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The Dahomian Conquest of Ouidah

The political and commercial situation on the Slave Coast was transformed by the rise of Dahomey, under its king Agaja (died 1740), who conquered Allada in 1724 and Hueda in 1727. This profoundly affected Ouidah, which became subject to Dahomey from 1727 and was left as its exclusive outlet for trade with the Europeans after the Dahomians destroyed the rival ‘port’ of Jakin in 1732.¹ The origins of the Hueda–Dahomey war of 1727 have been treated at length elsewhere, and detailed rehearsal would be out of place here; it need only be stated that the general view of contemporary European observers – that Agaja sought control of Ouidah principally in order to secure more effective and unrestricted access to the European trade – remains persuasive.² For present purposes, it is the consequences rather than the causes of the war that are of central importance.

The Dahomian forces invaded Hueda in March 1727, and quickly overran it.³ The capital Savi was taken on 9 March⁴ and destroyed; the European factories there, which had survived the initial sack of the town, were burned down by the Dahomians a few days later.⁵ Many thousands of the inhabitants of the kingdom were killed or enslaved and sold, and others fled, settling in communities along the coast to both east and west of Ouidah, where the lagoon and other inland waterways afforded a degree of protection against the land-based forces of Dahomey.There is thus a Hueda quarter, Houédakomè, in Porto-Novo, to the east, and a significant Hueda element also settled in Badagry, further east again.⁶ The Hueda king Hufon, together with many of his subjects, however, fled westwards, to found the kingdom later known as Hueda-Henji. They first took refuge, as reported immediately after the conquest, on ‘an island on the sea coast . . . lying near [Grand-] Popoe’.⁷ In early 1728 the place where Hufon was residing was named as ‘Topoy’, which may represent ‘Tokpa’, a generic toponym meaning ‘on the waterside’;⁸ but ‘Topoy’ was attacked and destroyed by the Dahomians soon after, and Hufon evidently removed to a less accessible site. Hueda tradition indicates that the initial settlement of the exiles was at Mitogbodji, an island in the southwest of Lake Ahémé; but Hufon subsequently moved his capital to Houéyogbé, further north, on the western shore of the lake.⁹ Presumably, this exiled Hueda community was originally subject to Grand-Popo, in whose territory it was settled, but relations with their hosts quickly deteriorated, leading to war in 1731, after which the new Hueda state presumably became independent.¹⁰

Map 3 Dahomey and its immediate neighbours

The conquest of Ouidah, 1727–33

After the fall of Savi on 9 March 1727, the victorious Dahomian army, pursuing the retreating Hueda, pressed on south to Ouidah, where it attacked and captured the Portuguese fort and laid siege to the French and English forts; the Portuguese fort was ‘demolished to the ground’ and its cannon carried off into the interior.¹¹ The Dahomians did not, however, press their attack on the other forts; the siege was lifted after a few days, and Agaja sent to assure the Europeans of his good intentions towards them and issued a proclamation threatening death to ‘anyone who came near the [French] fort or harmed the whites’.¹² The main body of the Dahomian army was then withdrawn from the Hueda kingdom, leaving only a garrison at Savi.¹³ Ouidah itself was neither garrisoned nor subjected to any form of Dahomian administration, being by implication left under the authority of the European forts.

Local tradition in Ouidah, it may be noted, claims that Agaja visited the town in person. A story is told that he paused under a tree, either in the pursuit of the defeated Hufon or after the conquest, in order to take his first drink of imported European gin, although this story is attached in different versions to two different trees, one immediately south of the town (called the ‘Captains’ Tree’) and one in the village of Zoungbodji, halfway to the beach.¹⁴ The contemporary evidence, however, makes clear that Agaja did not personally accompany the army that invaded Hueda in 1727;¹⁵ and there is no suggestion in the contemporary record that he did so on any subsequent occasion either.

The Dahomian conquest of 1727 was not definitive, since the displaced Hueda now established to the west continued to dispute possession of the country and enlisted the assistance of the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo, in the interior to the northeast, whose forces launched a series of invasions of Dahomey during 1728–30. In January 1728 Agaja was in negotiation with Hufon at ‘Topoy’, offering to allow him to re-establish himself in his capital Savi and to give him a share of the ‘customs’ levied from European ships; but Hufon, believing that the support of Oyo would secure his restoration in complete independence, rejected the overture.¹⁶ In February, a force commanded by Assou, the former ‘French Captain’ in the Hueda kingdom, encamped on the beach south of Ouidah;¹⁷ effective control was established, to the extent of intercepting the customs paid by European ships, and Dahomian messengers who came to Ouidah were assaulted.¹⁸ Subsequently, while Dahomey was distracted by an Oyo invasion, which presumably caused the withdrawal of the garrison from Savi, the Hueda even began to rebuild their capital. At the end of April, however, a Dahomian army reappeared in the area, destroyed the buildings which the Hueda had erected at Savi, and encamped north of Ouidah; at its approach the Hueda there fled, most of them back to Grand-Popo, but Assou and others taking refuge in the French fort. A detachment of the Dahomian army therefore proceeded, on 1 May, to attack the French fort, but it was repulsed after four hours’ fighting, with some assistance from the artillery of the neighbouring English fort.¹⁹ The Dahomians now withdrew from Ouidah, leaving the town for the moment in the control of Assou and the Hueda forces, and moved westwards to attack Hufon’s base at ‘Topoy’. However, they returned to Ouidah on 14 May and evidently reasserted their control there. Despite the earlier involvement of the French and English forts in the fighting against them, the Dahomian commanders again offered assurances to the Europeans that they had no hostile intentions against them but only against the Hueda; and also undertook ‘to spare the people belonging to the crooms [i.e. villages] near the forts [i.e. the three quarters of Ahouandjigo, Sogbadji and Docomè], for cargadoers [i.e. porters] and servants to the whites’. At the same time, they gave out that they did not intend any further action against the Hueda, but this turned out to be merely a ruse to catch the latter off guard, since a few days later they again attacked ‘Topoy’, which they destroyed on 16 May, although Hufon himself escaped. The Dahomians then, however, once again withdrew their forces from Ouidah, leaving only a detachment encamped at Savi, ‘to protect the King of Dahomy’s trade’.²⁰

Dahomian control of Ouidah was now threatened from another quarter, when in July an army from Little Popo arrived on the beach to the south; this was engaged in independent banditry, rather than supporting the Hueda against the Dahomians, intending ‘to help neither but to rob both’. It was understood to intend to march on Ouidah itself, where the French fort put itself in a state of defence against the anticipated attack. However, the attack on Ouidah never materialized, and the raiders withdrew after only three weeks, on the approach of a Dahomian army.²¹ Following the departure of this Popo force in mid-August, the Director of the French fort, Houdoyer Dupetitval, in view of the recent demonstration of Dahomian military dominance, resolved on a policy of conciliation with Dahomey, sending one of his subordinate officers on a mission to Agaja in his capital Abomey, to offer him assurances of friendship and to dissociate the French from the Hueda–Oyo alliance.²² Agaja for his part thought again of consolidating his conquest through the resettlement of at least part of the Hueda people. In August he was reported to have concluded an agreement with a son of Hufon, then at Jakin to the east, to install him as king of Hueda; and at the beginning of October he issued a proclamation encouraging the Hueda to reoccupy their former homes.²³

This attempt at a peaceful settlement once again broke down, however. Although Assou again led a party of the exiled Hueda to reoccupy Ouidah, he refused a demand from Agaja for his formal submission, and in consequence, in December 1728, a Dahomian army was dispatched against him. On its approach Assou and his troops again withdrew to the French fort, where the director Dupetitval, despite his earlier undertakings of support for the Dahomians, granted them refuge. The Dahomians therefore again assaulted the fort, and this time were assisted by the circumstance that the roofs of buildings within the fort took fire, threatening to ignite gunpowder stored in the magazine. The European personnel thereupon abandoned the fort, taking refuge in the English fort; but over 1,000 of the Hueda were killed in the subsequent explosion of the magazine, although Assou himself was also able to escape to the English fort. The Dahomians were repelled from the English fort by cannon fire, but were left in occupation of the French fort. Once again, however, the Dahomian army then withdrew, allowing the French to recover possession of their fort.²⁴

Although the campaigns of 1728 appeared to have decisively confirmed Dahomian military control over Ouidah, still no move was yet made towards setting up any permanent Dahomian presence in the town. In September 1728 Agaja took the first step towards establishing an administrative structure for Ouidah when he appointed three ‘captains’, one each for the three European forts, in imitation of the system that had operated in the Hueda kingdom earlier.²⁵ These officials levied customs, each from the European nation assigned to him, and also conducted the king’s own trade. However, they do not seem to have resided permanently in Ouidah but only went there when there was specific business to transact.²⁶ For most practical purposes, both of defence and of day-to-day administration, the town remained for the moment under the control of the directors of the European forts. The campaigns of 1728 had a decisive but contradictory impact on the attitudes of the Europeans in Ouidah. The English, on the one hand, concluded that the continuation of Dahomian control of Ouidah would be ruinous to trade; Charles Testefole, who became governor of the English fort in July 1729, actively encouraged the exiled Hueda to continue their attempts to recover their country.²⁷ In contrast, the French director Dupetitval, having suffered the weight of Dahomian military power in two attacks on his fort, resolved to align the French with what now appeared to be the winning side. When Hufon from exile sought European assistance for a further attempt to repossess his kingdom, whereas the English and Portuguese forts promised support, Dupetitval refused.²⁸

In 1729, under cover of another Oyo invasion of Dahomey and encouraged by Testefole, the Hueda made a further and more serious attempt to reoccupy Ouidah. They were reinforced by allies from Grand-Popo and led this time by Hufon in person, although with Assou again as a subordinate commander. The Dahomian garrison at Savi had been withdrawn to reinforce the national army facing the Oyo, and the Hueda-Popo force seems to have encountered no initial opposition, entering Ouidah on 4 May, and remaining in occupation of the town for over two months. But, once the Dahomians had seen off the Oyo, they dispatched an army to Ouidah, where it arrived on 16 July. Although Assou and the Popos made a stand, the bulk of the Hueda forces again fled without offering to fight; Hufon himself took refuge in the English fort and was later smuggled out of the country back to his retreat to the west.²⁹ Although the English director Testefole actively assisted the Hueda on this occasion, the latter evidently felt that the other two European forts in Ouidah had not been equally supportive, and took reprisals against their personnel. During their occupation of Ouidah, they seized and killed an official of the Portuguese fort, on the allegation that he had helped the Dahomians.³⁰ The French director Dupetitval was also kidnapped, on 29 July, and taken prisoner to the Hueda refuge in Grand-Popo, where he subsequently died, presumed to have been executed on Hufon’s order.³¹ Contrariwise, the English director Testefole, even after the withdrawal of the Hueda, continued to offer provocations to the Dahomians, eventually administering a flogging to one of their officials who visited the English fort. He was seized when he imprudently ventured outside the fort, held prisoner for some time at Savi and eventually tortured and executed.³² Presumably in connection with this incident, the Dahomians also attacked the English fort, in an engagement which lasted six hours.³³

Early in 1730 the Oyo again invaded Dahomey, and Hufon from his place of exile in the west gave notice to the Europeans at Ouidah that he intended to make a further attempt to repossess his kingdom, but on this occasion it does not appear that this materialized.³⁴ In fact, Agaja now opened negotiations with the king of Oyo, through the mediation of the director of the Portuguese fort at Ouidah, João Basilio, and Oyo made peace, abandoning the exiled Hueda to their fate. During 1730–31 attempts were made to arrange peace between Dahomey and the exiled Hueda also, on the basis of Hufon agreeing to become a tributary of Agaja, first by the governor of the English fort and then by the Portuguese director Basilio, but these came to nothing.³⁵ The Hueda continued to mount raids on the beach to the south of Ouidah, severely disrupting trade there: in May and again in July 1731, for example, they plundered the European traders’ tents on the beach, on the second occasion killing six Europeans whom they caught there.³⁶ By 1733 the Hueda seem to have established effective control over the beach, since ‘boys’ belonging to Captain Assou were then reported to be ‘serving’ in the tents set up on shore by two Portuguese ships trading there, and other Hueda were established in the Portuguese and English quarters of Ouidah itself. There is even some hint that Hueda control was formally recognized by Dahomey, the director of the French fort claiming credit with Assou for having interceded with Agaja on his behalf, seemingly to protect his interests in controlling the beach.³⁷

At the same time, the rudimentary administration of the European trade at Ouidah which Agaja had established was in some disarray. In 1732 the ‘English Caboceer’ at Ouidah was executed by Agaja, for reasons which the English were unable to discover but which were presumed to reflect internal tensions on the Dahomian side.³⁸ Relations between the Dahomian officials and the European forts were also bad; the ‘captain’ for the Portuguese, in unexplained circumstances, even made an attempt to seize the French fort. In 1733, however, Agaja decided to assert his control over Ouidah more effectively. As a first step, in January he summoned the directors of the three European forts to attend his ‘Annual Customs’ at Abomey; this attendance, which became an annual obligation thereafter, being probably intended to assert their status as holding office under Dahomian sovereignty. The Directors took the opportunity to complain against the three existing Dahomian ‘captains’, and Agaja in response replaced them with a single official, called ‘Tegan’.³⁹ This was evidently a title, rather than a personal name, being held apparently by three successive persons, down to 1745.⁴⁰ This new official was clearly concerned with more than just the conduct of trade, being referred to by the French, soon after his appointment, as ‘Governor of Gregoy [Glehue]’, implying that he exercised a more general administrative authority.⁴¹ His position therefore corresponded to the later office of Yovogan, ‘Chief of the Whites’, commonly described by Europeans as the ‘Viceroy’ of Ouidah, although the actual title of Yovogan does not appear to have been used for the Dahomian administrator of Ouidah until the late 1740s.⁴² The Yovogan’s residence was later to the north of the English fort and east of the French fort, on the site occupied nowadays by the Roman Catholic cathedral, the northern section of the town in which it is situated being still called Fonsaramè, ‘the Fon [i.e. Dahomian] quarter’ and being populated to the present by the descendants of Dahomian officials and merchants. The appointment of the Tegan probably marks the beginning of this Fon quarter in Ouidah.⁴³

In records of the English fort in the following year the Tegan is described as ‘a Chief Captain of War deputed by the King of Dahomey to reside among the Forts’, and as ‘the Viceroy or Commanding Officer for Dahomey residing among the Forts’, indicating he also had command of troops stationed permanently in Ouidah.⁴⁴ The installation of a military garrison seems to have occurred not at the time of the Tegan’s original appointment, but a few months later. In June 1733, in a decisive assertion of control over Ouidah, the Dahomians arrested about 80 Hueda in the Portuguese and English quarters of the town, and the next day a force of 400–500 Dahomian troops arrived ‘at the beach’ to the south and encamped there, seizing 40 ‘boys’ belonging to Assou who were employed by Portuguese ships trading there, all those taken prisoner being then carried off to Dahomian capital inland.⁴⁵ This report of the setting up of a military camp on ‘the beach’ probably relates to the establishment of a Dahomian garrison at Zoungbodji, actually midway between Ouidah and the beach; local tradition recalls the establishment of this garrison after the Dahomian conquest, to oversee the arrival of European traders, under a chief with the title of Kakanaku (or, in its usual French form, Cakanacou).⁴⁶ In contemporary sources, the Cakanacou is first attested in 1747, when the existing incumbent was killed in action and a replacement sent from Dahomey: his function is described as ‘General of War for the Beach’.⁴⁷ Zoungbodji was generally referred to by Europeans in the eighteenth century as ‘Cakanacou’s village’.⁴⁸

This assertion of Dahomian military control over Ouidah was complemented by efforts to conciliate and incorporate the exiled Hueda. As has been seen, Agaja had contemplated re-establishing the Hueda monarchy earlier: during 1728, he had first offered to permit Hufon to reoccupy his capital Savi and then to appoint a son of Hufon as king of Hueda. In the abortive negotiations with Hufon in 1731, Agaja again offered to accept him as a tributary, though whether the intention on this occasion was for him to be reinstalled in Savi or recognized as king over the Hueda in exile is not clear. However, Hufon died still in exile around the end of August 1733, and the succession to his kingship was disputed between two of his sons. One of the contenders, although able to occupy the royal capital, found himself besieged there by his opponent and contrived to send word to Agaja to offer his submission in return for Dahomian support. A Dahomian force marched to his relief, and he then went in person to Allada, where Agaja was currently residing, to pay homage to him, and received permission to reoccupy the old Hueda capital Savi, on condition of becoming tributary to Dahomey.⁴⁹ This settlement was accompanied by a return of some of the exiled Hueda to Ouidah, around 500–600 of whom resettled there, according to a later account, ‘under the protection of the Portuguese fort’, meaning evidently in Tové, the indigenous Hueda quarter of the town, immediately north of the fort.⁵⁰ Hueda tradition names the son of Hufon who succeeded him as king and submitted to Dahomian authority as Akamu.⁵¹ Local tradition in Ouidah also recalls the submission of the exiled Hueda to Agaja and their return to reoccupy their home country;⁵² the name of Akamu is also remembered there as having assisted in the resettlement of Tové quarter after the Dahomian conquest, and the Adjovi family traces its descent from Hueda royalty through him.⁵³

The Hueda–Dahomey wars, 1743–75

The settlement of 1733 was not in fact the end of the matter, since the attempt to reconstitute the Hueda kingdom as a dependency of Dahomey was not in the long run successful. The new king appointed by Agaja was not accepted as legitimate by most Hueda, and he eventually withdrew to Dahomey, where he died ‘universally despised’.⁵⁴ Agaja’s successor Tegbesu (1740–74) seems to have continued or revived the attempt to maintain a Hueda puppet monarchy under Dahomian suzerainty, since the records of the English fort at Ouidah report that in 1756 he appointed a ‘King of the Whydahs’ and sent him down to Ouidah, and in 1769 he proclaimed a new ‘King of the Whydahs’, named ‘Bangra’ (i.e. Agbangla, also the name of one of the pre-Dahomian Hueda kings), and sent him to Ouidah to be introduced to the European forts there.⁵⁵ Where these ‘kings of the Whydahs’ were ruling is not made clear; but a context is suggested by traditions among the exiled Hueda which record that, in the second generation after Hufon, the royal dynasty split, when a dissident prince called Amiton, who had gone to Dahomey to secure recognition as king but was rejected by the people, established a rival dynasty at Séhoumi, to the north of Houéyogbé.⁵⁶ The main body of the exiled Hueda at Houéyogbé, however, evidently remained hostile to Dahomey.

From the 1740s the exiled Hueda resumed their attempts to repossess their homeland by military force, and they continued to present a serious threat to Dahomian control of Ouidah down at least to the early 1760s. Their hopes of recovering possession of it were revived when Dahomey became involved in hostilities with the rising power of Gen or ‘Little Popo’, on the coast to the west, under its ruler Ashangmo, from 1737 onwards.⁵⁷ The Hueda soon established a close alliance with Little Popo, and perhaps became politically subject to it.⁵⁸ Dahomey’s position was further weakened by a renewed outbreak of war with Oyo in 1742–8. In 1743, when an Oyo army invaded Dahomey and the main Dahomian forces in Ouidah were withdrawn to meet this threat, the Hueda exiles, supported by allied forces from ‘Popo’ (meaning now, presumably, Little Popo rather than Grand-Popo), seized the opportunity to attack Ouidah, where they defeated the small Dahomian garrison remaining, pillaged and burned the town and blockaded the European forts. They occupied the country for more than three months before the Dahomians again drove them out. The Dahomian viceroy and the commander of the local garrison are both said to have been killed in this campaign, referring presumably to the Tegan and the Cakanacou.⁵⁹

The Dahomians believed that the European forts in Ouidah had again assisted the Hueda, and after the restoration of their authority there proceeded to take reprisals. The director of the French fort was seized and deported, on the allegation that he had refused to grant refuge in his fort to Dahomians remaining in Ouidah during the Hueda invasion.⁶⁰ Later in the same year, in June, the director of the Portuguese fort, Basilio, was also arrested, on the charge that he was in negotiation with the exiled Hueda and was harbouring Hueda emissaries within his fort; and at the same time the Gau, the commander-in-chief of the Dahomian army, laid siege to the Portuguese fort. Basilio was held prisoner for some time and released only to be deported from the country. Meanwhile, during his imprisonment, the Dahomian force attacked the Portuguese fort, on 21 July 1743; as had happened with the French fort in 1728, the roofs took fire and caused the powder magazine to explode, after which the Dahomians were able to enter the fort and massacre its inhabitants, including the returned exiled Hueda who had taken refuge in it; the African ‘head servant’ of the fort, who had led the defence in Basilio’s absence, blew himself up with gunpowder rather than surrender.⁶¹ Local tradition names the African leader of the defence of the Portuguese fort on this occasion as Amoua, though he is said to have been captured and killed by the Dahomians, rather than dying in the fighting.⁶² The demonstration of Dahomian power on this occasion was seemingly decisive for the future attitude of the European forts, which never afterwards ventured to support challenges to Dahomian authority.

Although Dahomian military control of Ouidah was thus decisively reasserted, Dahomian administration of the town was now undermined by serious internal divisions, which were part of a wider crisis of royal authority within Dahomey in the early years of Tegbesu’s reign.⁶³ The new Tegan appointed after the Hueda invasion in 1743 antagonized the governors of the European forts, and was arrested and executed by Tegbesu, upon their complaints, in July of the same year.⁶⁴ His successor as Tegan also alienated the European governors by his ‘oppressive conduct’ and, when they set out to the capital to complain about his behaviour, ordered their arrest and forcible return to Ouidah. Subsequently, it was alleged that he plotted to set himself up as an independent king in Ouidah, to which end he tried to seize the English fort in August 1745, but its governor was forewarned and refused him entry – although conceivably this was a false allegation contrived by the Europeans, as a means of revenge. However this may be, Tegbesu declared the Tegan an outlaw and dispatched military forces, which besieged him in his residence in Ouidah. The Tegan attempted to escape, but was killed in a second attempt to enter the English fort.⁶⁵ In the aftermath of this revolt, the title of Tegan was evidently suppressed, his successor in office being given the title Yovogan, ‘Chief of the White Men’, which then remained the normal title of the governors of Ouidah throughout the period of Dahomian rule. This title had existed in the Hueda kingdom earlier, but the office there had had purely commercial functions, dealing with the Europeans as traders; the ‘Chief of the White Men’ in Dahomey, in contrast, exercised political authority in Ouidah, including over the European forts.

Despite their defeat in 1743, the exiled Hueda also continued to pose a military threat. Later in the same year they raided the beach south of Ouidah, destroying the tents of European traders there; and at the beginning of 1744 there were rumours of a further attempt to reoccupy their homeland, although it is unclear whether in the event this took place.⁶⁶ Subsequently, further raids were mounted on Ouidah by forces from Little Popo, presumably operating in support of the exiled Hueda; and the Dahomians in response progressively strengthened their garrison in the town. In August 1747 a party of ‘Blacks from Accra’ (referring evidently to Little Popo, which had been founded in the 1680s by refugees from Accra) raided the beach south of Ouidah, killing most of the Dahomian forces posted there, including their commander the Cakanacou, but was then beaten off by the main garrison from Ouidah. Shortly afterwards, on a report that Ashangmo himself was marching to attack the town, the Dahomians sent down ‘another General of War Cockavo’, with instructions ‘to remain here to protect this place’; and later in the year the garrison was further reinforced, when the king sent down ‘another General of War Joehena for this place and Bunjam, another General of War for the Beach’.⁶⁷

Of the additional ‘generals’ mentioned, ‘Cockavo’ is evidently identical with ‘Caukaow’ or ‘Cakaow’, given later in the eighteenth century as the title of ‘the military officer who commands in Whydah’.⁶⁸ In the nineteenth century this title is recorded in a shorter form, Kao, nowadays generally rendered locally in a French form, ‘Caho’.⁶⁹ Dahomian tradition identifies the Caho as the general who commanded in Agaja’s conquest of Hueda in 1727;⁷⁰ and local tradition in Ouidah also associates the appointment of the first Caho with the original Dahomian conquest.⁷¹ The wording of the contemporary report, however, implies that it was an office newly created, or at least newly assigned to Ouidah, in 1747. Initially, the Caho seems to have been posted to Ouidah on a seasonal basis, rather than residing there permanently, since the English fort records down to 1755 refer to him as recurrently ‘sent down to take care of the country’.⁷² But, in the longer run, the office became localized in Ouidah. Unlike the Cakanacou, the Caho resided in Ouidah itself; his encampment is shown in a map of 1776 as close to but separate from the town, to the north-west;⁷³ the site is nowadays incorporated within the town, but still bears the name of Cahosaramè, ‘Caho’s quarter’. The significance of the appointment may have been not only reinforcement of the existing garrison at Ouidah, but also to remove operational command of it from the Yovogan. Of the officers sent to Ouidah later in 1747, the ‘Bunjam’ is referred to again in the following year, when the first holder of the title was replaced, and is then described more precisely as ‘2^d General of War for the Beach’.⁷⁴ This indicates that this officer served as deputy to the Cakanacou in command of the garrison at Zoungbodji; his appointment therefore presumably represented a strengthening of this garrison. ‘Bunjam’ in these documents is probably a miscopying of ‘Dunjam’, and represents the title Dognon, which is recalled in local tradition as that of the Cakanacou’s deputy.⁷⁵ The third name ‘Joehena’, however, represents ‘Zoheino’, which is recorded later as the title of one of the four leading officers of the main Dahomian field army.⁷⁶ His posting to Ouidah was evidently only temporary; in the following year, the Caho and the ‘Zoheino’ were summoned back to the capital, and the Caho alone (together with the replacement Dognan) returned to Ouidah.⁷⁷

Although Dahomey was able to make peace with Oyo in 1748, at the price of becoming its tributary, fighting against the exiled Hueda, supported by Ashangmo of Little Popo, continued. In January 1752 the Hueda again raided the beach south of Ouidah, but were ‘repulsed’ by the local Dahomian garrison; and shortly afterwards ‘Aproga General of War’ was ‘sent down to take care of the land’, the reference being to the Aplogan, the provincial governor of Allada to the north, from where forces were evidently sent temporarily to support the Ouidah garrison. In July or August 1755 they apparently attacked Ouidah itself, but were driven off by the local Dahomian forces.⁷⁸ In October of the same year the Hueda, this time assisted by the Popos, again raided the beach, where they seized several Europeans, and remained for two and a half days, defeating the local Dahomian forces and inflicting severe casualties, including ‘an army General, 3 Captains of War, several of the principal merchants, and many soldiers’; those killed on the Dahomian side on this occasion included the Caho, commander-in-chief of the Ouidah garrison, and the Boya, one of the king’s merchants. Ouidah itself was again attacked, or at least threatened, since the English fort recorded that its African personnel had been afraid to go out to buy provisions until reinforcements for the garrison arrived; once again the Aplogan came ‘down from Arda [Allada] on the first alarm’, this time followed shortly afterwards by the main Dahomian army under the command of the Gau.⁷⁹ The nervousness arising from this raid was still apparent at the beginning of the following year, when Europeans returning from attending the ‘Annual Customs’ at the capital were escorted from Allada to Ouidah by forces supplied by the Aplogan, ‘on account of the Whydahs’. Later in the year, in September or October, there was a further raid by the Popos (the Hueda this time not being explicitly mentioned), once more causing the Aplogan to be summoned down from Allada, followed again by the main army under the Gau.⁸⁰

The most serious attack in the series came on 12 July 1763, when a combined force of Hueda and Popo, commanded by a son of Ashangmo called Foli (‘Affurey’ in contemporary reports), crossed to the north of the lagoon and attacked the town of Ouidah itself. The Yovogan was wounded in the action and took refuge in the French fort. The town was abandoned to the invaders, who ‘set the suburbs on fire’ and were ‘preparing to burn the vice-roy’s quarters’, when they were checked by artillery fire from the English fort. The Dahomian forces then rallied and repelled the invaders, with great slaughter; 30 of 32 generals of the attacking army were killed in the action and its commander Foli committed suicide in his disgrace, the main Dahomian army under the Gau this time arriving only after the fighting was over.⁸¹ The tree under which Foli shot himself continued to be identified into the nineteenth century, and even beyond.⁸²

The war of 1763 did not mark the end of Hueda–Popo raids, but nevertheless represented a decisive defeat of the exiled Hueda and their allies, who were no longer able to present any serious threat to Dahomian control of Ouidah. After 1763, they gave up the attempt to dispute possession of the town, contenting themselves with raiding the beach to the south in order to disrupt the operation of the European trade, though they may have calculated that the destruction of the town’s commercial value would eventually persuade the Dahomians to abandon it.⁸³ In April 1767, for example, a party of Popos raided the beach and plundered goods landed from European ships which they found there, but did not advance any further; there was another raid in February 1768, and further attacks were feared, raising apprehensions for the security of the European forts at Ouidah.⁸⁴ In 1769 Tegbesu announced that he was ‘at peace with the Popoes’, but this was evidently only short-lived.⁸⁵ Between July and September 1770, the Hueda–Popo forces made no fewer than five raids on the beach, plundering goods and burning the Europeans’ tents and canoes. On a final raid they stayed four days, 16–20 September, provoking fears that they might attack Ouidah itself, where the French fort put itself in readiness against such an event; but no such attack materialized, the Hueda retiring upon the approach of a reinforcing Dahomian force, commanded this time by the Mehu, the second most senior chief of Dahomey.⁸⁶ Early in 1772 the Popos again seized control of the beach and interrupted communication between Ouidah and the shipping for an entire month, causing the main Dahomian army under the Gau again to be sent down to protect the town.⁸⁷

Later in 1772, Tegbesu enlisted the governor of the English fort, Lionel Abson, to negotiate peace with Little Popo; and in July the Mehu was sent down to Ouidah, invested with full powers ‘to settle all differences with the Popos’.⁸⁸ The exiled Hueda are not explicitly mentioned as parties to these negotiations, which suggests that they had been abandoned by their erstwhile allies. King Kpengla, who succeeded to the Dahomian throne in 1774, was able to go over on to the offensive against the Hueda. His opportunity was provided, as for Agaja in 1733, by a disputed succession to the Hueda kingship. Following the death of the reigning king, the throne was contested between two princes, Agbamu and Yé (these names being given as ‘Agbavou’ and ‘Eyee’ in a contemporary report). Agbamu initially seized control and drove out his rival, but the latter then appealed for assistance to Kpengla. Dahomian forces invaded the Hueda country and besieged Agbamu on an ‘island’, into which they eventually forced entry by building a causeway across the lagoon. Agbamu surrendered and was taken captive to Dahomey, where he was executed, his head being exhibited to a visiting European in the following year.⁸⁹

In Hueda tradition, the defeat and death of Agbamu in 1775 are recognized as marking the end of the kingdom’s independence and ‘the end of the resistance’.⁹⁰ In fact, it does not appear that the exiled Hueda community became formally subject to Dahomey. Although Yé was enthroned as their king, he was deposed in an internal coup soon afterwards, without the Dahomians attempting further intervention in his support;⁹¹ and in 1776 the Hueda were described as preserving ‘neutrality’, implying that they remained beyond formal Dahomian rule.⁹² Their military power, however, had been decisively curbed, and the regular raids they had mounted against Ouidah now came to an end; subsequent hostilities involved rather Dahomian raids on the Hueda in their place of exile, as on several occasions during the 1780s.⁹³ Little Popo to the west remained a threat for several years longer. In 1777 the king of Popo sent to Ouidah to give notice of the termination of the peace with Dahomey.⁹⁴ In 1778 and 1780 there were reports that the Popos intended to attack, causing the Europeans to bring their canoes north of the lagoon for safety; in 1781 the main Dahomian army under the Gau was posted to Savi as a precaution against an invasion, and in 1784 there were again rumours of an impending attack.⁹⁵ But, in the event, no attacks materialized. In 1789 there were fears that the Popos might attack Ouidah itself, causing the Posu, the second-in-command of the metropolitan army, to be sent down to defend the town, but again the reports proved false.⁹⁶ The threat from Little Popo was finally brought to a definitive end in 1795, when Dahomey allied with Grand-Popo to inflict a crushing defeat upon it.⁹⁷

No serious threat to Dahomian possession of Ouidah seems ever to have been offered from any other quarter. In 1787–8 there were reports that forces from Porto-Novo and Badagry, to the east, planned to attack Ouidah, but no attack in fact occurred.⁹⁸ Again, in 1803, there were fears of an attack on the town by enemy forces in the neighbourhood, and a false alarm caused the Yovogan to take refuge in the English fort, but no attack materialized, and a Dahomian force was despatched to chase off the raiders; although the attackers on this occasion are not identified in the contemporary report, they were probably also from Badagry.⁹⁹ Thereafter, no challenge to Dahomian control of Ouidah occurred for the remainder of the nineteenth century until the war with France in the 1890s.

The Dahomian conquest in local tradition

In the traditions of Ouidah, as recorded in the twentieth century, it is the campaign of 1743 under Tegbesu, rather than the original invasion of the Hueda kingdom by Agaja in 1727, which is regarded as representing the definitive Dahomian conquest of the town, although this campaign is commonly given the incorrect date of 1741, derived from published European sources.¹⁰⁰ The Ouidah traditions, however, present a distorted account of the Dahomian conquest, which in particular telescopes events that in fact occurred over several years into a single campaign. Although unreliable as a source for the actual events of the Dahomian conquest, these stories are illuminating of the way in which the Ouidah community viewed its historical relationship both to the pre–1727 Hueda monarchy and to the Dahomian state that replaced it, and therefore warrant extended treatment here.

Some brief accounts of local traditions concerning the Dahomian conquest were already recorded by European visitors to Ouidah in the 1860s.¹⁰¹ More extended accounts were recorded by French administrators in the early years of colonial rule, first by Gavoy in 1913, with supplementary material, from the perspective of the individual quarters of Ouidah, added by Reynier in 1917. The more elaborate account of the local historian Casimir Agbo published in 1959, which has become canonical, reproduces most of their material, but also supplements and revises it in significant ways.¹⁰²

One interesting, though unsurprising, aspect of these traditions is that they present a much more heroic account of Hueda resistance to the Dahomian conquest in 1727 than the contemporary accounts suggest. In the story as told in the traditions, Hufon is in fact alleged to have twice defeated the Dahomian forces sent against him by Agaja, mainly by virtue of his possession of cannon but also because he had arranged for the removal of the hammers from muskets he had earlier supplied to the Dahomians. Agaja is said to have been successful only at a third attempt, and then through treachery, employing agents in Ouidah to discover and send on the missing hammers for the muskets and to render Hufon’s cannon ineffective by pouring water on their supplies of gunpowder. These measures to undermine the Hueda forces are usually credited to a daughter of Agaja, called Na-Geze, whom he married to Hufon for this purpose. A variant story, however, credits the neutralization of Hufon’s cannon rather to Zossoungbo, the head of Sogbadji quarter of Ouidah, who, when summoned by the king to join the muster of the Hueda forces against the Dahomians, instructed his men to carry out this sabotage.¹⁰³ The tale of the Dahomian princess Na-Geze is a version of a widespread traditional stereotype, in which women given or taken in marriage betray the secret (material or spiritual) of a king’s power, and is more illuminating about general perceptions of the ambiguous position of women, subject to divided loyalties between their natal and marital families, than about the circumstances of the fall of Hueda; if it relates at all to Ouidah’s historical experience, it may reflect conditions under Dahomian rule, when royal women married to local officials and merchants were commonly perceived to act as spies for the king.¹⁰⁴ But the alternative story blaming the Hueda Zossoungbo may well represent a genuine recollection of the role of internal treachery, as recorded in contemporary sources. The emphasis on the decisive role played by imported artillery and firearms in these stories, on the other hand, evidently also serves purposes of local pride, by implication underlining the importance of Ouidah and its trade in supporting Dahomian military power after the conquest.

The Ouidah traditions also distinguish, more starkly than the contemporary accounts, between the original conquest of the Hueda kingdom in 1727 and the extension of Dahomian control over Ouidah, which is presented as being effected only after several years of further struggle. It is claimed that after 1727 the Dahomians, although now occupying the Hueda capital Savi, were initially unable to establish control over Ouidah, because the inhabitants of the latter were supported by the European forts with their cannon, so that possession of the town remained contested between the Dahomians and the Hueda – a representation which, as has been seen, although simplified and exaggerated, has some basis in events as recorded in the contemporary sources. Eventually, however, in the course of a clash in which the Hueda had been initially the victors, the tables were turned when the Hueda alienated the Europeans by firing on the English fort and killing its governor’s wife, provoking the European forts to turn their artillery on the Hueda, and the Dahomians were then able to conquer the town, in the process attacking and destroying the Portuguese fort. According to Gavoy’s version, the Hueda were led in this war by a chief called Foli, while the Portuguese fort was defended by Amoua, both of whom were captured and executed by the victorious Dahomians. Reynier adds that the forces of Ahouandjigo and Docomè quarters were led against the Dahomians by their respective founders, the royal princes Agbamu and Ahohunbakla, with Amoua merely a lieutenant of the latter; Agbamu as well as Amoua was killed, but Ahohunbakla survived to transfer his service to the Dahomians after the conquest. Agbo, however, synthesizes the traditional stories to rather different effect, presenting Agbamu as ‘king’ rather than merely chief of a quarter, with Foli as his subordinate military commander, implying that Agbamu was the successor to the Hueda kingship, who had set himself up as king in Ouidah after the fall of Savi.¹⁰⁵ In this version, therefore, it is the supposed overthrow of Agbamu in Ouidah in 1743, rather than that of Hufon in Savi sixteen years earlier, which is presented as representing the end of the Hueda monarchy.

These accounts, however, clearly represent a conflation of the campaign of 1743 with subsequent fighting against the exiled Hueda established to the west. ‘Foli’, as seen earlier, was actually the commander of the Little Popo forces who joined the exiled Hueda in their initially successful attack on Ouidah in 1763; and the story of the Hueda provoking retaliation from the English fort by killing the governor’s wife also belongs to this later campaign.¹⁰⁶ The displacement of the latter incident to the original conquest in local narratives was already noted in the 1860s.¹⁰⁷ Agbamu, on the other hand, was the name of the king of the Hueda in exile who was killed by the Dahomians in 1775. The traditional account thus runs together a number of originally discrete episodes, each of which was in its way decisive: the campaign of 1743 was the last occasion when the Hueda had been able temporarily to reoccupy Ouidah, that of 1763 was the defeat of their last attempt to repossess the town and that of 1775 marked the definitive subjugation of the Hueda community in exile. Together, they could reasonably be taken to represent the consolidation of Dahomian control over Ouidah, through the destruction of the independent power of the Hueda.

This representation also has the important implication of stressing continuity between the pre-1727 Hueda kingdom and the post-1727 Ouidah community and therefore the status of the latter as a victim of foreign conquest. Already in the 1860s, it was noted that the Dahomian conquest of Ouidah remained vivid in local memory and was recounted in terms that appropriated the leaders of post-1727 Hueda raids on the town as defenders of local independence, and even represented the Hueda invasion of 1763 as a local rebellion against Dahomian rule.¹⁰⁸ The sense of subjection to the Dahomians as foreign conquerors was evidently central to the self-image of Ouidah, despite the reality that, demographically, it became a predominantly Dahomian town.

The repeopling of Ouidah

Ouidah suffered considerable destruction in the Dahomian wars of conquest between 1727 and 1743. Local tradition recalls that Tegbesu, in the campaign of 1743, ‘completely razed the town’.¹⁰⁹ This is confirmed and elaborated by traditions relating to particular quarters: Docomè, the quarter of the Portuguese fort, was ‘pillaged and burned’ by the Dahomians and its inhabitants were killed or taken captive or fled to the west, while in Ahouandjigo, the quarter of the French fort, the inhabitants were ‘almost all massacred’.¹¹⁰ Only Sogbadji, the quarter of the English fort, is said to have escaped relatively unscathed, because Agaja gave orders for it to be ‘spared’, in return for the assistance which Zossoungbo, the head of the quarter, had allegedly given in the campaign against Hufon.¹¹¹

When Dahomian control of Ouidah had been firmly established, however, measures were taken to reconstitute the town. Tradition in Sogbadji recalls that Agaja charged Zossoungbo to invite those who had fled to return to the town. The traditions of other quarters also recall the repeopling of the town under Dahomian rule. In Ahouandjigo, it is said that the French complained to Agaja that the depopulation of the quarter by war had left them short of labourers, in response to which he sent them a new batch of 100 male and 100 female captives; the family that later held the headship of the quarter, Atchada, claims descent from the head of this new batch of fort slaves.¹¹² Other families in Ahouandjigo, however, claim origins antecedent to the Dahomian conquest, notably that of Agbo, hereditary servants in the French fort, which claims descent from the Hueda king Agbamu. In Docomè and Tové also, tradition stresses continuity with the pre-Dahomian community, despite the disruption of the Dahomian conquest. In Docomè, it is claimed that Ahohunbakla, the commander of the quarter’s forces against the Dahomians, survived the defeat and was invited by the Dahomians to continue to serve as intermediary in their dealings with the Europeans; Ahohunbakla in turn requested that a son of Amoua, his deputy commander, who had been killed in the war, should be associated with him in this role, and the headship of the quarter subsequently remained in the Amoua family.¹¹³ In Tové, following the defeat of Hufon, a man called Sale, who was married to a woman of the Kpase family, made his submission to Agaja, who charged him with recalling those who had fled from the quarter; Sale received from the Dahomian king the surname Tchiakpé, which is still borne by the family of his descendants in the quarter.¹¹⁴ Although there may be an element of fiction in the claiming of specifically royal descent, there seems no reason to question the Hueda antecedents of 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 Indes’, 8 Nov. 1730.

32. Snelgrave, New Account, 130–34.

33. PRO, T70/395, Sundry Accounts, William’s Fort, 30 June–31 Oct. 1729.

34. PRO, T70/1466, Diary of Edward Deane, Ouidah, 30 Dec. 1729 & 21 Feb. 1730.

35. PRO, T70/7, Brathwaite, Ouidah, 1 June & 16 Aug. 1730; João Basilio, Ouidah, 20 May 1731, in Verger, Flux et reflux, 153.

36. Basilio, Ouidah, 20 May 1731, in Verger, Flux et reflux, 153–4; Van Dantzig, Dutch and the Guinea Coast, no. 305: Hertog, Jakin, 2 Aug. 1731; Harms, The Diligent, 151, 202–4, 234.

37. ANF, C6/25, Levet, Ouidah, 26 Aug. 1733 (lettre de nouvelles): on a visit to Assou in his place of refuge in Popo, Levet reminded him of ‘what I did for him, with Dada [= Agaja], when the English Director wished to furnish canoes to all nations’.

38. Snelgrave, New Account, 154.

39. ANF, C6/25, Levet, Juda, 26 Aug. 1733 (nouvelles).

40. One European account, written in the 1770s, Robert Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomy (London, 1789), 40–48, treats it as a personal name; and this is followed by Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 102–3. But after the original Tegan (or, more probably, his successor) was executed in 1743, his successor was also called Tegan: ANF, C6/25, Levet, 20 Aug. 1743. It may represent togan, a generic term for provincial governors.

41. ANF, C6/25, Levet, Juda, 26 Aug. 1733 (nouvelles).

42. Norris, Memoirs, 36–8, 40, uses the title Yovogan for the viceroys of Ouidah before 1745; and this is followed, for example, by Akinjogbin, Dahomey, 102–3, 119–20. But, in fact, this is clearly an anachronism. In records of the English fort, the title Tegan was used down to Sept. 1745, while that of Yovogan (‘Evegah’) first appears in Jan. 1746: PRO, T70/703–4, Sundry Accounts, William’s Fort, Sept.–Dec. 1745, Jan–April 1746. Dahomian tradition asserts that the title of Yovogan was created by Agaja, but local tradition in Ouidah says by his successor Tegbesu: Le Herissé, L’Ancien Royaume, 42; Reynier, ‘Ouidah’, 51.

43. But note that local tradition attributes the foundation of Fonsaramè to the first Yovogan, Dasu, appointed under Tegbesu in the 1740s: Reynier, ‘Ouidah’, 51.

44. PRO, T70/402, Castle Charges at Whydah, 12 July–31 Oct. 1734.

45. ANF, C6/25, Levet, Juda, 26 Aug. 1733 (nouvelles).

46. Agbo, Histoire, 112–14. Agbo says that the title was created by Tegbesu in the 1740s, but other accounts say by Agaja earlier: e. g. Sinou & Agbo, Ouidah, 161. The title of Cakanacou still survives as that of the chief of Zoungbodji; nowadays he claims the status of king (and is sometimes even represented to be ‘king of Ouidah’).

47. PRO, T70/423, Sundry Accounts, William’s Fort, May–Aug. 1747 [‘Cockracoe’]

48. E.g. ANF, C6/27, Gourg, ‘Mémoire pour servir d’instruction au Directeur’, 1791 [‘un poste appelé Cakeracou’]; John M’Leod, A Voyage to Africa (London, 1820), 102 [‘Kakeraken’s croom’]. The name Zoungbodji was first recorded in 1797: Vicente Ferreira Pires, Viagem de Africa em o reino de Dahomé (ed. Clado Ribeiro de Lessa, São Paulo, 1957), 28 [‘Zambugi’].

49. ANF, C6/25, Levet, Ouidah, 21 Nov. 1733; cf. the later account of Norris, Memoirs, 27–9 (who, however, misdates this campaign to 1741). Norris suggests that it was originally intended that this king should rule in the Hueda place of refuge to the west, but the contemporary account indicates that he was set up as king in the Hueda homeland, at Savi.

50. Norris, Memoirs, 29–30.

51. Assogba, Découverte de la Côte des Esclaves, 18.

52. Gavoy, ‘Note historique’, 56.

53. Reynier, ‘Ouidah’, 47; Merlo, ‘Hiérarchie fétichiste’, 17.

54. Norris, Memoirs, 35.

55. PRO, T70/1158, 1160, Day Book, William’s Fort, May–June 1756, 10 Aug. 1769.

56. Soglo, ‘Les Xweda’, 76–7. However, these traditions do not mention any king called Agbangla.

57. Law, Slave Coast, 316–18; Gayibor, Le Genyi, 104–13.

58. Norris, Memoirs, 26, says that the Hueda were ‘incorporated’ with the ‘Popoes’, so that the two became effectively ‘one nation’. Although often, as here, European observers referred to ‘the Popoes’, without specifying whether Grand- or Little Popo was meant, it is presumed that from the 1740s onwards references to ‘Popo’ as allied to the Hueda relate to Little Popo, rather than (as earlier) to Grand-Popo.

59. Norris, Memoirs, 36–9. This account (recorded a generation after the event) actually gives the titles of the Dahomian leaders killed as Yovogan and Caho, but this is presumed to be an anachronism, as these titles are not attested at Ouidah in the contemporary record until later in the 1740s.

60. ANF, C6/25, Levet, Ouidah, 20 Aug. 1743.

61. Ibid.; also Norris, Memoirs, 30–33 (who, however, misdates this incident, placing the capture of the Portuguese fort on 1 Nov. 1741).

62. Gavoy, ‘Note historique’, 57; Reynier, ‘Ouidah’, 39. The traditions may conflate two persons: Norris, Memoirs, 33, says that the second-in-command in the fort’s defence was captured and executed.

63. For this wider context, see Law, Slave Coast, 324–8.

64. ANF, C6/25, Levet, Ouidah, 20 Aug. 1743.

65. Norris, Memoirs, 40–47.

66. ANF, C6/25, Levet, Ouidah, 20 Aug. 1743, 31 Jan. 1744.

67. PRO, T70/423, Sundry Accounts, William’s Fort, May–Aug. & Sept.–Dec. 1747.

68. Norris, Memoirs, 36; cf. Archibald Dalzel, The History of Dahomy. An Inland Kingdom of Africa (London, 1793), 194.

69. Burton, Mission, i, 52 [‘Kawo’].