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Royal Monopoly and Private Enterprise in the Atlantic Trade: The Case of Dahomey1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Robin Law
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Extract

The kingdom of Dahomey is often presented as the classic instance of the operation of a royal monopoly of the Atlantic trade in West Africa. Detailed study establishes, however, that there was never any such royal commercial monopoly in Dahomey, although there were attempts to establish such a monopoly in the 1780s and in the 1850s. The kings of Dahomey enjoyed a number of commercial privileges, and controlled the distribution of the war captives taken by the Dahomian army, but they were never the sole sellers of slaves. There was always an important group of private merchants in Dahomey, who were mainly concerned with marketing the slaves imported into the kingdom from the interior. The replacement of the slave trade by the palm oil trade in the nineteenth century strengthened the position of the private merchants, since they were able to move into the production of oil as well as marketing it. The kings of Dahomey also engaged in the production of oil for export, but were not able to establish as complete control of the production of oil as they had exercised over the ‘production’ of slaves.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 1977 , pp. 555 - 577
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

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114 Forbes, , Dahomey and the Dahomans, I, 112.Google Scholar

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121 Foà, , Le Dahomey, 33–4Google Scholar. It was this incident which initiated the disputes which led to the British blockade of Whydah in 1876–7.

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135 Herissé, Le, L'Ancien Royaume de Dahomey, 90.Google Scholar

136 Ibid. 52, 90. As early as the 1720s, it is reported that the king of Dahomey ‘had great Numbers of captive Negroes, which tilled his Grounds': Snelgrave, , New Account of Some Parts of Guinea, 106.Google Scholar

137 Herissé, Le, L'Ancien Royaume de Dahomey, 87, 90.Google Scholar

138 Forbes, , Dahomey and the Dahomans, i, 114, 115, 123.Google Scholar

139 Ibid. I, 31.

140 Private merchants could, however, be marginally involved in slave ‘production’, since they might be required to supply forces to serve with the Dahomian army: cf. Ibid. I, 113. They could also finance slave-producing operations, by supplying guns and ammunition on credit to the military chiefs.

141 Dalzel, , History of Dahomy, 215.Google Scholar

142 Forbes, , Dahomey and the Dahomans, i, 113.Google Scholar

143 Herissé, Le, L'Ancien Royaume de Dahomey, 86–7.Google Scholar

144 Forbes, , Dahomey and the Dahomans, i, 35, 111.Google Scholar

145 Herissé, Le, L'Ancien Royaume de Dahomey, 87.Google Scholar

146 PRO: FO. 84/893, Forbes, T. G. to Bruce, H. W., 18 Jan. 1852Google Scholar; ibid., Forbes, T. G., ‘Journal of Proceedings on My Visit to Abomey’, entry for 13 Jan. 1852Google Scholar; FO. 84/886, Fraser, L., ‘Occurrences, Gossip &c. at Whydah’, entries for 20 Jan. and 16 Feb. 1852Google Scholar; Ross, David, ‘The Autonomous Kingdom of Dahomey, 1818–94’ (Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 1967), 123–4.Google Scholar

147 PRO: FO. 84/886, Fraser, L., ‘Occurrences, Gossip &c. at Whydah’, entry for 16 Feb. 1852.Google Scholar

148 Skertchly, , Dahomey As It Is, 272Google Scholar. Other royal oil plantations were established on the Abomey plateau: Ross, , ‘The Autonomous Kingdom of Dahomey’, 83–4.Google Scholar

149 Skertchly, , Dahomey As It Is, 52, 89.Google Scholar

150 Gezo's successor Glele had the alternative identity of Addokpon. For the institution of the ‘Bush King’, see Burton, , Mission to Gelele, 268–9Google Scholar; Skertchly, , Dahomey As It Is, 271–2Google Scholar. Skertchly links the institution to the oil trade; Burton gives a similar commercial explanation of its origins, but refers not to trade in oil but to the manufacture of cloth, clay pipes, etc. The institution had been established by 1857, when Gezo is recorded to have employed the name Gankpe while trading oil to Prya Nova, west of Whydah: PRO: FO. 2/20, Consul Campbell to Earl of Clarendon, 7 Mar. 1857, with inclosures, esp. Commander George H. Day to Commodore John Adams, 24 Feb.

151 Skertchly, , Dahomey As It Is, 271.Google Scholar

152 PRO: FO. 84/1465, Anonymous letter to the Editor of the African Times, 23 June 1876Google Scholar, inclosure to Fitzgerald, E. to Wylde, W. H., 27 July 1876Google Scholar. The writer, however, refers to having been at Whydah in 1843–5, and it seems likely that his account reflects conditions in the 1840s rather than in the 1870s.

153 Ross, , ‘The Career of Domingo Martinez’, 83.Google Scholar

154 Skertchly, , Dahomey As It Is, 23, 32–4.Google Scholar

155 Ibid. 406.

156 Burton, , Mission to Gelele, 193.Google Scholar

157 It does appear, indeed, that there was some sort of struggle for control of trade between the state bureaucracy and private entrepreneurs in Asante during the nineteenth century: Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), 194–6, 688–92, 700–5Google Scholar. In Benin also, royal control over the Atlantic trade appears to have partially broken down for a period in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: Ryder, A. F. C., Benin and the Europeans 1485–1897 (London, 1969), 130, 153.Google Scholar