Ouidah. Robin Law

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СКАЧАТЬ settled in Ouidah as free immigrants, attracted there by the opportunities for employment in the European trade. The most prominently visible category among such incomers were canoemen from the Gold Coast. As noted earlier, the indigenous people of Ouidah, although using canoes on the inland lagoons, had no tradition of navigation on the sea, whereas on the Gold Coast the inhabitants had employed canoes for sea-fishing and coastwise communication even before the arrival of the Europeans. Since at Ouidah (and elsewhere on the Slave Coast) European ships were unable to approach close to the shore (owing to the dangerous bars and surf), they regularly bought canoes and hired crews of canoemen on the Gold Coast on their way down the coast, in order to land goods and embark slaves.¹⁴⁴ During the second half of the seventeenth century, indigenous Gold Coast merchants also began to travel to the Bight of Benin by canoe, to trade independently of (and in competition with) the Europeans, for cloth and other goods for resale on the Gold Coast: in 1688, for example, it was noted of the trade in African cloth at Ouidah that ‘the Blacks come with canoes there to trade in them, and carry them off continuously’.¹⁴⁵

      Most of the canoemen who came to Ouidah from the Gold Coast returned home on completion of their contracts, but some settled permanently in Ouidah. At the end of the seventeenth century, Cape Coast, the English headquarters on the Gold Coast, was said to be visibly depopulated because of the recruitment from there of canoemen by English ships trading at Ouidah, ‘after which they liking the place, live there, and seldom remember to come home again’.¹⁴⁶ Some of these immigrant canoemen entered the service of the European factories in Ouidah on a long-term basis, as free employees, while other canoemen were recruited as pawns (bound to work while paying off debts) or slaves. In the 1710s, it was noted that the English and Dutch factories enjoyed the services of canoemen recruited respectively from Cape Coast and Elmina, whereas the French, having no Gold Coast establishments of their own, were at a disadvantage in this respect, and French ships had to hire canoemen on their voyage down the coast.¹⁴⁷ By the mid-eighteenth century, however, the French fort also had its own corps of canoemen, who in this case were slaves.¹⁴⁸

      The cosmopolitan character of Ouidah, arising from its coastwise connections with the Gold Coast, is illustrated by an incident in 1686, when one Gold Coast man, described as from Kormantin but ‘an ancient inhabitant here’, was murdered by another, from Elmina, the latter having been sent to collect a debt owed by the first man to a third party in Elmina.¹⁴⁹ Some of these Gold Coast immigrants became prominent people in the local system: in the 1690s the official who served as interpreter to the English factory in Ouidah, who was also a substantial trader in slaves, called ‘Captain Tom’, was in origin from the Gold Coast.¹⁵⁰ This Gold Coast element in the population is reflected in the currency of local versions of the personal names used in the Akan languages of the Gold Coast which allude to the day of the week on which a person was born: as for example, Kwadwo, Kwamina, Kwaku and Kofi (given to boys born respectively on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday), which occur in Ouidah in the forms Codjo, Comlan, Cocou and Coffi.

       Early Ouidah

      By the 1720s, Ouidah was thus made up of the combination of Tové, the original Hueda village, with the three quarters associated with the European forts, Ahouandjigo, Sogbadji and Docomè. The size of the settlement, along what was presumably its longest axis, from the French to the Portuguese fort, was only around 1 km in length. In comparison, the Hueda capital Savi was larger, being estimated in the 1720s to have a circuit of over 4 miles, or 6 km; while the Allada capital was said to have a circuit of 3–4 Dutch miles, that is 12–16 English miles, or around 18–24 km.¹⁵¹

      The population of Ouidah at this time is a matter for speculation. The combined personnel of the European forts cannot have been more than a few hundred. In the 1710s the French fort had a total of 160 African slaves, including children as well as adults; by the 1770s this had grown only slightly to between 180–200, who were said to comprise 50 separate ‘families’, each living in its own ‘hut [caze]’ near the fort. The ‘European’ quarters also included free families whose members were employed by or provided services for the forts, who were perhaps roughly as numerous as the fort slaves; by c. 1789, when the French fort was reported to have 207 slaves, the total population of the French ‘village’, including free persons outside the fort, was thought to be nearly 500.¹⁵² The only scrap of evidence for the population of the settlement as a whole is an account of the establishment of the Portuguese fort in 1721, which refers to its location as being in a ‘quarter’ containing 300 households (‘hearths’), all the inhabitants of which were employed in the service of foreigners trading in the town.¹⁵³ This high figure seems likely to refer to the town as a whole rather than the two pre-existing ‘European’ quarters only, and suggests (on the analogy of 200 persons in 50 ‘families’ reported for the French quarter in the 1770s) a population of between 1,000–1,500; the addition of Docomè quarter with the construction of the Portuguese fort would have raised this figure, but the total population of the town is still unlikely to have reached as high as 2,000. In comparison, while no figures are available for Savi, the Allada capital in 1660 was thought to have 30,000 inhabitants.¹⁵⁴

      In addition, there was a substantial transient population, in the form of African officials and merchants from Savi, as well as Europeans from visiting ships, and especially slaves in transit to embarkation from the shore. The total number of slaves annually passing through Ouidah, which peaked at around 15,000 in the early eighteenth century, was in fact substantially higher than that of the resident population. Although many of these slaves passed through the town rapidly, significant numbers might be held for some time locally, in the European factories: the English factory in 1687 was said to have space to lodge between 600 and 800 slaves.¹⁵⁵

      In its spatial organization, Ouidah clearly differed radically from towns further inland that served as capitals of states, such as Savi and Allada (and later, Abomey), which were centred around the royal palace.¹⁵⁶ Ouidah was multi-centred, focused on the three European forts; in so far as it had a single centre, this was perhaps the Zobé market.¹⁵⁷ However, to what extent Ouidah yet formed a coherent community, rather than an assemblage of discrete settlements, is doubtful. In the early eighteenth century, the indigenous ‘village of Grégoué’ (i.e. Tové quarter) was still described as separate from the French and English forts, which were ‘a very short distance’ away.¹⁵⁸ The establishment of the Portuguese fort in 1721, immediately south of Tové and east of the English fort and Sogbadji quarter, produced greater contiguity of settlement, grouped around the market of Zobé; but the French fort with Ahouandjigo to the north-west remained physically distinct. In fact, it is not clear whether, within the Hueda kingdom, the town was administered as a unit or, perhaps more likely, the three European forts were individually responsible to the king of Hueda, and separately from the local indigenous authorities. There was a Hueda chief called ‘Prince Bibe’ or ‘Captain Bibe’, who is named along with the king as negotiating to permit the establishment of the French at Ouidah in 1671 and who in 1682 seems to have been residing at Ouidah, rather than at the capital Savi.¹⁵⁹ In the early eighteenth century, a list of Hueda chiefs who served as ‘governors’ of ‘provinces’ within the kingdom includes one entitled ‘Gregoué Zonto’, who was presumably the governor of Glehue;¹⁶⁰ and maybe this is the title which ‘Prince Bibe’ held.¹⁶¹ But whether he had overall administrative responsibility for the town, including the European forts, is doubtful; more probably, he was governor of the indigenous ‘village’ only.

      The operation of the European trade in the Hueda kingdom gave rise to a number of new official positions. Most important was that of ‘Captain of the White Men’, as Europeans correctly translated the indigenous title Yovogan, or Yevogan, which is already attested in the 1680s,¹⁶² and from the 1690s was held by a man called ‘Carter’.¹⁶³ There was also an assistant to the Yovogan called ‘Agou’, and separate ‘captains’ for the European nations with factories in Hueda: the French (whose captain was called ‘Assou’), English (served in the 1690s by ‘Captain Tom’), Dutch and Portuguese.¹⁶⁴ But these officials who dealt with European traders СКАЧАТЬ