West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century

1967 ◽  
Vol 133 (4) ◽  
pp. 537
Author(s):  
C. W. Newbury ◽  
Daryll Forde ◽  
P. M. Kaberry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West African

The Dahomean Middleman System, 1727–c. 1818

1987 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ross
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Supply Problem ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Trading Partners

During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, European merchants bought more slaves in the Bight of Benin than on any other part of the West African coast. From c. 1720 until 1727 much of their buying was concentrated in Savi, the capital of a small Aja state called Whydah. When the Dahomeans overran Savi in 1727 they stopped the inland slave suppliers from travelling to the coast, prevented the local Hueda from going inland to collect slaves, and insisted that the Europeans bought slaves only from Dahomean dealers. In an attempt to make sure that the Europeans had nothing more to do with their former trading partners the Dahomeans burned the factories in Savi and forced their European occupants to retire to Grehue, Savi's port, a spot on the coast where the Europeans maintained a number of fortified warehouses.The middleman policy did not at first operate satisfactorily. There were two reasons for this. The first was that the Dahomeans were, in practice, unable to prevent the Europeans from continuing to trade with the Hueda. The second was that the inland suppliers refused to sell slaves to Savi's conquerors. The Dahomeans solved their ‘coastal’ problem in the 1740S by placing a garrison in Grehue. This garrison kept the exiled Hueda at bay and held the Europeans in what amounted to open captivity. The Dahomeans were never able completely to solve their ‘supply’ problem. In the 1730s and 1740S the inland merchants took their slaves to ports which opened up on the Bight to the east of Grehue. Only in the 1750s and 1760s did they channel substantial numbers of slaves through Dahomey. In the last decades of the century they again boycotted the Dahomean market. Dahomey therefore prospered as a middleman state only between c. 1748 and c. 1770.An examination of their eighteenth century trading suggests that the Dahomeans were a slave-raiding community whose members realised in 1727 that they would soon run out of fresh raiding grounds. They appear to have introduced their middleman policy in an attempt to ensure that they would continue to profit from slave trading even after they had ceased to be able to take large numbers of captives themselves. Although the policy was by no means a complete success, it was important in that it seems to have led the Dahomeans to begin placing garrisons in the territories they ravaged. It appears, in fact, to have been the pursuit of their middleman goals that led them to begin creating the often described nineteenth century ‘greater’ Dahomean state. The middleman programme ceased to be of much importance after c. 1818, when the fall of Oyo enabled the Dahomeans to resume raiding widely in unexploited territory.

Officers’ contributions to Britain’s anti-slavery culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Mary Wills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Naval Officers

This chapter examines officers’ contributions to the metropolitan discourses about slavery and abolition taking place in Britain in the early to mid-nineteenth century. Furthering the theme of naval officers playing an important part in the social and cultural history of the West African campaign, it uncovers connections between the Royal Navy and domestic anti-slavery networks, and the extent to which abolitionist societies and interest groups operating in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century forged relationships with naval officers in the field. Officers contributed to this ever-evolving anti-slavery culture: through support of societies and by providing key testimonies and evidence about the unrelenting transatlantic slave trade. Their representations of the slave trade were used to champion the abolitionist cause, as well as the role of the Royal Navy, in parliament, the press and other public arenas.

Credit in early nineteenth century West African trade

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. W. Newbury
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
European Origin ◽  
New Class ◽  
Merchant Class ◽  
Import Trade ◽  
Great Growth

Little attention has been paid to the great growth of trade in West Africa in the nineteenth century prior to the ‘economic revolution’ which began towards its close. As far as the export-import trade at the coast is concerned, British statistics show that between c. 1810 and c. 1850 the import of various manufactured staples increased by factors from at least 3 to as much as 50. The question arises as to how such a large increase in the volume of trade on the coast was financed in the absence of banking procedures. On the Senegal and Gambia and in the Niger delta, the traditional eighteenth-century practice by which visiting European merchants advanced credit to African brokers in goods continued. On the Gold Coast and at Sierra Leone and Lagos, however, a new class of local importers, of African as well as European origin, emerged and were able to secure credit from European exporters. But, though, less flexible than the newer system, the old system, with its tendency to monopoly on the part of both European traders and African brokers, seems to have permitted the greater expansion of credit. However, by the second half of the century, both systems were under strain and leading to conflicts over debts and jurisdiction, which are examined. Ultimately both were replaced by the European trading houses entering the interior trade through the use of paid agents, many of whom were recruited from among the new merchant class of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Lagos.

West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century

1968 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 872
Author(s):  
Graham Irwin ◽  
Daryll Forde ◽  
P. M. Kaberry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West African

Drake's Fake: A Curiosity Concerning a Spurious Visit to Asante in 1839

1984 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 223-236
Author(s):  
T. C. McCaskie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Present Note ◽  
West African ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
African Slave ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
Intellectual Interest ◽  
Unusual Occurrence

A wholly fraudulent source is an unusual occurrence in historical research. What is much more common and of much more intellectual interest is the discovery of a source that skilfully combines spurious invention with some regard for accuracy and convincing detail. This second kind of source is of course very familiar to historians of Africa, and the present note deals with a document of this type that, among other things, purports to offer a brief first-hand account of life in Kumase in 1839. I am chiefly concerned hare with the accuracy or inaccuracy of this piece of reportage; and--unusually for precolonial Africa--the document presently under review can be directly compared with a number of other precisely contemporary written accounts of life in Kumase.In his pioneering work published over thirty years ago on the suppression of the illicit nineteenth-century slave trade from Africa, Christopher Lloyd remarked on the paucity of first-hand accounts authored by slave traders. He also offered a number of judicious observations respecting the veracity or reliability of such accounts of this type as did exist. In his treatment of the workings of the illegal West African slave trade, Lloyd relied very heavily on one of the annotated editions of the memoirs of Théodore Canot (alias Théophile Conneau). Canot or Conneau is justly famous, and in the intervening years since the appearance of Lloyd's book this important source has become something of an exegetical industry among historians of West Africa.

Welfare Trends among the Yoruba in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Anthropometric Evidence

1990 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 521-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Eltis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Nutritional Status ◽  
Genetic Factors ◽  
West African ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Systematic Relationship

Analysis indicates that the Yoruba were taller than other West African peoples in the early nineteenth century. Disease, workloads, and environmental or genetic factors explain little of this differential. Rather, it appears due to a superior nutritional status made possible by Yoruba social structures, in particular, Yoruba towns. Yoruba stature declined both absolutely and relatively over the forty years corresponding to the collapse of the Oyo Empire. Regression analysis suggests a systematic relationship between these two events.

Travel Writing, Experiences, and Silences: What is Left Out of European Travelers' Accounts—the Case of Richard D. Mohun

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Barrett-Gaines
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
African History ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

Recent contributions to this journal have taken various approaches to travelers's accounts as sources of African history. Elizabeth de Veer and Ann O'Hear use the travel accounts of Gerhard Rohlfs to reconstruct nineteenth-century political and economic history of West African groups who have escaped scholarly attention. But essentially they use Rohlfs' work as he intended it to be used. Gary W. Clendennen examines David Livingstone's work to find the history under the propaganda. He argues that, overlooking its obvious problems, the work reveals a wealth of information on nineteenth-century cultures in the Zambezi and Tchiri valleys. Unfortunately, Clendennen does not use this source for these reasons. He uses it instead to shed light on the relationship between Livingstone and his brother.John Hanson registers a basic distrust of European mediated oral histories recorded and written in the African past. He draws attention to the fact that what were thought to be “generally agreed upon accounts” may actually reflect partisan interests. Hanson dramatically demonstrates how chunks of history, often the history of the losers, are lost, as the history of the winners is made to appear universal. Richard Mohun can be seen to represent the winners in turn-of-the-century Central Africa. His account is certainly about himself. I attempt, though, to use his account to recover some of the history of the losers, the Africans, which Mohun may have inadvertently recorded.My question is double; its two parts—one historical, one methodological—are inextricably interdependent. The first concerns the experience of the people from Zanzibar who accompanied, carried, and worked for Richard Dorsey Mohun on a three-year (1898-1901) expedition into Central Africa to lay telegraph wire. The second wonders how and how well the first question can be answered using, primarily, the only sources available to me right now: those written by Mohun himself.

Mapping the Malagueta Coast: a History of the Lower Guinea Coast, 1460–1510 through Portuguese Maps and Accounts

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 331-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Massing
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Iron Ore ◽  
West African ◽  
African History ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
World Demand ◽  
History Of

The Malagueta Coast can serve as a classic example of a region which was integrated into the world economy as a result of world demand for its resources—spices and labor in the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries, and again in the nineteenth century palm oil, cocos fiber, and labor—and has sunk into oblivion once the demand ceased. It is similar with Liberia's rubber and iron ore industry of the twentieth century. I had wanted to write this paper, which reconstructs the discovery and commercial exploitation of the coast through a systematic analysis of published maps and reports, ever since I walked and paddled along this coast in 1968. Furthermore I intend to review the discovery of the coast in the perspective of overall Portuguese policy and politics (interior and foreign). Last, but not least, this is to help students of Liberian and West African history with a review of the early sources—among which maps are by far the most abundant.The Portuguese legacy to Africa is enshrined in coastal toponymy until today. Avelino Teixeira da Mota in his “Topónimos de origem portuguesa” focused on Portuguese names still surviving in the nineteenth century, but I will focus here on contemporary fifteenth- and sixteenth-century nomenclature and what it might reveal about the African discoveries. The Portuguese initially were attracted by gold at the Rio d'Ouro (later Spanish Sahara), then slaves, and eventually malagueta—a substitute for Indian pepper—commodities known on the Lisbon market and which served to name the coasts: malagueta, marfim, ouro, esclavos. Diogo Gomes was the first to actually see Malagueta on the Gambia in 1445, but the malagueta coast was not discovered until after Henry's the Navigator's death in 1460.

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