1. Astley, Thomas, A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels (6 vols.: London, 1745–1747): 3:5Google Scholar, note f, commenting on Barbot's account of the Slave Coast. Cf. also Astley's more general censure of Barbot for plagiarism, ibid., 2:vii.

2. See esp. Lawrence, A.W., “Some Source Books for West African History,” JAH, 2 (1961), 227–34, esp. 228–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hair, P.E.H., “Barbot, Dapper, Davity: A Critique of Sources on Sierra Leone and Cape Mount,” HA, 1 (1974), 25–54.Google Scholar Also Hair, , “A Note on Jean Barbot (1655-1713),” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, 23/5 (1981): 295–308.Google Scholar My thanks are also due to Paul Hair for discussion of many issues relating to Barbot's account of the Slave Coast in correspondence, and for reading and commenting on a draft of this article.

3. Debien, Gabriel, Delafosse, Marcel, and Thilmans, Guy, “Journal d'un voyage de traite en Guinée, à Cayenne et aux Antilles fait par Jean Barbot en 1678-79,” BIFAN, sér. B, 40 (1978), 235–395.Google Scholar

4. The manuscript was formerly preserved in the Admiralty Library of the Ministry of Defence, London (MS 63), but is now reported to be in the Public Record Office, London (ADM 7/830 A,B). The critical edition, which will identify and publish all the original material in Barbot, is to be published by the Hakluyt Society.

5. Dapper, Olfert, Naukeurige beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche gewesten (Amsterdam, 1668; second ed., 1676).Google Scholar There was also a French translation, Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686)Google Scholar: Barbot heard of this while writing his own Description (1688: 1st pagination, 145), but seems himself to have worked from the Dutch original.

6. Bosman, Willem, Nauwkeurige beschryvinge van de Guinese Gout-Tand- en Slavekust (Utrecht, 1704)Google Scholar; A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705).Google Scholar Barbot seems to have used the English edition.

7. Ardener, Edwin, “Documentary and Linguistic Evidence for the Rise of the Trading Polities Between Rio del Ray and Cameroons, 1500-1650,” in Lewis, I.M., ed., History and Social Anthropology (London, 1968), 81–126, esp. 96Google Scholar; Hair, , “Barbot, Dapper, Davity,” esp. 29–30.Google Scholar

8. Barbot did not use the term “Slave Coast” in 1688, but adopted it in 1732, perhaps under the influence of Bosman, from whom 1732 borrowed heavily.

9. 1688 (like Bosman's book) was cast in the form of a series of letters supposedly written by Barbot to a single correspondent; this epistolary form was abandoned in 1732.

10. This is clear not only from differences in phrasing between the 1686 Dapper and Barbot, but also from the fact that Barbot included material which is in the original Dutch edition of Dapper but omitted in the 1686 translation.

11. Leers, Arnout, Pertinente beschryvinge van Afrika (Amsterdam, 1665).Google Scholar The material on the Slave Coast is between 300-11. It is possible, however, that Dapper did not use Leers' account, but rather drew independently from Leer's unpublished sources.

12. There is no indication in Dapper's text of the date of his original material on the Slave Coast, but his information on the kingdom of Warri, to the east, is said to relate to 1644 (1688:507).

13. “Journal du voyage du Sieur d'Elbée” and “Suite du journal de Sieur d'Elbée” in de Clodoré, J., Relation de ce qui s'est passé dans les Isles & Terre-Ferme de l'Amérique, pendant la dernière guerre avec l'Angleterre & depuis en exécution du Traitté de Breda (2 vols.: Paris, 167;), 2: 347–494Google Scholar; 3: 495-558. There is no indication that d'Elbée himself wrote the “Suite,” but for the sake of simplicity references to both accounts are hereafter cited as to d'Elbée.

14. The qualification is necessary, since my work on the maps that might have been available to Barbot is far from being complete.

15. The text of 1688 actually appears to say that Bequoe is in the neighborhood of Cape Montego, further west, but this is due to his garbling of a passage copied from d'Elbée. The confusion was cleared up in 1732:321.

16. In 1732:323 Barbot appears to place Ooy between Great Popo and Whydah rather than between Little and Great Popo, but this may be merely careless phrasing rather than a deliberate emendation.

17. Dapper referred to a coastal port called Ba (1668:488,492; copied by Barbot in 1688: 2nd pagination, 140), but this seems to be east rather than west of Allada and so cannot be the same place as Barbot's Coulainba. “Ba” indeed probably represents Apa, between Porto Novo and Badagry.

18. Barbot's remark “One never sees Negroes coming out of it …” is suspiciously similar to d'Elbée's observation, with regard to the Cape Monte area, that “canoes seldom come along-side…” (1671:381), but since Barbot reproduces d'Elbée's remark almost verbatim a couple of sentences later it seems likely that his own observation is original.

19. 1688 did not distinguish very clearly between Great Popo and Little Popo, but a casual aside (132) indicated that the kingdom described at length was Great Popo. (The distinction is made much more clearly in 1732:323). The allusion to the existence of two Popos in 1688 looks like an afterthought to the main description of Popo, and suggests that Barbot learned of this only after his visit to the coast in 1682. Earlier sources (such as Dapper) had known only one Popo, the first accounts to distinguish two being apparently those of Barbot himself and of Du Casse, describing a voyage in 1687/68 (“Mémoire ou relation du Sieur du Casse sur son Voyage en Guynée avec ‘La Tempeste’ en 1687 et 1688” in Roussier, P., L'etablissement d'Issigny, 1687-1702, [Paris 1935], 14).Google Scholar Little Popo (Anecho) seems, indeed, not to have existed, or at least to have been a place of no importance, before the 1680s, when it was occupied by refugees displaced from Accra by the Akwamu conquest of that kingdom; cf. Bosman, 1705: 332.

20. D'Elbée had described a kingdom in the area of Cape Monte (1671:381; reproduced by Barbot, 1688:130-31), which seems to be the kingdom referred to here. In 1732 (321) Barbot identified this kingdom, probably correctly, with that of Coto (i.e. Keta) described by Bosman.

21. Dapper, 1688:488; Leers, 1665:301. The earliest reference to Popo seems to be in the map of Bartholemeu Velho of 1561. There is also a description of a “kingdom of the Popoes” in de Sandoval, Alonso, Naturaleza, policia sagrada i profana costuwbres i ritos, disciplina, i catechismo evangelico de todos Etiopes (Seville, 1627), 51Google Scholar, but there is no reason to suppose that Barbot can have seen this.

22. For example, that of Sanson d'Abbéville in 1656.

23. D'Elbée may himself have misled Barbot by stating that “Tary” was “marked on the maps Terra” (1671:382). In fact, maps showed rather Terra gazellas (“gazelle land”) and Terra anagada (“flooded land”) between the Volta and Allada. These were surely vague descriptions of general areas rather than designations of specific settlements, but Barbot believed (1688:132) that they applied to the Popo area.

24. Cf. Law, Robin, “The Fall of Allada, 1724,” JHSN, 5/1 (1969), 160.Google Scholar

25. “Mémoire ou relation du Sieur du Casse” in Roussier, , Etablissement, 14Google Scholar; Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, Isles voisines, et à Cayenne (4 vols.:Paris, 1730) 2: 8, 12, 284.Google Scholar It is curious that Bosman (1705:335) described Great Popo as having formerly been subject not to Allada, but to Whydah. This probably referred to developments after 1682 (or perhaps specifically to the defeat of Great Popo by Whydah in the war of 1682 reported by Barbot), but in 1732 (323) Barbot characteristically ignored the question of chronology and tried to have it both ways, claiming that “great Popo… may properly be reckoned to be in the ancient country of Ardra, as well as Fida.”

26. In 1685 the Dutch threatened the king of Allada with the prospect of establishing a lodge at Popo, which evidently implies that there was not one there already; van Dantzig, Albert, Dutch Documents Relating to the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast (Coast of Guinea), 1680-1740 (Legon, 1971), 13.Google Scholar A lodge was finally established there in 1688; ibid., 17-18.

27. The text of 1688 elsewhere (131) states that Popo can be recognized by “the flags which the Moors of the place hoist.” The map marks a “village where the blacks have a white flag” to the west of the channel giving access to Popo and a “Dutch flag” to the east. Taken by itself, without the passage that Barbot copied from d'Elbée, this might be interpreted to mean that both flags were raised by the local people. However, in 1732 (322) Barbot asserted explicitly that only the white flag was raised by the locals, the Dutch flag being linked with the alleged Dutch lodge.

28. For this text, printed in Madrid in 1658, see Labouret, Henri and Rivet, Paul, Le royaume d'Arda et son évangélisation au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1929).Google Scholar For this early linguistic material see Hair, P.E.H., “An Ethnolinguistic Inventory of the Lower Guinea Coast Before 1700,” II, African Language Review, 8 (1969), 230–246, n.57.Google Scholar

29. Bosman's account is based on first-hand observation: on his own account he made three visits to Whydah (1705:338) which appear to have been in 1697 (cf. 334), 1698 (337, 389, 398) and 1699 (329). The case of Labat is more problematical: his account of Whydah was based on a manuscript journal of the Chevalier des Marchais (preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris: Fonds francais, 24223), which purports to describe a voyage to Whydah in 1725, but the bulk of des Marchais' material can be shown to relate rather to ca. 1704, and was presumably gathered on an earlier voyage to Whydah which des Marchais is known to have made in that year (and for which des Marchais' manuscript journal also survives, though apparently incomplete, in the British Museum: Additional Ms, 19560).

30. For the context, see Law, Robin, The Oyo Empire, c. 1600-1836 (Oxford, 1977), 155–56.Google Scholar

31. A list of slaves on an estate of French Guiana in 1690 does, in fact, include one slave from Oyo who had been brought from Africa precisely in 1682: Debien, G. and Houdaille, J., “Les origines des esclaves aux Antilles, no. 32: Sur une sucrerie de la Guyane en 1690,” BIFAN, sér. B, 26 (1964), 173.Google Scholar It is a diverting, if somewhat frivolous, speculation that this slave might have been brought from Whydah by Barbot himself.

32. Cornevin, Robert, Histoire du Dahomey (Paris, 1962), 82–83Google Scholar, discusses discrepant lists of the kings of Allada given in the traditions, but makes no attempt to relate these to contemporary records. Akinjogbin, I.A., Dahomey and Its Neighbors, 1708-1818 (Cambridge, 1967), 25–31, 54–60Google Scholar, cites some of the contemporary references (but not Barbot's), but offers no systematic discussion of Allada dynastic chronology.

33. D'Elbèe had included fusils (matchlocks) in his list of goods, so that by mousquets Barbot presumably meant specifically flintlocks. The successive lists of Dapper (without firearms), d'Elbèe (with matchlocks), and Barbot (with flintlocks) neatly illustrate the developing role of firearms in the trade of the Slave Coast in the late seventeenth century, for which see Kea, R.A., “Firearms and Warfare on the Gold and Slave Coasts From the 16th to the 19th Centuries,” JAH, 12 (1971), 192–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. D'Elbée had in fact stated that Allada extended in the west to the River Tary and Cape Monte (which on the face of it gives two contradictory boundaries) (1671:557), with Barbot himself adding the erroneous identification of Tary with Popo. Barbot's discussion of the extent of Allada's territory uncritically ignored the possibility of change over time. Tori was evidently subject to Allada when visited by d'Elbée in 1670 (1671:382-83), even if it was independent when Barbot was on the coast in 1682, and Whydah was likewise stated by later sources to have been formerly subject to Allada (e.g. du Casse, in Roussier, , Etablissement 14Google Scholar; Labat, , Voyage 2: 61–74).Google Scholar

35. Tori and Foulaen are also marked on early maps, such as that of Sanson d'Abbéville, 1656. There is also an account of “Fulao,” curiously stated to have been earlier subject to Popo, in Sandoval, , Naturaleza, 51.Google Scholar For an even earlier reference to “Faloim” in 1607 see Hair, , “Ethnographic Inventory,” 2, 247n59.Google Scholar

36. For this practice see Smith, Robert, “The Canoe in West African History,” JAH, 11 (1970), 516–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. The usual indigenous name of Lagos is Eko, but a nineteenth-century source reports that the Benin name for Lagos was “Korame” (d'Avezac-Maçaya, A., Notice sur le pays et le peuple des Yébous en Afrique [Paris, 1845], 13Google Scholar) and traditions recently recorded in the Benin river refer to trade with a place in the lagoon to the west called “Ukoroama” or “Iko” which is presumed to be Lagos (Alagoa, E.J., “Long Distance Trade and States in the Niger Delta,” JAH, 11 [1970], 327CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The use of the Benin name for Lagos confirms what Dapper's account itself implies, that the Europeans at this period obtained their information on the Lagos area primarily through Benin.

38. However, the matter is complicated by the fact that some later sources place a town called “Caran” or “Caram” (probably in origin no more than a corruption of “Kuramo,” though usually depicted as a separate settlement) on the northern bank of the Lagos lagoon. The earliest instance of which I am aware is the map by H. Moll included in the English edition of Bosman (1705). Conceivably Barbot had seen an earlier map with similar misinformation, and this influenced his relocation of Kuramo in 1688.

39. The names had also appeared on earlier maps: “Curamo” in Sanson d'Abbéville (1656) and “Icho” in Blaeu (1659).

40. D'Elbée had stated that Allada marched in the east with Benin (1671:557), and Dapper's distances imply that the Lagos river was beyond the eastern boundaries of Allada (1668:448, 494). This might have been enough for Barbot to infer that Lagos lay within the sphere of Benin overlordship, but in fact Barbot seems to have obtained some new information on the eastern boundary of Allada, which led him to place it further west than Dapper (cf. 1688:139), so that it seems reasonable to suppose that his information about Lagos is original, too.

41. The material in Barbot (on the upper course of the Volta and the hinterland neighbors of the kingdom of “Ulkamy”) corresponds precisely with that in Delisle's “Carte de la Barbarie, de la Nigritie & de la Guinée” of 1707; the same material may well be in earlier versions of Delisle's map or in other maps that I have not yet seen.

42. cf. Law, , The Oyo Empire, 156.Google Scholar

43. Another instance may be 1732:328, which considerably expands the account of drinking water and wells in Whydah given in 1688:135.

44. If reliable, this information is of considerable interest. The Dutch showed some interest in the lagoon route between Benin and Lagos in the 1710s but were unable to establish regular communication along it; Ryder, A.F.C., Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897 (London, 1969), 157–58.Google Scholar One might suppose that this Dutch interest was inspired by the earlier activities of the Portuguese and English reported by Barbot, but the Dutch sources give no hint of this.

45. The reference to “Portuguese geographers” almost certainly alludes to cartographical sources, but I have so far not been able to identify a precise source for Barbot's knowledge of “Jubu.” As regards the lagoon area, information identical to Barbot's (except that by an evident error the name “Labum” is given instead of “Jabum”) is incorporated in the map of the Bight of Benin by van Keulen (1716), reproduced by Ryder. It seems reasonable to suppose that the same information appeared in maps a few years earlier that were available to Barbot.

46. The journals of voyages by Barbot's brother James to New Calabar in 1699 and by his nephew, James Barbot junior, to the Congo in 1700 were included as appendices in John Barbot's 1732 Description. For John Barbot's commercial contacts in England, see Hair, , “A Note on Jean Barbot,” 297, 304.Google Scholar

47. These commercial contacts probably also explain the new information on the European end of the trade in cowry shells that Barbot incorporates into his account of Whydah: 1732:338-39.

48. Most accessible in his The Political and Commercial Works of that Celebrated Writer Charles D'Avenant (5 vols.: London, 1771), vol. 5.Google Scholar The passage copied by Barbot is at 5: 226.

49. Phillips, Thomas, “A Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal of London, Ann. 1693-4” in Awnsham, and Churchill, John, eds, Collection of Voyages and Travels, (6 vols.: London, 1732), 6: 173–239.Google Scholar The material borrowed by Barbot is at 6: 216.

50. The French lodge at Whydah was abandoned when it was destroyed by raiders from Popo “some years” before 1701 (“Relation très curieuse du voyage que le Chavalier d'Amon a fait aux indes pour faire un établissement à Issigny” [1702], in Roussier, , Etablissement, 106)Google Scholar, perhaps in 1692, when a raid from Little Popo is recorded to have destroyed the Dutch lodge in neighboring Offra and to have rendered Whydah insecure also (cf. Van Dantzig, , Dutch documents: 35–37Google Scholar); it was reoccupied and fortified in 1704 (Berbain, Simone: Le comptoir français de Juda au XVIII siècle [Paris, 1942], 39Google Scholar). However, Barbot erred in attributing the abandonment of the lodge to “changes that happened in the affairs of their African company,” and seems not to have realized that a French agent continued to reside at Savi, the Whydah capital, even during the period when the coastal lodge was abandoned.

51. The existence of a lodge of the Brandenburgers at Whydah is confirmed by Bosman in the late 1690s (1705:374), but it does not appear to have survived long, since it is not mentioned in des Marchais' account of the European establishments at Whydah, ca. 1704 (Labat, , Voyage, 2: 42–43, 106–07Google Scholar).

52. Barbot's king had in fact died in 1703, and the king who died in 1708 was his successor: cf. Akinjobgin, , Dahomey and Its Neighbours, 35, 39–40.Google Scholar

53. This mention of a Portuguese lodge is not an anachronism, as might be inferred from accounts of the construction of the Portuguese fort at Whydah in 1721, which give no hint of any earlier unfortified establishment (e.g. Verger, Pierre, Flux et reflux de la traite des Nègres entre le golfe de Bénin et Bahia de todos os santos du XVIIe au XIXe sièale [Paris, 1968], 132–39Google Scholar). The existence of a Portuguese lodge earlier, though in the Whydah capital rather than at the coast, is corroborated by des Marchais' account, describing conditions ca. 1704 (Labat, Voyage). The maintenance of Whydah as a neutral port despite the European war at this period is likewise confirmed not only by des Marchais (ibid. 107-13), but also by contemporary Dutch and English records relating to the period 1703-08 (Van Dantzig, , Dutch documents, 56, 69–70, 74–75, 91Google Scholar; Davies, K.G., The Royal African Company [London, 1957], 274Google Scholar).