Ouidah. Robin Law
these families. Other families in Ouidah that claim to derive from the time of the Hueda monarchy and to have returned to resettle there after initially fleeing from the Dahomian conquest include those of the priests of several important vodun, notably of the sea-god Hu in Sogbadji and the earth-god Hwesi in Ahouandjigo.115 This survival of a substantial Hueda element in the population of Dahomian Ouidah, recalled in local tradition, is confirmed by a contemporary report of 1780s that ‘there are still at Juda many of the former inhabitants or their descendants’, who were recognizable by their distinctive facial marks.116
The Dahomian conquest also, however, involved the introduction of new settlers and the extension of the town by the foundation of new quarters, thereby transforming the ethnic composition of the community. The principal new quarter established was Fonsaramè, which included the residence of the Dahomian viceroy, the Yovogan. This may have been created in part through the appropriation of land from existing quarters, since local tradition claims that the Yovogan’s palace occupies the site of the former residence of Agbamu, the supposed founder of Ahouandjigo quarter.117 But mainly it represented an extension of the town to the north. The second quarter associated with the Dahomian conquest was Cahosaramè, taking its name from the title of the commander of the Dahomian military garrison, which is said by tradition to date to the time of either Agaja or Tegbesu. This was originally, as noted earlier, a separate encampment outside the town, but it was later absorbed within the town as it expanded, presumably in the nineteenth century. The other six quarters of the town (Ganvè, Boya, Brazil, Maro, Zomaï and Quénum) were not founded until the nineteenth century.118
In the long run, at least, the Dahomian element was not restricted to the new Fon and Caho quarters, since individual Dahomians also settled in older quarters of the town. Families of Dahomian origin include, for example, the Adanle family in Sogbadji, related to Hwanjile, the official ‘Queen Mother’ of Tegbesu, under whose auspices its founder settled in the town.119 Overall, it was the Fon rather than the Hueda element which came to predominate in the town, though this presumably owed something to assimilation over time as well as to the original ethnicity of settlers: in the 1930s it was reckoned that persons who considered themselves Fon outnumbered Hueda by a ratio of nearly 2: 1.120 That the Ouidah community nevertheless continued to see itself as distinct from Dahomey and, by implication as a conquered people, subject to Dahomian rule as a foreign administration, reflected its problematic relationship with the Dahomian monarchy, rather than its biological origins.
Notes
1. For the Dahomian conquest of the coast, see Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 64–100; Law, Slave Coast, 278–97.
2. See discussion in Law, Slave Coast, 300–08; as against the view of Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 73–81, that Agaja’s original intention was to bring the slave trade to an end.
3. For the campaign, see esp. Robin Law, ‘A neglected account of the Dahomian conquest of Whydah (1727): the “Relation de la Guerre de Juda” of the Sieur Ringard of Nantes’, HA, 15 (1988), 321–8; Snelgrave, New Account, 9–18.
4. So according to the Gregorian (or New Style) calendar, but 26 Feb. by contemporary English (Julian, or Old Style) reckoning. The date is regularly given in local sources as 7 Feb. 1727: first in A. Le Herissé, L’Ancien Royaume du Dahomey (Paris, 1911), 297, n. The source of this date is unclear, but it is certainly incorrect.
5. Francisco Pereyra Mendes, Ouidah, 4 April 1727, in Verger, Flux et reflux, 145; Smith, New Voyage, 190–91.
6. A. Akindélé & C. Aguessy, Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire de l’ancien royaume de Porto-Novo (Dakar, 1953), 153; Robin Law, ‘A lagoonside port on the eighteenth-century Slave Coast: the early history of Badagri’, CJAS, 28 (1994), 38–41. Three of the 8 quarters of Badagry are of Hueda origin (one of them having the same name as one of the quarters of Ouidah, Awhanjigo [= Ahouandjigo]); the senior chief of Hueda origin, the Wawu of Ahoviko quarter, claims descent from the royal family of the old Hueda kingdom.
7. Snelgrave, New Account, 14–15.
8. ANF, C6/25, unsigned letter [Dupetitval], Ouidah, 20 May 1728.
9. Soglo, ‘Les Xweda’, 72–3. The name Mitogbodji, ‘ancestral dwelling’, was evidently given retrospectively, after its abandonment (Houéyogbé meaning, in contrast, ‘new home’). A contemporary account of the 1770s gives the name of the settlement of the exiled Hueda as ‘Ouessou’, which is not identifiable: de Chenevert & Bullet, ‘Réflexions’, 40.
10. Van Dantzig, Dutch and the Guinea Coast, no. 303: Hertog, Jakin, 26 June 1731. In 1733 the Hueda even made an unsuccessful attempt to seize control of Grand-Popo, burning half of the town before they were repelled: ANF, C6/25, Levet, Ouidah, 26 Aug. 1733 (lettre de nouvelles).
11. Van Dantzig, Dutch and the Guinea Coast, no. 252: Hertog, Jakin, 18 March 1727.
12. Francisco Pereyra Mendes, Ouidah, 4 April 1727, in Verger, Flux et reflux, 145.
13. Snelgrave, New Account, 115.
14. Sinou & Agbo, Ouidah, 115, 161.
15. Agaja was clearly not with the Dahomian army when it took Savi, since the Europeans taken prisoner there were taken to the king at Allada: Snelgrave, New Account, 17.
16. ANF, C6/25, [Dupetitval], Ouidah, 20 May 1728.
17. Van Dantzig, Dutch and the Guinea Coast, no. 274: Hertog, Jakin, 16 Feb. 1728, in Minutes of Council, Elmina, 23 March 1728. Assou’s involvement appears from ANF, C6/25, [Dupetitval], 20 May 1728.
18. Robin Law (ed.), Correspondence of the Royal African Company’s Chief Factors at Cabo Corso Castle with William’s Fort, Whydah and the Little Popo Factory, 1727–8 (Madison, 1991), no. 15: Thomas Wilson, Ouidah, 24 Feb. 1728.
19. ANF, C6/25, [Dupetitval], Ouidah, 20 May 1728; Law, Correspondence with William’s Fort, no. 19: Wilson, Ouidah, 29 April 1728.
20. ANF, C6/25, [Dupetitval], Ouidah, 20 May 1728; Law, Correspondence with William’s Fort, nos 19, 22: Wilson, 29 April (PS of 3 May), 12 July 1728.
21. Law, Correspondence with William’s Fort, no. 22: Wilson, 12 July 1728, PS of 19 July; ANF, C6/25, Minutes of Conseil de Direction, Fort Saint-Louis de Gregoy, 11 Aug. 1728.
22. See account of negotiations in ANF, C6/25, Minutes of Conseil de Direction, 26 Aug.–3 Oct. 1728.
23. ANF, C6/25, Dayrie, Jakin, 18 Aug. 1728, in Minutes of Conseil de Direction, 15 Aug. 1728; Dupetitval, Ouidah, 4 Oct. 1728.
24. Snelgrave, New Account, 115–20; for the date, see ANF, C6/10, Dupetitval, 17 March 1729, summarized in Robert Harms, The Diligent (New York, 2002), 217–19. This reconstruction of the sequence of events amends that in Law, Slave Coast, 288–9, which assumed that Snelgrave’s account of the destruction of the French fort related to the Dahomian attack on 1 May 1728; also that of Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 84, that the second attack which destroyed the fort, occurred later in the same month.
25. ANF, C6/25, Delisle, Dahomey, 7 Sept. 1728, in Minutes of Conseil de Direction, 13 Sept. 1728.
26. This is clear from the fact that the Dahomians were unaware of the reoccupation of Ouidah by the exiled Hueda in 1729, until Agaja ‘sent down some of his traders, with slaves’ to the European forts there: Snelgrave, New Account, 125.
27. Ibid., 123.
28. ANF, C6/25, ‘Mémoire de la Compagnie des Indes contre le Sr Galot’, 8 Nov. 1730.
29. Snelgrave, New Account, 123–8; for the dates, see PRO, T70/7, Charles Testefole, Ouidah, 30 Oct. 1729, which says that the Hueda occupied Ouidah from 23 April to 5 July [Old Style: = 4 May to 16 July, New Style].
30. Viceroy of Brazil, 28 July 1729, in Verger, Flux et reflux, 149 (the fort storekeeper, Simão Cordoso).
31. ANF, C6/25, ‘Mémoire de la Compagnie des