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The Anti-Slave Trade Theme in Dahoman History: An Examination of the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

David Ross
David Ross*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
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Extract

Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century travelers who described pre-colonial Dahomey all stressed that the Dahomans were dedicated, enthusiastic slavers. The kingdom's first historian, Archibald Dalzel, remarked, for example, that the Dahomans were “bred solely to war and rapine.” F.E. Forbes, the author of one of the best-known nineteenth-century accounts of the kingdom, in a similar vein, declared of Dahomey that “strange and contradictory as it may sound, this great nation is no nation, but a banditti.”

The views of these and other similarly-minded writers were, until the 1960s, everywhere accepted. In that decade, however, Isaac A. Akinjogbin published a series of works in which he gave an account of a long-lived Dahoman anti-slave trade tradition. Dahomey was, he claims, founded ca 1620 by a group of “highly principled and far-seeing” Aja in the Abomey area. These Aja founded the kingdom so as to be able to wage war effectively against those of their countrymen who traded in slaves.

Akinjogbin believed that the Dahomans spent about ninety years making war on their slave trading neighbors. It was, he claims, only in 1730 that the European slavers and their African allies were able to force the Dahomans to abandon their anti-slave trade campaign and to begin trading in slaves themselves. The very destructive wars of the 1720s, the wars which made Dahomey a major west African power, were, it seems undertaken as part of a virtuous, anti-slave trade crusade.

Although the Dahomans were forced to begin trading in slaves in 1730, they did not, Aknjogbin implies, entirely abandon their anti-slave trade ideals.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 9 , 1982 , pp. 263 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1982

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References

NOTES

1. Dalzel, Archibald, The History of Dahomey (London, 1793), 26.Google Scholar

2. Forbes, F.E., Dahomey and the Dahomans (2 vols.: London, 1851), 1:19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The author of the other very well-known nineteenth-century description of Dahomey, R.F. Burton, singled out this remark for special praise; see Burton, R.F., A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomey (London, 1864), 264n25.Google Scholar Unless otherwise stated all references are to the more readily available 1966 reprint.

3. Akinjogbin, develops this theme most fully in Dahomey and its Neighbours 1708-1818 (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar He also deals with it in his “Agaja and the Conquest of the Aja Coastal States,” JHSN, 2/4(1963), 545–66Google Scholar, and in his “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 All references below are to Dahomey and its Neighbours.

4. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, 203.Google Scholar

5. Ibid, 21-26.

6. Ibid, 23-92.

7. Ibid, 200, 193.

8. Ibid, 194.

9. Yoder, John C., “Fly and Elephant Parties: Political Polarisation in Dahomey, 1840-1870,” JAH, 15(1974), 417–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10. Ibid, 423-24.

11. Ibid, 417.

12. When Gezo died he was succeeded by his son, Gelele (1858-1889). Yoder believes that Gelele maintained his father's policies and that as a result he was the leading member of the Elephant party after 1858.

13. Yoder, , “Fly and Elephant Parties,” 431–32.Google Scholar

14. Henige, David and Johnson, Marion, “Agaja and the Slave Trade: Another Look at the Evidence,” HA, 3(1976), 57–67.Google Scholar

15. Ibid, 66n41.

16. Ibid.

17. Le Herissé, A., L'ancien royaume du Dahomey (Paris, 1911), 60-61, 84.Google Scholar

18. Marine BI19 Deliberations du Conseil de Marine Colonies, Pendants 4 premiers moins 1717, Le Sieur Bouchel à Juda, le 22 Juin, 1716. My brackets. Archives Nationale, Paris.

19. T70/1163, Accounts and Daybooks for Whydah, 23 October 1808. Public Record Office, London.

20. Yoder, , “Fly and Elephant Parties,” 426.Google Scholar

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid, 427. Forbes, , Dahomey, 2:109.Google Scholar For an account of the way in which the word “mother” is used in the Dahoman literature see Argyle, W.J., The Fon of Dahomey (Oxford, 1966), 64–65.Google Scholar On “Antoine” see below.

24. Yoder, , “Fly and Elephant Parties,” 427.Google Scholar

25. Forbes, , Dahomey, 2:108.Google Scholar

26. Ibid, 1:157-59.

27. Ibid, 2:7, 80.

28. Ibid, 2:109.

29. Skertchly, J.A., Dahomey As It Is (London, 1874), 326.Google Scholar

30. A further, although minor point, which suggests that the second Amazon was talking about animals, not Abeokuta, is that she used the plural of the word: elephants. If she had been speaking of Abeokuta she would, presumably, have used the singular.

31. Yoder, , “Fly and Elephant Parties,” 427.Google Scholar

32. Ibid, 430.

33. Ibid, 427.

34. Ibid, 430-31; Forbes, , Dahomey, 1:53, 112–15Google Scholar; 2:62–63, 175-76, 189-90, 243-46.

35. Yoder, , “Fly and Elephant Parties,” 427–28.Google Scholar

36. Forbes, , Dahomey, 1:20.Google Scholar

37. Ketu may--or may not--have become tributary to Dahomey, at some time before Forbes visited Abomey, in 1849. If Ketu did become tributary at some point in Gezo's reign, it may well have done so long before the outbreak of Egba-Dahoman hostilities in the 1840s.

38. Yoder, , “Fly and Elephant Parties,” 428.Google Scholar

39. Burton, , Mission [1864 ed.], 2:366.Google Scholar Appendix III, no. 2, Commodore Wilmot to Rear Admiral Sir B. Walker, Rattlesnake at sea, 10 February 1863.

40. Although Wilmot noted that “many of the chiefs” were tired of war he did not suggest that they wished to put an end to the slave trade. R.F. Burton the official who was sent in late 1863 to follow up Wilmot's initiative in visiting Abomey provided a much more detailed account of Dahomey than did Wilmot. Burton stressed that in 1863 the Dahomans remained enthusiastic slavers.

41. Yoder, , “Fly and Elephant Parties,” 429–30.Google Scholar

42. Even the evidence to be found in the works which Yoder cites in his footnotes shows this; see Burton, , Mission, 76, 138–40Google Scholar; Skertchly, , Dahomey, 165, 436, 445Google Scholar; Le Herissé, , L'ancien royaume, 41–42.Google Scholar See also Argyle, , Fon, 72–73.Google Scholar

43. Forbes, , Dahomey, 1:74, 2:48Google Scholar; Burton, , Mission, 241Google Scholar; Skertchly, , Dahomey, 250, 395.Google Scholar

44. Burton, , Mission, 193.Google Scholar In his account of the Bokonu's rise to power Burton suggests that all the politically important Dahomans could be described as “wealthy entreprenuers.”