scholarly journals Jenkins, Paul, ed. -- The Recovery of the West African Past. African Pastors and African History in the Nineteenth Century : Carl C. Reindorf & Samuel Johnson. Basler, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 1998, 212 p.

2000 ◽  
Vol 40 (160) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard SALVAING
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
Samuel Johnson ◽  
African History ◽  
The West

The Dahomean Middleman System, 1727–c. 1818

1987 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ross
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Supply Problem ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Trading Partners

During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, European merchants bought more slaves in the Bight of Benin than on any other part of the West African coast. From c. 1720 until 1727 much of their buying was concentrated in Savi, the capital of a small Aja state called Whydah. When the Dahomeans overran Savi in 1727 they stopped the inland slave suppliers from travelling to the coast, prevented the local Hueda from going inland to collect slaves, and insisted that the Europeans bought slaves only from Dahomean dealers. In an attempt to make sure that the Europeans had nothing more to do with their former trading partners the Dahomeans burned the factories in Savi and forced their European occupants to retire to Grehue, Savi's port, a spot on the coast where the Europeans maintained a number of fortified warehouses.The middleman policy did not at first operate satisfactorily. There were two reasons for this. The first was that the Dahomeans were, in practice, unable to prevent the Europeans from continuing to trade with the Hueda. The second was that the inland suppliers refused to sell slaves to Savi's conquerors. The Dahomeans solved their ‘coastal’ problem in the 1740S by placing a garrison in Grehue. This garrison kept the exiled Hueda at bay and held the Europeans in what amounted to open captivity. The Dahomeans were never able completely to solve their ‘supply’ problem. In the 1730s and 1740S the inland merchants took their slaves to ports which opened up on the Bight to the east of Grehue. Only in the 1750s and 1760s did they channel substantial numbers of slaves through Dahomey. In the last decades of the century they again boycotted the Dahomean market. Dahomey therefore prospered as a middleman state only between c. 1748 and c. 1770.An examination of their eighteenth century trading suggests that the Dahomeans were a slave-raiding community whose members realised in 1727 that they would soon run out of fresh raiding grounds. They appear to have introduced their middleman policy in an attempt to ensure that they would continue to profit from slave trading even after they had ceased to be able to take large numbers of captives themselves. Although the policy was by no means a complete success, it was important in that it seems to have led the Dahomeans to begin placing garrisons in the territories they ravaged. It appears, in fact, to have been the pursuit of their middleman goals that led them to begin creating the often described nineteenth century ‘greater’ Dahomean state. The middleman programme ceased to be of much importance after c. 1818, when the fall of Oyo enabled the Dahomeans to resume raiding widely in unexploited territory.

Early European Sources Relating to the Kingdom of Ijebu (1500-1700): A Critical Survey

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 245-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Limited Range ◽  
West African ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Early History ◽  
Critical Survey ◽  
African History ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Original Information

The history of the Yoruba, as is well known, is very poorly documented from contemporary European sources prior to the nineteenth century, in comparison with their neighbors Benin to the east and the states of the ‘Slave Coast’ (Allada, Whydah, and Dahomey) to the west. There is, however, one Yoruba kingdom which features in contemporary European sources from quite early times, and for which at least intermittent documentation extends through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is the kingdom of Ijebu in southern Yorubaland. The availability of contemporary European documentation for the early history of Ijebu is especially valuable since the historical traditions of Ijebu itself do not appear to be very rich.Such, at least, is the impression given by published accounts of Ijebu history: although a large number of kings of Ijebu are recalled, thereby suggesting for the kingdom a considerable antiquity, and though there is some recollection locally of early contacts with the Portuguese, it does not seem that Ijebu traditions record much in the way of a detailed narrative of the kingdom's early history. At the same time, the European sources referring to Ijebu present considerable problems of interpretation, particularly with regard to establishing how far successive references to the kingdom constitute new original information rather than merely copying a limited range of early sources, and consideration of them helps to illuminate the character of early European sources for west African history in general. For these reasons, it seems a useful exercise to pull together all the available early European source material relating to Ijebu down to the late seventeenth century.

Further Additions to Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland by Patricia Carson

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 81-89
Author(s):  
H. M. Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
West African ◽  
African History ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Hague ◽  
State Archives

This article is a supplement to a previous article on the same subject published in the African Studies Bulletin. Before I list further citations omitted from Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland, I will discuss, in some detail, the nature of the archival material deposited in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. I will attempt to enhance the brief discussions of Miss Carson while avoiding repetition of statements which seem clear and/or are adequately discussed in her book. The General State Archives, The Hague, includes two major collections of interest to the West African historian: the Archives of the West India Companies and the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast. Initially, one must realize that most of the seventeenth-century papers of both collections have been lost or destroyed, and that as a consequence there are many gaps among the existing manuscripts. For example, volume 81 (1658-1709) of the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast includes only manuscripts for the following times: December 25, 1658-June 12, 1660; August, 1693; and October 12-December 31, 1709. Also, most of the seventeenth-century material is written in script, whereas the eighteenth-century manuscripts, with some exceptions, are in more conventional hand-writings.

Travel Writing, Experiences, and Silences: What is Left Out of European Travelers' Accounts—the Case of Richard D. Mohun

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 53-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Barrett-Gaines
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
African History ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

Recent contributions to this journal have taken various approaches to travelers's accounts as sources of African history. Elizabeth de Veer and Ann O'Hear use the travel accounts of Gerhard Rohlfs to reconstruct nineteenth-century political and economic history of West African groups who have escaped scholarly attention. But essentially they use Rohlfs' work as he intended it to be used. Gary W. Clendennen examines David Livingstone's work to find the history under the propaganda. He argues that, overlooking its obvious problems, the work reveals a wealth of information on nineteenth-century cultures in the Zambezi and Tchiri valleys. Unfortunately, Clendennen does not use this source for these reasons. He uses it instead to shed light on the relationship between Livingstone and his brother.John Hanson registers a basic distrust of European mediated oral histories recorded and written in the African past. He draws attention to the fact that what were thought to be “generally agreed upon accounts” may actually reflect partisan interests. Hanson dramatically demonstrates how chunks of history, often the history of the losers, are lost, as the history of the winners is made to appear universal. Richard Mohun can be seen to represent the winners in turn-of-the-century Central Africa. His account is certainly about himself. I attempt, though, to use his account to recover some of the history of the losers, the Africans, which Mohun may have inadvertently recorded.My question is double; its two parts—one historical, one methodological—are inextricably interdependent. The first concerns the experience of the people from Zanzibar who accompanied, carried, and worked for Richard Dorsey Mohun on a three-year (1898-1901) expedition into Central Africa to lay telegraph wire. The second wonders how and how well the first question can be answered using, primarily, the only sources available to me right now: those written by Mohun himself.

Mapping the Malagueta Coast: a History of the Lower Guinea Coast, 1460–1510 through Portuguese Maps and Accounts

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 331-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Massing
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Iron Ore ◽  
West African ◽  
African History ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
World Demand ◽  
History Of

The Malagueta Coast can serve as a classic example of a region which was integrated into the world economy as a result of world demand for its resources—spices and labor in the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries, and again in the nineteenth century palm oil, cocos fiber, and labor—and has sunk into oblivion once the demand ceased. It is similar with Liberia's rubber and iron ore industry of the twentieth century. I had wanted to write this paper, which reconstructs the discovery and commercial exploitation of the coast through a systematic analysis of published maps and reports, ever since I walked and paddled along this coast in 1968. Furthermore I intend to review the discovery of the coast in the perspective of overall Portuguese policy and politics (interior and foreign). Last, but not least, this is to help students of Liberian and West African history with a review of the early sources—among which maps are by far the most abundant.The Portuguese legacy to Africa is enshrined in coastal toponymy until today. Avelino Teixeira da Mota in his “Topónimos de origem portuguesa” focused on Portuguese names still surviving in the nineteenth century, but I will focus here on contemporary fifteenth- and sixteenth-century nomenclature and what it might reveal about the African discoveries. The Portuguese initially were attracted by gold at the Rio d'Ouro (later Spanish Sahara), then slaves, and eventually malagueta—a substitute for Indian pepper—commodities known on the Lisbon market and which served to name the coasts: malagueta, marfim, ouro, esclavos. Diogo Gomes was the first to actually see Malagueta on the Gambia in 1445, but the malagueta coast was not discovered until after Henry's the Navigator's death in 1460.

scholarly journals Did the ancient Egyptians migrate to ancient Nigeria?

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jock M. Agai
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
West African ◽  
Samuel Johnson ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
African History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Literatures concerning the history of West African peoples published from 1900 to 1970 debate�the possible migrations of the Egyptians into West Africa. Writers like Samuel Johnson and�Lucas Olumide believe that the ancient Egyptians penetrated through ancient Nigeria but Leo�Frobenius and Geoffrey Parrinder frowned at this opinion. Using the works of these early�20th century writers of West African history together with a Yoruba legend which teaches�about the origin of their earliest ancestor(s), this researcher investigates the theories that the�ancient Egyptians had contact with the ancient Nigerians and particularly with the Yorubas.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: There is an existing ideology�amongst the Yorubas and other writers of Yoruba history that the original ancestors of�the Yorubas originated in ancient Egypt hence there was migration between Egypt and�Yorubaland. This researcher contends that even if there was migration between Egypt and�Nigeria, such migration did not take place during the predynastic and dynastic period as�speculated by some scholars. The subject is open for further research.

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