The Long Goodbye

2018 ◽  
pp. 265-288
Author(s):  
Finn Fuglestad
Keyword(s):  
Palm Oil ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Local Tradition

The ruler of Dahomey from 1797 (up until possibly 1818) was Adandozan. But his reign has been erased from oral memory and the local tradition. Why this is so, constitutes another mystery in Dahomean history. In any case, his reign and that of his successors saw the official but slow and tortuous disentanglement of the European and American powers from slavery, the slave trade, and the Slave Coast (until the colonial conquest). As the locals were opposed to the abolition of the slave trade, the result was for a while a moderately thriving so-called illegal slave trade with the connivance of the Brazilian authorities. In addition, a trade in palm-oil developed. If we add the final collapse of Oyo and the subsequent eruption of the Yoruba wars, we could say that prospects looked fairly promising for Dahomey. Dahomey was eclipsed, and in fact defeated at times, by the polities (some new) of the Yoruba in the east, principally Lagos and Abeokuta.

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

1965 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Ross
Keyword(s):  
Palm Oil ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
Previous Decade

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.

Hanseatic Merchants and the Procurement of Palm Oil and Rubber for Wilhelmine Germany’s New Industries, 1850–1918

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-440
Author(s):  
Samuel Eleazar Wendt
Keyword(s):  
Palm Oil ◽  
World Trade ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Great Influence ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
South American ◽  
Commodity Chains ◽  
Tropical Regions

This article analyses the reorientation of Hanseatic merchants’ involvement in world trade during the second half of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth centuries. This shift was influenced by the independence of former British and Iberian colonies in the Americas, which caused the implosion of colonial trade monopolies. The abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, and the Scramble for Africa also allowed German commerce to obtain more direct access to markets in and raw materials from tropical regions. An examination of the commodity chains of rubber and palm oil/kernels reveals the great influence of Hanseatic merchant families (e.g. O’Swald, Schramm or Woermann) on determining and shaping the terms by which African and South American regions became incorporated into the emerging world economy.

Maritime Families

1999 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Maritime Law ◽  
Maritime Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Detailed Record ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Social Affairs

This chapter contains a detailed record of seven Liverpool-based families and their involvement in the city’s historical maritime economy. The report focuses on the social and economic lives of the Cropper, Earle, Crosbie-Oates, Danson, Stubbs, Mather and Laird families, and uses the family’s business and social affairs to provide an insight into slave trade; abolition; maritime law; shipping trade; the palm oil trade with West Africa; and emigration to Ireland and America. Resources featured include letters; minutes taken; estate deeds and family papers; business papers; newspaper clippings; accounts; diary extracts and travel journals; scrapbooks; and printed pamphlets.

The Compatibility of the Slave and Palm oil Trades in the Bight of Biafra

1976 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Northrup
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Indirect Effects ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Export Growth ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Direct And Indirect Effects ◽  
External Demand ◽  
Oil Export ◽  
The Relationship

The rise of the legitimate trade in palm oil in the nineteenth century is often described as following (or due to) a decline in the overseas slave trade. In fact in the most important oil producing region, the Bight of Biafra, the palm oil trade expanded well in advance of any decline in the slave trade and the suppression of the slave trade occasioned no marked increase in the rate of palm oil export growth. It would appear that the direct and indirect effects of the slave trade in this region had created economic conditions which enabled its small farmers to respond so rapidly to external demand for palm oil. The failure to understand the relationship between the slave and the palm oil trades is a result of misunderstanding the relationship between these oil producers and the coastal middlemen.

Price Fluctuations in the Early Palm Oil Trade

1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. H. Latham
Keyword(s):  
Palm Oil ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Supply Networks ◽  
Price Fluctuations ◽  
Price Series ◽  
Recent Suggestion ◽  
New Information

A previously unused price series from the Liverpool Mercury provides new information about the early days of the palm oil trade. A boom in 1818 drove prices to their century high, only to be followed in the 1820s by a prolonged depression. The boom may have encouraged merchants to try to bring Bonny into the oil trade, as its development as an important oil port dates from this time. However the depression of the '20s did not prevent the continued expansion of the trade, which was also sustained during the better prices of the 1830s. This information does not affect Northrup's recent suggestion that the slave trade continued to expand in the 1830s, as his evidence is inconclusive and there is no comparable information on slave prices. Yet clearly both trades were carried on side by side at the time. This was not because their supply networks were different. Slaves and oil were both sent from Ibibioland, being peripheral to the main economic activity of that region, domestic agriculture and craftwork.

Royal Monopoly and Private Enterprise in the Atlantic Trade: The Case of Dahomey

1977 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Private Enterprise ◽  
Complete Control ◽  
Important Group ◽  
Atlantic Trade

The kingdom of Dahomey is often presented as the classic instance of the operation of a royal monopoly of the Atlantic trade in West Africa. Detailed study establishes, however, that there was never any such royal commercial monopoly in Dahomey, although there were attempts to establish such a monopoly in the 1780s and in the 1850s. The kings of Dahomey enjoyed a number of commercial privileges, and controlled the distribution of the war captives taken by the Dahomian army, but they were never the sole sellers of slaves. There was always an important group of private merchants in Dahomey, who were mainly concerned with marketing the slaves imported into the kingdom from the interior. The replacement of the slave trade by the palm oil trade in the nineteenth century strengthened the position of the private merchants, since they were able to move into the production of oil as well as marketing it. The kings of Dahomey also engaged in the production of oil for export, but were not able to establish as complete control of the production of oil as they had exercised over the ‘production’ of slaves.

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