Dahomey's Conquest of Ouidah (1727): King Agaja and the Coast

Dahomey’s conquest of Ouidah in February 1727 was the moment an inland West African kingdom seized control of one of the busiest slave-trading ports on the Atlantic coast. King Agaja of Dahomey, ruling from Abomey in present-day Benin, had already taken the kingdom of Allada in 1724; three years later his army overran the kingdom of Hueda and its port, Ouidah. The victory made Dahomey a direct partner of European traders for the rest of the slave-trade era.

Background: the Slave Coast around 1700

The stretch of coast between the Volta River and the Lagos lagoon was known to Europeans as the Slave Coast. By the late seventeenth century it had become one of the main sources of enslaved Africans shipped across the Middle Passage.

Two coastal kingdoms dominated the trade. Allada was the older power. To its south-west, the small but wealthy kingdom of Hueda had its capital at Savi and its port at Ouidah, known to Europeans as Whydah or Juda. The French, English and Portuguese all built forts at Ouidah, and its rulers profited by taxing the trade and allowing European companies to compete.

Inland lay Dahomey, a Fon kingdom founded in the seventeenth century around the town of Abomey. Dahomey was a growing military state, but it depended on coastal kingdoms for access to European goods, including firearms.

King Agaja and his aims

Agaja became king of Dahomey around 1718, although some traditions place his accession in 1708. He was an ambitious ruler who expanded the kingdom in several directions and built up a strong army.

Historians have long debated why he turned to the coast. Some European writers of the time, and later the Nigerian historian I. A. Akinjogbin, suggested that Agaja wanted to curb or end the slave trade, which was destroying the region’s population. Robin Law and most recent historians reject this. They argue that Agaja wanted to control the trade himself, to obtain guns and other imports directly and to stop Allada and Hueda from blocking or taxing Dahomey’s commerce.

The conquest of Allada (1724)

In 1724 Dahomey attacked Allada and conquered it. An English trader named Bulfinch Lambe, who was at Allada, was taken captive to Abomey and kept there for several years. A letter later published in England, said to be from Agaja to King George I, was carried out by Lambe, but its authenticity and meaning are disputed.

With Allada gone, only Hueda stood between Dahomey and the main European trading post.

The conquest of Ouidah (1727)

In February 1727 Agaja’s army invaded Hueda. Contemporary accounts describe Hueda as divided and poorly prepared, and Dahomey’s forces quickly took the capital, Savi, which was sacked and burned. King Huffon fled westwards with many of his people.

European traders at Ouidah were caught in the middle. The English slave-ship captain William Snelgrave, who visited Agaja’s camp shortly after the conquest, later wrote an eyewitness account of the Dahomean court in his book A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave-Trade (1734). He described large numbers of captives and the killing of prisoners, as well as Agaja’s interest in trade with Europeans.

Contemporary reports put the number of people killed or captured in the conquest in the thousands, but precise figures are not reliable.

Aftermath: counterattacks and Oyo

Dahomey’s hold on the coast was not secure at first. The exiled Hueda, often with support from European traders and neighbouring states, launched repeated attacks to recover their land in the late 1720s and early 1730s. In one Dahomean counterattack in 1729, European observers noted a unit of women soldiers in Agaja’s army, the earliest reference to the women warriors later called the Agojie. Huffon died in exile in 1733.

A greater danger came from the north. The Oyo Empire, a powerful Yoruba state with strong cavalry, invaded Dahomey in 1726 and again in the following years. Around 1730 Agaja agreed to pay tribute to Oyo, an arrangement formalised in 1748 that lasted, with interruptions, until the 1820s.

Dahomey organised Ouidah as a province. By the 1740s it was governed by a royal official known as the yovogan, or “chief of the white men”, who supervised the European traders. Agaja died in 1740 and was succeeded by his son Tegbesu, under whom the royal monopoly over the slave trade at Ouidah tightened.

How Dahomey won

Several factors explain Dahomey’s success. Its army was organised and disciplined, raised by a centralised monarchy that kept tight control over its provinces. Agaja had acquired large numbers of firearms, and his soldiers were experienced from wars inland.

Hueda, by contrast, was weakened by internal rivalries. European traders described its king as unpopular and its defences as neglected, and the European forts at Ouidah, each pursuing its own company’s interests, offered little coordinated help. Some accounts claim that Hueda’s soldiers failed to defend a key river crossing, allowing the Dahomean army to advance with little resistance, although such reports came from outsiders and may simplify events.

Key people

• Agaja (r. c. 1718–1740): the king of Dahomey who led the conquests of Allada and Hueda.
• Huffon: the last independent king of Hueda, who fled after the fall of Savi and died in exile in 1733.
• William Snelgrave: an English slave-ship captain whose 1734 book is a key eyewitness source for the conquest.
• Bulfinch Lambe: an English trader held at Abomey after the fall of Allada, whose reports reached Europe.
• Tegbesu (r. 1740–1774): Agaja’s son and successor, who consolidated Dahomey’s control of Ouidah.

Consequences and legacy

The conquest changed the politics of the Slave Coast. A single strong inland kingdom now controlled the main port, replacing a set of rival coastal states. Ouidah remained one of the leading ports of the trade for more than a century; historians estimate that around one million enslaved Africans were shipped from it in total, making it one of the largest embarkation points in Africa.

Many of those deported came from wars and raids waged by Dahomey and its neighbours. Vodun religion, carried by people from this region, became an important influence on the religious life of Haiti and other parts of the Americas.

Ouidah today is a town in Benin known for its history and for vodun. The Route des Esclaves, a road leading from the old slave market to the beach, ends at the Door of No Return memorial, unveiled in 1995. The royal palaces of Abomey, built by Dahomey’s kings including Agaja, are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Timeline

• c. 1718: Agaja becomes king of Dahomey (some traditions say 1708).
• 1724: Dahomey conquers Allada; Bulfinch Lambe is taken to Abomey.
• 1726: The Oyo Empire invades Dahomey.
• 1727, February: Dahomey conquers Hueda, sacking Savi and taking Ouidah.
• 1727: William Snelgrave visits Agaja’s camp.
• 1729: A Dahomean counterattack near Ouidah includes a unit of women soldiers.
• c. 1730: Dahomey agrees to pay tribute to Oyo.
• 1733: Huffon, the exiled king of Hueda, dies.
• 1740: Agaja dies and is succeeded by Tegbesu.

Why it matters

The conquest of Ouidah turned Dahomey into one of the main African states engaged in the Atlantic slave trade and reshaped the politics of the West African coast. It shows that African rulers pursued their own strategic goals in the trade, and that the consequences were devastating for the people who were captured and sold.