Ouidah. Robin Law

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СКАЧАТЬ of the system that had operated in the Hueda kingdom earlier.²⁵ These officials levied customs, each from the European nation assigned to him, and also conducted the king’s own trade. However, they do not seem to have resided permanently in Ouidah but only went there when there was specific business to transact.²⁶ For most practical purposes, both of defence and of day-to-day administration, the town remained for the moment under the control of the directors of the European forts. The campaigns of 1728 had a decisive but contradictory impact on the attitudes of the Europeans in Ouidah. The English, on the one hand, concluded that the continuation of Dahomian control of Ouidah would be ruinous to trade; Charles Testefole, who became governor of the English fort in July 1729, actively encouraged the exiled Hueda to continue their attempts to recover their country.²⁷ In contrast, the French director Dupetitval, having suffered the weight of Dahomian military power in two attacks on his fort, resolved to align the French with what now appeared to be the winning side. When Hufon from exile sought European assistance for a further attempt to repossess his kingdom, whereas the English and Portuguese forts promised support, Dupetitval refused.²⁸

      In 1729, under cover of another Oyo invasion of Dahomey and encouraged by Testefole, the Hueda made a further and more serious attempt to reoccupy Ouidah. They were reinforced by allies from Grand-Popo and led this time by Hufon in person, although with Assou again as a subordinate commander. The Dahomian garrison at Savi had been withdrawn to reinforce the national army facing the Oyo, and the Hueda-Popo force seems to have encountered no initial opposition, entering Ouidah on 4 May, and remaining in occupation of the town for over two months. But, once the Dahomians had seen off the Oyo, they dispatched an army to Ouidah, where it arrived on 16 July. Although Assou and the Popos made a stand, the bulk of the Hueda forces again fled without offering to fight; Hufon himself took refuge in the English fort and was later smuggled out of the country back to his retreat to the west.²⁹ Although the English director Testefole actively assisted the Hueda on this occasion, the latter evidently felt that the other two European forts in Ouidah had not been equally supportive, and took reprisals against their personnel. During their occupation of Ouidah, they seized and killed an official of the Portuguese fort, on the allegation that he had helped the Dahomians.³⁰ The French director Dupetitval was also kidnapped, on 29 July, and taken prisoner to the Hueda refuge in Grand-Popo, where he subsequently died, presumed to have been executed on Hufon’s order.³¹ Contrariwise, the English director Testefole, even after the withdrawal of the Hueda, continued to offer provocations to the Dahomians, eventually administering a flogging to one of their officials who visited the English fort. He was seized when he imprudently ventured outside the fort, held prisoner for some time at Savi and eventually tortured and executed.³² Presumably in connection with this incident, the Dahomians also attacked the English fort, in an engagement which lasted six hours.³³

      Early in 1730 the Oyo again invaded Dahomey, and Hufon from his place of exile in the west gave notice to the Europeans at Ouidah that he intended to make a further attempt to repossess his kingdom, but on this occasion it does not appear that this materialized.³⁴ In fact, Agaja now opened negotiations with the king of Oyo, through the mediation of the director of the Portuguese fort at Ouidah, João Basilio, and Oyo made peace, abandoning the exiled Hueda to their fate. During 1730–31 attempts were made to arrange peace between Dahomey and the exiled Hueda also, on the basis of Hufon agreeing to become a tributary of Agaja, first by the governor of the English fort and then by the Portuguese director Basilio, but these came to nothing.³⁵ The Hueda continued to mount raids on the beach to the south of Ouidah, severely disrupting trade there: in May and again in July 1731, for example, they plundered the European traders’ tents on the beach, on the second occasion killing six Europeans whom they caught there.³⁶ By 1733 the Hueda seem to have established effective control over the beach, since ‘boys’ belonging to Captain Assou were then reported to be ‘serving’ in the tents set up on shore by two Portuguese ships trading there, and other Hueda were established in the Portuguese and English quarters of Ouidah itself. There is even some hint that Hueda control was formally recognized by Dahomey, the director of the French fort claiming credit with Assou for having interceded with Agaja on his behalf, seemingly to protect his interests in controlling the beach.³⁷

      At the same time, the rudimentary administration of the European trade at Ouidah which Agaja had established was in some disarray. In 1732 the ‘English Caboceer’ at Ouidah was executed by Agaja, for reasons which the English were unable to discover but which were presumed to reflect internal tensions on the Dahomian side.³⁸ Relations between the Dahomian officials and the European forts were also bad; the ‘captain’ for the Portuguese, in unexplained circumstances, even made an attempt to seize the French fort. In 1733, however, Agaja decided to assert his control over Ouidah more effectively. As a first step, in January he summoned the directors of the three European forts to attend his ‘Annual Customs’ at Abomey; this attendance, which became an annual obligation thereafter, being probably intended to assert their status as holding office under Dahomian sovereignty. The Directors took the opportunity to complain against the three existing Dahomian ‘captains’, and Agaja in response replaced them with a single official, called ‘Tegan’.³⁹ This was evidently a title, rather than a personal name, being held apparently by three successive persons, down to 1745.⁴⁰ This new official was clearly concerned with more than just the conduct of trade, being referred to by the French, soon after his appointment, as ‘Governor of Gregoy [Glehue]’, implying that he exercised a more general administrative authority.⁴¹ His position therefore corresponded to the later office of Yovogan, ‘Chief of the Whites’, commonly described by Europeans as the ‘Viceroy’ of Ouidah, although the actual title of Yovogan does not appear to have been used for the Dahomian administrator of Ouidah until the late 1740s.⁴² The Yovogan’s residence was later to the north of the English fort and east of the French fort, on the site occupied nowadays by the Roman Catholic cathedral, the northern section of the town in which it is situated being still called Fonsaramè, ‘the Fon [i.e. Dahomian] quarter’ and being populated to the present by the descendants of Dahomian officials and merchants. The appointment of the Tegan probably marks the beginning of this Fon quarter in Ouidah.⁴³

      In records of the English fort in the following year the Tegan is described as ‘a Chief Captain of War deputed by the King of Dahomey to reside among the Forts’, and as ‘the Viceroy or Commanding Officer for Dahomey residing among the Forts’, indicating he also had command of troops stationed permanently in Ouidah.⁴⁴ The installation of a military garrison seems to have occurred not at the time of the Tegan’s original appointment, but a few months later. In June 1733, in a decisive assertion of control over Ouidah, the Dahomians arrested about 80 Hueda in the Portuguese and English quarters of the town, and the next day a force of 400–500 Dahomian troops arrived ‘at the beach’ to the south and encamped there, seizing 40 ‘boys’ belonging to Assou who were employed by Portuguese ships trading there, all those taken prisoner being then carried off to Dahomian capital inland.⁴⁵ This report of the setting up of a military camp on ‘the beach’ probably relates to the establishment of a Dahomian garrison at Zoungbodji, actually midway between Ouidah and the beach; local tradition recalls the establishment of this garrison after the Dahomian conquest, to oversee the arrival of European traders, under a chief with the title of Kakanaku (or, in its usual French form, Cakanacou).⁴⁶ In contemporary sources, the Cakanacou is first attested in 1747, when the existing incumbent was killed in action and a replacement sent from Dahomey: his function is described as ‘General of War for the Beach’.⁴⁷ Zoungbodji was generally referred to by Europeans in the eighteenth century as ‘Cakanacou’s village’.⁴⁸

      This assertion of Dahomian military control over Ouidah was complemented by efforts to conciliate and incorporate the exiled Hueda. As has been seen, Agaja had contemplated re-establishing the Hueda monarchy earlier: during 1728, he had first offered to permit Hufon to reoccupy his capital Savi and then to appoint a son of Hufon as king of Hueda. In the abortive negotiations with Hufon in 1731, Agaja again offered to accept him as a tributary, though whether the intention on this occasion was for him to be reinstalled in Savi or recognized as king over the Hueda in exile is not clear. However, СКАЧАТЬ