Hueda (Whydah) country and town: Archaeological perspectives on the rise and collapse of an African Atlantic Kingdom

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 42, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 387-410

  Norman, Neil L ^a  

^a Dept of Economics and Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy at the College of William and Mary   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77952202951     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (83)

1. For a detailed description of this event, see Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 284-86
2. Robin Law, "'The Common People Were Divided': Monarchy, Aristocracy and Political Factionalism in the Kingdom of Whydah, 1671-1727," International Journal of African Historical Studies 23, 2 (1990), 201-29
3. Kenneth Kelly was the first to use archaeological and ethnohistorical techniques to identify and explore the site of Savi. For a review, see Kelly, "Change and Continuity is Coastal Bénin," in C. DeCorse, ed., West Africa During the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives (London: Leicester University Press, 2001), 81-100
4. I.A. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbors 1708-1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 79-80, suggests that Dahomean troops burned the last standing European trading lodge at Savi in April 1727
5. I.A. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbors 1708-1818 Ibid., 70-71, notes that 10,000-11,000 Huedans were made prisoner
6. William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London: J. and P. Knapton, 1734) estimates that after this raid the skulls of approximately 4,000 Huedans were piled in heaps within the Dahomean palace complex at Abomey
7. Robin Law, "'My Head Belongs to the King': On the Political and Ritual Significance of Decapitation in Pre-Colonial Dahomey," Journal of African History 30, 3 (1989), 402, suggests that this figure represents the totality of skulls taken in the battle along with those from later sacrificial victims. Robin Law brought to my attention that 4,000 is a figure commonly used by the Fon for "a large number" so the sum of 4,000 perhaps should not be taken literally
8. For Ouidah's rise after Savi's collapse, see Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving 'Port' 1727-1892 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004), Chapters 1 and 2
9. Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving 'Port' 1727-1892 Ibid., 66-68, notes a dissonance between historical accounts and twentieth-century oral accounts collected in Ouidah, the latter suggest a much more substantial Huedan defense against Dahomey in 1727, a longer period of Huedan struggle against Dahomey perhaps stretching into the 1740s, and heightened continuity between pre-1727 community at Ouidah and post-1727
10. For recent reviews of the historiography of the region, see Law, Slave Coast
11. and Patrick Manning, Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640-1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), Chapters 1 and 2
12. For the historiography of the town of Ouidah, see Law, Ouidah, Chapters 1 and 2. Adrien Sogolo, pers. comm., 12 December 2005, suggested that Agaja moved the Sogolo family from the Abomey plateau to Savi shortly after the sacking of Savi for the explicit purpose of monitoring and managing the area for the Dahomean stool
13. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbors, 50-52, argues that the most important reason for Hueda's failure was "irreconcilable enmity between traditional chiefs" alongside its lack of a centralized army controlled by the king as well as the fact that regional Huedan political leaders collected taxes in the name of the Huedan king while diverting some of those resources to their own interests at the expense of the broader polity
14. Law, Slave Coast, and Ouidah, 46-49, largely amplify and extend Akinjogbin's interpretations on the collapse of the kingdom
15. David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 184, conversely suggests that the question remain open over why the kingdom of Hueda, with income from its Atlantic trade and significant military capability, never gained regional prominence, and collapsed so completely in 1727
16. See also Robin Law, "Problems of Plagiarism, Harmonization, and Misunderstanding in Contemporary European Sources: Early (Pre-1680s) Sources for the 'Slave Coast' of West Africa,Paideuma 33 (1987), 337-58 for a discussion of Huedan historiography and issues with specific documentary sources
17. Willem Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, Divided into the Gold, the Slave, and the Ivory Coasts (London: J. Knapton, 1705), 315, records that "this [Huedan] Country is so very populous, that in one Village alone, as the King's, or any of his Viceroy's villages (for instance) there are as many People as in a common Kingdom on the Gold Coast."
18. For a review, see Adria LaViolette and Jeffrey Fleisher, "The Archaeology of Sub-Saharan Urbanism: Cities and their Countrysides," in Ann B. Stahl, ed., African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 327-52
19. Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, 10-14 suggests that Huedans mounted little defense against the Dahomean advance troops other than making sacrifices to the Huedan tutelary deity Dangbe at the waterway north of Savi
20. 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," History in Africa 15 (1988), 325, drawing from the account of Sieur Ringard of Nantes, who arrived in Hueda on March 3 of 1727, suggests that a large Huedan force engaged the Dahomean troops north of Savi at the aforementioned river on March 5 and 6, and only after they were soundly defeated in these campaigns did the populace break and flee the area
21. Christopher DeCorse, An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400-1900 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001)
22. David Anderson and Richard Rathbone, "Urban Africa: Histories in the Making," in David Anderson and Richard Rathbone, eds., Africa's Urban Past (London: James Curry, 2000)
23. Susan McIntosh and Roderick McIntosh, "Cities without Citadels: Understanding Origins along the Middle Niger," in Thurston Shaw, Paul Sinclair, Bassey Andah, and Alex Okpoko, eds., The Archaeology of Africa: Food, Metals, and Towns (New York: Routledge, 1995), 622-41
24. Smith, A New Voyage, 193
25. Kenneth G. Kelly, "Transformation and Continuity in Savi, a West African Trade Town: An Archaeological Investigation of Cultural Change on the Coast of Bénin during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries" (Ph.D. thesis. University of California, Los Angeles, 1995)
26. See Kenneth G. Kelly, "Change and Continuity in Coastal Bénin," in Christopher R. DeCorse, ed., West Africa During the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives (London: University of Leicester Press, 2001), 81-100
27. and Kenneth G. Kelly, "Indigenous Responses to Colonial Encounters on the West African Coast: Hueda and Dahomey from the 17th through 19th Centuries," in C.L. Lyons and J. Papadopoulos, eds., The Archaeology of Colonialism (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2002), 96-120
28. Norman, "An Archaeology of West African Atlanticization."
29. Suzanne Blier "Razing the Roof: The Imperative of Building Destruction in Danhomè (Dahomey)," in Tony Atkin and Joseph Rykwert, eds., Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2005), 165-84, suggests that there is a general trend in the region of southern and central Bénin of razing houses by fire and building atop the ashes of one's ancestral home. However, the archaeological work in the Savi countryside did not reveal recurrent incidence of fires alongside evidence of large scale rebuilding that would have accompanied such a residential pattern
30. For a review, see Kelly, "Indigenous Responses."
31. Robert Harms, The Diligent: A Voyage Through the Worlds of the Slave Trade (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 158, notes a slightly larger area for the Hueda Kingdom of sixty-four kilometers along the coast (east/west) and spanning forty kilometers inland (north/south)
32. John Thornton, Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500-1800 (London: UCL Press, 1999), 86
33. Astley, A New General Collection, 9, summarizing from the account of Des Marchais, reports that the residences of community leaders resembled towns, each of which was surrounded by radiating settlements: "Each of these twenty-six ... [chief towns] has fewer smaller villages, or hamlets, which are subordinate to it; and although the bounds of the kingdom are small, and consequently the provinces [proportionally] little, yet the country is so populous and full of hamlets, that the whole kingdom seems to be one town, divided into many quarters, and separated only by cultivated lands, which appear like gardens." The Astley account suggests that the king gave each of these twenty-six regional provinces to a prominent man of the kingdom who occupied a "Chief Town" within the provinces
34. See J. Cameron Monroe, "Continuity, Revolution or Evolution on the Slave Coast of West Africa? Royal Architecture and Political Order in Precolonial Dahomey," Journal of African History 48 (2007), 349-73
35. J. Cameron Monroe, "The Dynamics of State Formation: Archaeology and Ethnohistory of PreColonial Dahomey" (Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 2003)
36. Bosman, A New and Accurate Description, 339
37. Djidiohou-Agba, pers. comm. 3 July, 1999. Cf. Dominique Juhé-Beaulaton, "Sacred Forests and the Global Challenge of Biodiversity Conservation: The Case of Benin and Togo," Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2, 3 (2008), 351-72
38. Sandra Greene, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), records a close association between sacred forests and archaeological sites in southern Ghana
39. Gérard Chouin, "Archaeological Perspectives on Sacred Groves in Ghana," in Michael J. Sheridan and Celia Nyamweru, eds., African Sacred Groves: Ecological Dynamics and Social Change (Oxford: James Curry, 2008) 178-94, records a similar pattern
40. Suzanne Blier, The Royal Arts of Africa: The Majesty of Form (New York:Prentice Hall, 1998)
41. Neil L. Norman and Kenneth G. Kelly, "Landscape Politics: The Serpent Ditch and the Rainbow in West Africa," American Anthropologist 106, 1 (2004), 98-110
42. Kelly, "Transformation and Continuity," 216-20
43. William Bascom, "The Sociological Role of the Yoruba Cult-Group" (Washington D.C., American Anthropological Association, Memoir 63, 1944)
44. G.J. Afolabi, Yoruba Palaces: A Study of the Afins of Yorubaland (London: University of London, 1966)
45. J.B. Falade, "Yoruba Palace Gardens," Garden History 18, 1 (1990), 47-56
46. Eva Krapf-Askari, Yoruba Towns and Cities: An Enquiry into the Nature of Urban Social Phenomena (London: Clarendon Press, 1969)
47. Roderick McIntosh, "Archaeology and Mud Wall Decay in a West African Village," World Archaeology 6, 2 (1974), 154-71, for a discussion of terre pisé architecture and archaeological investigations of such architecture
48. Kelly, "Transformation and Continuity in Savi," 109
49. Peter Garlake, "Excavations at Obalara's Land, Ife: An Interim Report," West African Journal of Archaeology 4 (1974), 111-48
50. and Peter Garlake, "Excavations on the Woye Asiri Family Land in Ife, Western Nigeria," West African Journal of Archaeology 7 (1977), 57-95, records that archaeologically recovered architectural features in Western Nigeria were oriented between 10-23 degrees east of north
51. Given the finding of five fragmentary maize kernels at Loci 3, 5, and 7, it appears that maize was an element of the Huedan diet. However, future research focused on archaeological botanical remains is required to determine whether Patrick Manning's Early Growth Thesis (suggesting intense cultivation of yam and millet in the project area prior to European trade, and maize cultivation shortly after contact with the Portuguese in the fifteenth century
52. See Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, Chapters 1 and 2)
53. or Jouke Wigboldus's Impressive Early Seaborne Growth Thesis (which suggests a much later, 1470-1660, widespread adoption of yam and millet in the Dahomey Gap region with intensive exploitation of maize after ca. 1700 is more compelling
54. see "Trade and Agriculture in Coastal Benin c. 1470-1660: An Examination of Manning's Early Growth Thesis," A.A.B. Bijdragen, 28 [1986] 299-80)
55. For a discussion of the religious significance of these pits, and the other archaeological material associated with Huedan Vodun described below, see Neil Norman, "Powerful Pots, Humbling Holes, and Regional Ritual Processes: Towards an Archaeology of Huedan Vodun ca 1650-1727," African Archaeological Review 26, 3 (2009), 187-218
56. Thomas Phillips "A Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal of London, Ann. 1693, 1694, From England to Cape Monseradoe, in Africa; and Thence Along the Coast of Guinea to Whidaw, the island of St. Thomas, and to Barbados: With a Cursory Account of the Country, the People, and Their Manners, Forts, Trade, etc.," in John Churchill, ed., A Collection of Voyages (London: J. Walthoe, 1732), 224
57. Norman, "Powerful Pots."
58. Neil L. Norman, "Through the Medium of the Vessel: An Ethnoarchaeological Investigation of Ritual Earthenwares in Southern Bénin, West Africa" (MA thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, 2000)
59. Norman, "An Archaeology of West African Atlantization," 267-73
60. Monroe, "The Dynamics of State Formation," 294-98
61. Monroe, "Continuity, Revolution or Evolution."
62. For a discussion of the issue of taste in archaeology, see Ann Stahl, "Colonial Entanglements and the Practices of Taste: An Alternative to Logocentric Approaches," American Anthropologist 104, 3 (2002), 827-45
63. For an early example, see Gordon Willey, Prehistoric Settlement Patterns in the Viru Valley, Peru, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 155 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1953)
64. For a review, see Ann Stahl, "Political Economic Mosaics: Archaeology of the Last Two Millennia in Tropical Sub-Saharan Africa," Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), 145-72
65. th Centuries A.C.," Journal of Field Archaeology 23, 1-2 (2001), 27-43
66. Manning, Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 24-5, notes that states in the project area were in place prior to Portuguese contact in the fifteenth century, but that they were "smaller and more rudimentary" than later versions
67. Bosman, New and Accurate Description, 339
68. P.E.H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law, eds., Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, Volume 2 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1992), 635. Jean Barbot discusses being borne in a hammock between the beach and Ouidah
69. and Monroe, "Continuity, Evolution, or Revolution."
70. Jane Guyer and S.E. Belinga, "Wealth in People as Wealth in Knowledge: Accumulation and Composition in Equatorial Africa," Journal of African History 36 (1995), 91-120
71. Kenneth G. Kelly, "The Archaeology of African-European Interaction: Investigating the Social Roles of Trade, Traders, and the Use of Space in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Hueda Kingdom, Republic of Bénin," World Archaeology 28, 3 (1997), 77-95
72. For the similar active role of architectural elements in creating centering and empowering personal spaces among the Swahili, see Jeffrey Fleisher, "The Changing Power of Swahili Houses, Fourteenth to Nineteenth Centuries AD" in R.A. Beck, ed., Durable House Society Models in Archaeology (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007)
73. Blier, "Razing the Roof
74. Kelly, "African-European Interaction"
75. Norman and Kelly, "Serpent Ditch."
76. Hair et al., Barbot on Guinea, 639
77. John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West Indies (London: C. Ward and R. Chandler, 1737), 110, the English slaver who visited Savi in 1721, noted that king Huffon of Hueda had not left his palace for several years. Atkins suggests that one reason for the seclusion was a large "Dole" he owed to the people
78. For a similar description of the incorporation of Atlantic trade items into religious spaces, see Akinwumi Ogundiran, "Material Life and Domestic Economy in a Frontier of the Oyo Empire During the Mid-Atlantic Age," International Journal of African Historical Studies 42, 3 (2009), 351-385
79. For a discussion of this passage, see Law, Common People
80. Robert Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
81. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, eds., Modernity and Its Malcontents: Ritual and Power in Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)
82. Ann Stahl, "Dogs, Pythons, Pots, and Beads: The Dynamics of Shrines and Sacrificial Practices in Banda, Ghana, 1400-1900 CE," in B. Mills and B. Walker, eds., Memory Works: Archaeologies of Material Practices (Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press, 2008), 159-86
83. See also Peter Schmidt, Tropes, Materiality, and Ritual Embodiment of African Iron Smelting Furnaces as Human Figures," Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 16, 3 (2009), 262-82