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Some Reflections on the Brazilian Legacyin DahomeyElisée SoumonniPublished online: 08 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Elisée Soumonni (2001) Some Reflections on the Brazilian Legacy in Dahomey,Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 22:1, 42-60, DOI: 10.1080/714005182

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Some Reflections on the Brazilian Legacyin Dahomey

ELISÉE SOUMONNI

The impact of Brazil on the present-day Republic of Benin, heir of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Dahomey, is still visible in manyforms. To understand the significance of this impact an historicalperspective is needed. In particular, the role played by the Afro-Braziliancommunity during the nineteenth century must be taken into account.During that time, ‘a great century in the history of [the Fon Kingdom of]Dahomey’,1 the foundation of the Brazilian heritage was solidly laid in animportant West African kingdom (see Figure 1). Even the French influenceduring the period of the anti-slave trade crusade and eventual transition to‘legitimate’ commerce in agricultural products (palm oil in particular)benefited from the cooperation or complicity of the Brazilian slave-traders.Similarly, the subsequent French colonial administration sought and foundstrong support among the Afro-Brazilian elite. It is therefore not surprisingthat the Brazilian heritage, despite the vicissitudes of history, still remainstoday a living reality, as if Dahomey had been a Brazilian colony! FromPorto-Novo to Agoué, the vestiges of the heritage are attested in familynames, cultural traditions, architecture, and more. This short article reflectson the establishment of the Brazilian heritage in Dahomey and itssignificance in the present-day Republic of Benin.

The reign of the Dahomean king Gezo was of particular significance inthe consolidation and growth of Brazilian influence. This monarch came topower in 1818 through a coup d’état, with the assistance of a famousBrazilian slave-trader, Felix Francisco de Souza, who is generally andrightly regarded not only as the ancestor of the de Souza family of thesubregion, but also of the Afro-Brazilian community in Dahomey. Thisepisode in the history of Dahomey and biography of Felix Francisco deSouza is already well known and does not require elaboration.2 It is worthpointing out, however, that the installation by Gezo of Felix Francisco deSouza as his principal commercial agent in Ouidah, with the title of Chacha,was a decisive factor in the establishment and development of the Afro-Brazilian community in Dahomey. From the 1830s, de Souza became thechief coordinator of the arrival and establishment of slaves freed or expelledfrom Brazil as a result of the Bahia uprising in 1835.3 When he died in 1849,

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Domingo Martinez, who began his career in Dahomey as de Souza’sprotégé, ‘succeeded to his position if not to his title’ and played, like deSouza, a leading role ‘in formulating Dahomean policy towards Europeans’.Martinez then became, as a result of ‘his wealth and political importance’,the leader of the Brazilian coastal society.4

Felix Francisco de Souza and Domingo Martinez were not, of course,the only Brazilians whose role in the organization of the Afro-Braziliancommunity and in the political and economic history of Dahomey is worthnoting. They were, however, the leading figures during the crucial transitionperiod from the slave-trade to ‘legitimate’ commerce. It is therefore notsurprising that the role and attitude of the Brazilian community areimportant issues in the historiography of nineteenth-century Dahomey.They were particularly formative in debates over Dahomey’s resistance toBritish pressure to end the slave-trade, in the process of the substitution ofpalm-produce exports for slave exports, and in the long Anglo-French

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rivalry in the subregion.5 The Brazilians and French formed an alliance inthe competition between the two European powers. The Brazilians did notconsider the slave and palm-oil trades incompatible, while the French wereless concerned with discouraging slave-trading than consolidating Frenchinfluence in Dahomey. Indeed, French merchants and shippers andBrazilian slavers cooperated very closely until Brazil abolished the slave-trade in the early 1850s. This cooperation contributed to the intensificationof Anglo-French rivalry in the mid-nineteenth century.6

In the development of their palm-oil business as well as their politicalinfluence, the French received effective support from the Braziliancommunity.7 This cooperation influenced the decision of French officialsfollowing the colonial conquest to encourage the return of former Brazilianslaves.8 The Afro-Brazilian community continued to grow in quantity anddiversity, not only through the influence of the returnees, but also by aprocess of assimilation of local peoples who had no blood relations withBrazilian descendants or who had never travelled to Brazil,9 but whoidentified with Afro-Brazilian culture as a result of their long associationwith the Afro-Brazilian coastal community. The main features of Afro-Brazilian culture, as illustrated in the Brazilian heritage in today’s Republicof Benin, are the product of a complex process of transformation,construction, and reconstruction of identities in Brazil and on the ‘SlaveCoast’. This process requires further consideration in order to grasp andassess the Brazilian legacy in Dahomey.

The starting point of the process was the prevailing situation in the Bightof Benin itself. The disintegration of Oyo is particularly significant for itsconsequences in the subregion and in Brazil. The fortune of Oyo was animportant factor in the history of Dahomey. The perception of the reign ofGezo as beginning a new era in Dahomean history is not unconnected withthe fact that this king freed his country from Oyo’s long hegemony, an‘exploit’ achieved not through the strength of his army but as a result of theinternal problems facing the Oyo empire. The collapse of Oyo and itsaftermath had a great impact on relations between Brazil and the SlaveCoast. Despite abolitionist measures, independence from Oyo stimulatedDahomean militarism and created more opportunities for slave exports fromOuidah under Felix Francisco de Souza’s supervision. The breakup of Oyoled to a costly struggle for ascendancy among new states and brought thefull impact of the slave-trade to Yorubaland, which became a major supplierof slaves for internal West African markets as well as for the transatlantictrade.10 However, slaves from Yorubaland were not only of Yoruba originbut also came from other ethnic groups directly or indirectly involved in theconflicts caused by the collapse of Oyo, such as Aja-fon, Hausa, and Nupe.The influx of slaves of so many different ethnic origins into Brazil, and

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particularly Bahia, was to become the starting point for the construction ofnew identities in these places with Yoruba and Islam as the leading factors.

Significant research has been done on this process.11 The case study ofthe Nago in Bahia by Maria Ines Cortes de Oliveira is of particular interest.The following brief discussion of this example is based on an article shepresented in Toronto in 1997.12 With Robin Law’s recent article on ‘Lucumi’and ‘Yoruba’ as ethnonyms in West Africa,13 de Oliveira’s paper providesinsight into the social transformations induced by the return of the formerslaves from Brazil.

If the slave-trade was a factor in ethnic disintegration, it was also,paradoxically, an element in the construction in the New World of newidentities and ‘nations’ on a larger scale than in Africa. The case of Bahiaillustrates this phenomenon. The term ‘Nago’, used there to identify all theYoruba groups, also incorporated non-Yoruba elements that did not losetheir original national identities. Even the various Yoruba subgroupsretained their names within what Maria Ines Cortes de Oliveira called ‘lagrande tente Nago’ or the ‘great Nago umbrella’ (Nago-Ba for Egba, Nago-Jebu for Ijebu, Nago-Gexas for Ijesha, etc.). The term Nago becameextensive enough in its use to integrate, in a kind of alliance, many groupsthat even so did not forget or abandon the original names of their subgroupsor ‘nations’. A pan-Nago identity was thus created in Bahia, leading to theemergence of most of the formal Nago associations, such as Candomblécommunities, cantos or juntes. A similar phenomenon of the construction ofidentity took place in Cuba, where slaves of Yoruba origin were known as‘Lucumi’, a term that also underwent a wide extension to embrace themajority, if not all, of the Yoruba groups, and even non-Yoruba elementssuch as the Tapas, the Aradas, the Barbas, and the Hausa.14

Because the very term Yoruba was not commonly used in Africa toidentify all the Yoruba-speaking groups before the nineteenth century, itsextension in Brazil and Cuba raises the question of whether there was anyinitial Yoruba ethnic or national consciousness in Africa or whether thisconsciousness emerged in the diaspora.15 A full examination of this questionis beyond the scope of this essay, although it is quite relevant in the sensethat the slaves’ strategies of survival in the diaspora were inspired by theirAfrican experiences. One can safely argue, I believe, that interactions on thecontinent between various Yoruba groups were developed sufficiently bythe nineteenth century to create a sense of cultural unity, even in the absenceof a common ‘label’. In hostile environments, such as Brazil and Cuba, thissense of cultural unity manifested itself in intensified solidarity. Even today,the various Yoruba subgroups continue to identify themselves by theirspecific names (Ijesha, Ondo, Ekiti, Ketu, Sabe, Idaisa, etc.), but theconsciousness of their cultural unity remains unshaken. It is true, all the

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same, that the construction in the diaspora of larger identities was asignificant phenomenon that made possible coexistence and cooperationbetween groups that various conflicts in Africa had separated before theordeal of exile. The construction of larger identities in the diaspora was alsoa significant phenomenon, as is illustrated by the case of Dahomey, in theorganization and establishment of the returned former slaves in West Africa.

Another aspect in the construction of identities in Bahia which had somebearing on the Brazilian heritage in Dahomey is the Islamic factor. Islamicgroups within which the 1835 slave rebellion in Bahia was planned were, asMaria Ines Cortes de Oliveira has pointed out, the only form of organizationthat transcended ethnic barriers. Members of these organizations, the Males,belonged to different ethnic groups. Thus, both ‘national’ and ‘Muslim’identities coexisted within Islamic groups, and Islam played a supranationaland unifying role. However, this role raises a few questions. Since theHausa and the Nago were a majority in the Islamic groups, what was therelative significance of ethnic and Islamic factors in the mobilization of theslaves for the rebellion? Among the Nago themselves, many continued topractice African religions. How did Muslims and non-Muslims cooperate insuch a situation? These questions are matters of debate that cannot beexamined here. It is not, however, unreasonable to assume that withouttolerance, understanding, and coexistence between different ethnic groupson the one hand, and between Muslims and non-Muslims on the other, theplanning of the revolt would have been difficult, indeed impossible.

It seems to me that in Brazil the Jihad against the unbeliever, the‘gavere’, was not the most important obligation or priority of the MuslimAfrican slave. Freedom was the sacred objective, and it could only beachieved through tolerance and cooperation with non-Muslims. Returneesapparently brought this tradition of a tolerant and accommodating Islam toDahomey from the 1830s onwards.

The point of departure of slaves to the New World, Ouidah, was also theport of arrival for slave descendants who were lucky enough to return home,influenced by experiences and transformations that have just beendiscussed. From Ouidah, the returned slaves settled elsewhere along thecoast, their number increasing until the end of the nineteenth century. Theexpulsion of free slaves subsequent to the 1835 rebellion is not the onlyexplanation for the trend. The abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888 needsto be taken into account.

The development of Ouidah in the nineteenth century was, to a greatextent, a product of relations between Brazil and Dahomey. The newquarters created after Gezo’s accession were directly or indirectly related toFelix Francisco de Souza’s activities and the aftermath of the Bahia slaverevolt in 1835.16

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At the time of the colonial conquest, returnees constituted importantnuclei in Ouidah, Agoué, Grand-Popo, and Porto-Novo. The French reliedgreatly on them in the administration of their new colony. Before theexpansion of western education, Afro-Brazilians were the only local elitethat could provide the needed staff for positions such as interpreter,secretary, and teacher. Many of the returnees were also skilled artisans,qualified for practical jobs.17 Conscious of their usefulness, the Governor ofthe colony authorized, as early as 1895, an association ‘aimed atencouraging the return of former Dahomean subjects and their descendantsto the slave coast; subjects at present in America; and to assure aid andprotection at the time of their arrival in the colony’.18 It is not unlikely thatthe colonial administration itself initiated the creation of this association.An early administrative directive had declared:

A population called Creole of about 500 persons, composed in largepart of Negroes returning from Brazil and in lesser proportion ofBlacks from Lagos, Sierra-Leone, and the Gold Coast, is of particularinterest. Catholics, Protestants, and even Muslims, almost all theCreoles speak Portuguese, and some of them speak English. Theywrite and read these languages and have attained a high level ofcivilization ... They dress as Europeans ... All the Creoles perfectlyunderstand the mechanism of [European] justice ... When Frenchinstruction has penetrated this population, when the day-to-dayinfluence of our institutions and certain measures has made them ours,we will find strong support for the civilization of the region in theCreole group.19

This long quotation clearly shows the objective of the French colonialadministration. To be fully loyal to the French cause the ‘Creoles’ must beturned into French cultural agents through French education. In other words,they must lose their originality, in short, their Afro-Brazilian identity.

If Afro-Brazilians gave the colonial administration the expected support,thereby contributing to the development of French culture and influence,they also remained faithful to their origins and identity, despite the French‘assimilation’ policy. Their Afro-Brazilian identity did not constitute anobstacle to a progressive integration into their new environment. Thereturnees are often presented as a distinct group within the local population,perpetuating a ‘foreign’ culture.20 Such a view, in the case of Dahomey, atleast, is questionable. The Afro-Brazilian community of Dahomey, despiteits distinctive cultural identity, is well integrated into the local population,as I will attempt to show in the last part of this article by focusing onceagain on the relations between Brazil and the Slave Coast during thenineteenth century.

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Most of the liberated slaves returning to Dahomey in the nineteenthcentury disembarked at Ouidah and settled in the coastal area, in Ouidahitself in particular. The reasons for this were not only that the slaves hadembarked at Ouidah for America and that some were unwilling or unable toreturn to their native villages, but also that, as pointed out by M.R. MonteiroRibeiro, the Brazilian presence on the Dahomean coast was so strongbetween the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ‘that one might also speakof a kind of informal colonization’.21 Along the coast, ‘towns like [Ouidah]became colonial enclaves, cultural outposts of Brazil that were informalcolonies of a colony’.22 Because of this, disembarking former slaves werenot too disoriented, finding that their new environment and the Braziliancommunity were familiar to them. The best symbol of this community was,without doubt, the Chacha Felix Francisco de Souza, described by manyEuropean travellers and visitors to Dahomey as completely Africanized.Felix Francisco de Souza’s life and experience in Dahomey is a significantfactor in the Brazilian legacy in Dahomey.

After a close look at the Chacha’s extraordinary career in Dahomey, oneis tempted to share the view that ‘every Brazilian, even if he is white-skinned and fair-haired, carries in his soul, and if not in his soul, in his body– a shadow, or at least a spot of negro blood’.23 Though faithful to his origin,Felix Francisco de Souza adopted the basic characteristics of Africanculture and of Dahomean traditions. His alliance with Gezo was concludedwith a blood pact, in a purely local tradition. His family life was that of achief, or even of an African ‘King’, with an impressive number of wives andchildren. He left, at his death, ‘25 boys and 25 girls, chosen and recognizedby him among the 312 children of his 302 wives’.24 Felix Francisco deSouza died in Dahomey. He was buried in Dahomey, not in Brazil. This isworth noting because of the significance of the cult of the dead and ofancestors in Dahomey. Today, the extended de Souza family, through theannual commemoration of his birthday (4 October 1754), contributes tokeeping alive not only their ancestor’s memory, but also the Brazilianlegacy in Dahomey as well.25 This legacy in Dahomey and on the formerSlave Coast is surprisingly dynamic, despite the lack of formal colonizationand the distance between Brazil and Africa. It is true that the distance isreduced by striking geographical analogies: soil, climate, vegetation, andnatural environment. These natural factors must have had some influence onthe extraordinary experience of Francisco de Souza in Africa. In his destinyalso, thanks to his numerous offspring, he is remembered in today’sRepublic of Benin not as the famous slave-trader he really was, but as therespected ancestor of a great family!

Natural factors probably contributed to the growth of the Brazilianinfluence in Dahomey, as they did, despite the ordeal of exile, to the slaves’

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survival and organization in Brazil. The success and fame in Brazil of a fewAfricans, free or political exiles, may have been partly due to the samenatural factors. As a matter of fact, a handful of Africans experienced inBrazil an affluent life reminiscent of that of Felix Francisco de Souza inDahomey. An African chief who lived in Porto Alegre, studied by Albertoda Costa e Silva, provides an example.26 This case deserves someconsideration because it is not unlikely that this man, José Custódio Joaquinde Almeida, was a son of Dahomey! According to information provided bythe newspapers of Rio Grande, which da Costa e Silva has examined, thePrince of Whydah (Ouidah), as Joaquin was called, left Africa in 1862, atthe age of 32, and arrived at the Port of Rio Grande two years later. He firstlived in Rio Grande and Bage as a herbalist and practitioner of Africanreligion, before settling from 1901 onwards in Porto Alegre. There heresided until his death, in the manner of Francisco de Souza so to speak,leading a life of both an African chief and a member of the Brazilianbourgeoisie. We are, as a matter of fact, told that José Custódio Joaquin deAlmeida had a small court of 25 people in his house, not including servants.He also had 25 racehorses and one Chevrolet car, at a time when not manypeople could afford such luxuries. Custódio Joaquin had a second house atPraia de Cidreira, at the beach, where he spent part of the summer, amidstnumerous guests. Each year during the period of his birthday, he gaveimpressive receptions that Borges de Medeiro, Governor of the state, nevermissed. When the Prince of Whydah finally died, aged over 100 years, hereceived, like Felix Francisco de Souza, a real West African funeral.

As can be seen, the Chacha of Ouidah and the Prince of Whydah sharedmany common characteristics. What both figures and situations show, I think,is the facility of exchange, interaction, and adaptation across the Atlanticthroughout the nineteenth century. What the former slaves brought back fromBrazil and what constitutes the Brazilian heritage was in reality the productof reciprocal influences. If this heritage remains strong even today, it isbecause African influences in Brazil were deep-rooted. The vast Portuguesecolony that was Brazil coexisted for over three centuries with Black Africansand in the process, ‘her society and civilization became Africanized’.27

It is also worth noting that the coast of Benin was open to Brazilianinfluences from the inception of the slave-trade and that some slaves wereexposed to them before their forced migration to the New World. TheBrazilian influence in so many areas such as diet, religion, popular festivals,and architecture is the product of this long and complex process of exchangeand interaction. That is why the Brazilian heritage is not a relic, but rathera living reality maintained with a highly effective fidelity. This is illustratedby the ‘Buriyan’, a veritable ‘dance of memory’,28 the Dahomean form ofthe very popular Brazilian tradition, the ‘Burinha’ or ‘Bumba-meu-boi’.

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The Burinha is always performed during an important religiouscommemoration, that of Nosso Senhor do Bonfin, very popular in Salvadorin Bahia since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Africans in Bahiaassociated Nosso Senhor do Bonfin with Orisha Oxala (Obatala).Introduced in Dahomey by the ‘returnees’, do Bonfin became the patron ofthe Aguda. Although his commemoration in Ouidah and Porto-Novo startswith a Mass, it is more an Afro-Brazilian festival than a religious one, withBuriyan and Samba dancers and Brazilian dishes such as feijoada. WhetherChristians, Muslims, or practitioners of African religions, all the Aguda takepart in the commemoration with an ecumenical spirit. In fact, thecommemoration has become a very popular national event.

It is in the religious sphere, as illustrated by the commemoration ofNosso Senhor do Bonfin, that the Brazilian legacy in Dahomey is particularsignificant. Many Afro-Brazilian families such as the Paraisos, the daSilvas, and the do Regos, have a Christian branch and a Muslim branch. InPorto-Novo in particular, Muslims continue to bear two and even threenames: Muslim, Christian, and African, symbolic of their African religion.Such a spirit of tolerance contributes not only to maintaining the cohesionof the Afro-Brazilian community, but also to reducing tensions of areligious nature in the country since some influential Catholic and Muslimleaders belong to that community. Beyond the Aguda, the Brazilian legacyin the Republic of Benin, heir of the kingdom conquered by the French atthe end of the nineteenth century, has a national dimension.

What is there to conclude after these general considerations of theBrazilian legacy in Dahomey? Perhaps to stress, first of all, the difficulty inassessing this legacy beyond its many visible vestiges in family names,religious traditions, festivals, dishes, and architecture. Yet, the significance ofthis heritage cannot be reduced to these traits alone. The Aguda of Dahomeyare sometimes perceived as agents or witnesses of a foreign culture, distinctfrom the rest of the population with a superiority complex, in search of a newsocial identity among ‘other groups of the nation-state’.29 Such a view callsfor some reconsideration. The ‘foreign’ character of Afro-Brazilian culture isrelative, as I hope I have shown in this article. And that is precisely why itfound such fertile soil in Dahomey. The experience that the former slavesbrought back with them, though unique, involved basic elements of Africanculture. The life they lived in Brazil was not incompatible with their newenvironment once they returned to the West African coast. Uniqueness couldnot therefore hinder the returnees’ social integration.

If so much has been said about Felix Francisco de Souza in thisdiscussion, it is precisely because this ancestor of the Afro-Braziliancommunity of Dahomey, with his numerous offspring, is the embodiment ofthe cultural synthesis that is the original feature of the Brazilian heritage.

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Though of foreign origin, de Souza had become a big Dahomean chief‘practically naturalized’ by the time he died in 1849.30 To my knowledge,there was no similar case among European merchants established inDahomey throughout the slave-trade era. It is not surprising therefore thatChacha is perceived today as the ancestor of an extended family, with alarge intellectual and political elite, rather than as the most famous slave-trader on the West African coast. It was not by accident that on 7 October1995, a high Mass for the coronation of the eighth Chacha, HonoreFeliciano Juliao de Souza, was co-celebrated by Monsignor Isidore deSouza, descendant of Felix Francisco de Souza, and Monsignor RobertSastre, another eminent member of the Aguda community of Benin.

Is this community, as suggested in M.R. Monteiro Ribeiro’s thesis,engaged today in a process of the construction of an ‘ethnic’ or ‘social’identity? It is doubtful, since the community is not faced with a problem ofsocial integration or an identity crisis. In fact, the Aguda, individually, arealso members of other ethnic or social groups to which they are wellintegrated. The community itself has also expanded by including elementswhose connection with it is remote, to say the least. Not all those withBrazilian names are returnees’ descendants or have Brazilian blood in theirveins. They have become ‘Brazilianized’, so to speak, as a result of theirancestors’ long association with Portuguese, Brazilian and Afro-Braziliantraders on the coast.

Finally, I want to mention an important aspect of the Brazilian heritagethat French colonization deliberately and successfully destroyed. At the endof the nineteenth century, Portuguese was about to become the officialforeign language of Dahomey. This situation was incompatible with theFrench colonial policy of assimilation. The French subsequentlydeliberately encouraged the spread of their language and the disappearanceof Portuguese, thus depriving the Aguda of an original feature of theiridentity.

NOTES

1. W. J. Argyle, The Fon of Dahomey: A History and Ethnography of the Old Kingdom(London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p.34.

2. D. Ross, ‘The First Chacha of Whydah: Francisco Felix de Souza’, Odu, N.S., 2 (1969),pp.19–28. All published works on Dahomey in the nineteenth century devote considerableattention to Francisco de Souza.

3. B.C. Codo, ‘Les “Brésiliens” en Afrique de l’Ouest: Hier et Aujourd’hui’, in P.E. Lovejoy(ed.), Identifying Enslaved Africans: The ‘Nigerian’ Hinterland and the African Diaspora(Toronto: York University, 1997), pp.428–37.

4. D. Ross, ‘The Career of Domingo Martinez in the Bight of Benin, 1833–1864’, Journal ofAfrican History, 6, 1 (1965), pp.79–90.

5. R. Law, ‘The Politics of Commercial Transition: Factional Conflict in Dahomey in theContext of the Ending of the Atlantic Slave Trade’, Journal of African History, 38 (1997),

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pp.213–33.6. L.C. Jennings, ‘French Policy towards Trading with African and Brazilian Slave Merchants,

1840–1853’, Journal of African History, 17, 4 (1976), pp.515–28.7. This was particularly the case with the establishment and consolidation of the House of Regis

of Marseilles in Ouidah.8. D. Ronen, Dahomey: Between Tradition and Modernity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1975), pp.33–5.9. Codo, ‘Les “Brésiliens”’.

10. R. Law, ‘The Atlantic Slave Trade in Yoruba Historiography’, in T. Falola (ed.), YorubaHistoriography (Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, 1991),pp.123–34.

11. Cf. in particular J.J. Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993).

12. M.I. Cortes de Oliveira, ‘La grande tente Nago: Rapprochements ethniques chez lesAfricains de Bahia au dix-neuvième siècle’, in Lovejoy (ed.), Identifying Enslaved Africans,pp.286–301.

13. R.Law, ‘Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: “Lucumi” and “Nago” as Ethnonyms in West Africa’,History in Africa, 24 (1997), pp.205–19.

14. Ibid.15. Ibid.16. Mémoire du Bénin, (matériaux d’histoire), 2 (Cotonou: Les Editions du Flamboyant, 1993),

pp.29–73.17. R. Cornevin, Histoire du Dahomey (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1962), p.6518. Journal Officiel du Dahomey, 1er Octobre 1898, in Ronen, p.35.19. Archives d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, dossier: Dahomey, general. Quoted in Ronen,

pp.33–4.20. Ronen, p.33.21. M.R.M. Ribeiro, ‘Agouda – Les “Brésiliens” du Bénin: Enquête anthropologique et

photographique’ (Thèse de Doctorat, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,Marseilles, 1996), p.9.

22. E.G. Bay, Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998), p.169.

23. J. H. Rodrigues, ‘The Influence of Africa on Brazil and of Brazil on Africa’, Journal ofAfrican History, 3, 1 (1962), p.52.

24. Mémoire du Bénin, 2, p.41.25. Ribeiro.26. A. da Costa e Silva, ‘An African Chief in Porto Alegre: Sketch for a Portrait’, in Lovejoy

(ed.), Identifying Enslaved Africans, pp.438–45.27. Rodrigues, p.55.28. R.A. de Souza, La danse de la mémoire: le buriyan à Ouidah à travers ses fêtes et

patrimoines familiaux (Cotonou: Les Editions du Flamboyant, 1995), pp.43–63.29. Ronen; Ribeiro.30. R. Law, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Merchant Class in Whydah in the Nineteenth Century’,

paper presented at the Canadian Association of African Studies, Montreal, 4 May 1996.

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