-
Chapter 1
- Ohio University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
3 Chapter 1 Lacustrine Villages in South Benin as Refuges from the Slave Trade Elisée Soumonni The prominent role played by Dahomey (Benin) in the supply of captives for enslavement in the Americas is illustrated by the abundant literature on this old West African kingdom.1 Ouidah (Whydah in the English documents), its port of trade, is a familiar name to students and scholars of the Atlantic slave trade. The extant literature however does not address several issues of Dahomey’s involvement in the trade. The impact of the obnoxious traf¤c on the old kingdom and indeed on other contemporary sub-Saharan African polities is generally overlooked . Little attention, if any, is paid to the ways local populations resisted the slave trade and enslavement, thereby often giving the impression that any form of resistance began on board the slave ships or in the Americas. Not much is known about the various forms of internal resistance to the traf¤c, thereby creating the assumption among many that captives surrendered like sacri¤cial lambs to their oppressors. By examining the primary form of resistance and protection provided by the nature of the environment, this chapter is an attempt at challenging such a view. The environment under consideration is made of a series of lacustrine villages in the southern region of the present-day Republic of Benin. Ganvié is the most important and the best known of these villages because of its exploitation as “one of the gems of the Republic of Benin’s tourist and cultural You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. 4 Elisºe Soumonni heritage” (Zinsou 1994). Ganvié is also referred to as the Venice of Africa, extolled by Eustache Prudencio, the country’s popular poet, in one of his famous poems.2 But even the least attentive tourists visiting the site can easily understand from the guide’s explanations that those living in the so-called Venice of Africa and other adjacent lacustrine villages were not attracted there in the early eighteenth century by the beauty of the landscape. The search for security in a period of violence and fear created by slave raiders and traders forced ¶eeing populations to seek a decent life in an environment that was then and still largely remains unattractive. The Country of “The Men on Water” During the era of the transatlantic slave trade, Lake Nokoué and the swamplands surrounding it provided an ideal refuge for various migrants who came to constitute a homogenous ethnic group, that of the To¤nu (see Bourgoignie 1972). This major historical factor in the establishment and relocation of villages in the area, though acknowledged, is yet to be the focus of investigation. In contrast, the physical environment in which various and successive generations of migrants settled, their social organization, and their economic activities have been the subject of signi¤cant research. The starting point and focus of these studies are generally the ecological dimension of human settlements. Geographers , botanists, geologists, and archaeologists, in an ethnographic perspective , have made outstanding contributions to our knowledge of what I shall call To¤nuland (see, for example, Pélissier 1963; Mondjannagni 1969; Paradis 1975; Barbier 1978; Pétrequin and Pétrequin 1984). To¤nuland, the country of the To¤nu, is part of the lagoon system created along the entire Bight of Benin through the deposit of sand by the eastwardmoving coastal current. It is located in the lower zone of the So River, a branch of the delta built up by the Weme (Ouémé), the most important river of Benin, about forty kilometers from the coast. While the So ¶ows into Lake Nokoué, most of the delta waters ¶ow into the lagoon of Porto Novo and, through a natural channel, into that of Lagos. To¤nuland is in an amphibian environment prone to ¶ooding by the swelling So and Weme Rivers, as well as Lake Nokoué and the lagoon of Porto Novo. Indeed, ¶oods, a characteristic feature of To¤nuland, have been used as a classi¤cation criterion of its villages: • villages with cultivable lands because they are not often ¶ooded: GbessouGbegome You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and...