Ouidah. Robin Law

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СКАЧАТЬ was disrupted by the activities of European pirates in 1719–20, Hufon did authorize the construction of a stone fort on the beach by the French, in order to protect ships trading in his dominions, but, again, the idea was not pursued.¹²¹

      The forts in Ouidah operated as secure places of storage for goods and slaves, rather than exercising any serious military power over the local community. The concept of an ‘enclave-entrepôt’, which has been applied to coastal towns on the Gold Coast in which Europeans settled, such as Elmina, does not seem applicable to Ouidah, which was in no sense an enclave of European authority, or even of their informal predominating influence.¹²² In Ouidah, there was never any question that the European establishments were in the final analysis subject to local control, rather than representing independent centres of European power.¹²³ This was explicitly expressed in the policy of the Hueda kings of forbidding fighting among Europeans in the kingdom, even when their nations were at war in Europe, which was formalized in 1703, when the king obliged the local agents of the Dutch, English and French companies to sign a treaty prohibiting hostilities in the Ouidah roadstead, or within sight of the shore, on pain of payment of damages to the value of eight slaves;¹²⁴ one chief of the English fort was deported in 1714, after a fracas with his French counterpart, which was deemed to be a breach of this treaty.¹²⁵

      Each of the three European forts in Ouidah became the centre of a quarter of the town, occupied by persons in the service of the forts. These were commonly called the French, English and Portuguese quarters (or, in contemporary European sources of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, ‘towns’, ‘villages’ or ‘camps’), or in local parlance Zojage-ko, Glensi-ko and Aguda-ko (ko meaning ‘quarter’).¹²⁶ Of these names, ‘Glensi’ is merely a local version of the name ‘English’, but the others call for further comment. ‘Zojage’ is explained as meaning ‘Fire has come to earth’, which is said to have been an exclamation of wonder uttered by Zingbo, the companion of Kpate, upon sight of the first Europeans to land at Ouidah (alluding to their ‘red’ skin colour, which was thought to resemble fire).¹²⁷ This story implies that it was originally applied to Europeans in general (these first visitors being in fact Portuguese), but it was subsequently restricted to the French in particular; when first documented in a contemporary source, in a vocabulary collected in Brazil among African slaves from the Dahomey area, it already designated the French specifically.¹²⁸ ‘Aguda’ is a term of uncertain etymology, which is commonly understood nowadays to mean ‘Brazilian’, and when first attested, in the same vocabulary, was applied specifically to Bahia, as opposed to Portugal; but in West Africa in the nineteenth century its reference was national rather than geographical, applied to ‘Portuguese’ in general, including Brazilians, rather than to Brazilians as distinct from Portuguese.¹²⁹

      In recent times, the three ‘European’ quarters of Ouidah have more commonly been known by other names, that of the French fort being called Ahouandjigo, that of the English Sogbadji, and the Portuguese Docomè, these names being first attested in the contemporary record in the 1860s.¹³⁰ The name ‘Ahouandjigo’ is translated as ‘where war cannot come’, and is usually explained by tradition as recording an undertaking by the Hueda king Ayohuan not to make war on the French fort there;¹³¹ it seems more likely, however, that it alluded to the policy of the Hueda kings of forbidding fighting among Europeans at Ouidah, which was reaffirmed in the treaty signed in 1703, the year before the establishment of the French fort. That of ‘Sogbadji’ for the English quarter refers to So, the vodun of thunder, meaning ‘So’s enclosure’; it is said to have been the place where the bodies of persons killed by lightning were taken, from which they could be redeemed for burial only on payment of a fine.¹³² The etymology of the name ‘Docomè’, ‘Do quarter’, is uncertain.¹³³

      Although their origins are understood at one level to be connected with the establishment of the European forts, it is noteworthy that all three of these quarters celebrate indigenous Hueda persons rather than Europeans as their actual founders; by implication, these were already settled locally before the arrival of the various European groups whom they welcomed. Ahouandjigo claims to have been founded by a prince of the Hueda royal family called Agbamu (in French ‘Agbamou’); a prominent family in the quarter, that of Agbo, claims descent from him.¹³⁴ Docomè is said to have been founded by a man called Ahohunbakla (‘Ahohounbacla’), who belonged to the same family as Kpate, the hero who welcomed the first Europeans, who is also sometimes said to have belonged to Hueda royalty.¹³⁵ Both Agbamu and Ahohunbakla are also said to have survived to lead their quarters in resistance to the Dahomian conquest of the town in the 1720s–40s. The details of these traditions are suspect. The claim in both cases that the founder of the ward was also its leader against the Dahomians, although chronologically possible (at any rate, if Agbamu is assumed to have been associated with the building of the French fort in 1704, rather than the original establishment in 1671), may be doubted; it seems more likely that Agbamu and Ahohunbakla are composite or symbolic figures, into whose careers as recorded in the traditions events from different epochs have been telescoped. Indeed, as will be seen in the next chapter, it is clear that the historical Agbamu cannot have been either the founder of Ahouandjigo or its leader against the Dahomians, since he was in fact a king of the Hueda in exile, two generations after the Dahomian conquest. It may also be suspected that the name ‘Ahohunbakla’ is a variant or corruption of that of Agbangla, the Hueda king who died in 1703 and who is said by tradition to be buried in Docomè quarter.¹³⁶ The appropriation of such founding ancestors from among Hueda royalty is, however, significant as a claim of indigenous legitimacy, which was probably asserted against Dahomian overlordship, as well as and probably more than against European primacy. In Sogbadji, however, the claimed indigenous founder is of non-royal Hueda stock. The founder is usually named as Zossoungbo, said to have been a hammock-bearer to the Hueda king at Savi, whose descendants claim the hereditary headship of the quarter; but another Hueda family in Sogbadji, that of Déhoué, disputes priority of settlement with the Zossoungbos.¹³⁷

      The personnel of the ‘European’ forts was in fact predominantly African. The English fort in the 1700s, for example, was manned by only 20 white men, with 100 ‘gromettoes’, or African slaves.¹³⁸ The ‘European’ quarters also included free Africans who were either in place before the establishment of the European factories or were attracted into their service subsequently. To the present day, these quarters are largely occupied by descendants of persons associated with the forts, including some Europeans who fathered families by local women, but mainly free African employees and slaves. Some of these families claim to be descended from persons employed in the forts before the Dahomian conquest in 1727, although most of those in place today seem to have arrived later, in the period of Dahomian rule. In addition to indigenous Hueda (and Hula) families, the populations of the ‘European’ quarters also included a large non-indigenous African element. Many of the fort slaves employed in Ouidah were from the Gold Coast to the west: in 1694 it was noted that ‘most’ of the slaves employed in the English fort were ‘Gold Coast negroes’, who were considered superior soldiers to the local Huedas; likewise in 1716 the slaves of the English fort at Ouidah (and also of the Dutch factory at Savi) were ‘almost all inhabitants of the Gold Coast, or Minas’.¹³⁹ Conversely, it may be noted, slaves purchased in Ouidah and Allada were commonly employed by Europeans in their factories on the Gold Coast;¹⁴⁰ this being reflected to the present day in the existence of ‘Alata [i.e. Allada]’ quarters in the Dutch and English sections of Accra.¹⁴¹ The logic of employing such ‘foreign’ Africans was, explicitly, that such outsiders were less liable to run away than slaves recruited locally, whose homelands were more accessible. Other fort slaves employed in Ouidah were imported from the interior; in effect, a portion of those purchased for export through the town was retained for local use. The slaves of the French fort in the eighteenth century were generally called ‘Acqueras’, a usage already established by the 1710s, and this was in origin the name of a specific ethnic group, reported to be located in the far interior, from which presumably many of the French fort slaves were derived.¹⁴² In 1723 the French fort reported that it had purchased ‘Chamba [Tchamba]’ slaves, this being another ethnicity in the interior СКАЧАТЬ