in conquering the coastal states of Allada and Whydah between 1724 and 1727. In discussing Akinjogbin's elucidation of Agaja's motives, we propose to concentrate not so much on the logic of his argumentation, but on his use of the sources on which any assessment of Agaja's motives must be based. With a single exception the material examined here is the same used by Akinjogbin, and in this sense the first part of the paper should be seen as a study in the use of evidence and inference.

The second part of this paper will be an examination of European and Dahomean commercial activities in the first few years after the conquest of the two coastal states. The sources describing these activities suggest that the motives and mechanisms of all parties were more complex than generally assumed.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 3 , 1976 , pp. 57 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1976

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References

NOTES

1. The extent of the historiography of the Atlantic slave trade is illustrated in the recent comprehensive bibliography devoted to it. See: Hogg, Peter C., The Atlantic Slave Trade and Its Suppression: A Classified Bibliography (London, 1973).Google Scholar

2. For early manifestations of this view, see Norris, Robert, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee … (London, 1799), pp. x–xi Google Scholar; and Dalzel, Archibald, A History of Dahomey (London, 1793), pp. 8–9 Google Scholar, as well as the sources cited in footnote 7.

3. Akinjogbin develops his arguments most fully in his Dahomey and Its Neighbours, 1708-1818 (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 68–109 Google Scholar, and it is to this work that we devote attention. See also his “Agaja and the Conquest of the Aja Coastal States,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria II/4 (December 1963): 545–66Google Scholar, and “The Expansion of Oyo and the Rise of Dahomey, 1600-1800,” in Ajayi, J.F.A. and Crowder, M., eds., History of West Africa (London, 1971) 1: 323–30.Google Scholar

4. E.g., Hopkins, A.G., An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), p. 107 Google Scholar (but see p. 107, n63); Fyfe, C., “Reform in West Africa: The Abolition of the Slave Trade,” in Ajayi, J.F.A. and Crowder, M., eds., History of West Africa, II (London, 1974), p. 33 Google Scholar; Rodney, W.A., “The Guinea Coast,” in Cambridge History of Africa, IV, ed. Gray, R. (Cambridge, 1975), p. 246.Google Scholar

5. An anonymous reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement.

6. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, p. 23.Google Scholar

7. See Snelgrave, William, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London, 1734)Google Scholar; Atkins, John, A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, and the West-Indies (London, 1735)Google Scholar; Smith, William, A New Voyage to Guinea (London, 1744).Google Scholar

8. Abraham Duport, Whydah, to Chief Merchants, Cape Coast Castle [henceforth CCC], 23 October 1727, Francklyn Mss. 1055/1, Bedford Record Office, Bedford.

9. Thomas Wilson to CCC, 24 February 1728, ibid.

10. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, pp. 73–75.Google Scholar Snelgrave and Smith defended the slave trade, while Atkins condemned it.

11. Ibid., p. 77.

12. Ibid., p. 76.

13. Ibid., p.77. See also pp. 79-81.

14. I include the qualification since many of Akinjogbin's citations are inexact or ambiguous (e.g., p. 75, n3; p. 79, n1, n2, n3), while several others are, so far as I can determine, incorrect. I have not used the French sources cited by Akinjogbin, but they are not crucial to his argument.

15. Atkins did recount that Lamb carried a proposal from Agaja to England claiming that he would sell slaves to the Europeans (only?) if they would “settle Plantations” ( Atkins, , Voyage to Guinea, p. 122 Google Scholar).

16. Smith, , New Voyage, p. 172.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., p. 174.

18. Ibid., p. 184. The economic aspects of this will be discussed in the second part of this paper.

19. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, p. 79 Google Scholar, citing Snelgrave, , New Account, pp. 70 Google Scholar [sic for 86]-107.

20. Ibid., p. 89.

21. Wilson, Whydah, to CCC, 24 February 1728. This corroborates (though not necessarily independently) Snelgrave's statement to the same effect (New Account, p. 89).

22. Ibid., pp. 82-85, 93-95, 107.

23. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, p. 80.Google Scholar

24. Conde de Sabugosa to King of Portugal, 13 May 1729, quoted in Verger, Pierre, Flux et reflux de la traite des Nègres entre le Golfe du Bénin et Bahia de Todos os Santos du XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1968), p. 149.Google Scholar

25. Snelgrave, (New Account, p. 125)Google Scholar noted that Agaja “drives no regular Trade in Slaves, but only sells such as he takes in his Wars.” Given his immersion in warfare–whether offensive or defensive–at the time, this can tell us little of his intentions.

26. Conde de Sabugosa to King of Portugal, 5 April 1728, Verger, (Flux et reflux, p. 146).Google Scholar

27. Same to same, 10 July 1730, ibid., p. 150. Cf. Snelgrave, , New Account, p. 136.Google Scholar

28. Abinjogbin, . Dahomey, pp. 73, 74.Google Scholar

29. In his Preface, Snelgrave cited Wilson as a person who could corroborate his own account, and in the body of his work he referred to Duport as an informant. Most likely Wilson's, Duport's, and Snelgrave's accounts were substantially independent eye-witness versions of events at or near Whydah in 1727 and 1728.

30. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, p. 80.Google Scholar

31. Wilson, Whydah, to CCC, 19 July 1728; Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, p. 90.Google Scholar

32. Wilson, Whydah, to CCC, 19 July 1728. Cf. Snelgrave, , New Account, pp. 124–30.Google Scholar

33. Akinjogbin, (Dahomey, pp. 68–99)Google Scholar discusses these wars in detail.

34. Valentijn Gros, Whydah, to WIC, 21 December 1690; same to same, 7 August 1691, WIC 180 in van Dantzig, Albert comp., Dutch Documents Relating to the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast, 1680-1740 (cyclostated, Department of History, University of Ghana), pp. 20–22.Google Scholar

35. Bosman, Willem, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), pp. 343–44.Google Scholar

36. J. de Paauw to WIC, 6 September 1709 and 11 February 1709, WIC 180, in Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, pp. 93–95 Google Scholar; William Baillie to CCC, n.d. (but February or March 1718), where he described trade as “very dull.” Baillie's correspondence is in T70/5 and T70/1475, Public Record Office, with copies of most letters in C113/276, PRO. In fact, if we are to impute motives from recorded actions, the portrait of the Whydah king Huffon as presented by Baillie might well qualify him for the role assigned to Agaja by Akinjogbin. Baillie characterized Huffon as “an insupportable tyrant,” “a monster of nature,” “a Dogg governed by his wives,” “imperious,” and concluded that most of the Europeans would prefer to do their trading elsewhere (Baillie to CCC, 10 May 1720)–and why? Because Huffon was imposing restrictions on the slave traffic that Baillie and his colleagues found uncongenial. Granted that Baillie was an unusually querulous individual (to judge from his correspondence from Whydah, and from Komenda earlier), it remains that Huffon attempted measures similar to those more successfully imposed by Agaja. In large part Huffon's failure to implement his plans was due to his inability to control slave exports entirely. Unlike Agaja, he had no monopoly.

37. Samuel Heartsease and Lancelot Prince to Baillie, Whydah, 10 July 1718, C113/294, 16-17, PRO. Cf. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

38. Snelgrave, , New Account, pp. 87–88.Google Scholar

39. Wilson, Whydah, to CCC, 19 July 1728.

40. Wilson, Whydah, to CCC, 3 May 1728 and 19 July 1728; Snelgrave, , New Account, pp. 87–88.Google Scholar

41. As suggested by Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, pp. 21–24, 80, 203.Google Scholar Akinjogbin seems to argue further that Dahomey maintained an anti-slave trade stance throughout the seventeenth century, arguing that “it is known” that on at least two occasions (1670/71 and 1687/88) the state prevented slavers from proceeding inland to secure slaves (citing Barbot and Du Casse; ibid., p. 24). Since his citation to Barbot is incorrect, it is difficult to know the basis of his assertion; however, when describing Allada, Barbot did not mention Dahomey in any way at all, merely alluding to “a civil war in his [king of Allada's] own dominions” which had “stopped all the passes for carrying down the slaves” to the coast ( Barbot, John, A Description of the Coasts of North and South-Guinea [London, 1732], p. 325 Google Scholar). Clearly, any attribution of this action to Dahomey on the basis of this passage is wishful thinking. There are problems with the account of Du Casse as well. He stated that there had been an “alteration” in the usual price of slaves, which the blacks justified by claiming that “quelques différends avec le Roy de Fouin” were obstructing the passage of slaves, but that “cela se doit rétablir” ( Roussier, Paul, L'établissement d'Issigny, 1687-1702 [Paris, 1935], p. 15 Google Scholar). The obstacles this account offers to Akinjogbin's arguments are too obvious to need comment.

42. Perhaps a final note should point out that any discussion of printed or archival sources for trade on the Guinea coast dating from this period should set them into a broader “literary” context when discussing their tenor. Lugubriousness (sometimes alternating with the most quixotic hopes) was so large a feature of the writing that it might almost be considered as an endemic local disease. If one were to believe what the factors and agents wrote, trade was always bad, either because of war, the perfidy of the Africans, or the failure of the company in question to supply the right quantities of the right goods–but while it was always bad, it was also usually just on the verge of becoming superlatively good. When seen in this perspective, the lamentations of Atkins, Lamb, Snelgrave, and others may seem to be no more than local variations on a wider theme.

43. The following abbreviations are used in this part of the paper: ARH–Algemeen Rijksarchief, Hague; ANP–Archives Nationales, Paris; PRO–Public Record Office, London; WIC–Archives of the (Second) Dutch West India Company; NBKG–Nederlandsche Bezittingen ter Kuste van Guinea.

44. Verger, P., Le fort St Jean-Baptiste d'Ajuda (Porto-Novo, 1966), p. 3ff.Google Scholar

45. Contract of Jean Desainct issued by the king of Portugal in 1724, quoted in ARH Rademacher Archief 591, “Short Remonstrance” dated 1727 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 151 Google Scholar). “A great number of slaves need to be imported [into Brazil] for the cultivation of sugar and tobacco and the work in my gold-mines.” For the development and rapid expansion of gold mining in southern Brazil in the early eighteenth century, see Boxer, C.R., The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695-1750 (Berkeley, 1962), pp. 40–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. P. Nuyts to Assembly of Ten, Amsterdam, 25 May 1707, ARH-NBKG 59 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 98 Google Scholar).

47. Ibid.

48. Minutes, Elmina Council, 24 November 1707 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 88 Google Scholar).

49. Secret Minutes, Assembly of Ten, 4 March 1714, ARH-WIC 41 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 117 Google Scholar).

50. Ibid.

51. Minutes, Elmina Council, 10 October 1720, ARH-WIC 124 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 142 Google Scholar).

52. Verger, , Le fort St Jean-Baptiste, pp. 14, 21, 33ff.Google Scholar

53. Declaration of recognition dues, Rademacher Archief 597, 7 April 1723 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 144 Google Scholar).

54. William Baillie, Whydah, November 1716, in Donnan, Elizaberth comp., Documents Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America (4 vols.: Washington, 1930–1935), 2: 209.Google Scholar

55. CO 338/14, S34, p. 50, PRO.

56. Elmina Journal, 24 July 1727, re letter from Whydah dated 26 April 1727, ARH-NBKG 94 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 149 Google Scholar).

57. Wilson, Whydah, to CCC, 24 February 1728. Six grand Cabess equalled 24,000 cowries; the standard rate was 16,000 to the ounce.

58. Verger, , Le fort St Jean-Baptiste, p. 11.Google Scholar

59. Elmina Journal, 24 July 1727, re letter from Whydah dated 26 April 1727, ARH-NBKG 94 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 149 Google Scholar).

60. Elmina Journal, 15 December 1727 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 149 Google Scholar).

61. Elmina Journal, 19 February 1728 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 153 Google Scholar).

62. Hertog correspondence, 12 June 1730 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 164 Google Scholar).

63. Hertog correspondence, 27 March 1731 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 167 Google Scholar).

64. Comments on “Short Memoir,” undated but ca. 1730, Rademacher Archief 596 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 158 Google Scholar).

65. Verger, , Le fort St Jean-Baptiste, p. 26.Google Scholar

66. de Pommegorge, A-E Pruneau, Description de la Nigritie (Amsterdam, 1789), p. 157.Google Scholar

67. Dubellay, Lettre de Commerce, Gregoy-Fort, 21 November 1733, ANP, C625/063. My thanks to Werner Puekert for this citation and that in footnote 70.

68. Minutes, Elmina Council, 23 April 1724 ( Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, p. 144 Google Scholar).

69. Personal communication.

70. Dupetitval, “Memoire à la Compagnie des Indes,” ANP, Colonies C625/038, dated 20 May 1728. “There is gold in the country, but the inhabitants keep it in their hands for securing their riches in case of invasion, the gold being very transportable.”

71. Personal communication, 26 July 1974. Peukert also thinks that gold may have been used in the external trade, e.g., to buy Oyo clothes.