from its intrinsic interest as one of the leading African slave-trading ports, the case of Ouidah also warrants study because the documentation available for its history is exceptionally rich, and serves to pose or illustrate some significant methodological issues of more general relevance in the field of pre-colonial African history, especially in the possibilities of combination of information from different categories of material: basically, as between foreign (European) contemporary and local traditional sources.30
The greatest mass of detailed documentation for the history of Ouidah derives from the European commercial presence, although the most useful sources are not in fact those deriving directly and specifically from the conduct of European trade. The most informative sources for the eighteenth century are the records of the permanently organized fortified factories which the three leading European nations involved – the French, English and Portuguese – maintained in Ouidah;31 among which, the best preserved are those of the English.32 These provide detailed documentation of the forts’ day-to-day activities and interactions with the rest of the community, and thus constitute a rich source for the social and political, as well as the narrowly economic history of the town. With the legal abolition of the slave trade in the early nineteenth century, these forts were abandoned, leaving something of a hiatus in the evidence until the 1840s. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, documentation on the town’s history is provided above all by the records of the British government, relating to its campaign to suppress the now illegal slave trade, which included the maintenance of a vice-consulate in Ouidah between 1849 and 1852. The French government also intervened in Dahomey, to defend France’s commercial interests, from the 1850s, and likewise maintained a vice-consulate in Ouidah from 1863. Some material is also provided by Christian missions that operated in the town: British Methodists in 1854–67, and French Catholics in 1861–71 and again from 1884. There are also a number of detailed published accounts by European visitors to Ouidah in this period, among which the most informative are those of the Scottish explorer John Duncan in 1845, the British naval officer (engaged in the anti-slaving squadron) Frederick Forbes in 1849–50, and the British consul (and pioneer anthropologist) Richard Burton in 1863–4.33
Source material of local provenance also includes some contemporary written material, deriving from the community of settlers from Brazil that was established in the town in the nineteenth century. Occasional items of correspondence from or addressed to Brazilian traders resident in Ouidah are preserved in overseas archives, especially in Britain among papers seized from illegal slave ships intercepted by the British navy. Little comparable material seems to have been preserved in Ouidah itself, although it is frequently claimed that written records which once existed were destroyed by fire or other hazards. A few items do, however, survive in local possession (or at least did so until recently), notably a letter-book of the Brazilian trader José Francisco dos Santos, containing correspondence from 1844–7 and 1862–71;34 and the will of Antonio d’Almeida, an African-born freed slave who had returned from Brazil to resettle in Africa, made out at Ouidah in 1864.35
More substantial, as well as of greater chronological depth, is the information provided by local traditions. Much of this material also exists already in written form. Two surveys of Ouidah traditions were made by French colonial officials, Marcel Gavoy in 1913 and Reynier in 1917; the purpose of the collection of this material was explicitly to understand the existing political system, in order to inform administrative arrangements under French colonial rule.36 Although these were published only many years later, they evidently circulated in Ouidah in typescript earlier, and have exercised considerable influence on local perceptions of history.
There is also a substantial tradition of local historical writing by African authors. Among such works by local writers, the earliest was a study of Ouidah ‘origins’ published in a Roman Catholic church journal in 1925–6, by Paul Hazoumé, a leading figure in the literary history of Bénin, who was in origin from Porto-Novo rather than Ouidah, but had worked for several years as a schoolmaster in the latter town.37 The most substantial local history (and an indispensable source and guide for the modern historian) is a book by Casimir Agbo, published in 1959.38 There are also a number of histories of particular Ouidah families. Traditions of the de Souza family, descended from the Francisco Felix de Souza mentioned above, were published by Norberto Francisco de Souza, a grandson of the founder and successor to the headship of the family, in 1955; and a more extended compilation of material from various sources was published by Simone de Souza, a Frenchwoman married into the family, in 1992.39 Substantial histories also exist of the Dagba family, descended from a man who served as Yovogan, or Dahomian governor, of Ouidah for an exceptionally long period in the nineteenth century (1823–1870s); and of the Quénum family, who were the most prominent indigenous Dahomian merchants in the town in the second half of the nineteenth century.40 This material available already in written form has been supplemented by local fieldwork undertaken by myself, during several visits to Ouidah between 1992–2001. Besides interviewing informants in the town, this has involved extensive conversations with experts in local history, including members of the staff of the Historical Museum of Ouidah: especially Martine de Souza, one of the museum guides (and a great-great-great-granddaughter of the original de Souza).
Something may be said here of the character of historical ‘tradition’ in Ouidah. First, it should be stressed that it is not exclusively ‘oral’; not only has much of it been recorded in writing, as has been seen, since the early twentieth century, but it has also evolved in interaction with written sources. Gavoy’s survey of 1913 already represents an attempt to combine local traditions with information derived from contemporary European sources; and this conflation of written and oral material has remained characteristic of local history writing in Ouidah ever since. Agbo’s Histoire, for example, cites the earlier studies of Gavoy and Reynier, together with published sources, as well as additional material of his own; the latter including reminiscences of persons with direct personal experience of the late pre-colonial period, as well as more strictly ‘traditional’ material relating to earlier times. In Ouidah, as in coastal West Africa more generally, the ‘traditions’ current nowadays in oral form are regularly subject to the influence of ‘feedback’ from written sources, including now especially Agbo’s own work.41
It should also be noted that local traditions provide relatively little in the way of a narrative of the history of the community as a whole, apart from certain major events, such as the original foundation of the town, the arrival of the first European traders, the Dahomian conquest in the 1720s, and the establishment in the town of Francisco Felix de Souza in the nineteenth century. Local historical memory is in general more focused on the component elements that make up the town. As it existed by the end of the nineteenth century, Ouidah comprised twelve quarters, each with its own distinct origins and history. These were: first, Tové, the original settlement, which predated European contact, on the east of the town; second, three quarters associated with the European forts which were established in the town in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries – from west to east (which is also the chronological order of their establishment) Ahouandjigo (French), Sogbadji (English) and Docomè (Portuguese); third, two quarters on the north of the town, which represent the Dahomian administrative establishment installed after the conquest of the 1720s – Fonsaramè, the ‘Fon [i.e. Dahomian] quarter’ (the location of the residence of the Dahomian viceroy), and Cahosaramè, ‘Caho’s quarter’ (originally the site of the Dahomian military garrison, whose commander had the title Caho); and finally, six further quarters were added in the nineteenth century, all on the western side of the town, and all founded by individual merchants – Ganvè, founded by the Afro-French trader Nicolas d’Oliveira; three quarters associated with the Brazilian Francisco Felix de Souza, called Blézin, or in French Brésil (i.e. Brazil), Maro and Zomaï, and two established by indigenous African traders, Boya and Quénum quarters.42 Gavoy’s survey thus follows a sketch of the history of the town by separate notes on its various quarters, while Reynier’s is wholly organized around the distinctive histories of the twelve quarters, and indeed most of its material relates to the origins and history of individual families
