Brazilian Culture in the Bight of Benin
Despite being considered a particular group identifiable by their names, the Aguda community was never a homogeneous group. At the time of its formation, and even today, members of the community were perceived to be Catholics, but among the former returnees there were also Muslims and those who were followers of African-based religions such as Vodun and Orisha.58 Among them there were African-born former bondspeople who belonged to various ethnic groups and spoke various native languages, mainly Yoruba, but also Gbe languages such as Gen, Aja, and Fon.
Over time the community included returnees and their descendants, descendants of Brazilian and Portuguese slave traders, and those who had been bondspeople of these two groups and were then assimilated by their families. These individuals carried the Portuguese names of their former Brazilian owners and shared customs and culture acquired in Brazil and Portugal.59Freedpeople from Brazil brought to the Bight of Benin a particular cuisine that included popular Brazilian dishes such as feijoada (beans and pork, similar to the French cassoulet), cozido (boiled meat and vegetables), and acará (deep-fried dough made with white beans) that are still consumed today in Togo, the Republic of Benin, and Nigeria, similar to the Brazilian acarajé, very popular in Bahia. Although Europeans introduced bread to the Bight of Benin, it was the Aguda community who popularized its consumption.60
Despite the differences within the Aguda community, the returnees had a common past in which the Atlantic slave trade and slavery played a crucial role. Unlike the local population, the Aguda were Westernized. They were Catholic and baptized with Portuguese and Brazilian names such as Silva, Reis, Assunção, Almeida, Santos, Cruz, Paraíso, Oliveira, Souza, and many others.
They also dressed according to the European fashion of the time, wearing Western clothes such as suits, shirts, and ties. Moreover, to preserve their cohesion, the members of the Aguda community often chose to marry within their community. Many Aguda were literate. They also developed in the Bight of Benin new trades they had learned in Brazil. Members of the community were masons, carpenters, tailors, and merchants. Because of their Westernized manners, they were perceived by the local population to be more educated, but they themselves saw their Westernization as European assimilation and denial of their African origins. The professed superiority associated with a Luso-Brazilian culture, imported mainly from Brazil, provoked jealousy among the local residents. Ultimately, being an Aguda meant belonging to a modern bourgeoisie, which is why some families in the Bight of Benin sought to imitate the community’s way of living, to the extent of sometimes adopting Portuguese names.The Aguda community also left its mark in the public space. In coastal towns of the Bight of Benin such as Lagos, Porto-Novo, Ouidah, and Agoué, members of the community built two-story houses with balconies that influenced the local community to emulate the Brazilian architectural style. Adopting some of these formal elements led to the development of a vernacular architecture inspired by the colonial Luso-Brazilian style.61 Although often in a great state of decay, many of these buildings are still standing in cities such as Agoué, Ouidah, Porto-Novo, and Lagos. For example, the iconic Great Mosque of Porto-Novo (figure 17.1), whose construction started in 1912 during French colonial rule, borrowed many elements of colonial Brazilian architecture.
Figure 17.1. Great Mosque of Porto-Novo, Republic of Benin, 2020. Courtesy of Kottiobed, via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grande_mosquée_de_porto-novo_03.jpg.
Over several decades, the Aguda community also reproduced, maintained, and re-created on West African soil Brazilian traditions such as Carnaval, samba parades, and the bouryan, a popular masquerade in the Brazilian Northeast that is similar to the bumba-meu-boi. The Aguda contributed to the development of the Catholic Church in the region, preparing the way for British, French, and German colonizers who took control of the Bight of Benin at the end of the nineteenth century. The Aguda also re-created Catholic brotherhoods such as the Our Lord of the Good End (Nosso Senhor do Bom Fim), an association that, like other Black brotherhoods discussed in chapter 14, contributed to the manumission of numerous enslaved people in Bahia. In 1861, when the French Société des Missions Africaines established a permanent Catholic Church in the Bight of Benin, its main goal was to serve the already existing Aguda Catholic community.
By 1850, when the slave trade to Brazil had again been outlawed, the slave trade in Ouidah had already dramatically declined. Beginning in the 1830s, in reaction to British pressure to put an end to the slave trade, many slave merchants started trading alternative products, but they continued trading in enslaved Africans until the 1860s.62 The new trade largely relied on the production of palm oil, the demand for which had increased since the eighteenth century. During the nineteenth century, palm oil was sold in the European and North American markets for industrial purposes, such as in the manufacture of lubricants, industrial fuels, candles, and soap, while palm nut oil was used in the production of margarine.63
The British fight against the slave trade was not disinterested but already part of Britain’s endeavors to establish a permanent presence in the region. In 1851, the British Royal Navy blockaded Ouidah to oppose the refusal by Dahomey to put an end to the slave trade. Years later, in 1876, a quarrel involving the merchant Jacinto da Costa Santos, who was an agent of the British firm of Swanzy, and King Glele, who ruled Dahomey from 1858 to 1889, led to a second British blockade that lasted nearly ten months.64 But at that point the French conquest of Dahomey and Porto-Novo was already in progress.
In 1851, France signed a treaty of commerce and friendship with King Toffa, who reigned Porto-Novo from 1875 to 1908. Britain bombarded Lagos and sent the Oba Kosoko into exile to secure control of the region in 1851. On January 13, 1852, Dahomey and Britain eventually signed a treaty to put an end to the Atlantic slave trade, even though the slave trade continued. In 1861, Britain annexed Lagos.65 One historian estimated that nearly 1,000 residents of Lagos were identified as Brazilians (Aguda) in 1865, in a population of approximately 25,000. This number increased to 5,000 in 1889, when the overall population was assessed at 37,458.66Cotonou became a French protectorate in 1863 and was confirmed as such in 1878, but as French occupation was not yet established at that point, the city remained under Dahomey’s control.67 When the Atlantic slave trade effectively ended in Ouidah in 1865, ten of the eighteen active slave merchants were Brazilians.68 But despite the end of the trade in enslaved Africans, several returnees who settled at the Bight of Benin continued to travel to Brazil, where slavery remained alive until 1888. These voyages were not only intended to visit relatives left behind but also to continue developing economic, cultural, and religious relationships on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.69 Likewise, the most prosperous Aguda families sent their male children to study in Brazil, Portugal, and France. Only the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 slowed down these lively and continuous exchanges.
The movement of freedpeople from Brazil back to Africa continued on the eve of the Brazilian abolition of slavery. After the Berlin Conference of 1884, the Atlantic slave trade was replaced by European conquest and colonization. In 1882, Porto-Novo and France confirmed Porto-Novo’s status as French protectorate. Likewise, Little Popo became part of German Togoland in 1885, and in the same year, Grand-Popo and Agoué became French territories.
In early 1889, France proposed establishing a trade customhouse in Cotonou. Because King Glele refused to negotiate, France declared war against Dahomey.During the first French military campaign of 1890, France occupied Ouidah. In October 1890, a treaty establishing peace between Dahomey and France confirmed the loss of Cotonou but gave Dahomey control of Ouidah. However, in March 1892, French troops advanced from Porto-Novo to Abomey. Dahomey’s capital was occupied in November 1892 and Ouidah in December 1892. A French decree established Dahomey as a French protectorate that also included Porto-Novo, Ouidah, Savi, Godomey, and Abomey-Calavi. In 1893, King Behanzin, who succeeded his father in December 1889, was defeated, and in 1894 he was forced to abdicate the throne and was sent into exile in Martinique. On January 15, 1894, his brother was made king by the French under the name Agoli-Agbo, but he had no actual powers. During his reign, French colonial rule in Dahomey preserved local sovereigns, but finally as French colonizers imposed a major tax increase, they also replaced local rulers with their own administrators.70 In 1900, Agoli-Agbo was also sent into exile, to Gabon. Several dynasties continued to exist in Dahomey, but their role was only symbolic because the French regime did not recognize them.
Not all members of the Aguda community supported the French conquest, but some members joined the new French colonial administration in a variety of positions in which they were intermediaries between the local populations and the European colonizers. For example, several Aguda individuals served as interpreters in the treaty negotiations between the French and the local chiefs. Indeed, their Brazilian and African experiences facilitated their mobility in the new colonial context, and many saw the French presence as an opportunity to become prosperous.71 In general, the end of the Atlantic slave trade diminished the economic and political power of the Aguda community, but those who were economically successful continued to nourish economic and cultural ties with Brazil.
Moreover, French colonization allowed the already prosperous Aguda families to forge a distinct place in colonial society. With the new colonial configuration, many Aguda continued to perform the professional activities that they had performed in Brazil (carpenters, tailors, masons), and others occupied administrative positions (clerks, interpreters, traders).72 They collaborated with the French regime, and they received favors in exchange for their assistance, thus consolidating their privileged position in colonial society. Thus, during French colonial rule, the Aguda became important elite members of the Colony of Dahomey and Dependencies (Colonie du Dahomey et dépendances).73 To a great extent, the formation of this Afro-Luso-Brazilian community in the Bight of Benin, before the first calls of “back to Africa” in the United States, shows us how the Atlantic exchanges that emerged during the era of the Atlantic slave trade persevered after the end of the inhuman commerce in the 1860s. It also reminds us of the continuous ties of African-descended communities with their homelands and their contribution to the development of an African diaspora that includes descendants of enslaved people and also descendants of individuals who traded in human beings.