Ouidah. Robin Law
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became known officially as ‘Fort Saint-Louis de Gregoy [i.e. Glehue]’. The local traditions nowadays current of the establishment of the French fort, which attribute it to the reign of the fourth king of Hueda, Ayohuan (or Hayehoin), clearly relate to this subsequent refoundation, rather than to the original settlement in 1671, since Ayohuan is evidently to be identified with the king known to contemporary Europeans as ‘Aisan’ or ‘Amar’, who reigned in 1703–8.89 The French fort was owned by a succession of trading companies until 1767, when it passed into the authority of the French crown. It was abandoned in 1797, but reoccupied by private French merchants (of the firm of Régis of Marseille) from 1842. The building, however, no longer survives, having been demolished in 1908; its site is now a public square, which is still however called ‘La Place du Fort français’.90
Assuming that the fort built in 1704 was on the same site as the earlier French factory, at the time of its original foundation in 1671 the latter must have been physically separate from the indigenous settlement of Tové, since the later fort was on the opposite (west) side of the town from Tové, the intervening space being occupied by the quarter of the English factory, Sogbadji, which was established later. This is consistent with the account of Barbot in 1682, which describes the French and English factories at Ouidah as situated ‘near to’, rather than actually in, the indigenous village.91 This arrangement was seemingly also paralleled in the kingdom of Allada earlier, where the original site of the European factories, Offra, was distinct from although close to the town of Jakin, although Offra eventually developed into a substantial and autonomous indigenous settlement also.92 This suggests the policy widely attested elsewhere in West Africa of segregating foreign traders in distinct quarters, on the outskirts of the indigenous towns. This practice is most familiar from the colonial period, when in Nigeria, for example, southern immigrants in northern cities were regularly segregated into ‘new towns’ (sabon gari), while in the south northern merchants settled in separate quarters called ‘zongos’.93 (There is, in fact, a Zongo quarter in Ouidah itself, on the north-east of the town, which dates from the period of French colonial rule after 1892.) But in this colonial practice clearly followed indigenous pre-colonial precedents: in towns in the Borgu region in the north of modern Bénin, inland from Dahomey, for example, foreign Muslim merchants likewise formed their own quarters, such as the Maro quarter of Nikki and the Wangara quarter of Djougou.94 This arrangement probably also accounts for the location of the principal market in Ouidah, called Zobé, which is still today situated south-west of Tové quarter, and between it and the quarters of the former English and French forts to the west.95
The second of the European factories to be established was the English. The Royal African Company, which held a legal monopoly of English trade in West Africa at this time, first projected a factory at Ouidah in April 1681; but this was abortive, the factor left there being recalled four months later to take over the company’s factory at Offra to the east.96 Later in 1681 a factory was established in Ouidah by an English trader called Petley Wyburne, who was not an agent of the Royal African Company but an ‘interloper’, that is, a trader operating independently of the company and in breach of its monopoly, and this was maintained until Wyburne was forcibly removed by agents of the Royal African Company in 1686.97 The company itself had meanwhile established a factory in the Hueda kingdom, at a second attempt, in July 1682; but this was located not at Ouidah, but at the capital Savi.98 In April and May 1684, however, this factory suffered two serious fires, which evidently effectively destroyed it, since later in 1684 the local chief factor reported that he was ‘busied about building a house’;99 and the new factory now built was evidently situated at Ouidah.100 The English factory was situated east of the French factory (at least, east of where the later French fort was established in 1704), between it and the indigenous settlement of Tové. It was fortified with earthworks, mounted with cannon, for defence against its French neighbour, in 1692, and a moat was added in 1694;101 it was later known as ‘William’s Fort, Whydah’, alluding to King William III (1689–1703), the English monarch in whose reign it was fortified.
From the Royal African Company William’s Fort passed into the possession of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, which replaced it in 1752, but it was abandoned in 1812, following the legal abolition of the British slave trade. It was reoccupied by a private British merchant, Thomas Hutton, operating from the Gold Coast to the west, from 1838, and was later occupied by a British vice-consulate (1851–2), by a British Methodist mission (1856–67), and again by a different British trading firm (F. & A. Swanzy, also of the Gold Coast) in the 1870s. It was sold off to a German firm (C. Goedelt, of Hamburg) in the 1880s, but was confiscated as enemy property by the French colonial authorities in the First World War and passed back into the hands of another British firm, John Walkden of Manchester, who remained in occupation until 1963 and with whose name it is still locally associated. Redevelopment had destroyed its appearance as a fortification by 1890, when the building occupied by Goedelt was described as ‘an ordinary house’; the moat was filled in in 1908.102 The only material remains of the earlier fort visible today are a few cannon scattered around its courtyard.103 In local usage, the area nevertheless remains ‘Le Fort anglais’.
The third and last of the European forts in Ouidah was the Portuguese. Some accounts date the foundation of the Portuguese fort to 1680;104 but although a Portuguese factory was indeed established in the Hueda kingdom around this time, it appears that this was at the capital Savi rather than at Ouidah, and in any case was ephemeral, or at least not continuously occupied.105 The Portuguese fort in Ouidah was in fact built in 1721;106 it was later known as ‘Fort São João Baptista de Ajudá [= Hueda]’. It was situated east again from the English factory, and adjoining Tové quarter on the south; a contemporary account of its establishment indicates that, unlike the earlier factories, it was constructed within an already built-up part of the town, which had to be demolished in order to clear the site, the construction employing over 500 persons for 30 days.107 Unlike the other two forts, the Portuguese was from the first a possession of the Portuguese crown, and under the immediate authority of the viceroy of Brazil at Salvador, Bahia; and later (after the Brazilian capital was removed to Rio de Janeiro in 1763) under the provincial governor of Bahia. It was abandoned after the legal abolition of the Portuguese slave trade north of the equator in 1815, but the Portuguese claim to it was maintained. It was reoccupied by the Portuguese government in 1844, this time administered from the local Portuguese headquarters on the island of São Tomé, off the West African coast. This renewed Portuguese presence was at first tenuous and intermittent, and possession of the fort was briefly usurped by Roman Catholic missionaries of the French Société des Missions Africaines in 1861–5. But it was definitively reoccupied by Portugal in 1865, and remained an anomalous Portuguese enclave within the French colony of Dahomey throughout the colonial period, its evacuation being forced by the newly independent Republic of Dahomey only in 1961. Alone of the three European forts the Portuguese retains its character as a fortification, though the present layout of the buildings appears to date from the reoccupation of 1865 rather than from the original period of occupation in the eighteenth century.108 It now houses the Historical Museum of Ouidah.
Local tradition speaks of the existence of Dutch and Danish forts also in Ouidah, and even indicates their supposed sites.109 Memory of a Dutch fort that had allegedly existed earlier is already attested in Ouidah in the 1860s, when it was said to have been on the site occupied since the 1820s by the Brazilian slave-trader Francisco Felix de Souza, which remains today the de Souza family compound.110 But the existence of such a Dutch fort is not corroborated by earlier contemporary evidence. The Dutch West India Company did contemplate establishing a factory in Ouidah, after their existing factory at Offra was destroyed in the war of 1692, when the Hueda authorities offered them the factory formerly occupied by the English interloper Wyburne.111 Although the Dutch factors were in the event evacuated, some of the company’s African employees apparently remained behind; in 1694 it was noted that there was a settlement of ‘Mina’ people (i.e. from Elmina, the Dutch headquarters on the Gold Coast), half a mile from the English factory at Ouidah, who assisted Dutch ships trading there.112 But it does not appear that this establishment was maintained. A Dutch fort is mentioned at Ouidah, alongside the French and