¹ On slave trading on the pre-Dahomean Slave Coast see esp. Law, Robin, ‘Royal monopoly and private enterprise in the Atlantic trade; the case of Dahomey’, J. Afr. Hist., XVIII, IV (1977), 555–7,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Trade and politics behind the Slave Coast: the lagoon traffic and the rise of Lagos, 1500–1800’, J. Afr. Hist., XXIV, iii (1983), 321–48;Google ScholarManning, Patrick, ‘The slave trade in the Bight of Benin, 1640–1890’, in Gemery, Henry A. and Hogendorn, Jan S., eds., The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1979), 107–47,Google Scholar and Manning, P., Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640–1960 (Cambridge, 1982), 1–50;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLovejoy, Paul E., Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983), 54–5.Google Scholar

² Bosman, William, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (4th English ed., London, 1967), 366–366A; Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), C 6/25, Du Coulombier, ‘Relation envoyer à la compagnie’, 10 August 1714, Du Coulombier, ‘Mémoire de la suite des affaires’, 14 February 1715; Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO), T 70/5, Hicks to Royal African Company, 18 October ‘7 to; PRO, T 70/54, W. Baillie to Governor, Cape Coast Castle, 10 May 1720.Google Scholar

³ Le Herissé, A., L'Ancien Royaume du Dahomey (Paris, 1911), 274–91Google ScholarDunglas, E., ‘Contribution à l'histoire du Moyen Dahomey’, Etudes Dahoméennes, XIX (1957), 90–6.Google Scholar

⁴ de Pommegorge, Pruneau, Description de la Négritie (Amsterdam, 1789), 153 and AN, C 6/25, Pruneau and Guestard, ‘Mémoire pour servir à I'intelligence du commerce de Juda’, 18 March 1756,Google Scholar quoted in Law, Robin, ‘Dahomey and the slave trade: reflections on the historiography of the rise of Dahomey’, J. Afr. Hist., XXVII, (1986), 253.Google Scholar

⁵ See esp. Ross, David, ‘Mid nineteenth century Dahomey: recent views v. contemporary evidence’, History in Africa, XII (1985), 307–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Akinjogbin, A. (‘Agaja and the conquest of the coastal Aja states’, J. Hist. Soc. of Nigeria, II, iv (1963), 545–60,Google Scholar and Dahomey and Its Neighbours 1705–1818 (Cambridge, 1967), 8–95) claims that Dahomey was founded by Aja who wanted to stop the spread of the slave trade.Google Scholar The evidence does not support this claim: see Henige, David and Johnson, Marion, ‘Agaja and the slave trade: another look at the evidence’, History In Africa, III (1976), 57–67;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRoss, David, ‘The anti slave trade theme in Dahomean history: an examination of the evidence’, History in Africa, IX (1982), 263–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Le Herissé, L'Ancien Royaume, 273.Google Scholar

⁸ Argyle, W. J.(The Fon of Dahomey (Oxford, 1966), 1–33) provides a reliable guide to what is known of Dahomey's seventeenth and eighteenth century history.Google Scholar

⁹ Akinjogbin (Dahomey, 103),Google ScholarLombard, Jaques (‘The Kingdom of Dahomey’, in Forde, D. and Kaberry, P. M. (eds.), West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1967), 90),Google Scholar and Polanyi, Karl(Dahomey and the Slave Trade: An Analysis of an Archaic Economy (Seattle, 1966), 33–39, 94) argue that the Dahomean monarch monopolized the sale of slaves. Law (‘Royal Monopoly’) and Manning (Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth, 42–43) demonstrate convincingly that this was not the case.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Marty, Paul (Etudes sur Islam au Dahomey (Paris, 1926), II, fn. 1) gives an account of the Dahomean middleman system in so far as it affected Muslim traders. Marty notes that the Dahomeans stopped the Muslim traders from travelling to the coast in 1727. He adds that in the later eighteenth and in the nineteenth centuries the Muslim merchants who wanted to import or export through Ouidah or Cotonou had to do so through Dahomean middlemen. Marty does not say where he acquired his information. The implication is that he acquired it from those he interviewed.Google Scholar

¹¹ On the Dahomean conquest of Savi see esp. Snelgrave, William, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London, 1734), 9–20, 136;Google Scholar Archivo Publico, Bahia (hereafter APB) 21, Doc. 58, Francisco Pereyra Mendes to Viceroy of Brazil, Whydah, 4 April 1727, quoted in Verger, Pierre, Trade Relations between the Bight of Benin and Bahia, 17th–19th Century (2nd ed., Ibadan), 121.Google Scholar

¹² APB, 24, fo. 18, Viceroy of Brazil to Lisbon, 29 April 1730 and APB, 26, fo. 140, Viceroy of Brazil to Lisbon, 10 July 1730, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 125, 126.Google Scholar

¹³ Snelgrave, A New Account, and 54 and 80.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Slave buying in Whydah was centred on the Savi factories, not on the Grehue fortified warehouses. See esp. Snelgrave, , A New Account, 2, 12–18;Google ScholarNorris, Robert, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomey (London, 1789), 66, 142.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Snelgrave, A New Account, 19, 20;Google ScholarVerger, Trade Relations, 121;Google Scholar PRO, T 70/7, Abstracts of ‘In’ Letters, Duport, A., Whydah, 17 May 1727.Google Scholar

¹⁶ PRO, T 70/1470, ‘A description of the castles and forts belonging to the Royal African Company, Whydah, 1737’. Although exiled Hueda periodically tried to resettle the Grehue area, none of them, in the 1730s, remained there for very long.Google Scholar

¹⁷ See esp. Snelgrave, A New Account, 115–20, 123–8;Google ScholarNorris, Memoirs, 29–33;Google Scholar APB, 27, fo. 129, Basilio, J. to Viceroy of Brazil, 20 May 1731, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 129–30; AN, C 6/25, ‘Mémoire de la Compagnie des Indes’, 8 November 1730, Levet to Compagnie des Indes, 26 August 1733; PRO, T 70/7, Charles Testefolle to Company, 30 October 1729.Google Scholar

¹⁸ The first documents which stated unequivocally that the Oyo supplied most of the slaves sold on the Bight date from the early 1770s. However it is practically certain that the Oyo were the major suppliers to the Bight ports for many years before that. Law (‘Royal monopoly’, 556), for example, concludes that the Oyo and the Dahomeans were the principal hinterland suppliers of slaves to Allada and Savi.Google Scholar

¹⁹ In 1729, 1730 and 2731 Jaquin was the Bight's major slave export centre: see esp. PRO, T 70/7, Braithwaite to Company, Whydah, 1 June 1730; APB, 24, fo. 158, Viceroy of Brazil to Lisbon, 29 April 1730, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 125–6; Archives of the (Second) Dutch West India Company, the Hague (hereafter WIC), 138, H. Hertzog to Company, Jaquin, 28 January, 29 March, 12 June, 29 September, 31 October, 1730, 27 March, 26 June, 2 August, 13 August, 13 September, 17 December, 1731. When Snelgrave (A New Account, 89) visited Jaquin in April 1727, soon after the destruction of Savi, he noted that trade there was poor because ‘there remains at present only one country, Lucamme, lying towards the North East, for the Jaqueens to trade to’. Since Lucamme seems to be a version of the word Olukumi, meaning Yorubaland, Sneigrave's reference is probably to Oyo. The implication of his remark is that it took the Oyo merchants some time both to adjust to the destruction of Savi and to begin taking their slaves elsewhere. Jaquin's trade began to flourish in 1729.Google Scholar

²⁰ Snelgrave, A New Account, 156; Archivo Historico Ultra Marino, Lisbon (hereafter AHU) São Tomé, caixa 4, J. Basilio to Viceroy of Brazil, 8 September 1732, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 130; WIC, 238, Hertzog to Company, Apa, 9 October 1733.Google Scholar

²¹ A Portuguese document (APB, 44 fo. 93, Viceroy of Brazil to Lisbon, 8 October 1747, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 161–2) shows that Apa was destroyed before October 1747. Akinjogbin (Dahomey, III, fn. 4) has found evidence of a 1747 Dahomean raid on Epe. Since it is always very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to sort out references to Epe from references to Apa in contemporary documents, it is possible that the 1747 raid was on Apa.Google Scholar

²² In the early 1740s Little Popo (to the east), Epe and Badagry (to the west), each individually did more trade than Grehue; see esp. AN, C 6/25, Levet to Company, 31 January 1744.Google Scholar

²³ Snelgrave, A New Account, 125, 130.Google Scholar

²⁴ Contemporary documents all stress that the number of slaves to be found in Grehue declined dramatically after the Dahomean conquest of Savi. However in their analysis of the ‘decline’ Henige and Johnson (‘Agaja and the slave trade’, 61–5) point out that the ‘decline’ was mainly in English, French and Dutch trade (the Dutch, in fact, withdrew from the former Whydah kingdom's territories in 1727). The ‘decline’ in Portuguese trade, they stress, is much less obvious. Although the Portuguese merchants complained bitterly that trade was slow and frequently interrupted, their supplies of gold and Brazilian tobacco enabled them to buy the majority of the Dahomeans’ captives. In the 1730s the Dahomeans seem in fact to have sold the Portuguese most of the six thousand or so slaves they required annually in Brazil. On the Portuguese trade see esp. APB, 35, fo. 370, Viceroy of Brazil to Lisbon, 20 September 1739, and APB, 44, fo. 93, Viceroy of Brazil to Lisbon, 8 October 1747, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 141–2, 161–2.Google Scholar

²⁵ On the Oyo–Dahomey wars see esp. Law, Robin, The Oyo Empire, c, 1600–c. 1836 (Oxford, 1977), 157–82.Google Scholar

²⁶ One of the Allada commoner territories, Jaquin, began paying tribute to the Dahomey Dadda in 1724, immediately after the Dahomeans conquered the Allada kingdom's central province (Snelgrave, A New Account, 20). The other southern Aja commoner territories almost certainly also began paying tribute in 1724 or in 1727.Google Scholar

²⁷ See esp. Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 83–123;Google ScholarVerger, Trade Relations, 121–62;Google ScholarLe Herissé, L'Ancien Royaume, 294–305;Google ScholarSnelgrave, A New Account, 36, 77.Google Scholar

²⁸ Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 95–8, 106, 112;Google ScholarVerger, Trade Relations, 121–62;Google ScholarSnelgrave, A New Account, 123–7.Google Scholar

²⁹ Dunglas (‘Contribution’, 176) says that a major body of Dahomean settlers moved to the coast c. 1741–42. The last Oyo invasion appears to have taken place c. 1743: see Akinjogbin, Dahomey, III;Google ScholarLaw, The Oyo Empire, 164. The garrison was not in place in the late 1730s: see PRO, T 70/1470, ‘A description of the Castles and Forts, belonging to the Royal African Company, Whydah, 1737’. It is probable that the garrison was sent to the coast, c. 1743, at about the time the majority of the Dahomeans moved from Allada back to Abomey.Google Scholar

³⁰ The form of the town's name usually seen today, the French form, has been used throughout. The English form, Whydah, for convenience, has been applied to the pre-Dahomean Aja coastal state of the same name.Google Scholar

³¹ The move seems to have taken place in late 1743: see AN, C 6/25, Levet to Company, 25 February 1744, quoted in Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 118, fn.I.Google Scholar

³² The slave-traders' records contain only indirect references to these village garrisons. An account of them has therefore to be based, in part, on nineteenth century sources. (On these sources see esp. Ross, ‘Mid Nineteenth Century Dahomey’). What the slave-traders do say about their journeys to Abomey suggests that the composition of the village garrisons changed very little in the course of a century: see for example, Norris, Memoirs, 75–6.Google Scholar

³³ Norris (Memoirs, 140) notes that Allada was ‘no contemptable place’.Google Scholar

³⁴ The Europeans called the Wensangan ‘Half Heads’ because they kept one side of their head shaved. In the late eighteenth and in the nineteenth centuries, groups of Wensangan were stationed in the garrisoned villages lying along the Ouidah-Abomey road. When carrying information to and from the capital they travelled in relays from one garrisoned village to the next. They were as a result able to carry information to and from the capital very quickly. The first lengthy account of the Wensangan is to be found in Macleod, John, A Voyage To Africa With Some Account Of The Manners And Customs Of The Dahomean People (London, 1820), 42–3.Google ScholarArgyle, W. (The Fon, 68–9) gives a full review of the evidence relating to the Wensangan.Google Scholar

³⁵ PRO, T 70/1158, Accounts and Daybooks, Whydah, July–August 1755 and January–February 1756. Nineteenth-century sources suggest that the Akplogan performed religious or ceremonial duties at the tombs of the Dahomey Dadda's possibly mythical Alladan ancestors: see Argyle, The Fon, 74. The Akplogan may then have remained in Allada when the majority of the Dahomeans returned to Abomey in c. 1743.Google Scholar

³⁶ PRO, T 70/1158, Accounts and Daybooks, Whydah, January–February 1754, May–June 1755, November–December 1756, May–June 1757.Google Scholar

³⁷ The early 1750s saw a number of ‘exiled’ Hueda raids on Ouidah and a series of revolts in the interior. A rebellion in Tori, directly to the north of Ouidah, seems to have been the most serious of the revolts: PRO, T 70/1158, Accounts and Daybooks, Whydah, January–February 1753 and September–October 1754.Google Scholar

³⁸ The most important nineteenth-century works on Dahomey are Forbes, F. E., Dahomey and the Dahomeans (London, 1851), 2 vols,CrossRefGoogle ScholarBurton, R. F., A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomey (London, 1864), 2 vols,Google Scholar and Skertchly, J. A., Dahome as it is (London, 1864). For an analysis of the information to be found in these works see Ross, ‘Mid nineteenth century Dahomey’.Google Scholar

³⁹ Akinjogbin (Dahomey, 1–215) argues that eighteenth-century Dahomey was a nation state organized in much the same way as the nation states of contemporary western Europe.Google Scholar The evidence does not support this remarkable claim. For an account of the eighteenth-century evidence see Ross, David, ‘European models and West African history: further comments on the recent historiography of Dahomey’, History in Africa, X (1983), 293–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁰ During the Oyo wars the Dahomeans all went into hiding together, and all remained in hiding together for long periods. During the wars they all moved together, in one body, from Abomey to Allada. Only a small closely knit group could have acted as they did.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Norris (Memoirs, 62), writing of the 1760s and 1770s, gives the town 8,000 people.Google ScholarAdams, John (Remarks on the Country extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo (London, 1823) 50) says it had 6,000–7,000 people in the 1790s. Macleod (A Voyage, 13), writing of the early 1800s, gives it a very unlikely 20,000 inhabitants. AN, C 6/27 bis., Abbé Bullet, ‘Réflexions sur Juda’, 1 June 1776, chs 6 and 29, states that the town had 2,000 people in 1776. However, he adds that it had a population of 10,000 only ten years before. None of the slave-traders says how he made his calculations. Even the rough average figure of 6,000–8,000 may be too high.Google Scholar

⁴² Some of the Hueda may have had no need to make their peace with Dahomey. The Hueda did not all oppose the Dahomean attack of 1727 on Savi: see esp. Snelgrave, A New Account, 9–10; AN, C 6/25, Pruneau and Guestard, ‘Mémoire’, 18 March 1750.Google Scholar Some of the Hueda may in fact never have ceased to be allies of the Dahomeans. The members of at least one Hueda family, the Kwenum, were eventually even accepted as Dahomeans. In the nineteenth century members of the family held fairly high office in Ouidah: see Forbes, , Dahomey, I, 112;Google ScholarQuénum, M., ‘Au Pays des Fons’, Bulletin du Comité d'Etudes Historiques et Scientifiques de l'A.O.F., XVIII (1935), 296–7.Google Scholar

⁴³ Akinjogbin (Dahomey, 102–3, 119–20) states that Tegan was the first Yeovogan's name and that he was appointed to this office in January, 1733. Akinjogbin bases his argument on evidence which he claims is to be found in a letter from the acting director of the French fort (AN, C 6/25, Levet to Company, 26 August 1733 — Akinjogbin cites Julien Dubellay as the author of the letter). Levet does not state in this letter that Tegan had been appointed Yeovogan, White Man's Captain or Viceroy. He writes merely that the Dahomean trading agents had been replaced by one man, Tegan. Akinjogbin assumes that Tegan was an individual's name. This is clearly not the case. Slave-trader documents, from 1733 to 1755, contain a series of references to the Tegan which show both that there were a number of Tegan (the documents mention not only a number of ‘new’ Tegan but two executed Tegan) and that the Tegan was, during that period, called by the slavers the Viceroy, or Governor, of Ouidah(Verger, Trade Relations, 142, 148, 149;AN, C 6/25, Levet to Company, 14 June 1743; PRO, T7/1158, Accounts and Daybooks, Whydah, March–April 1755 and May–June 1755).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ When describing the events which took place on the coast in the 1740s and 1750s Norris (Memoirs, 1–49) states that the coastal Dahomeans were led by a Yeovogan. However Norris assumed that the Ouidah hierarchy was always organised as it was in his own day. He simply ‘gave’ the title of Yeovogan to the best remembered of the coastal leaders; he certainly did this when describing the activities of the individual he calls ‘Tanga’. Dunglas (‘Contribution’, 176), suggests that the first Yeovogan may have been appointed in the early 1740s when the Dahomeans settled Ouidah. However, since there had been a dignitary called the ‘White Man's Captain’ in pre-conquest Allada, it is also possible that the Dahomeans appointed the first Yeovogan in the 1720s or 1730s. In that case, the Yeovogan may simply have moved from Allada to Ouidah in the 1740s. The pre-1755 Yeovogans seem likely to have been trade officials and nothing more. The records of the European slave-traders certainly suggest that there was, between 1752 and 1755, both a Yeovogan and a Tegan in Ouidah: PRO, T 70/1158, Accounts and Daybooks, Whydah, July–August, November–December 1752, March—April, May—June 1755.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Dunglas (‘Contribution’, 160) records a tradition which states that the first Kawo, one Azila, was appointed by Agaja(c. 1718–40). Norris (Memoirs, 36) remarks that a Kawo was killed fighting the Hueda in 1743. Although Norris's dating of events in the 1740s is unreliable, his statement, for what it is worth, does reinforce Dunglas’ evidence. Law (‘Royal Monopoly’ 564, fn. 61) states that a separate military commander for Ouidah, the Kawo, was first appointed in 1747. Law here develops an argument advanced by Akinjogbin (Dahomey, 121). Akinjogbin claims that a military officer called the Cockavo was sent to live permanently on the coast in 1747.Google Scholar However, as the evidence of the European slave-traders shows, the Kawo's and Cockavo's offices were held by different individuals: see, for example, Dalzel, A., The History of Dahomey (London, 1793), 176 and 194.Google ScholarThe Cockavo was an Abomey-based military officer who was periodically seconded to Ouidah to help deal with various temporary crises. He was never sent to live permanently on the coast. The records show that the Cockavo was sent to Ouidah in 1752, 1754, 1755 and 1757 as well as in 1747: PRO.T70/1158, Accounts and Daybooks, Whydah, January–February 1752, January–February 1752, March–April 1754, March—April 1755 and January—February 1757.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ PRO, T 70/704, Journals and Ledgers, Cape Coast Castle, November–December 1746, and PRO, T 70/423, Accounts and Journals, Cape Coast Castle, September– December 1747, quoted in Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 119.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ PRO, T 70/35, Governor Torrane to African Committee, Cape Coast, 26 July 1812.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Macleod, A Voyage, 100–2.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ During Xwetanu the governors paid their respects to the Dahomean leader, the Dahomey Dadda, discussed outstanding business and handed over their annual ‘presents’.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Norris, Memoirs, 69–70.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Macleod, A Voyage, 99–100.Google Scholar

⁵² Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 111–13, 137–8, 148–50, 152–3.Google Scholar

⁵³ See above, notes 20 and 21.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ouidah's trade revived dramatically soon after peace was made with Oyo: see esp. AN, C 6/25, Guestard, ‘Mémoire, pour servir à l'intelligence du commerce du Juda, 1750’, quoted in Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 134.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Dahomean oral traditions state that Cana was the place where the Oyo merchants gathered. The European records state that the inland merchants took their slaves to the Dahomean court: see esp. Labarthe, P., Voyage à la Côte de Guinée (Paris, 1803), 116; Bullet, ‘Réflexions’, ch. 2. Since the Dahomean leaders spent a good part of the year in Cana — the ‘country capital’ — it is almost certainly to Cana rather than to Abomey that the inland merchants took their slaves.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Dalzel, The History, 214.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Labarthe, Voyage, 104.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ The comments of the Ouidah slave-traders on the state of trade in their port show that Ouidah's trade flourished in these decades, even though, of course, the volume of trade varied considerably from year to year. Akinjogbin (Dahomey, 127–540) records a number of slavers’ comments.Google ScholarPeukert, Werner (Der Atlantische Sklavenhandel Von Dahomey 1740–97: Wirtschaft – Anthropologie Und Sozialgeschichte (Wiesbaden, 1978), 305–306) calculates that the Bight's ports, as a group, exported 129,000 slaves between 1751 and 1760 and 149,500 slaves between 1761 and 1770. believes that of these Ouidah exported 29,000 between 1751 and 1760 and 54,500 between 1761 and 1770. Peukert's figures must however be treated with a great deal of caution. They are based on a very limited sample of the evidence, two ships' books and one year of the English fort's ‘Accounts and Daybooks’–this for the whole period 1740–97. Manning (Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth, 35), basing his calculations on the number of slaves landed in the Americas, gives an estimate of the Bight's total exports which differs considerably from Peukert's. He believes that the Bight's ports exported 70,500 slaves between 1751 and 1760 and 102,700 slaves between 1761 and 1770.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ AN, C 6/25, Levet to Company, 20 August, 1743; AHU, São Tomé caixa 5, letter to Viceroy of Brazil, 29 October 1744, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 176, 29.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See, for example, Snelgrave, A New Account, 133.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Norris, Memoirs, 57–8.Google Scholar

⁶² Bullet, ‘Réflexions’, ch.z. AbomeyCalavi's period as a major trading centre may have been very brief. Daizel (The History, 207) writing of the 1780s, gives the impression that the inland merchants took most of their slaves directly to Porto Novo.Google Scholar

⁶³ Disturbed political conditions made it impossible for them to buy slaves in the major eastern markets in both the late 1770s and 1780s: esp. AN, C 6/26, Ollivier Montaguère to the Minister, Ouidah, 1777, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 184;Google ScholarDaizel, The History, 207.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Bullet, ‘Réflexions’, ch.2;Google ScholarLabarthe, Voyage, 526–27.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Dalzel, The History, 213–16.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Law (‘Royal Monopoly’, 566) discusses Dalzel's account of Kpengla's attempt to establish a monopoly and comes to the conclusion that Kpengla was in fact unlikely to have sought to establish himself as the sole Dahomean dealer in slaves.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ On the Egbadoland route see Law, The Oyo Empire, 92–6.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ AN, C 6/26, Ollivier Montaguère to Minister, 24 September 1781, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 185; PRO, T 70/1551, Absom to Norris, Whydah, 30 September 1784.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ PRO, T 70/1151, Absom to Norris, 21 June 1778.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ An account of the drift of the slave trade eastwards away from Ouidah is to be found in Law, ‘Trade and Politics’, 344–8. The comments by the European slave-traders at Ouidah on the European state of trade in their port show that Ouidah's trade declined steadily between 1770 and 1812, even though, of course, it fluctuated, sometimes dramatically, from year to year: see esp. Abbé Bullet, ‘Réflexions’;Google ScholarLabarthe, Voyage, 104–5, 137, 156–7, 162–3;Google ScholarDalzel, The History, 166, 194, 214;Google ScholarVerger, Trade Relations, 182, 184, 185, 189, 207.Google Scholar References to many of the numerous other comments on Ouidah's poor trade are to be found in Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 141–201. Peukert (Sklavenhandel, 305–6) argues that Ouidah exported roughly as many slaves in the last quarter of the eighteenth century as in the third. This is clearly not the case. Peukert's very limited sample of the evidence has obviously misled him. Peukert also argues that the Bight ports as a group exported 469,500 slaves between 1771 and 1797. Manning (Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth, 35), basing his calculations on the number of slaves imported into the Americas, reckons that the Bight ports, as a group, exported 317,800 slaves between 1771 and 1800. If Peukert's Ouidah figures were lowered his overall total would come closer to Manning's.Google Scholar

⁷¹ AN, C 6/26, Ollivier Montaguère to Minister, Ouidah, November 1777, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 184. This does not mean, it should be emphasised, that the Dahomeans gave up slave raiding. The evidence suggests that they went raiding regularly, probably annually, between c. 1748 and c. 1818, even though they usually took relatively few slaves when they did so.Google Scholar

⁷² In theory the Dahomeans did not raid those who had agreed to pay tribute. In practice they raided most of their victims repeatedly. They usually claimed that the tributaries they attacked had ‘rebelled’ or ‘insulted’ the Dahomey Dadda. Only garrisoned territories appear to have escaped repeated raiding — although most territories were attacked again and again before being garrisoned.Google Scholar

⁷³ Daizel (The History, 165–6, 224–6) claims that in 1790 the Dahomeans took over one thousand captives during a raid on the Mahi. However, since the episode forms part of one of Daizel's ‘Dahomean atrocity’ stories, the figures must be treated very cautiously. See also, Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 155–6, 180–1.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Dalzel (The History, 166–70, 792–3) states that the Dahomeans took large numbers of captives when they took Epe, in 1778, and Ouémé, in 1786. The Dahomeans attacked Epe in alliance with Porto Novo, Oyo's ally. They destroyed Ouémé at Oyo's invitation.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Dalzel, The History, 207.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Ibid., 767–8, 783–6.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 196.

⁷⁸ On the export of slaves from Porto Novo via the lagoon and Lagos, see Law, ‘Trade and Politics’, 346–8.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Adams, Remarks, 63–5.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ The great majority of the European slave traders taken in Epe and Badagry seem, for example, to have ended their days wretchedly as captives in Abomey: see Verger, Trade Relations, 187–8;Google ScholarDalzel, The History, 193–5;Google ScholarPRO, T 70/1545, Absom to Mills, Whydah, 20 November 1783.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Adams, Remarks, 54–5.Google Scholar

⁸² Akinjogbin (Dahomey, 190, 137) states that the Governor of the English fort, Lionel Absom, ‘assumed Dahomean citizenship’ and that another English slaver, David Mills, wanted to settle in Dahomey. An examination of the letters of Absom and the Millses, however, shows that their attitude to Dahomey did not differ at all from that of the other slave traders: see esp. PRO, T 70/1545, L. Absom to R. Mills, 20 November 1783 and PRO, T 70/1534, D. Mills, to R. Mills, 5 February 1777 (Akinjogbin quotes selectively from this letter).Google Scholar

⁸³ PRO, Admiralty 1/2151, Diggles Bayley to Captain Malbon, 5 January 1806.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ On the closing of the forts, see esp. Verger, Trade Relations, 209–11.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ On the duties paid by ships which took on slaves at Ouidah, see esp. Law, ‘Royal monopoly’, 560–1.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ In the second half of the nineteenth century the southern Aja looked on the Dahomean leaders as their ‘natural’ rulers. However it is unlikely that their 1770 predecessors – the survivors of the Dahomean conquest — did the same. As has been noted, the conquest was not complete until at least the early 1740s. Moreover major southern Aja rebellions are known to have taken place in the 1750s. See PRO, T 70/TI 8, Accounts and Daybooks, Whydah, September–October, W. Devaynes, 31 October 1754.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ On Da Souza, see esp. Ross, David, ‘The First Chacha of Whydah, Francisco Felix Da Souza’, Odu, 2 (1969), 19–28.Google Scholar