Law, Robin. "Royal Monopoly and Private Enterprise in the Atlantic Trade: The Case of Dahomey". The Journal of African History, Vol.18, No.4 (1977): 555-577.

Law, Robin. "Royal Monopoly and Private Enterprise in the Atlantic Trade: The Case of Dahomey". The Journal of African History, Vol.18, No.4 (1977): 555-577.

• Historical literature generally agrees that the kings of coastal West African states had a monopoly on the slave trade with Europeans, whereas slaving in the Sahelian inland areas was less centralized and more commercial (555, 559).
• This consensus has been largely centered around the historiography of the Kingdom of Dahomey, largely pioneered by Dr. Karl Polanyi, who emphasized the state control over slave trading in a region centered on that activity (555).
• The author argues that much of this idea that the King of Dahomey ever exercised a royal monopoly on the slave trade is a myth based on biased readings of primary literature and lack of historical depth. Although the Dahomean monarchy did try to impose a monopoly, this was only temporarily successful in the 1780s and 1850s, breaking down both times into a mixed system of commerce (556, 576).
• The Kingdom of Dahomey was originally a state of the African interior, and only gained control of ports on the Gulf of Guinea in the 1720s. Before that time, trade with European merchants had been mediated by the coastal kingdoms of Allada and Ouidah (556).
• The transatlantic slave trade in the region really began in the 1620s, mainly focused on the port of Godomey in the Kingdom of Allada, although by the 1670s the trade had shifted towards the Ouidah ports to the East. These kingdoms sold their own criminals in addition to slaves purchased from Dahomey and the Kingdom of Oyo (556).
• European accounts of the slave trade in Allada in the mid-1600s noted that the King imposed a tax on all ships wishing to trade in his ports, and taxed as licensed slave traders in his kingdom. He also reserved the right of preemption on all imported goods, allowing the King to claim his favorites among payments (557).
• The King of Ouidah exercised similar rights and systems of control as the Allada kings, but also personally set the price for all slaves with European merchants, prohibiting individual slave merchants from determining prices. In addition to preemption of goods, the King of Ouidah had the right to sell his slaves before any other merchants; they used this power in combination with setting prices to impose a cartel of slavery at certain occasions (557-558).
• Both of the coastal kingdoms delegated relations with European slave traders to specific officials, a singular official in Allada and three separate officials in Ouidah, one each for the French, Portuguese, and English traders (557-558).
• This practice was continued by the Dahomey kings after the conquest, along the three officials in Ouidah were replaced with a single position in 1733 following complaints by European merchants of national favoritism (562). In 1746, however, these official were executed for disobedience and replaced with officials responsible for tax collection, while the King conducted diplomacy more directly with European merchants (563, 567).
• In the 1710s, the Kingdoms of both Ouidah and Allada began imposing stricter control over the slave trade. In Ouidah, the king demanded that all slaves be sold to his office, giving him a monopoly on the sale of slaves to Europeans. In Allada, the king increased taxes of the sale of slaves and restricted certain goods, particularly reserving cowry shells and guns for his royal use (558).
• This restriction of the acquisition of firearms from the sale of slaves in the Kingdom of Allada caused serious problems for both small slavery outfits and the Kingdom of Dahomey, which depended on firearms supplied from Allada. In response to this, King Agaja of Dahomey conquered Godomey in 1724 and Ouidah in 1727, guarantee himself a supply of European weapons (559).
• A source mine of the range of research views on slavery in the Kingdom of Dahomey in available on pages 559 and 560.
• The dynamics of Dahomean control over the slave trade appears to be similar to the system in place in Allada and Ouidah prior to their conquest. The King of Dahomey imposed a tax on all ships seeking to purchase slaves and an export tax on all sales, both of each fluctuated according to competition with other slave ports in the region (561). He also had preemption for the sale of slaves and the import of manufactured goods, with a monopoly on the purchase of guns or gunpowder (561).
• The extent of royal involvement in the slave trade changed over time, in particular King Gezo in the 1840s specifically tries to reduce royal involvement in exchange for giving more authority to military leaders to avoid increased pressure from abolitionist Britain (562).
• Considering that the system of slavery in Dahomey does not represent a royal monopoly on the trade, the author suggests that the misinterpretation comes from a mistranslation of the 1911 French text L'Ancien Royaume de Dahome, where the author claims not that the King of Dahomey had control over the slave trade, but that he had a monopoly on the trade in slaves captured from raids, who had to be sold to the King, only one source of slaves in the region (561).
• The King of Dahomey fielded the vast majority of the Kingdom's military force, made of primarily of female slaves, as a private army, with other armed units making up a much smaller portion. This meant that most slaves captured in raids were captured by the King's slave-soldiers (562).
• Unlike the previous administrations in the Allada and Ouidah kingdoms, the kings of Dahomey did not allow foreign traders from the inland kingdoms to trade directly with Europeans. Slave traders from the Kingdom of Oyo or the Kingdom of Mahi had to sell their slaves to Dahomean traders, who could then sell them to Europeans (564).
• Most of the people purchasing slaves from the interior were private merchants, however, the King of Dahomey frequently rewarded military leaders with the rights to tax the slave trade in certain inland regions. These officials then often set up their own slave trading outfits to buy from inland merchants (565).
• Very little is currently known about the social makeup of private slave-traders in Dahomey, however we do know that in the 1780s one of the wealthiest traders was a woman. Accounts from the 1800s describe a variety of backgrounds, including some military nobility and the child of a manumitted slave (565-566).
• The closest thing to a royal monopoly on slave trading in Dahomey occurred in the 1780s during the reign of King Kpengla, who attempted to impose a monopoly by forcing all merchants to sell their slaves directly to him. This was apparently met with resistance, with many inland merchants simply refusing to sell in Dahomey and taking their slaves to Porto Novo instead. The policy has repealed by his successor, King Agonglo (566).
• Only one account, from 1848, attempts to gauge the control of the King of Dahomey over the slave trade, ascribing 3,000 slaves sold to the King out of 8,000 total, or by far the largest minority in a plural marketplace (567).
• Palm oil had been purchased by European merchants since the 1780s, but in the 1840s the abolition of slavery by British mandate made it a popular 'legitimate' alternative to slave trading (571). Most of the Dahomean elite decided to continue slaving, meaning that private merchants and farmers were the primary beneficiaries of increased trade in palm oil (572).
• The increase in the cultivation of palm oil in the lush forest belt near the coast contributed to a rise in the slave population used internally in Dahomey, as wealthy merchants used slaves to harvest the oil in large plantations. These plantation were established by both European and Dahomean merchants (573).
• The royal house did use slaves on large plantation near the palace, but this was to produce food for the royal court and the standing army, not to produce cash crops for export (573).
• The dominance of private merchants in the production of palm oil led to a wealth disparity between the existing military elites serving the King and the new economic elite, who now had hundreds of times the wealth enjoyed by the old slave exporters (574).
• The King of Dahomey did eventual institute a tax on the production of palm oil in 1850, adapted from a previous tax on foodstuffs, amounting to 1/18 of production. This tax was distributed between the King and local administrators. In 1852, after coming to power in a coup, King Gezo did seize the plantations for himself and establish a royal monopoly on the production of palm oil (574-575).
• The effectiveness of this order, however, is disputed, as numerous accounts indicate that much trade was still undertaken by private merchants with private plantations in which King Gezo was largely uninvolved outside of taxation (575-576).