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Further Light on John Duncan's Account of the “Fellatah Country” (1845)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Extract
The kingdom of Dahomey (in the modern Republic of Bénin) was one of the African states best known to Europeans in the precolonial period, from its prominent role as a supplier of slaves for the trans-Atlantic trade. In the late eighteenth century it was said that the road from Ouidah, the coastal port of Dahomey, to Abomey, its royal capital 100 kilometers inland, was “perhaps the most beaten track, by Europeans, of any in Africa.” Beyond Abomey, however, European knowledge of the interior was limited, and prior to the nineteenth century based only upon hearsay. This reflected in part the deliberate policy of Dahomey, which normally sought to bar direct access to the interior, in defense of its position as middleman in the supply of slaves to the coast. Archibald Dalzel, who served as Governor of the British fort at Ouidah in 1767-70, opined that “to pass from [Abomey] towards the northern country was next to impracticable … from the extreme jealousy of the Dahomans and their government.” It was known, however, that the immediate northern neighbors of Dahomey, against whom it fought a series of wars during the eighteenth century, were the Mahi (commonly “Mahees” in contemporary sources). There were also vaguer reports of another people further inland, the Bariba (“Barrabas,” “Barbar” etc.) of Borgu, from whom, as well as from the Mahi, slaves were brought for sale at the coast.
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References
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32 Duncan, , Travels, 2:179–83.Google Scholar This account claims that Park's party was attacked by forces from Yauri, rather than from Bussa. This is consistent with the account originally given by Park's guide Amadi Fatuma, although this is dismissed as “in flat contradiction to almost all of the other credible evidence” by Lupton, Kenneth, Mungo Park, the African Traveler (Oxford, 1979), 207–08.Google Scholar Conceivably, Duncan's account may have derived from Amadi's, rather than providing independent corroboration of it, although he differs materially in blaming Amadi himself for the dispute between Park and the ruler of Yauri.
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