DANXOMEY: THE WEST AFRICAN KINGDOM
Article-2: Governance & The Port Capital of Ouidah
Article-1: The Kingdom & The Religion- https://medium.com/@srn.abuj/danxomey-the-west-african-kingdom-2a3d4fdb52b2
GOVERNANCE
In the Kingdom of Danxomey, the king represented the government, although he was assisted by his appointed dignitaries. The “Mingan” was equivalent to a prime minister. The 2 “Meo’s” were secondary ministers, and then there were several “Cabeceres” (heads) who carried around with them 1 to 4 horsetail hairs in their right hands, depending on their rank.
The King’s representatives in Ouidah were known as the “Vevoghan” and the “Agor”. They were figures of authority but had no decision-making capacities. They were essentially the King’s slaves in authority.
Consequently, despotism was the rule of the day. Similarly, to the Ashanti Kingdom, the King and his dignitaries carefully buttressed their authority with religious rituals. The King known as “the Lion of Abomey”, a cousin to the leopard, was a supreme deity. He took his meals in total privacy. He did not eat or drink in common company like other mortals. His authority was unlimited, he had implicit control over the life and welfare of his subjects. He determined their fate and their death. By the 19th century, these customs were gradually being phased out.
According to tradition, a phantom king reigned over the forests in whose name taxes were levied as well as all sorts of penalties for insignificant offences. All income, including other extortions, was attributed to this false king, but the revenue was paid to the actual King as an extra source of income.
The primary objectives of such a government were to maintain an efficient operation and to create wars. Consequently, the outflows far exceeded the inflows despite such impositions, and they had to resort to other methods to increase their income.
They resorted to devious means of organizing thefts of affluent households, or extortions from large traders. After all, there were only 2 categories in society, the common peasants, and the traders who interacted with the foreign suppliers. The authorities did not hesitate to block the movement of merchandise, seize, or impound it for no formal reason. So, traders would position paid civilians to intercept any authority operating on their routes, prior to collection and delivery. This was most common in Ouidah, the maritime capital, where all the foreign traders were located. Usually, avoiding the authorities was considered an economic crime.
Obviously, all these interferences and meddling were frustrating for the wealthy in particular, but there was no way they could avoid them, and this promoted the necessity of corruption to ensure the safe and easy passage of goods from one point to another. It must be noted that large traders did not necessarily have shops or warehouses like they do today, they stored their merchandise in their homes and sold to rural folks from their homes, subsequently falling prey to the thefts by the king’s agents.
In the spring, the King recruited the healthy and young males of his population for war. He did not hesitate to use them for the harvest of palm nuts and palm oil, the lucrative trade of the Kingdom. All the current species of palm plantations from Brazil to Malaysia and Indonesia, were taken by the Portuguese on their world explorations.
The King would intentionally neglect the maintenance of roads and drainage to paralyze the Europeans and leave them stranded.
Through a similar existing culture, it appears that any authoritative figure did not choose to impose his authority through law and order, but rather through aggravations and frustrations. The purpose of this is to validate their importance, and in order to resolve the situation, negotiate a financial settlement.
OUIDAH: The Port Capital
Ouidah is an ancient Kingdom that dates as far back as the 12th or 13th century. Its people are known as the Xueda (pronounced: Hweda), the Ouedah, or Pedah. In Portuguese archives, it is referred to as Ajuda, or in some cases as Juiza.
The Portuguese were the first settlers and they were instructed by their King to build the Forte (fort) de São João Baptista de Ajudá, also referred to as “Feitoria (outpost) de Ajudá” or simply “Ajudá”. São João Baptista de Ajuda was a small Portuguese colonial enclave of about 4.5 square kilometers, consisting of a factory and its surroundings, where authority was exercised by the Portuguese overseer. It was the smallest colonial territory in the world. (“The Guinness Book of Records”/Guinness Superlatives Limited, 1958/S.81: “The smallest colony in the world is the Portuguese enclave in the French West African Territory of Dahomey consisting of the Fort of St. John the Baptist. This has been occupied since 1680 and is garrisoned by one officer and a few men.”) Noting of course, that the Portuguese first arrived in Ouidah in 1486.
On the other hand, “Juiza” (judge) is an adjective in Portuguese referring to adroitness or uprightness “direito”, which can also be referred to as a straight course — in navigational terms. In fact, Ouidah’s location in the Bight of Benin, the Gulf of Guinea, in West Africa, is actually a direct or straight sailing course. Furthermore, the coastline is deep enough to allow the safe berthing of large merchant vessels at a short distance from the coastline. Since their main activity was fishing, producing sea salt, and trading, there were abundant fishing canoes to move out the short distance to meet the ships offload their cargo, and pick up their disembarking passengers.
The Ouedah people eventually created settlements dotted all across the coast of Danxomey, into Togo, and as far as Nigeria and Ghana. To the west, Grand Popo (“Kpo Kpo”, which means “to intercept”), was a vantage point to observe the foreign ships as they slowly approached the straight shoreline to their trading posts in Ouidah. They are also noted for their deity, “Dangbey” (the Python), and they have their Python Temple in the main square in Ouidah. In fact, most of the traditional carvings in wood and brass in Danxomey always reflect the Python, to this day. They are also identified through their facial tribal marks commonly known as “deux fois cinq” (two-by-five) in French. They are short double marks on the 5 parts of the face: the temple, the side of the eyes, and the cheekbones totaling 10 scars. Their ethnicity has retained the famous Portuguese sailor head gear that drops sideways with a big round pompon at the tail end of it. It may not come as a surprise to discover that the little drop ‘tail’ at the end of the traditional Yoruba caps may have also come from the Portuguese headgear they were exposed to. After all, they historically intermingled with the Danxomeyans for centuries through trade, and still do so to this day.
Ouidah was the first port city until the Portuguese created the second one “Porto Novo” (the New Port). It was known as a leading slave port from the 1670s until the abolishment of the slave trade in the 19th century. It also persisted as an important trading city well into the 20th century, when the French declared it its administrative capital, and the new Port of Cotonou the commercial capital. In addition, Portuguese was banned as the official language, and all Portuguese names were replaced by their French translations or equivalent, eliminating all cultural attachments to Abomey and Portugal. Ouidah became a remnant of the glory it once enjoyed, and this can be seen today through rusty relics, and dilapidating architecture in the old quarters. Most interesting are the masonry engravings on the old houses and mansions of the old family homes that whisper of better days gone by.
The Coast of Mina (old Togoland) and the Coast of Guinea (Danxomey) had been discovered by the Portuguese explorers since the 15th century. King Pedro II of Portugal (1667–1705) ordered his Governor of São Tomé and Príncipe, to erect a fortification in the town of Ouidah, to protect their growing bilateral trade. The Forte de São João Baptista de Ajudá was built in 1721. It was the last of three European forts built to tap the slave trade. The other two were the British Fort of the Royal African Company (RAC) constructed in 1650, and the French Fort. Following the legal abolition of the slave trade early in the 19th century (British Slave Trade Act of 1807, and the Portuguese Empire ban of February 25, 1869), the Portuguese fort lay abandoned most of the time. The King of Danxomey ceded it to French missionaries who occupied it between 1861 and 1865 until it was taken over by the Portuguese and permanently reoccupied in 1865.
In the aftermath of the creation of the French colony of Dahomey in 1892, the French authorities recognized Portuguese sovereignty over the fort due to the adamant insistence of Portugal. The Fort was garrisoned by a small detachment of troops from Portuguese Sao Tome and Principe until 1911. After that, only the Residente (governor), his assistant, and their families inhabited the Fort. Portuguese sovereignty was maintained over the minuscule enclave entirely surrounded by French Dahomey until it was seized by the authorities of the newly independent Republic of Dahomey in August 1961. On the deadline provided July 31, 1961, and unable to put up any resistance, the government of Oliveira Salazar in Lisbon ordered the last residents to set it on fire before abandoning it. His order was loyally fulfilled on the deadline date. Today, the Fort is part of the Ouidah Museum of History.
The Boca do Rei tributary joining the Mono River, was a pivotal means of transportation and communication between the seat of the Kingdom and its maritime capital. When the Portuguese first arrived, they were impressed by the Danxomeyans. They explicitly declared that throughout their travels across the old world, nowhere was agriculture as developed in China, as it was in Danxomey. In those days, most world societies were rural farmers or petty traders. Observing the influx of unknown regional traders into the port capital, and the continual influx of international foreigners also, they confirmed that the Danxomeyans were as good as the Venetian traders of Europe. This was further reinforced, when they discovered that the biggest local traders were women, and they had a primitive system of banking they traditionally applied, and still apply until now, called the “Tontine”. All the women members contributed an equal monthly amount. The total sum was paid to each woman in turn, which she used to increase her trading capital. A monthly interest was paid for the sum to the Tontine Manager. This constituted a reserve, for any member who required an urgent loan. Again, an interest was paid on that as well. This reserve increased over the years and cushioned their trade.
When the demand increased for their palm nuts and palm oil, a royal edict was issued obliging each family to plant one Palm tree for every male child that was born. The nuts and the oil harvested were packaged in wooden drums that were easily rolled or carried short distances, and then dispatched by canoes to Boca do Rey, and to the port of Ouidah to be exported.
The Portuguese brought a native root plant from the native Indians in Brazil, referred to as “Mandioca” (Manioc or Cassava), it was introduced into Africa through Danxomey. Introducing this tuber in the staple diet of Indians was encouraged by the local agriculture that was so developed. The burgeoning trade that brought in regional traders was an opportunity to disseminate agricultural products through barter or sale. Cassava flour in Brazil is called “Farofa”. The same word still exists in the local Fon dialect to describe the same product that is fine and white and comes from the highlands of Savalou, beyond Abomey. It is usually eaten with water or milk, roasted groundnuts, and a pinch of sugar. Africans in general do not adhere to a large intake of sugar, they believe it contributes to constipation and piles. It is only recently that this reservation has started changing. The coarser, yellower type from the Mono Region, is referred to as “Gari”. It is a staple in diets across West Africa _ and perhaps, beyond.
Since then, Cassava made its way to Togo and Nigeria. The Germans were so impressed with the organized plantations in the Region of Togo, that they established a pharmaceutical industry in the late 19th century, to extract the starch and manufacture the tablet. Today, Nigeria is the largest producer of Cassava in the world.
Other produce imported by the Portuguese were horticultural fruits, like “Sapotille” (Sapodilla, Graviola, Saplinger tree, or Annaceae family); the wild, pink water apple which is abundantly found in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The last 2 products are mostly found around Porto Novo.
If cocoa was local produce when the French arrived in Danxomey in the 18th century, and it is said that it was not native to Africa prior to that, then we can surely assume that the Portuguese brought it in the 15th century during their trade with the Kingdom. The existing species in the Porto Novo region correspond to the original in Brazil. We can also deduct that it spread to Nigeria and Togo from Danxomey and not from Ghana.
The local candies produced culturally from groundnuts, cassava, and coconuts are obviously adopted from the Brazilian liberated slaves who sought to trace their roots back to Danxomey through the ports of Ouidah and Porto Novo. Nowhere else have I observed such candies along the West Coast except in modern Benin.
The Africans taken as slaves to Brazil who returned, and the descendants of Brazilian and Portuguese slave traders who settled in the region that is now Benin, Togo, and Nigeria in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are all known as “Agudas”. In fact, Aguda is taken from the Portuguese “Algodaon” (cotton). They distinguished themselves by wearing expensive fabrics in lace and cotton as a wrap-around, over a discreet and modest overall covering their torso. At the time, the locals simply wore a wraparound covering only the lower parts of their bodies. The expensive wraparound became known as “Agbada”- even as far as western and northern Nigeria today.
Ouidah unsuccessfully attempted to break off from the Kingdom in the 17th century. From then until the turn of the 20th century, it remained the maritime and commercial capital of the Kingdom, and second in importance to the seat of the Danxomean King in Abomey, approximately 100 km inland, connected through a tributary of the Mono River at the “Boca do Rei” (the King’s Mouth), where he arrived with a flotilla of escorting vessels with all the royal pomp and ceremony, and accompanying music announcing his arrival.
A chronology of all the major events in the Kingdom spanning 5 centuries, from the 15th to the 20th century, shall follow in a future article for recapitulation purposes. They shall briefly include all that has been mentioned here in detail.
Ouidah is still known by its old and original name of Glēxwé (Gle-houey), literally meaning “Farmhouse”. Apart from the Cotonou main port today, there are plans to either revive Ouidah as a new secondary port or Seme Podji, which is not far from Porto Novo. We would all like to see Ouidah regain the traditional glory it once enjoyed in international trade.
In every article, I provide a personal snippet or story to provide readers with an intimate picture of the subject concerned. There is a continuation to Ouidah in my next Article-3.
Sammy RNAJ
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