Ouidah. Robin Law

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СКАЧАТЬ two of his sons. One of the contenders, although able to occupy the royal capital, found himself besieged there by his opponent and contrived to send word to Agaja to offer his submission in return for Dahomian support. A Dahomian force marched to his relief, and he then went in person to Allada, where Agaja was currently residing, to pay homage to him, and received permission to reoccupy the old Hueda capital Savi, on condition of becoming tributary to Dahomey.⁴⁹ This settlement was accompanied by a return of some of the exiled Hueda to Ouidah, around 500–600 of whom resettled there, according to a later account, ‘under the protection of the Portuguese fort’, meaning evidently in Tové, the indigenous Hueda quarter of the town, immediately north of the fort.⁵⁰ Hueda tradition names the son of Hufon who succeeded him as king and submitted to Dahomian authority as Akamu.⁵¹ Local tradition in Ouidah also recalls the submission of the exiled Hueda to Agaja and their return to reoccupy their home country;⁵² the name of Akamu is also remembered there as having assisted in the resettlement of Tové quarter after the Dahomian conquest, and the Adjovi family traces its descent from Hueda royalty through him.⁵³

       The Hueda–Dahomey wars, 1743–75

      The settlement of 1733 was not in fact the end of the matter, since the attempt to reconstitute the Hueda kingdom as a dependency of Dahomey was not in the long run successful. The new king appointed by Agaja was not accepted as legitimate by most Hueda, and he eventually withdrew to Dahomey, where he died ‘universally despised’.⁵⁴ Agaja’s successor Tegbesu (1740–74) seems to have continued or revived the attempt to maintain a Hueda puppet monarchy under Dahomian suzerainty, since the records of the English fort at Ouidah report that in 1756 he appointed a ‘King of the Whydahs’ and sent him down to Ouidah, and in 1769 he proclaimed a new ‘King of the Whydahs’, named ‘Bangra’ (i.e. Agbangla, also the name of one of the pre-Dahomian Hueda kings), and sent him to Ouidah to be introduced to the European forts there.⁵⁵ Where these ‘kings of the Whydahs’ were ruling is not made clear; but a context is suggested by traditions among the exiled Hueda which record that, in the second generation after Hufon, the royal dynasty split, when a dissident prince called Amiton, who had gone to Dahomey to secure recognition as king but was rejected by the people, established a rival dynasty at Séhoumi, to the north of Houéyogbé.⁵⁶ The main body of the exiled Hueda at Houéyogbé, however, evidently remained hostile to Dahomey.

      From the 1740s the exiled Hueda resumed their attempts to repossess their homeland by military force, and they continued to present a serious threat to Dahomian control of Ouidah down at least to the early 1760s. Their hopes of recovering possession of it were revived when Dahomey became involved in hostilities with the rising power of Gen or ‘Little Popo’, on the coast to the west, under its ruler Ashangmo, from 1737 onwards.⁵⁷ The Hueda soon established a close alliance with Little Popo, and perhaps became politically subject to it.⁵⁸ Dahomey’s position was further weakened by a renewed outbreak of war with Oyo in 1742–8. In 1743, when an Oyo army invaded Dahomey and the main Dahomian forces in Ouidah were withdrawn to meet this threat, the Hueda exiles, supported by allied forces from ‘Popo’ (meaning now, presumably, Little Popo rather than Grand-Popo), seized the opportunity to attack Ouidah, where they defeated the small Dahomian garrison remaining, pillaged and burned the town and blockaded the European forts. They occupied the country for more than three months before the Dahomians again drove them out. The Dahomian viceroy and the commander of the local garrison are both said to have been killed in this campaign, referring presumably to the Tegan and the Cakanacou.⁵⁹

      The Dahomians believed that the European forts in Ouidah had again assisted the Hueda, and after the restoration of their authority there proceeded to take reprisals. The director of the French fort was seized and deported, on the allegation that he had refused to grant refuge in his fort to Dahomians remaining in Ouidah during the Hueda invasion.⁶⁰ Later in the same year, in June, the director of the Portuguese fort, Basilio, was also arrested, on the charge that he was in negotiation with the exiled Hueda and was harbouring Hueda emissaries within his fort; and at the same time the Gau, the commander-in-chief of the Dahomian army, laid siege to the Portuguese fort. Basilio was held prisoner for some time and released only to be deported from the country. Meanwhile, during his imprisonment, the Dahomian force attacked the Portuguese fort, on 21 July 1743; as had happened with the French fort in 1728, the roofs took fire and caused the powder magazine to explode, after which the Dahomians were able to enter the fort and massacre its inhabitants, including the returned exiled Hueda who had taken refuge in it; the African ‘head servant’ of the fort, who had led the defence in Basilio’s absence, blew himself up with gunpowder rather than surrender.⁶¹ Local tradition names the African leader of the defence of the Portuguese fort on this occasion as Amoua, though he is said to have been captured and killed by the Dahomians, rather than dying in the fighting.⁶² The demonstration of Dahomian power on this occasion was seemingly decisive for the future attitude of the European forts, which never afterwards ventured to support challenges to Dahomian authority.

      Although Dahomian military control of Ouidah was thus decisively reasserted, Dahomian administration of the town was now undermined by serious internal divisions, which were part of a wider crisis of royal authority within Dahomey in the early years of Tegbesu’s reign.⁶³ The new Tegan appointed after the Hueda invasion in 1743 antagonized the governors of the European forts, and was arrested and executed by Tegbesu, upon their complaints, in July of the same year.⁶⁴ His successor as Tegan also alienated the European governors by his ‘oppressive conduct’ and, when they set out to the capital to complain about his behaviour, ordered their arrest and forcible return to Ouidah. Subsequently, it was alleged that he plotted to set himself up as an independent king in Ouidah, to which end he tried to seize the English fort in August 1745, but its governor was forewarned and refused him entry – although conceivably this was a false allegation contrived by the Europeans, as a means of revenge. However this may be, Tegbesu declared the Tegan an outlaw and dispatched military forces, which besieged him in his residence in Ouidah. The Tegan attempted to escape, but was killed in a second attempt to enter the English fort.⁶⁵ In the aftermath of this revolt, the title of Tegan was evidently suppressed, his successor in office being given the title Yovogan, ‘Chief of the White Men’, which then remained the normal title of the governors of Ouidah throughout the period of Dahomian rule. This title had existed in the Hueda kingdom earlier, but the office there had had purely commercial functions, dealing with the Europeans as traders; the ‘Chief of the White Men’ in Dahomey, in contrast, exercised political authority in Ouidah, including over the European forts.

      Despite their defeat in 1743, the exiled Hueda also continued to pose a military threat. Later in the same year they raided the beach south of Ouidah, destroying the tents of European traders there; and at the beginning of 1744 there were rumours of a further attempt to reoccupy their homeland, although it is unclear whether in the event this took place.⁶⁶ Subsequently, further raids were mounted on Ouidah by forces from Little Popo, presumably operating in support of the exiled Hueda; and the Dahomians in response progressively strengthened their garrison in the town. In August 1747 a party of ‘Blacks from Accra’ (referring evidently to Little Popo, which had been founded in the 1680s by refugees from Accra) raided the beach south of Ouidah, killing most of the Dahomian forces posted there, including their commander the Cakanacou, but was then beaten off by the main garrison from Ouidah. Shortly afterwards, on a report that Ashangmo himself was marching to attack the town, the Dahomians sent down ‘another General of War Cockavo’, with instructions ‘to remain here to protect this place’; and later in the year the garrison was further reinforced, when the king sent down ‘another General of War Joehena for this place and Bunjam, another General of War for the Beach’.⁶⁷

      Of the additional ‘generals’ mentioned, ‘Cockavo’ is evidently identical with ‘Caukaow’ or ‘Cakaow’, given later in the eighteenth century as the title of ‘the military officer who commands in Whydah’.⁶⁸ In the nineteenth century this title is recorded in a shorter form, Kao, nowadays generally rendered locally in a French form, ‘Caho’.⁶⁹ Dahomian tradition identifies the Caho as the general who commanded СКАЧАТЬ