Ouidah. Robin Law

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ source: ‘Relation du royaume de Judas’, 27. Perhaps ‘zonto’ is a miscopying of ‘honto’, i.e. hunto, which meant in origin ‘ship’s captain’ (hun = ‘boat’) but, at least by the nineteenth century, was also applied to indigenous officials: see Burton, Mission, i, 121, n.

      161. This now seems to me more likely than that he held the title Yovogan, as suggested in Law, Slave Coast, 214.

      162. Law, English in West Africa, i, no. 478, enc., Accounts of Thorne, Glehue, 20 April 1681, giving the title in the form ‘Captain Blanko’ (from Portuguese branco, ‘white’). The indigenous title is given (as ‘Lievauga’) in ‘Relation du royaume de Judas’, 27.

      163. Bosman, Description, 359.

      164. See Law, Slave Coast, 207.

      165. Van Dantzig, Dutch and the Guinea Coast, no. 234: Diary of Ph. Eytzen, 22 April 1718; map of the Hueda kingdom in Labat, Voyage, ii; des Marchais, ‘Journal’, 40.

      166. Polanyi, Dahomey, 118, 123, 126.

      167. Law, English in West Africa, i, no. 476: Thorne, Glehue, 24 May 1681; see Thorne’s accounts in the ‘warehouse’ in ‘Agriffie’, in no. 478, enc.

      168. Barbot, On Guinea, ii, 637; Law, English in West Africa, ii, no. 812: Carter, Ouidah, 19 Sept. 1685.

      169. Polanyi, Dahomey, 123.

      170. ANF, C6/25, ‘Mémoire de l’estat du pays de Juda’, 1716.

      171. Des Marchais, ‘Journal’, 28v, 40v; Labat, Voyage, ii, 34–5.

      172. There was a Portuguese factory at Savi by 1727, when it was destroyed in the Dahomian conquest: Smith, New Voyage, 190.

      173. Phillips, ‘Journal’, 215–16.

      174. As argued notably by David Eltis: e.g. ‘Precolonial western Africa and the Atlantic economy’, in Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge, 1991), 97–119.

      175. For slave prices, see Law, Slave Coast, 178; the average price is assumed to be 80% of that for adult males. For wage rates, see Robin Law, ‘Posthumous questions for Karl Polanyi: price inflation in pre-colonial Dahomey’, JAH, 33 (1992), 415–16.

      176. Barbot, On Guinea, ii, 637.

      177. Canoemen hired from the Gold Coast were paid half of their wages in advance on recruitment, in gold, and the remainder at the termination of their employment, in goods, which they would presumably carry back with them to the Gold Coast: Phillips, ‘Journal’, 229.

      178. Labat, Voyage, ii, 33.

      179. Bosman, Description, 362a.

      180. For the latter estimate, see ibid. (given in the original in the form $1,500 per ship, around £375); see also analysis (with slightly different calculations) in Law, Slave Coast, 213.

      181. Des Marchais, ‘Journal’, 49; Labat, Voyage, ii, 81.

      182. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 184.

      183. Law, Slave Coast, 127–41.

      184. PRO, T70/51, Royal African Company to King of Hueda, 12 Aug. 1701.

      185. Barbot, On Guinea, ii, 636–7, 658. Barbot actually says that the French in 1671 had paid 100 slaves in ‘customs’ at Offra, but this figure was for two ships, the rate per ship being 50: see Delbée, ‘Journal’, 439–40.

      186. Phillips, ‘Journal’, 227. The term ‘caboceer’ (Portuguese cabeceiro, ‘headman’) was commonly applied to African officials.

      187. Damon, ‘Relation du voyage d’Issyny’, 107.

      188. Law, Correspondence from Offra and Whydah, esp. nos 4, 6, John Mildmay, Offra, 13 Oct. 1680 (referring to the possibility of recovering ‘your old debts from [the King] and some of the chief captains’); William Cross, Offra, Feb. 1681 (an unsuccessful attempt to refuse further credit to the governor of Offra).

      189. Law, Kingdom of Allada, 96–7.

      190. Bosman, Description, 348–9; cf. Phillips, ‘Journal’, 225–6.

      191. Albert Van Danztig, ‘English Bosman and Dutch Bosman: a comparison of texts – VI’, HA, 7 (1980), 284 [passage omitted in the English translation of Bosman’s work].

      192. Eltis et al., ‘Slave-trading ports’.

      193. Polanyi, Dahomey, ch. 7; see also Arnold, ‘Port of trade’. For a critique of Polanyi’s analysis with reference to market centres in the West African interior, see Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Polanyi’s “ports of trade”: Salaga and Kano in the nineteenth century’, CJAS, 16 (1982), 245–77.

      194. De Chenevert & Bullet, ‘Réflexions sur Juda’ (MS of 1776, in ANF, Dépôt des Fortifications des Colonies, Côtes d’Afrique 111), 5.

      195. ANF, C6/25, Levesque, mémoire (responding to a proposal to abandon the Ouidah fort), 6 July 1716.

      196. For details, see Law, Slave Coast, 238–42, 245–7, 252–60; idem, Kingdom of Allada, 52–61.

      197. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 184.

      198. Law, Slave Coast, 243–4, 247, 249.

      199. ‘Relation du royaume de Judas’, 13.

      200. N****, Voyages aux Côtes de Guinée et en Amérique (Amsterdam, 1719), 121; see also Bosman, Description, 396.

      201. Law, ‘“The common people were divided”’.

      202. Robin Law, ‘Warfare on the West African Slave Coast, 1650–1850’, in R. Brian Ferguson & Neil L. Whitehead (eds), War in the Tribal Zone (Santa Fé, 1992), 103–26.

      2

       The Dahomian Conquest of Ouidah

      The political and commercial situation on the Slave Coast was transformed by the rise of Dahomey, under its king Agaja (died 1740), who conquered Allada in 1724 and Hueda in 1727. This profoundly affected Ouidah, which became subject to Dahomey from 1727 and was left as its exclusive outlet for trade with the Europeans after the Dahomians destroyed the rival ‘port’ of Jakin in 1732.¹ The origins of the Hueda–Dahomey war of 1727 have been treated at length elsewhere, and detailed rehearsal would be out of place here; it need only be stated that the general view of contemporary European observers – that Agaja sought control of Ouidah principally in order to secure more effective and unrestricted access to the European trade – remains persuasive.² For present purposes, it is the consequences rather than the causes of the war that are of central importance.

      The Dahomian forces invaded Hueda in March 1727, and quickly overran СКАЧАТЬ