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Trade and Politics Behind the Slave Coast: the Lagoon Traffic and the Rise of Lagos, 1500–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Robin Law
Robin Law
Affiliation:
University of Stirling
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Extract

The rise of Lagos, which became the principal port of the ‘Slave Coast’ at the end of the eighteenth century, can only be understood by reference to the interaction between the European Atlantic trade and the indigenous canoe-borne trade along the coastal lagoons. European traders in the sixteenth century used the Lagos channel and the lagoon to approach the Ijebu kingdom, where slaves and cloth were purchased, but this trade lapsed in the seventeenth century. The Lagos settlement originated as a fishing hamlet, but was occupied as a military base by Benin around the end of the sixteenth century. Benin expansion to the west may have been designed to prevent European trade with Ijebu, in the interests of a Benin monopoly. Lagos remained formally subject to Benin until the nineteenth century, but the decline of Benin power in the eighteenth century left it effectively independent. European sources of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries attest trade in cloth and slaves passing along the lagoons through Lagos to Allada and Whydah in the west. Although this pattern of trade has been assumed to date back to pre-European times, it was more probably a consequence of the European presence, and more specifically of the westward drift of European interest along the coast from Benin after the sixteenth century. European traders began to show an active interest in the lagoon trade to the east of Allada in the early eighteenth century, and again began to explore the possibility of using the Lagos channel to bapproach the inland lagoons. Lagos developed as an Atlantic port from the 1760s, exporting slaves and Ijebu cloth, but its importance was limited by its remoteness from any major source of slaves. Its emergence as a major port in the late eighteenth century was due to the disruption of slave shipments from ports further west by military pressure from Dahomey, which led to the diversion of slave supplies eastward along the lagoons for shipment from Lagos.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1983 , pp. 321 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 See esp. Smith, Robert S., ‘The canoe in West African history’, J. Afr. Hist. XI (1970), 515–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Strictly, the ‘Slave Coast’ was normally reckoned as extending from the Volta (or sometimes from a point slightly further west) to Lagos, thus excluding Benin and the Niger Delta to the east.

3 It has been suggested that the silting up of the lagoon at Godomey occurred only in the early nineteenth century: Newbury, C. W., The Western Slave Coast and its Rulers (Oxford, 1961), 3.Google Scholar However, it was noted already in the 1680s that the ‘river’ (i.e. lagoon) running east along the coast ‘loses itself in the earth at Jackin’, i.e. at Jakin, near Godomey: Barbot, Jean, ‘Description des Cotes d'Affrique’ (unpublished MS of 1688, in Admiralty Library, Ministry of Defence, London: MS 63), IIIe Partie, 132.Google Scholar Indeed, the location of the main seaport of the kingdom of Allada during the seventeenth century at Offra and later (after the destruction of Offra in 1692) at Jakin, both close to Godomey, was probably determined by this feature, enabling them to control the lagoon traffic to both west and east.

4 European traders operating along the coast between the Volta and Lagos found that they had to bring canoes and canoemen with them from the Gold Coast to the west in order to communicate with the shore, since the local people would not venture on to the sea: cf. e.g. Adams, John, Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo (London, 1823), 239Google Scholar; McLeod, John, A Voyage to Africa (London, 1820), 7–8.Google Scholar

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8 Adams, , Remarks, 242–3Google Scholar; Bowdich, T. E., Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 223.Google Scholar The present artificial channel across the bar was constructed only in 1914.

9 Forbes, F. E., Dahomey and the Dahomans (2 vols, London, 1851), 1, 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. the similar observations of Adams, , Remarks, 240.Google Scholar

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12 The most substantial studies of the early history of Lagos are those of Smith, Robert S., Kingdoms of the Yoruba (2nd edn., London, 1978), 103–9Google Scholar; Aderibigbe, A. B., ‘Early history of Lagos to about 1850’, in Aderibigbe, (ed.), Lagos: the development of an African city (Ibadan, 1975), 1–25.Google Scholar Cf. also Law, Robin, ‘The dynastic chronology of Lagos’, Lagos Notes and Records, II, ii (1968), 46–54Google Scholar, which requires revision in the light of additional evidence presented in this article. The most important recension of Lagos traditions is that by Wood, J. Buckley, Historical Notices of Lagos, West Africa (Lagos, 1878; 2nd edn., 1933)Google Scholar; some additional material is given by Losi, John B., History of Lagos (Lagos, 1914; 2nd edn 1967).Google Scholar

13 See esp. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans. Some material can also be found in Akinjogbin, I. A., Dahomey and its neighbours 1708–1818 (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

14 See the map of Pedro Reinel, c. 1485, in Cortesão, Armando & da Mota, Avelino Teixeira, Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica (5 vols, Lisbon, 1960), v, plates 521–2.Google Scholar

15 Pereira, Duarte Pacheco, Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, ed. da Silva Dias, A. E. (Lisbon, 1905), 117.Google Scholar

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17 A Portuguese document of 1519 refers to the supply of Benin and Ijebu cloths from the island of São Tomé to the Gold Coast: Ryder, A. F. C., Materials for West African History in Portuguese Archives (London, 1965), 16Google Scholar, item 121. For references to Ijebu cloth on the Gold Coast in the 1520s and 1530s cf. Vogt, , Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 68.Google Scholar

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20 Ryder, , Benin, 74, with n. 3.Google Scholar

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22 A Portuguese report of conditions in 1617 complains that the Dutch were trading with Ijebu, as well as with Benin: da Rosa, Gaspar, ‘Lembrança do estado e remedio da Mina’, in Cordeiro, , Viagens… VI, 1516–1619: Escravos e Minas de Africa segundo diversos, 23Google Scholar; cf. Ryder, A. F. C., ‘Dutch trade on the Nigerian coast during the seventeenth century’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria III, ii (1965), 195.Google Scholar

23 One Portuguese source of this period, de Figueiredo, Manoel's Hydrografia (Lisbon, 1614)Google Scholar, does refer to trade with Ijebu through the Lagos River: I have not been able to consult Figueiredo's own work, but depend upon de Maris Carneiro, António, Regimento de pilotos e roteiro da navigaçam e conquistas do Brazil, etc. (Lisbon, 1642), 86Google Scholar, which copies this material from Figueiredo. This account, however, is merely copied from the earlier work of Pacheco, and is not evidence of early seventeenth-century practice. The account of trade with Ijebu given by the Dutchman Ruiters in 1623 seems in turn to be taken from Figueiredo, though with some additional material which may reflect recent Dutch experience: Ruiters, Dierick, Toortse der Zee-vaert, ed. Naber, S. P. L'Honoré (The Hague, 1913), 76Google Scholar; cf. Ryder, , ‘Dutch trade’, 197.Google Scholar

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26 In the 1850s Kosoko, the exiled king of Lagos then established at the Ijebu town of Epe on the north bank of the lagoon, traded with the Europeans through the village of Orimedu, known to the Europeans as ‘Palma’, on the south shore: Smith, , Lagos Consulate, 40 ff.Google Scholar A settlement called Aldeia da Palmar (lit. ‘Palmgrove Village’) is regularly shown on sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century maps on the coast between the Lagos and Primeiro (Mahin) Rivers, but it would be rash to suppose that this is the same place: descriptive terms such as ‘Palmar’ might readily change their application even while remaining in continuous use.

27 Dapper, Olfert, Naukeurige beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten (Amsterdam, 1668; 2nd edn 1676)Google Scholar, 2nd pagination, 121, 127, 132, giving the name as ‘Jaboe’. Dapper also refers to a place called ‘Gaboe’, a source of slaves and beads which the Dutch purchased, presumably at Benin, but from its location (on the Benin River above the capital) this would seem not to be Ijebu: ibid. 132.

28 Cf. Ryder, , ‘Dutch trade’, 197–8.Google Scholar

29 Public Record Office, London (hereafter PRO): FO. 84/1031, Campbell to Clarendon, 4 April 1857. For archaeological relics of Benin's naval power see Darling, Patrick J., ‘The ancient canoe-port of Benin’, The Nigerian Field, XLVI, i–ii (1980).Google Scholar The suggestion that Benin influence extended into the eastern Niger Delta is supported by local traditions there claiming origin from Benin, but these are treated with scepticism by Alagoa, E. J., A History of the Niger Delta (Ibadan, 1972), 136, 187.Google Scholar

30 Wood, , Historical Notices, 9–19Google Scholar; Losi, , History, 1–7.Google Scholar

31 Tradition current in the 1850s stated that Lagos was occupied after an unsuccessful attack on ‘the Island of Eshalli, situated opposite to Lagos’: PRO: FO. 84/1002, Campbell to Clarendon, 27 May 1856; FO. 84/1031, same to same, 4 April 1857. This seems to be Iseri, which was not exactly an ‘island’ but situated within a bend of the Ogun: cf. Smith, , Lagos Consulate, 88.Google Scholar Later tradition recalls that one of the Benin commanders at Lagos died at Iseri, but without any details: Wood, , Historical Notices, 18.Google Scholar

32 Talbot, P. A., The Peoples of Southern Nigeria (4 vols London, 1926), IV, 80Google Scholar; Egharevba, J. U., A Short History of Benin (3rd edn, Ibadan, 1960), 30–1.Google Scholar

33 There is, however, an alternative etymology, from the Yoruba oko, ‘farm’: cf. Wood, , Historical Notices, 13.Google Scholar

34 The Benin origin of the dynasty can be accepted, the Lagos story of Asipa's departure and return being a common device to conceal foreign usurpation: cf. Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition (London, 1965), 74.Google Scholar

35 Cf. Bradbury, R. E., ‘Chronological problems in the study of Benin history’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria I, 4 (1959), 263–87.Google Scholar

36 Cf. Law, , ‘Dynastic Chronology’, 51–2.Google Scholar

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38 It is noteworthy that tradition current on the Gold Coast in the mid-eighteenth century claimed that the rulers of the Accra area had in early times been appointed from Benin: Roemer, L. F., Tilforladelig efterretning om Kysten Guinea (Copenhagen, 1760), 112–17.Google Scholar Accra tradition current in the late nineteenth century does not seem to have retained any recollection of this Benin connexion, though an origin from east of the Volta was claimed: cf. Reindorf, C. C., History of the Gold Coast and Asante (2nd edn, reprinted Accra, 1966), 21, 41, 47.Google Scholar

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40 Sixteenth-century maps sometimes show a place called Amata (later corrupted into Almata) just east of the Lagos channel; but though this is sometimes interpreted as a settlement, it seems rather to represent the Portuguese a mata, ‘the wood’.

41 Published by Crecelius, W., ‘Josua Ulsheimers Reisen nach Guinea und Beschreibung des Landes’, Alemannia, VII (1879), 97–120.Google Scholar My thanks are due to Dr Adam Jones for drawing my attention to this invaluable source. This and other German texts relating to West Africa will be published in translation in Jones, Adam (ed.), German Sources for West African History 1599–1669 (Wiesbaden, 1983).Google Scholar

42 Crecelius, , ‘Josua Ulsheimers Reisen’, 101–2, 118.Google Scholar

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46 ‘Korame’ was given by the Ijebu informant ‘Ochifekouede’ (cf. above, n. 10) as the Benin name for Lagos: d'Avezac-Maçaya, in Curtin, , Africa Remembered, 239.Google Scholar ‘Ikurame’ appears in a recension of Itsekiri tradition: Moore, W. A., History of Itsekiri (Lagos, 1936; reprinted London, 1970), 70.Google Scholar A further variant, ‘Ukuroama’, occurs in the traditions of an Ijo group on the lower Benin River who were formerly involved in the lagoon trade to the west: Alagoa, E. J., ‘Long-distance trade and states in the Niger Delta’, J. Afr. Hist. XI (1970), 327Google Scholar; also idem, History of the Niger Delta, 42–3. The name may be in origin merely a variant or elaboration of the more familiar ‘Eko’: Dr E. Ogieiriaixi informed me (in a personal communication of 19 August 1968) that it might represent the Bini phrase Eko ne ame, i.e. ‘Eko [or the war-camp] on the river’.

47 Roggeveen, Arent & Robijn, Jacob, The Burning Fen, Second part (Amsterdam, 1687; reprinted 1971), 27Google Scholar; for the location of ‘Caran’, cf. the map ‘Paskaert van de Gout Kust en Boght van Benin’. This account is apparently copied from a slightly earlier source, van Keulen, Johannes, De nieuwe groote ligtende Zee-fackel, part 5, book 1 (Amsterdam, 1683)Google Scholar, of which I have only been able to see a much later (1744) edition. It was presumably under the influence of one of these works that Barbot, , ‘Description des Côtes’, 148Google Scholar, placed ‘Curamo’ on the northern rather than the southern bank of the lagoon; cf. also the published English version of this work, Barbot, John, A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (London, 1732), 354.Google Scholar A more common response, seen in several early eighteenth-century maps, was to mark both ‘Caran’ (or ‘Karam’) north of the lagoon and ‘Curamo’ to the south, as if these were two different places. ‘Karam’ likewise appears alongside Lagos in a list of places trading with Whydah in the 1770s (PRO: T. 70/1532, ‘An account of the forts belonging to the British and Forreign Nations on that part of Africa called Guinea’, 30 Nov. 1773): but this too shows only that the author uncritically combined material from different sources, not that ‘Karam’ is a distinct place from Lagos.

48 Dapper, , Naukeurige beschrijvinge, 121.Google Scholar

49 Roggeveen, & Robijn, , Burning Fen, 27.Google Scholar

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51 Dapper, , Naukeurige beschrijvinge, 127.Google Scholar For Benin traditions of authority over Ijebu, cf. Egharevba, , Short History, 24Google Scholar, which improbably places the conquest of Ijebu as early as the late fifteenth century.

52 Egharevba, , Short History, 82.Google Scholar

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58 Apa is described as a ‘province’ of Allada in Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN): C. 6/25, Du Colombier to Compagnie de Guinée, 16 April 1715. Dapper, , Naukeurige beschrijvinge, 115Google Scholar, states that Allada extended east as far as ‘Acqua’, which is probably also Apa.

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62 Wilkes, & Wormal, , ‘Intelligence Report’, 5.Google Scholar

68 Cf. Law, , Oyo Empire, 90, 93.Google Scholar

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67 The map of Pedro Reinel, c. 1485, shows praia de almadias, i.e. ‘beach of canoes’, on the coast between the Lagos channel and the Rio Primeiro; cf. also the late fifteenth-century roteiro (route-guide) transcribed by Valentim Fernandes, in Peres, Damião (ed.), Os mais antigos roteiros da Guiné (Lisbon, 1952), 26.Google Scholar

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71 Barbot, , ‘Description des Côtes’, 148Google Scholar (cf. idem, Description of the Coasts, 354), writes that ‘They make many cotton cloths at Curamo’; but this is merely a careless translation of Dapper, not independent evidence.

72 PRO: CO. 2/15, Clapperton, Hugh, ‘Journal of the African Mission from Badagry to Jennah towards Katungah’, entry for 6 12 1825.Google Scholar Oyo as well as Ijebu cloth was also noted on sale at Porto Novo, to the west of Badagry, in the late eighteenth century: Adams, , Remarks, 89.Google Scholar

73 The French ***translation of Dapper, , Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), 307Google Scholar, does in fact interpret Dapper thus: ‘The Dutch come there [to Curamo] to buy cotton cloths, which they transport to the Gold Coast’.

74 Dapper, , Naukeurige beschrijvinge, 121.Google Scholar Dapper's account of the Lagos channel (though not his account of Curamo and its trade) is taken from a slightly earlier Dutch source, van Leers, Arnout, Pertinente beschryvinghe van Afrika (Rotterdam, 1665), 302.Google Scholar

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77 Dapper, , Naukeurige beschrijvinge, 126Google Scholar (italics added).

78 James Welsh in 1591 captured and destroyed a Portuguese ship anchored at Allada: ‘The second voyage to Benin’, 302–3. Allada had been marked on Portuguese maps since 1570: see the map of Fernão vaz Dourado, 1570, in Cortesão, & da Mota, Teixeira, Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, III, pl. 266Google Scholar (‘Costadarida’, i.e. ‘Coast of Arida’); also the anonymous map attributed to Sebastião Lopes, c. 1570, ibid. IV, pl. 507 (‘Arda’).

79 A Portuguese official in 1607 estimated the trade of Allada as worth 800, 000 reis per year, twice the value given for Benin: ‘Relação da Costa da Guiné’, in Cordeiro, , Viagens… IV, 1607: Estabelecimentos e resgates Portuguezes da Costa Occidental de Africa por um anonymo, 17.Google Scholar

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83 For references to Allada cloth on the Gold Coast in the 1640s, cf. Ratelband, K., Vijf Dagregisters van het Kasteel São Jorge da Mina (Elmina) aan de Goudkust (1645–1647) (The Hague, 1953), 37, 39, 158, 387.Google Scholar

84 For a reference to Allada cloth in Barbados in 1686, cf. Daaku, , Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 7.Google Scholar Cf. also Phillips, Thomas, ‘A journal of a voyage in the Hannibal of London, Ann. 1693, 1694’, in Awnsham, and Churchill, John, Collection of Voyages and Travels, VI (London, 1732), 220.Google Scholar

85 Two merchants who visited Whydah in the 1690s both believed that cotton cloth was made locally in that kingdom: Phillips, ‘Journal’, 220; Bosman, William, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), 342.Google Scholar

86 ‘Mémoire ou Relation du Sieur du Casse sur son voyage de Guynée avec “La Tempeste” en 1687 & 1688’, in Roussier, P. (ed.), L'établissement d'Issigny 1687–1702 (Paris, 1935), 15.Google Scholar

87 A report of 1723 states that ‘Whydah cloths are made at Lucamee, where no White Men ever were’: PRO: T. 70/7, Abstract of letter of Baldwyn, Mabyn and Barlow to Royal African Company, 9 Aug. 1723. In 1753 the king of Dahomey, who then controlled Whydah, sent gifts to the viceroy of Brazil which included cloths from ‘Locomin’: Verger, , Flux et reflux, 191.Google Scholar

88 Dapper, , Naukeurige beschrijvinge, 121.Google Scholar

89 On the name ‘Olukumi’, see esp. Hair, P. E. H., ‘An ethnolinguistic inventory of the Lower Guinea Coast before 1700: Part II’, Afr. Language Rev. VIII (1969), 248–9, nn. 65–6.Google Scholar

90 In some seventeenth-century sources, including Dapper, ‘Olukumi’ seems to be distinguished from Ijebu. This might be held to suggest that the reference is specifically to Oyo; but it is perhaps more probable that the references to ‘Olukumi’ and Ijebu are combined from different sources and that Ijebu was in fact included in ‘Olukumi’.

91 Dapper, , Naukeurige beschrijvinge, 116.Google Scholar

92 Ibid. 119.

93 Ibid. 115.

94 It is a difficulty that Dapper seems also to refer to Apa under a different name, ‘Acqua’: cf. above, n. 58. However, this is explicable on the assumption that he obtained information about Apa from two different sources.

95 The list of nationalities of slaves on sale at Whydah given by Labat, Jean-Baptiste, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée (4 vols, Paris, 1730), II, 125–9Google Scholar, includes the name ‘Tebou’. The description of the body cicatrizations by which these people are distinguished (large scars across the chest and belly) suggests that this may be an error for ‘Jebou’, i.e. Ijebu.

96 Cf. e.g. Adams, , Remarks, 78.Google Scholar

97 David Van Nyendael, ‘A description of Rio Formosa, or the River of Benin’, in Bosman, , New and Accurate Description, 427.Google Scholar

98 Ryder, , Benin, 158.Google Scholar

99 Van Nyendael, , in Bosman, , New and Accurate Description, 462.Google Scholar

100 AN: C. 6/25, Du Colombier to Compagnie de Guinée, 16 April 1715.

101 Ryder, , Benin, 180, n. 2.Google Scholar

102 Ibid. 158.

103 Diary of Ph. Eytzen, entry for 2 May 1718, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 139.Google Scholar

104 Fage, John D., ‘Some remarks on beads and trade in Lower Guinea in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, J. Afr. Hist. III (1962), 343–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘A commentary on Duarte Pacheco Pereira's account of the Lower Guinea coastlands in his Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis and on some other early accounts’, History in Africa VII (1980), 63–4. Fage's views are repeated, though without further evidence or supporting argument, e.g. by Vogt, , Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 9, 67, 70Google Scholar; Oliver, Roland & Atmore, Anthony, The African Middle Ages 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 1981), 93.Google Scholar

105 PRO: T. 70/11, Abstract of letter of Petley Wyburne to Royal African Company, 2 April 1688; also T. 70/82, Minutes of Court of Assistants of R.A.C., 12 Aug. 1688; cf. Davies, K. G., The Royal African Company (London, 1957), 250.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that Wyburne established a lodge at Popo (i.e. Great Popo) as well as at Apa, suggesting a design to tap the lagoon traffic to the west as well as to the east of Whydah.

106 Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 215–16Google Scholar (misidentifying the ‘Appa’ of the records with Epe, a distinct settlement further west). Also PRO: T. 70/5, Abstracts of letters of Richard Wills to Sir Dalby Thomas, 1 and 20 Sept./4 Oct. 1707, 3 Dec. 1707.

107 PRO:T. 70/5, Abstracts of letters of Joseph Blaney to R.A.C., 22 May, 4 Aug, 1714; T. 70/6, Abstracts of letters of Blaney, 30 Nov. 1714, 20 March 1715; cf. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey and its neighbours, 53, 55Google Scholar (again, misidentifying the ‘Appah’ of these accounts as Epe). Like Wyburne in 1688 (cf. above, n. 105) Blaney proposed a lodge on the lagoon to the west (at ‘Aguga’, near the Volta) as well as one at Apa to the east.

108 PRO: T. 70/5, Abstract of letter of Blaney, 4 Aug. 1714.

109 Ryder, , Benin, 158.Google Scholar

110 Barbot, , Description of the Coasts, 354.Google Scholar

111 Minutes of Council, Elmina, 10 Jan. 1716, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 121.Google Scholar

112 Ryder, , Benin, 157–8.Google Scholar

113 For Hertog's career see especially Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 229–42.Google Scholar Van Dantzig errs, however, here as elsewhere, in confusing the two distinct towns of Apa and Epe.

114 Snelgrave, William, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea (London, 1734), 149.Google Scholar

115 Elmina Journal, 8 May 1727, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 148.Google Scholar This seems to be the earliest reference to Epe (‘Eppe’), as opposed to Apa, in contemporary records, and helpfully distinguishes between the two. This Epe should also be distinguished from the town of the same name in the Ijebu kingdom, on the north bank of the lagoon east of Lagos (cf. above, n. 26), which is not mentioned in any source prior to the nineteenth century.

116 Snelgrave, , New Account, 151Google Scholar; cf. Hertog to Pranger, 16 April 1732, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 176.Google Scholar Both Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 233Google Scholar, and Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, 99Google Scholar, wrongly identify the ‘Appah’/‘Appa’ of these accounts as Epe.

117 Des Bordes to Assembly of X, 31 May 1736, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 215.Google Scholar

118 PRO: CO. 2/15, Hugh Clapperton, ‘Journal of the African Mission’, entry for 6 Dec. 1825; FO. 84/920, ‘A brief history of Badagry’, encl. to Fraser to Malmesbury, 13 Jan. 1853. It is not clear when the site of Badagry was moved, but the Dahomian raid may be one reported in a French document of 1737 cited by Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, 106.Google Scholar Badagry was certainly located north of the lagoon by the time of the Dahomian attacks on it in 1783–4 described by Dalzel, Archibald, A History of Dahomy (London, 1793), 180–7.Google Scholar

119 PRO: FO. 84/920, ‘A brief history of Badagry’, encl. to Fraser to Malmesbury, 13 Jan. 1853; Curwen, J. M., ‘A Report on the Reorganization of the Badagri District’ (?1937, in National Archives, Ibadan, CSO. 23/30030.S.I), 18Google Scholar; Avoseh, T. Ola, Short History of Badagry (Lagos, 1938), 10–12.Google Scholar

120 The traditional accounts regularly offer vernacular etymologies of the name ‘Huntokonu’ (‘the laughing ship-owner’, etc.), but this is probably merely later rationalization.

121 ‘List of effects left at the lodge at Patakkerie after the murder of Oppercommies Hertogh’, encl. to Bronssema to Des Bordes, 28 May 1738, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 232.Google Scholar

122 Minutes of Council, Elmina, 2 March 1735, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 212Google Scholar; cf. Ryder, , Benin, 182.Google Scholar

123 Ryder, , Benin, 183–4.Google Scholar

124 Ibid. 188–90.

125 Hertog to Des Bordes, 20 April 1738, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 230Google Scholar; cf. Ryder, , Benin, 192–3.Google Scholar

126 Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 242.Google Scholar At the time of Hertog's death in 1738 Bronssema states that he was ‘in Rio Lagos, where I had been sent half a year earlier by Mr Hertogh’: Bronssema to Des Bordes, 28 May 1738, in Van Dantzig, , Dutch Documents, 232.Google Scholar Taken by itself, this might be supposed to mean merely that Bronssema was at the Lagos River en route between Benin and Badagry. But the inventory of Hertog's effects in 1738 confirms that some sort of permanent establishment had been set up, since eleven cannon are listed as being ‘at Rio Lagos’: ‘List of effects left at the lodge at Patakkerie after the murder of Oppercommies Hertogh’, ibid.

127 Carson, Patricia, Materials for West African history in French archives (London, 1968), 43Google Scholar, item 902, lists a French ship as sailing from Brest for Lagos in 1737. The journal of this voyage, however, shows that this ship went not to Lagos in West Africa, but to Lagos in Portugal: AN: 4 JJ, 61, Journal of La Vénus, 1737–8.

128 Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 242.Google ScholarAkinjogbin, , Dahomey, 106Google Scholar, cites a French report suggesting that Hertog had been killed in a Dahomian raid on Badagry in 1737, but this must have been a false rumour.

129 The identity of Hertog's murderer as a Whydah prince is provided by the contemporary records: cf. Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 242.Google Scholar The motivation is supplied by Badagry tradition: Curwen, , ‘Report on the Reorganization of the Badagri District’, 18Google Scholar; Avoseh, , Short History, 13.Google Scholar The suggestion of Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 242Google Scholar, that at the death of Hertog Badagry became subject to Dahomey is unwarranted: the contemporary report refers to ‘the king of Ardera’ as intervening at Badagry to restore order after the murder, but the reference here is surely not to the king of Dahomey, then resident at Allada (which he had conquered in 1724), but rather to the representative of the legitimate line of the kings of Allada, who had founded a new Allada, better known to Europeans by the name Porto Novo, between Whydah and Badagry.

130 Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 242Google Scholar; Ryder, , Benin, 194.Google Scholar

131 Van Dantzig, , Les Hollandais, 257.Google Scholar

132 Verger, , Flux et reflux, 204 n. 29.Google Scholar

133 See especially Verger, Pierre, ‘Notes on some documents in which Lagos is referred to by the name “Onim” and which mention relations between Onim and Brazil’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria I, iv (1959), 343–50.Google Scholar

134 This is suggested by the fact that the Ijebu ‘Ochifekouede’ (cf. above, n. 10) recognized the name as one which ‘belongs to the neighbouring country to the west’ of Lagos: d'Avezac-Maçaya, in Curtin, , Africa remembered, 239.Google Scholar

135 Mettas, Jean, Répertoire des expéditions négrières françaises au XVIIIe siècle, I. Nantes (ed. Daget, Serge, Paris, 1978)Google Scholar, nos 810 (‘Onis’), 817 (‘rade de Lagos’). A French commercial survey of the same year estimates the trade of Lagos (‘Ahoni’) at 400 slaves annually: Patterson, K. David, ‘A note on slave exports from the Costa da Mina, 1760–1770’, Bull. I.F.A.N. XXXIII (1971), 255.Google Scholar

136 Patterson, , ‘Note on slave exports’, 253.Google Scholar

137 Verger, , Flux et reflux, 541 n. 8.Google Scholar

138 Ibid. 258.

139 Priestley, Margaret, West African Trade and Coast Society: a Family Study (London, 1969), 72, 77, 79, 87, 88, 91.Google Scholar

140 PRO: T. 70/31, Archibald Dalzel to Committee, 27 Sept. 1768, reporting the arrival at Whydah of a sloop of Brew's bound for Lagos ‘about ten months ago’.

141 Priestley, , West African Trade, 72.Google Scholar

142 Wood, , Historical Notices, 22Google Scholar; Losi, , History of Lagos, 13Google Scholar; Payne, J. A. Otonba, Table of Principal Events in Yoruba History (Lagos, 1893), 1–2Google Scholar; George, J. O., Historical Notes on the Yoruba Country (Lagos, 1895), 25.Google Scholar

143 Cf. Law, , ‘Dynastic Chronology’, 50–1.Google Scholar

144 PRO: T. 70/1534, J. Clemison, for Caboceer of Lagos, to R. Miles, 27 Jan. 1777. This document is also reproduced in Hodgkin, Thomas L., Nigerian Perspectives: an Historical Anthology (2nd edn. London, 1975), 225–6.Google Scholar

145 Payne, , Table of Principal Events, 2.Google Scholar

146 Ibid.; also Losi, , History of Lagos, 12.Google Scholar

147 George, , Historical Notes, 25.Google Scholar

148 Avoseh, , Short History, 32.Google Scholar Akinsemoyin is also said to have married a Badagry woman: ibid. 33; Losi, , History of Lagos, 13–14.Google Scholar

149 Patterson, , ‘Note on slave exports’, 253.Google Scholar

150 Namely in 1772: Mettas, , Répertoire, no. 961.Google Scholar

151 AN: C. 6/26, de Champagny, , ‘Mémoire contenant des observations sur quelques points de la Côte de Guinée’, 6 09 1786.Google Scholar Cf. the similar observation of a Portuguese official in 1782, cited by Verger, , Flux et reflux, 211.Google Scholar

152 Bold, Edward, ‘The merchants' and mariners’ African guide (London, 1822), 94Google Scholar; cf. 68.

153 Adams, , Remarks, 97Google Scholar; Robertson, , Notes on Africa, 301.Google Scholar

154 Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, 160Google Scholar, citing a report in 1783 that Whydah cloths ‘are both scarce and inferior to what they used to be’: Akinjogbin, however, takes this as evidence of a decline in cloth production inside Whydah (cf. above, n. 85) rather than of a loss of supplies from outside. Lagos did not altogether monopolize the supply of Ijebu cloth, since much was sent east ‘through the medium of various connecting creeks’ for sale on the Benin River: Bold, , African Guide, 68.Google Scholar Some also continued to be sold west of Lagos, at Porto Novo: Adams, , Remarks, 89, 97.Google Scholar

155 PRO: T. 70/1535, ‘The Council's Answer to the Return of the Lords of Trade’, 25 June 1778. This account estimates the total number of slaves exported from Lagos via the Gold Coast by British traders during the previous eight years at only 1, 000, three-quarters of which had been shipped by Richard Brew.

156 Adams, , Remarks, 96, 220.Google Scholar

157 AN: C. 6/26, de Montaguère, Ollivier, ‘Projet d'établissemens à la Côte d'Afrique’, 25 06 1786.Google Scholar As late as 1811, Lagos was described in a Portuguese report as the ‘port of Benin’: Ryder, , Benin, 229.Google Scholar

158 Cf. Law, , Oyo Empire, 222–3.Google Scholar

159 Verger, , Flux et reflux, 202.Google Scholar There is an earlier account of an attack on a French ship in the Benin River in 1755 by ‘les nègres Onjiaux (nation voisine)’, but it is uncertain whether this is a variant of the name ‘Onim’ often applied to Lagos, or represents some other name (perhaps Ijo): Mettas, , Répertoire, 415 (no. 717).Google Scholar

160 Landolphe, J.-F., Mémoires du Capitaine Landolphe (2 vols Paris, 1823), II, 98–103.Google Scholar The plausibility of this account is doubted by Ryder, , Benin, 225–6Google Scholar, who remarks that ‘one cannot see that Lagos had anything to gain’ by the attack on the French factory; but it seems reasonable to suppose that the Lagos calculation was that the Itsekiri, deprived of a local European factory, would be obliged to send their slaves to Lagos for sale.

161 AN: C. 6/26, Ollivier de Montaguère to Ministre de Marine, 24 Nov. 1781.

162 Dalzel, , History of Dahomy, 183.Google Scholar

163 Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, 167.Google Scholar

164 PRO: T. 70/1484, T. Miles to A. Dalzel, 10 Oct. 1793.

165 Robertson, , Notes on Africa, 283Google Scholar; cf. Adams, , Remarks, 95–6.Google Scholar

166 Verger, , Flux et reflux, 271.Google Scholar

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168 Cf. Norris, , Memoirs of the reign of Bossa Ahadee, 27Google Scholar: ‘the Dahomans have no address in engagements on the water, as they are altogether unacquainted with the management of canoes’.

169 When the Dahomians crossed the lagoon to attack Badagry in 1783, they depended upon Porto Novo canoes for transport: Dalzel, , History, 180.Google Scholar In 1784 the Dahomians attacked Badagry overland, marching along the northern bank of the lagoon, but this depended upon the co-operation of Oyo, who controlled the hinterland of Badagry: ibid. 182–3. Since Oyo protected Porto Novo against Dahomey, attack on Porto Novo by this route was not feasible, at least until the decline of Oyo power in the 1810s.

170 PRO: T. 70/1560, L. Abson to Mann, 13 Aug. 1791, which implies that Mann had been at Lagos already for over two years; cf. Akinjogbin, , Dahomey, 182.Google Scholar The British factory at Lagos was probably maintained until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807: cf. the letters addressed to T. Miles at the Lagos factory during 1795 in PRO: T. 70/1571, and the retrospective references to a former Lagos factory in Cock, S. (ed.), The narrative of Robert Adams (London, 1816), xxxviGoogle Scholar; Bowdich, , Mission from Cape Coast, 223.Google Scholar

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174 Cf. Law, , ‘Career of Adele’, 52.Google Scholar

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176 Adams, , Remarks, 97Google Scholar; cf. Robertson, , Notes on Africa, 301.Google Scholar Provisions were also brought to Lagos through the lagoons from the west, from Porto Novo and Dahomey: Bold, , African Guide, 62.Google Scholar

177 Aderibigbe, , ‘Early History of Lagos’, 12–13.Google Scholar

178 Law, , ‘Dynastic chronology’, 50.Google Scholar