Interesting article - Benin was never a big player in the slave trade

• published: 13 Aug 2009
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The excerpt shows that Benin was able to keep it's industries as Richard Burton pointed out This is just an article I found and wanted to share. Also read "Early Kongo-Portuguese Relations: A New Interpretation" by John Thornton http://www.fiu.edu/~ogundira/Thornton_Early_Kongo_Portuguese_Relations.pdf page 5 "The fact that Portugal possessed more developed marine technology, firearms , and building technology--and these were the very things that Kongo most wanted from Europe--does not necessarily imply that Portugal had adecisive structural advantage over Kongo. In more fundamental ways Kongo and Portugal were more or less on the same economic level" "The Slave Trade, Depopulation and Human Sacrifice in Benin History" James D. Graham http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cea_0008-0055_1965_num_5_18_3035# 322-323 "That this "falling off in the trade was severly felt by the people of Bénin," was demonstrated by the Oba's request, in 1838, that Moffat and Smith settle "that palaver" with the king of England. Although Moffat interpreted the Oba's request as a référence to British interférence with the slave trade, it is more reasonable to assume that the Oba was actually troubled by the general "falling off" in all trade, including ivory and palm oil, which was explained by Captain Owen. Richard Burton observed, in 1862, that it was "a hopeless task to restore commerce to Bénin." Since the Bini wove their own cotton cloth and brewed their own wine, Burton thought that they "seemed to care little for the suspension of trade: it became painfully évident that they could stand the ordeal better than we could." Indeed, Oba Adolo accepted the abolition of the slave trade "as a. fait accompli, and never even alludes to its revival." Burton also reported that the factors at Gwato were unscrupulous, and he recommended that their factories be abandoned and razed to the ground. Apparently, his suggestion was followed, for Gallwey, in 1893, said that there had been no factories at Gwato "until very recently. " Palm oil, agreed Burton and Gallwey, was then the primary export. The latter also noted that the Itsekiri "do their best to obstruct" direct trade with Bénin proper, and that the inland waterways leading to Gwato were very dangerous because of snags, rapid current, and sunken trees. An overall view of the period, between 1486-1897, yields the conclusion that the European slave trade was seldom, if ever, of considérable importance to Bénin proper." The bellow looks into the economy of a slave trading society (Dahomey). This needs more investigation especially the question how did they get hooked on the slave trade. I actually see guns as mostly as tools of the trade (slave trade) so guns were purchased with the aim of capturing more slaves and buying other goods "Dahomey and the Slave Trade: Reflections of the Historiography of the Rise of Dahomey" pages 24-25 http://www.fiu.edu/~ogundira/Law_Historiography_of_the_Rise_of_Dahomey.pdf "calculation by Patrick Manning (1982) would raise the share of the Atlantic trade in the national income to 15 percent, and both sets of figures must be regarded as having an essentially illustrative rather than a probative value. Assessment of the importance of the Atlantic trade must also, of course, be based upon qualitative as well as on quantitative considerations, and account needs to be taken of the crucial role played for the Dahomean state not only by imported firearms (whose importance Peuket tends to discount) but also by imported luxury items, which could be distributed to attract and secure the allegiance of followers, and by the cowry shells which served as currency in local markets. The importance of imported goods in royal largesse was already clear in the 1720s, when Bulfinch Lamb noted that the king of Dahomey gives Booges [cowries] like dirt, and Brandy like water. The importance of cowry shells should especially be stressed: in the second half of the seventeenth century, it appears that between a third and a half of the value of imports into the Slave Coast was normally in cowries. It is somewhat ironic that Peukert points to the existence of a flourishing local exchange economy in Dahomey as part of his argument for the downgrading of the significance of overseas trade. But the flourishing local trade, lubricated by a currency of imported cowry shells, was evidently, in large measure, itself a consequence of the booming Atlantic trade" Saint Mary's University: http://stmarys.ca/~wmills/course316/7Dahomey.html "- Dahomey had a monetary system: cowry shells were the basic currency, but trade goods were used also—guns, bolts of cloth etc. - Europeans tried to take advantage of this currency; they brought so many cowry shells that the shells lost value (inflation). As a result, European trade goods became the basic currency used in the purchase of slaves"