Considering that cultural, every day items such as the ‘‘Benin Cloth’ 'Benin Soap' are of great interest to us, the excerpt below on ’BENIN PEPPER’, which we found from searching after an image, was right along things dear to this blog. The question in these findings is often that of loss as specific knowledge industry has either been lost or shrugged off by the people themselves, either from the conveniences and exploitative caprices of the particular style of consumer modernity that fell upon emerging African nations (and from which they were formed) or, in this context of the Benins, the weight of overwhelming propaganda against which the kingdom and its founding ethnic tribe has had to deal.
Regarding the propaganda itself, it was a relief too to find an actual mention of the royal courtly coral beads as an actual export item of the day. This has always been the oral history as we knew it. Today, many other groups have overnight adopted the beads as representative or ceremonial attire, whether in outright cultural claim or indeed from the implosion of the postmodern phenomenon, 'the Nigerian Wedding'. While these adoptions are testament to how grand and evocative of 'royalty' the beads are in fact -- a fact imbued with the ancient history of the Benins themselves as a courtly people -- not all of these recent adoptions are benign. In fact so certain are the claims or need to defend the current rage of appropriation by other groups, the colonial British propaganda often rears its head these days in comment threads, which is that these were, after all, 'beads brought to Benin by Portuguese' and therefore 'not owned by Benin'.
Even as no evidence existed to prove much and despite the existence of the courtly Benin Royal beads having been definitively 'Edo/Benin' from as far as anyone can remember and prior to 1500s, one of the stunning propaganda levied against the Benin Kingdom during the British era was that it was the Portuguese and not the Benins themselves who made the Royal Benin beads for the Benins to use.
The effective nature of propaganda is not merely to deny a people their most defining aspect (in this case, courtly arts, whether it is the artefacts or indeed the Royal Benin beads) but as well render the people incapable of resurrecting much to disprove your claims.
But as we have said elsewhere on this blog, the various groups in Africa need to take responsibility as well for their own remarkable indifference towards the state of affairs.
It is no surprise that even the Edo Benin themselves have somehow mysteriously failed to rest the case of the history of their beads as manufactured by themselves. Perhaps because, aside from the 21st century phenomenon that nearly everyone these days buys the ‘Royal Benin Coral Beads’ from China — (which gives a whole other argument) —, like the Benin Cloth and so on, beyond the strictly esoteric, such as protected workshops within the palace, hardly any surviving manufacturing or knowledge industry of said beads exist on the ground in Edo/Benin today.
Like the case with the Benin Cloth, some if not an awful lot of responsibility rests on the palace to share its arts, research and unearth these aspects of material culture and revive them as practical uses for everyday Edo/Benin people. The beads were made in Benin Kingdom by the Benin Edo themselves and, as the article below states, were once a significant item of export by the Benin Kingdom. There is no reason why such an industry cannot be revived with a mark of authenticity to separate locally made from the made in Chinas.
The state of things today is of course desultory and rather depressing, given the 'Nigerian Situation'. Running a local factory, even something less complicated as a craft-shop, is on all accounts (according to the people themselves) extremely tasking -- all due the absurd mishmash called 'Nigerian Situation'. What this means as well is that, for whatever it's worth, none of these (i.e. whatever it is we are here writing or trying to discover, etc) matters if the people themselves are not energized or curious or supportive of their own environment to explore and revive past manufacturing abilities of unique items of which they were once capable.
To return briefly to the 'Benin Pepper' in the article, the question must be asked, in its case, if in fact the word ‘Benin’ wasn't being used at the time to describe a range of a specie of West African pepper. As the reader may have noticed from the image above, the name Esuru Wisa is supposedly in Twi, while product is also referred to as 'Benin Pepper’. Various other sellers online describe the same pepper as ‘Ashanti Pepper’, and often add ‘Benin Pepper’ as well. Since the writer in his essay mentions Ughoton precisely----Ughoton/Gwatto being the export port from which Benin Kingdom traded----, then we must wonder if in fact other ports sold this pepper and to what extent. It is interesting to note that the reduction in pepper from Ughoton spelt a swift decline in European interest in West African pepper all over (and the move to the Indian variety entirely). Whereas the early ban on and subsequent lack of sufficiently available people ‘for sale’ at Ughoton did not result in any dampening in the European pursuit of Africans for free labour abroad.
And so our investigations continue.
In any case, we share these interesting finds —— As for the article itself, conflicting or even contrary problem dating, i.e. such as statements that the ban by Oba Esigie in 1506 (fully for both genders by 1516) lasted centuries only to encounter contrary omissions a few lines later, etc, made our reading slightly unfinished. The writing is also oddly comatose. Even historians or precisely historians need to have some interest in writing well. We may return to article at a later date. The link has been provided should others be interested. Do let us know your take.
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FROM:
“A study of the Portuguese-Benin Trade Relations: Ughoton as a Benin Port (1485 -1506)”,
Published article by: Michael Ediagbonya, Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria
LINK: https://www.ijhcs.com/index.php/ijhcs/article/download/481/450
BENIN PEPPER
”The discovery of Benin pepper)…. which could compete favourably with Indian pepper, gave them hope of economic potential of the empire. It is important to say that, the relevance of Ughoton to Benin-Portuguese trade relations is based on the fact that the whole trading transaction took place there as the chief port of the kingdom.….”
”The main attraction of the Portuguese trade in Benin which was pepper faced serious challenge from the East. When much quantities began to come from India, pepper ceased to be profitable for the Portuguese Crown to exploit the small quantities coming from Benin. Before the discovering of the Indian pepper, Ughoton as a seaport to Benin kingdom witnessed considerable boom because of the high demand of Benin pepper by the Portuguese. The situation became worsened when the Portuguese crown promulgated decree forbidding Portuguese’s subjects to buy Benin pepper. This decree forbidding Portuguese’s subjects from buying Benin pepper affected Ughoton adversely because only few Portuguese traders came to the seaport to purchase pepper as attention now shifted to the East. The motives which prompted the decree of 1506 may be appreciated by comparing the 75 quintals of Benin pepper sent to Antwerp in 1504 with the 2,000 quintets that came from India in the same year.22 Thus it was said that the commerce upon which the profitability of the Ughoton post had rested was deliberately proscribed and soon afterwards the factor was finally withdrawn.“
BENIN BEAD
“The Portuguese also discovered that certain varieties of stone beads available in Benin could be exchanged for gold on the Costa da Mina so they began to buy them in large quantities. The Portuguese called them ’Coris’ because most of the beads were fashioned from a blue stone reined with red. Others, were yellow and some grey had greater value as objects of barter and were treated by the Portuguese as semi-precious stones. In his twenty months management of Ughoton post, Bastian Fernandez bought 33,382 Coris, 900 of the yellow beads and 162 of the ivory."
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