ARTICLE 4

Olfert Dapper was a Dutch physician and writer who never travelled out of the Netherlands even as his Description of Africa, published in 1668 became, for the next couple of centuries, the go to text for outsiders (ie Europeans, many of whom were potential slave traders, including the emerging mercantile class of ‘gentleman scholar’ common in Europe at the time) seeking to learn of Africa or the kingdoms of Africa.

Though he never visited any kingdom in Africa, certainly not West Africa, Olfert Dapper relied heavily on the records of the Dutch West India Company, a trading company that began to ply the West African coastline in the early 1600s and throughout the hotbed period of European slave trade. The period of 1600s, 1700s and all through the early 1800s was not only the most prolific in the trade of Africans by the Europeans, it was also a time when Oba Esigie's ban on the trade of humans was set fully in place in the kingdom of Benin, having been put in placed during the reign of the king in the preceding century. The so-called ‘military power’ attributed to the kingdom by the propaganda that followed after 1897 was questionable at best, especially given that it was an empire by a relatively small race of people over large swats of other races with their own native kingdoms — i.e. diverse kingdoms which, even though under the ‘sovereign’ or umbrella of Benin Empire, were independent in the many respects, particularly right at the onset of the arrival of the European trade-slavers as subsequent opportunities presented themselves -- a situation that created the almost overnight rise in strongmen personalities across the coastal, including hinterland groups and settlements. 

For instance, regarding the 'military power' too often touted by the British propaganda, it seems to elude even the propagandists that Eko, the Edo ramparts obtained in ancient times in the kindgdom's protectorate partnership between the Awori settlement and Ewuare the Great's son, Ado, was one of the first to be lost. Nor have they ever bothered to understand how Eko came to be under the government of Being Empire.

Properly annexed from Ewuare's reign, Eko was particularly dear to the monarchy and the collective imagination of all Edo Benin. It's early occupation by the Europeans is particularly telling of the 'military' limits of Benin Empire itself. The Benin Kingdom could not muscle out even a single European individual (Many had begun to arrive on that port, spilling from nearby Oudah where they amass themselves). The 1603 skirmishes at a settlement on the island was a last minute attempt to reclaim an old agreement with the Aworis that the port be kept as a mining depot for actual cowries. In any case, it was far from the port itself, which was already being defiled with greed. The Benin Kingdom it is clear was from the start self-protective and one can even say unable or unwilling to seize on 'opportunities' as did the new personalities being groomed by the Englishmen/British pirates on the coast who manned the terrible trade in humans.

In fact, the kingdom was against what the port Eko was was being suddenly used for and seem to have seen that as omen of what was to come and withdrew ever more.

The only port entirely within the power and ownership of the Edo was the port at Gwatto — i.e the only port on the entire West African coastline of notable, significant absence in the slave trade, which ought to be in of itself an astonishing thing. Gwatto was free of slavery precisely because the ban had been ordained, so to speak, early on by Esigie himself**.  The other thing of note is that Bonny, a brutal place east of the River Niger and far southern, past the delta area, was of no interest to the Benin Kingdom, whether in the modern times of the 1600s or earlier. 

Nor was the kingdom being armed by Portugal as per the vicious British propaganda against Benin Kingdom. Benin Empire was never once a Christian nation, which means it was never sold arms by the kingdom of Portugal according to their papal rules. Though Oba Esigie was possibly the first king of a West African native nation state and kingdom to convert to and fully embrace Christianity, the king could not make his Edo nation Christian. There were too many checks and balances in the ancient monarchy, in its complex systems, to permit such a thing. The Edo Benin however (and likely sculptors and members of the ancient metal guilds) did invent, after the versions they observed of the European, series of Edo Benin guns. It would be nice to get a study or survey and some specimen perhaps of these objects of history.

In any case, what all these means is that the kingdom so withdrawn was, in the eyes of the eagerly arriving European slave traders, one shrouded in mystery. Here was a kingdom so hailed by the early Portuguese (and the intrepid early Dutch trader), yet, here is in fact a recalcitrant kingdom opposed to the very trade for which the coast was popular. A kingdom known as 'Great' in the annals of gathered history was, unlike the budding groups all around it,  particularly hostile to the presence of European slave traders. 

In a sense, what Dapper has to say about Benin Empire, supposedly based on and from a collection made by the Dutch, Samuel Bloomaerts (one of its officials of the Dutch West India Company who was in West Africa but whose records/collection appear to have been lost, according to the archives) is shrouded in the mystery and myth that the Dutch Company and indeed the Europeans in general perceived of the withdrawing kingdom.

Here's the 17th century Dutch man Olfert Dapper's description of the monarchy of Benin and the city in its prime -- from his book "Naukeurige beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche gewesten", online translation from the Dutch unknown :

"The king's court is square and located on the right-hand side of the city, as one enters it through the gate of Gotton. It is about the same size as the city of Haarlem and entirely surrounded by a special wall, comparable to the one which encircles the town. It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses and apartments of the courtiers, and comprises beautiful and long squares with galleries, about as large as the Exchange at Amsterdam. The buildings are of different sizes however, resting on wooden pillars, from top to bottom lined with copper casts, on which pictures of their war exploits and battles are engraved. All of them are being very well maintained. Most of the buildings within this court are covered with palm leaves, instead of with square planks, and every roof is adorned with a small spired tower, on which casted copper birds are standing, being very artfully sculpted and lifelike with their wings spread."

"The city, together with the court of the queens, is five to six miles in circumference, or, excluding this court, 3 miles within her gates." 

The text then speaks of the walls of the walled administrative city, Benin City, as rising 

 

  "to the height of ten Feet, double Pallasado'd with great and thick Trees, with Spars of five or six Foot, laid Crossways, fasten'd together, and Plaister'd over with Red Clay, so that the whole is cemented into one intirely; but this surrounds hardly one side; the other side having onely a great Trench, or Ditch, and Hedge of Brambles, unpassable, with little less difficulty than a Wall, and con∣sequently a good Defence.

An illustration of the ancient moat system in Benin City

The Gates, * being eight or nine Foot high, and five broad, and made of one whole Piece of Wood, hang, or rather turns on a Pin, in the middle, being the fashion of that Countrey.

The King's Palace is Quadrangular, * standing on the right hand of the City, as you enter at the Gate from Gotton,of no less compass than it, and in like manner surrounded; sub-divided into several stately Courts, Houses, and Apartements in the Countries; containing within fair and long Galleries, one larger than the other, but all supported on Pillars of Wood, cover'd from the top to the bottom with melted Copper, whereon are Ingraven their War∣like Deeds and Battels, and are kept with exceeding Curiosity. Most of the Roofs of this Palace are cover'd with Palm Canes, and every corner adorn'd with a Turret, rising high with a Spire, on whose tops, as we do here, place ..." 

and,

"The city has thirty very straight and very wide streets, each about one hundred and twenty feet wide, or as wide as the Heere of Keizersgracht, here in Amsterdam, with houses from one side to the other, where many wide side roads, still somewhat less wide, lead into the houses are built along it in good order, close to each other, like in our country, decorated with facades and sidewalks, and roofs of palm leaves, or the leaves of banana trees, or other foliage, are not higher than one stadium, but usually large, with long galleries on the inside, especially the houses of the nobles, and divided into many rooms, which are separated by walls of red clay earth, very decently made; which they manage to make so smooth and plain, and shine like a mirror, by washing and rubbing it, maintaining it as any wall in Holland, made from chalk. From the same earth are made the upper floors. In addition to that, each house is provisioned with a well: in short, the houses there are built like no other of that region." (from the 1670 John Ogilby translation from the Dutch into (Elizabethan) English. So successful was this translation and given its different title of "Africa" was for centuries wrongly attributed to the Englishman)

**Even in his relationship with the Portuguese, Esigie was against the sale of humans once he has confirmed the difficulty of the trip across the seas after sending  Emissaries to the king of Portugal. It was clear to Esigie's that allowing the Europeans to take men away with then was not about sending them to merely help out on the farms and return. They surely would be unable to return, which in itself abominable. An Edo was not a slave, but even so, any enslaved person should be able to break the burden and return home. Sending over men who cannot return was severe loss in the eyes of the king. It is also perhaps for this reason too that, the brief times the sale of humans were allowed, they were (sadly) of women to Portugal.