Ouidah. Robin Law
and urban history in West Africa’, JAH, 21 (1980), 269–77.
16. See David M. Anderson & Richard Rathbone (eds), Africa’s Urban Past (Oxford, 2000). This includes a preliminary treatment of the case of Ouidah: Robin Law, ‘Ouidah: a pre-colonial urban centre in coastal West Africa, 1727–1892’, 85–97.
17. For this classification, see Alfred Comlan Mondjannagni, Campagnes et villes au sud de la République Populaire du Bénin (Paris, 1977), 295–341; the ‘third generation’ being towns that served as administrative or commercial centres within the colonial system, and the ‘fourth generation’ the unique case of Cotonou as the modern economic and de facto political capital of Bénin. These ‘generations’, it should be stressed, are not to be understood necessarily as distinguishing among different groups of towns, since they may represent successive periods in the history of a single town: for example, Ouidah itself originated as a town of the ‘second generation’ but then developed as a colonial town of the ‘third generation’. The term ‘villes-forts’ seems unfortunate since, as Mondjannagni acknowledges (309–10), the European commercial establishments in them were not necessarily (and for example in Ouidah were not originally) fortified.
18. E. g. Bernard Bailyn, ‘The idea of Atlantic history’, Itinerario, 20/1 (1996), 38–44.
19. See John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680 (Cambridge, 1992).
20. Robin Law & Kristin Mann, ‘West Africa in the Atlantic community: the case of the Slave Coast’, WMQ, 56/2 (1999), 307–34; also Robin Law, ‘The port of Ouidah in the Atlantic community’, in Horst Pietschmann (ed.), Atlantic History: History of the Atlantic System 1580–1830 (Göttingen, 2002), 349–64.
21. E.g. Franklin W. Knight & Peggy K. Liss (eds), Atlantic Port Cities (Princeton, 1991).
22. See the studies collected in Law & Strickrodt, Ports of the Slave Trade.
23. Nicoué L. Gayibor, Le Genyi (Lomé, 1990); Sandra E. Greene, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A History of the Anlo-Ewe (London, 1996). See also Silke Strickrodt, ‘Afro-European trade relations on the western Slave Coast, 16th to 19th centuries’ (PhD thesis, University of Stirling, 2003).
24. Caroline Sorensen-Gilmour, ‘Badagry 1784–1863’ (PhD thesis, University of Stirling, 1995); Susan M. Hargreaves, ‘The political economy of nineteenth-century Bonny’ (PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1987); W.E. Wariboko, ‘New Calabar and the forces of change, c. 1850–1945’ (PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1991); A.J.H. Latham, Old Calabar 1600–1891 (Oxford, 1973); Ralph A. Austen & Jonathan Derrick, Middlemen of the Cameroons Rivers: The Duala and their Hinterland, c. 1600–c. 1960 (Cambridge, 1999).
25. Harvey Feinberg, Africans and Europeans in West Africa: Elminans and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast during the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1989).
26. Austen & Derrick, Middlemen, 1–4.
27. Feinberg, Africans and Europeans, 1–6, 155–8.
28. Rosemary Arnold, ‘A port of trade: Whydah on the Guinea Coast’, in Karl Polanyi et al. (eds), Trade and Market in the Early Empires (New York, 1957), 154–76; Karl Polanyi, Dahomey and the Slave Trade (Seattle, 1966), 96–139.
29. See also the emphasis on pre-colonial antecedents by John Parker, Making the Town: Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra (Oxford, 2000), xviii – xix; although the study itself focuses on the period of colonial rule.
30. On this, this study represents a more optimistic perspective than that of Ralph A. Austen, ‘The slave trade as history and memory: confrontations of slaving voyage documents and communal traditions’, WMQ, 58 (2001), 229–44.
31. Only the French fort has been the subject of detailed study: Simone Berbain, Le Comptoir français de Juda (Ouidah) au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1942).
32. Since the original foundation of this factory, in the 1680s, predated the Union of England and Scotland (1707), it is properly called ‘English’ in its earliest phase. Strictly, it later became ‘British’, but insistence on this distinction can tend towards pedantry, especially as the word for ‘British’ in Fon (as also in French) is in fact ‘English [Glensi]’; I have therefore continued to refer to the ‘English fort’ in conformity with local usage.
33. John Duncan, Travels in Western Africa (London, 1847); Frederick E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans (London, 1851); Richard F. Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (London, 1864).
34. Published in French translation by Pierre Verger, ‘Cent-douze lettres de Alfaiate’, in Verger et al., Les Afro-américains (Dakar, 1952), 53–99 (cited hereafter as ‘Dos Santos correspondence’). Recent enquiries in Ouidah failed to confirm the continued existence of this letter-book in the dos Santos household there; it may be in the possession of a family member resident outside the town.
35. Ibid., 21–3; with original Portuguese text in Pierre Verger, Os libertos: sete caminhos na liberdade de escravos da Bahia no século XIX (Salvador, Bahia, 1992), 121–4.
36. ‘Note historique sur Ouidah par l’Administrateur Gavoy (1913)’, ED, 13 (1955), 45–70; ANB, 1E146, ‘Recherches sur l’organisation intérieure du commandement indigène’, by Reynier, Ouidah, 1 Dec. 1917, published as ‘Ouidah: organisation du commandement’, Mémoire du Bénin, 2 (1993), 30–68.
37. Paul Hazoumé, ‘Aperçu historique sur les origines de Ouidah’, in 6 parts (apparently incomplete), in La Reconnaissance africaine, nos 4–5, 7–8, 10–11 (1925–6).
38. Casimir Agbo, Histoire de Ouidah (Avignon, 1959). Other examples of the genre are Venance S. Quénum, Ouidah, cité historique des “Houeda” (Ouidah, [1982]); Dominique Avimagbogbênou Quénum, L’Histoire de Glexwe (Ouidah) (Dakar, 1999).
39. Norberto Francisco de Souza, ‘Contribution à l’histoire de la famille de Souza’, ED, 13 (1955), 17–21; Simone de Souza, La Famille de Souza du Bénin-Togo (Cotonou, 1992).
40. Léon-Pierre Ghézowounmè-Djomalia Dagba, La Collectivité familiale Yovogan Hounnon Dagba de ses origines à nos jours (Porto-Novo, 1982); Maximilien Quénum, Les Ancêtres de la famille Quénum (Langres, 1981). See also a shorter version of the Quénum family history: Faustin Possi-Berry Quénum, Généalogie de la dynastie Houéhoun à la collectivité familiale Azanmado Houénou-Quénum (Cotonou, 1993).
41. On ‘feedback’, see David Henige, Oral Historiography (London, 1982), 81–7.
42. The 12 quarters were listed by Reynier in 1917, although by then Boya and Ganvè were regarded as subdivisions of a single quarter. Subsequent amalgamations reduced the number of recognized quarters to six: by the 1930s, these were Tové, Ahouandjigo, Sogbadji-Docomè (amalgamated in 1936), Fonsaramè (now including Cahosaramè), Boya-Ganvè and Brésil (incorporating Maro, Zomaï and Quénum quarters). On the other hand, some subsections of the original 12 quarters have subsequently claimed autonomous status: e.g. the compound of the Hodonou family, formerly part of Fonsaramè, is nowadays regarded as a separate quarter, Hodonousaramè.
43. Burton, Mission, i, 58–116, chapter IV, ‘A walk round Whydah’.
44. Alain Sinou & Bernardin Agbo (eds), Ouidah et son patrimoine (Paris/Cotonou, 1991); see also the coffee-table spin-off, Alain Sinou, Le Comptoir de Ouidah, une ville africaine singulière (Paris, 1995).
45. For the recent trend to emphasize the role of African agency in the slave trade, see, for example, David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 7.
46. E. g. Lansiné Kaba, ‘The Atlantic slave trade was not a “black-on-black holocaust”’, African Studies Review, 44/1 (2001), 1–20.
47.