The Ugly Warrior who saw the nymph Agbagbon with his naked eye, the punishment of Oboro-Uku and how the abduction of Adesuwa caused a war…

The Esigie ban on the sale of humans was fully effective as early as 1516 for both genders. However in the mid to late 1700s, during the reign of Oba Akengbuda, the kingdom suddenly allowed itself to participate in a trade that Esigie had decreed forbidden. Why? 

Let us recall firstly that the 1700s was the zenith of the European Slave Trade on the West African coastline and that, for much of the up and coming merchant European class, the sale of Africans was one of the most profitable and colony expanding enterprise. Whereas for the so-called ’Great Benin’ mentioned in pre-1600s texts, in adhering to its beloved king’s century old ban on the trade, experienced rapidly receding boundaries with the advent of slaving European traders stationed all around the outskirts of its fast shrinking empire. 

Why then did the reclusive kingdom, refusing to join the slave trade for nearly two centuries before 1750, suddenly had men to send off from Gwatto? (Gwatto being the only port, by the way, under the Benin Kingom). What happened to change the long in place Esigie’s ban for that short timeframe in the late 1700s when “non-Benin” were sent off from Gwatto on Landolphe’s ship? Who were these ‘non-Benin’ men?

Well, that is where the fantastic title comes in. There are entire areas of oral history locked within the place itself and its oral tradition that, unless a historian is fully committed to lived exploration, even most capable (whether of foreign, and sadly local, such as the case with Egharevgha) may have no access. To date, no historian of the history of Benin has ever demonstrated lived commitment in their academic research work. Rather, extant texts on the history of Benin remain ‘compilations’ by white men read by the white men (and a white woman or two) who then try to formulate new ideas on what other white men have compiled, with the hegemony of Egharevha looming largely behind the compilations post 1950s, without much ploughing of the far recesses of myth, fables and the oral tradition of actual ‘history keeping’ of which the traditions of the Benins are most adept.

“Waree” = Warri 

Though in our opinion James D Graham was one of the few with the courage to step outside of the status quo of attributing to the Benin the so-called horrors, this sudden participation in the late 1700s by the fast shrinking kingdom, minor at best—as Graham examines in the image-text attests—would, according to the damaging British propaganda spread after 1897, entirely account as testament over centuries where the reclusive kingdom was, save for its imaginative hold on the early Europeans, entirely absent.

Thankfully, there exist areas of oral history mentioned earlier, available within the place itself and its traditions that draw light not just on the dry accounts of foreign texts like Graham but as well expose the dimensions of the colonial propaganda of the ex-slavers, the British; even as these in turn help us understand the breadth of collective capitulation and indifference that emerged shortly after of the subject under our study, Benin itself.

As far as a people fail to expressly put down the full extent of their own oral history into written account, in the full extent of things — a feat which frankly is impossible — the history of a place will always a bit of hearsay (usually from or by their victors), of mystery and things unknowable.

The surreal title above, which tell of actual happenings on the ground in the mid 1700s is exactly one of these that even a capable historian like Graham, apparently had no clue about and so could not apply to provide further insight on the events and accounts compiled during his research.

The title tells of a story that, like a wallop of thread, unravels the nature of events to help us excavate what happened circa late 1700s.

Stay tuned.