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The Career of Domingo Martinez in the Bight of Benin 1833–64

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David A. Ross
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Extract

The career of Martinez provides a guide to the economic and political fortunes of the Brazilians in the coastal States of the Bight of Benin in the eighteen-forties, fifties, and early sixties. The first phase of his career took place while the Brazilian slave trade was still at its height; the second phase covered the successful Brazilian adaptation to the new commercial patterns involved in the introduction of the palm oil trade; the third phase took place when Brazilian commerce was in decline following increased British intervention and growing contact between European merchants and the African States. The graph of his political influence follows exactly that of his commercial affluence. In the early eighteen-forties he was a prominent figure in the confused politics of the Bight. In the late forties he was as influential in Dahomey as Francesco Felix De Souza had been in the previous decade. At the end of his life his importance had declined so much that he was unable to prevent the King of Dahomey entering into an agreement which would have dealt a final blow to his commercial position.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 1965 , pp. 79 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1965

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References

1 Thomas Hutton, see note 2, writing in 1847, gives 1835 as the approximate date of his arrival. Vice-Consul Fraser, writing in 1851, gives 1833.

2 This paragraph is based on a letter from Thomas Hutton, a Gold Coast trader, to his uncle W. B. Hutton of the London firm of W. B. Hutton & Sons. C.O. 96/12, T. Hutton to W. B. Hutton, 17 March 1847.

3 For the dynastic struggle in Lagos, see Newbury, C. W., The Western Slave Coast and its Rulers, Chap. II, p. 36.Google Scholar

4 Biobaku, S. O., The Egba and their Neighbours, Chap. III, p. 33,Google Scholar and C.O. 96/12, T. Hutton to W. B. Hutton, 17 Mar. 1847.

5 C. W. Newbury considers that Martinez was for the first time attempting to break into Lagos trade.

6 C.O. 96/12, Extracts from a Correspondent at Badagry to W. B. Hutton, enclos. in W. B. Hutton to B. Hawes, London, 3 Sept. 1847.

7 Dahomey exercised a ‘protectorate’ over Porto Novo, and attempted to control the town's trade. This was why Porto Novo beach was in Dahoman territory.

8 In the 1840s this Company was suspected of being implicated in the slave trade. Its agent at Whydah was certainly involved, and was convicted in a French court.

9 C.O. 96/12, T. Hutton to W. H. Hutton, Aghwey, 7 December 1846.

10 Vice-Consul Fraser quotes a remark made at this time by Isidore Dc Souza (the heir of F. F. Dc Souza), who when asked if he would sell palm oil, replied ‘What do you think I am—a black?’

11 F.O. 84/826, Commander Forbes to Commodore Fanshawe, 6 April 1850.

12 F.O. 84/860, W. B. Hutton to Lord Palmerston, London, 24 March 1851.

13 F.O. 84/826, Commodore Fanshawe to Secretary of Admiralty, 10 April 1850.

14 The letters of a small slaver Dos Santos to his agents in Bahia—in Verger, P., Les Afro-Américains.Google Scholar

15 C.O. 96/12, J. H. Thompson to W. B. Hutton, Clapham, 15 June 1847. Thompson was one of Hutton's sea captains. He credited Martinez with having shipped, in three months of 1847, 45,000 slaves from different points on the coast.

16 C.O. 96/12, T. Hutton to W. B. Hutton, 17 March 1847, and F.O. 84/826, Commander Forbes to Commodore Fanshawe, 6 April 1850.

17 The English with whom he dealt came mainly from Bristol.

18 F.O. 84/816, Beecroft to Palmerston, Journal of visit to Abomey, 6 July 1850.

19 F.O. 84/866, Fraser to Beecroft, Journal of stay in Whydah, Dec. 1850.

20 Francesco Felix De Souza died in 1848 heavily in debt. According to Vice-Consul Duncan (F.O. 84/775, Duncan to Palmerston, 22 Sept. 1849), when he died De Souza owed $80,000 to the King of Dahomey alone. Nevertheless, his son Isidore succeeded to the office of Chacha, while two other brothers, Antonio and Ignatio, were well-known merchants. The family was burdened with F. F. Dc Souza's debts, and his three sons were in debt until their deaths in 1858–60. Their prestige was never anything like that of their father.

21 Louis Fraser was British Vice-Consul mt he Bight of Benin during 1851–3. As such he spent several months in Whydah between July 1851 and May 1852.

22 F.O. 84/886, Fraser's Journal of his residence in Dahomey—July to Nov. 1851— Fraser to Beecroft, 15 Nov. 1851.

23 F.O. 84/886, Fraser to Golimer, Canna, 23 Aug. 1851. Caboceer was a Portuguese word used to indicate an important chief.

24 Francesco Felix De Souza had rebuilt and furnished a church in the former Portuguese fort at Whydah. This church was periodically visited by a priest from the Portuguese island of Sèo Tomé, and was in good repair when the Lyons fathers first came to Whydah in 1863. There was also a well-provided-for chapel at Agoué. (Abbé Borghero to Abbé Planque, Whydah, 21 Dec. 1863, Les annates de la Propagation de Ia Foi, 1864.)

25 Lieutenant De Vaisseau Gelle, ‘Notice sur Porto Novo’, Revue Maritime et Coloniale, 1864.

26 FO. 84/886, Fraser's Journal, Fraser to Beecroft, 15 Nov. 1851.

27 F.O. 84/865, Commodore Fanshawe to Secretary of Admiralty, 29 Apr. 1851.

28 See Lloyd, C., The Navy and the Slave Trade, Chap. III.Google Scholar

29 F.O. 84/865, Commander Forbes to Commodore Fanshawe, 14 Mar. 1851.

30 F.O. 84/860, T. Hutton to W. B. Hutton, 16 Jan. 1851, enclos, in W. B. Hutton to Lord Palmerston, 2 Apr. 1851.

31 F.O. 84/855, Commander Adams to Commodore Fanshawe, 14 Mar. 1851.

32 Akitoye was restored to the Lagos throne when the slave trade in that port was in decline, and after an English firm (Hutton, see above, n. 30), had been admitted to trade there. Consul Beecroft was strongly influenced by the C.M.S. missionaries in Abeokutta. They regarded Akitoye–an ally of the Egba–as an anti-slave trade monarch, who could be relied on to prevent the slave trade reviving. Kosoko–the enemy of the Egbe–they regarded as an interveterate slave trader. Kosoko refused to sign an anti-slave trade treaty, which would have committed him to the allies of his dynastic enemies, and would have thus ruined his position in Lagos. Beecroft, influenced by the missionaries, saw what was essentially a dynastic struggle, in which opposing parties sought allies where they could, as a confrontation of principle. Kosoko was not expelled to force an entry for British traders–Thomas Hutton had already begun trading there. He was expelled because of the missionary tendency to see African politics in European terms. J. F. Ade Ajayi gives a useful summary of the events leading up to Akiltoye's restoration in ‘The British Occupation of Lagos 1851–61’ in Nigeria, no. 69, Aug. 1961. See also Newbury, C. W., The Western Slave Coast and its Rulers, Chap. III, and“ S. O. Biobaku, The Egba and their Neighbours, Chap. IV.Google Scholar

33 F.O. 84/886, Fraser's Journal, Oct. to Dec. 1851. The King depended on the Brazilians for most of his information about the policies and power of the Europeans. Martinez had advised that the King should not pay attention to the various missions sent from Britain in an attempt to persuade him to give up slaving.

34 F.O. 84/986, Commander Wilmot to Commodore Bruce, II Feb. 1852.

35 Antonio Dc Souza was one of the more important of Francesco Felix De Souza's sons; see note 20.

36 This paragraph is based on Vice-Consul Fraser's Journal of Residence in Whydah, Oct.–Dec. 1851 and Jan.-Mar. 1852. F.O. 84/886 enclos. in Beecroft to Lord Palmerston, 28 June 1852.

37 The King of Dahomey also signed an anti-slave agreement in Jan. 1852. He agreed only to give up slave trading, and refused to sign the standard treaty. This was not regarded as satisfactory by the Foreign Office, and the blockade was only raised when it was found that no more concessions could be extracted.

38 F.O. 84/950, Campbell to Townsend, 12 May 1854.

39 F.O. 84/950, Campbell to Clarendon, 1 Dec. 1854.

40 F.O. 84/858, Gollmer to Beecroft, Badagry, 18 Mar. 1847.

41 Campbell did, however, suspect one of the leading supporters of the House of Akitoye, Madame Tinubu, of dealing in slaves with Martinez.

42 When Akitoye had been driven from Lagos he had gone first to Abeokuta and then to Badagry. There his only ally had been Mewu, a Porto Novo chief in exile. Akitoye's hostility to the Kosoko régime in Lagos interrupted Badagry's trade with that port, and the native chiefs of Badagry turned against Akitoye. When they tried to turn him out, Mewu and Akitoye, with the support of the Egba and the C.M.S. missionaries, instead drove the chiefs out. With the triumph of Akitoye at Lagos, Mewu was left in possession of a much diminished Badagry.

43 British Consul in the Bight of Benin, July 1853–Jan. 1859.

44 F.O. 84/951, Rev. W. Warton to Rev. H. Beecham, Accra, 16 Aug., enclos. in Beecham to Clarendon, 27 Oct. 1854.

45 For the revival of slave trade in the 1850s, see Lloyd, C., The Navy and the Slave Trade, Chap. VII, ‘The End of the Atlantic Slave Trade’.Google Scholar

46 One of them was M. Louis Seminaire, well known s Don Louis, who had previously maintained a slaving factory at Gallinas. He spent some time in 1854 with Martinez at Porto Novo. F.O. 84/950, Campbell to Clarendon, 25 Dec. 1854.

47 F.O. 84/976, Campbell to Clarendon, 2 June 1855.

48 F.O. 84/1088, Campbell to Malmesbúry, Lagos, 4 Feb. 1859.

49 F.O. 84/1002, Campbell to Clarendon, 18 Aug. 1856.

50 This phrase was used on the coast at this time to describe any of the Brazilians who had been on the coast since before 1850 or so.

51 Some were Spanish and there is mention of a French vessel.

52 The British squadron could not arrest an American vessel if it was equipped for the slave trade, but only if it actually had slaves aboard.

53 F.O. 84/1031, Campbell to Clarendon, Lagos, 27 July 1857.

54 Probably because of the close co-operation of the Consuls at Lagos with the ships of the Squadron—acting often on information received from the British Consul in Havana:

55 F.O. 84/1115, Brand to Lord John Russell, Lagos, 10 Sept. 1860.

56 See Lloyd, C., The Navy and the Slave Trade, Chap. VII, ‘The End of the Atlantic Slave Trade’.Google Scholar

57 F.O. 84/1031, Campbell to Clarendon, 11 May 1857.

58 In his capacity as Governor of the Portuguese fort at Whydah.

59 F.O. 84/1008, Brand to Lord John Russell, 31 Dec. 1859.

60 Hargreaves, J. D., Prelude to the Partition of West Africa, Chap. III, part IIIGoogle Scholar, and Schnapper, B., La politique et le commerce français darn le Golfe de Guinée de 1830 à 1871, Chap. V, part II.Google Scholar

61 F.O. 84/1088, Campbell to Malmesbury, Lagos, Apr. 1859.

62 See n. 48.

63 F.O. 84/1088, Campbell to Malmesbury, Lagos, 4 Feb. 1859.

64 Hargreaves, J. D., Prelude to the Partition of West Africa, Chap. III, part III.Google Scholar

65 Burton, R., A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahomey.Google Scholar