Agaja - Agaja and The Slave Trade

Agaja and The Slave Trade

Agaja's motivations for taking over Allada and Whydah and his involvement in the slave trade have been a topic for debate among historians. The debate centers largely around Agaja's conquest of Allada and Whydah and an observed decrease in the slave trade in the area after this conquest. Complicating attempts to discern motivation is that Agaja's administration ended by creating a significant infrastructure for the slave trade and participated actively in it during the last few years of his reign.

The debate over Agaja's motivations goes back to John Atkins' 1735 publication of A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil, and the West Indies. In that book, Atkins argued that Allada and Whydah were known for regular slave raiding on the Abomey plateau and that Agaja's attacks on those kingdoms were primarily to release some of his people who had been captured. A key piece of evidence for Atkins was a letter purported to be from Agaja and carried by Bulfinch Lambe to England in 1731 which expressed the willingness of Agaja to establish agricultural exports to Great Britain as an alternative to the slave trade. The authenticity of this letter is disputed and it was widely used in abolition debates in Great Britain as a letter by a purported indigenous African abolitionist.

Later historians have continued this debate about the role of Agaja in the slave trade, but with the need to account for the fact that in the last years of Agaja's life (and after Atkins' book was published) the Kingdom of Dahomey was a major participant in the Atlantic slave trade. Basil Davidson contended that Dahomey was drawn into the slave trade only as a means of self-defense against slave raiding by the Oyo Empire and the kingdoms of Allada and Whydah. He argued that Agaja took over the coastal cities to secure access to European firearms to protect the Fon from slave raiding. He writes:

Dahomey emerged "at the beginning of the seventeenth century, or about 1625, when the Fon people of the country behind the Slave Coast drew together in self-defense against the slave-raiding of their eastern neighbor, the Yoruba of Oyo. No doubt the Fon were interested in defending themselves from coastal raiders too...But the new state of Dahomey could defend itself effectively only if it could lay hold on adequate supplies of firearms and ammunition. And these it could obtain only by trade with Ardra and Ouidah -- and, of course, only in exchange for slaves...In the end, Dahomey found their exactions intolerable. They refused to allow Dahomey to sell its captives to the Europeans except through them, and this was the immediate reason why the fourth king of Dahomey, Agaja, waged successful war on them in 1727 and seized their towns."

I.A. Akinjogbin has pushed the argument the farthest arguing that Agaja's primary motivation was to end the slave trade in the region. He writes that although Agaja participated in the slave trade, this was primarily a means of self-defense and that his original motives were to end the slave trade. The Bulfinch Lambe letter plays a prominent role in Akinjogbin's analysis as a declaration of Agaja's willingness to stop the slave trade. Akinjogbin writes:

"It immediately becomes clear that Agaja had very little sympathy for the slave trade when he invaded the Aja coast . His first motive appears to have been to sweep away the traditional political system, which had completely broken down and was no longer capable of providing basic security and justice...The second motive would appear to have been to restrict and eventually stop the slave trade, which had been the cause of the breakdown of the traditional system in Aja, and to substitute other 'legitimate' items of trade between Europe and the new kingdom of Dahomey."

Historian Robin Law, in contrast, argues that there is no clear evidence of motivation by Agaja opposing the slave trade and that the conquests of Allada and Whydah may have been simply done to improve Agaja's access to economic trade. Law contends that the disruption in slave trade that followed the rise of Dahomey was not necessarily related to any efforts on their part to slow the slave trade, but was simply due to the disruption caused by their conquests. Law believes in the authenticity of the Bulfinch Lambe letter, but contends that Atkins misinterprets it. In addition, Law doubts the self-defense motivation highlighted by Davidson and Akinjogbin, writing:

"It is true that the kings of Dahomey subsequently claimed credit for having freed the Dahomey area from the threat of invasion by neighbouring states, but there is no suggestion that this was a motive for either the original foundation or the subsequent expansion of the kingdom, or indeed that such invasions were seen (to any greater degree than Dahomey's own wars) as slave raids."

Similarly, David Henige and Marion Johnson question Akinjogbin's argument. While agreeing with the evidence from Akinjogbin that trade did slow after Agaja's rise, they find that the evidence does not support any altruistic or moral opposition to the slave trade as the reason for this. In terms of the Bulfinch Lambe letter, they maintain that its authenticity remains "not proven" but that since Lambe was provided 80 slaves when he was released, it is unlikely that Agaja's motivations were clear. Instead, they argue that the evidence supports Agaja trying to get involved in the slave trade but being unable to do so because of war with the exiled royal family of Whydah and the Oyo Empire. They write:

"Agaja's actions, insofar as we know them, suggest a willingness to participate in the external trade—be it slaves, goods, or gold—in a way that suited the perceived needs of Dahomey. At the same time, he was unable to implement this opportunity immediately because of the persistent warfare that threatened the existence of his state. During such a transitional and troubled period, trade inevitably languished. Such a view may not necessarily be correct, but it has the clear advantage of being both plausible and congenial to the available evidence."

Edna Bay assesses the debate by writing:

"Though the possibility that an African monarch tried to put an end to the slave trade is obviously attractive in the twentieth century, historians who have closely considered the evidence from Dahomey suggest, as did the eighteenth-century slave traders, that Dahomey's motive was a desire to trade directly with Europe, and that the kingdom was willing to provide the product most desired by European traders, human beings. Akinjogbin's thesis therefore is not likely. However, both Atkin's idea that Dahomey wanted to stop raids on its own people and the argument that the Dahomeans were seeking direct overseas commerce in slaves are conceivable."