The ‘BENIN CLOTH’: A Very Brief History of A Forgotten Textile Economy
When the Benin-Portugal factory opened at Gwatto (Ughoton) at the tail end of the 1400s, it was precisely for the exchange of material culture. The slave trade had not started and the world was still innocent as yet and among other items of exchanges, Benin Cloth, manufactured by the Benins, was an important item of export economy and thousands of yards of Benin Cloth were exported to Portugal, then later through the Dutch Company.
Global Textile Trade:
In 1505 alone, B Fernandez of Portugal, one of the main buyers, purchased just under 2000 bundles of cloth from the factory at Gwatto. Who were the makers of these cloth such that one buyer could purchase that many cloth? Reports suggests the weavers were mostly women, weaving from looms set up in their own homes.
In 1506 when Oba Esigie closed down the factory, it was precisely because the trade had suddenly shifted from exchange of material culture to precisely the European Slave Trade. The young king could as early as 1506 discern the sinister designs in the minds of the Europeans, particularly in the new arriviste, the English pirate, and decreed a ban on sale of humans (unfortunately starting first with a ban on just males, though a total ban soon followed). The king’s gesture was precisely to send the message that the kingdom had no wish to join the Europeans in their new trade — a trade which the young king saw as a portent of worse things to come.
What happened then to the Benin Cloth?
According to the German Andreas Ulsheimer in his voyage of 1603-4, the Benins even took, “by water and by land”, their “beautiful cotton cloths woven in all kinds of colours and patterns” as far as Lagos to sell. Reports have been given of Benin Cloth being sold in markets on the ‘Gold Coast’ (today’s Ghana), a country that was able to resurrect its traditional textile history and production.
In early 1600s, the Dutch Company began shipping out of West Africa, local traditional textiles and designs and the fabric and patterns used by the weavers of Benin Cloth were among the many samples of various West African textile traditions that the Dutch Company would eventually overlay with illustrations from Indonesian illustrators to achieve a brand of fabric that was then marketed to the Africans as ‘dutch waxes’. Similarly, in the same century, the English textiles would experience fantastic transformations of saxon designs from their contact with West African designs and these would become the rich brocades of the royal and fast emerging merchant class. The other element too is that it was the same Africans, enslaved in the new world, who were the labour for the growing demand for cotton.
“smelled like violets, washes well leaving the clothes very clean”.
English trader James Welch in 1588 on the BENIN SOAP - a locally manufactured soap made of palm-oil and wood ash and was used to wash the Benin Cloth.
Somehow, African textile history was entirely erased and the region’s traditional textile industry all stalled or were almost entirely decimated. Right on the heels of the European Slave Trade, the period of colonialism ensured that Africa was the source of raw materials even as the continent was also being guided, as part of so-called ‘progress’ into its final transformation as consumer culture — a situation that decades of bad governance would fully entrench post-independence. Indeed, the Royal Niger Company had made yet another turning point transformation from its days as slave traders to the RNC to Unilever Brothers and unto its final transformation as ‘Nigeria’.
More to the point of our subject, Benin, colonialism was particularly punishing for the Benins, who despite the best efforts of the British, refused to be conquered whether by religion or language and culture; and the British were keen to keep in mind ways to keep the kingdom and its people marginalized.
This however cannot account for why the Benin themselves entirely gave up on weaving and spinning as art forms or as occupations. Save for the palace* (*Does a cloth weaving department still exist inside the palace in Benin City?), it seems weaving and spinning entirely died out.
Design, and the courtly attire: The Overlay of Specific Symbols
The Benin Cloth is finely woven if cotton (it also can be woven with raphia) and principally white, or dyed red (ochre)and indigo blue. We haven’t done research on the ground to ascertain the pigments and processes.
However, growing up as a child who on an occasioned visited the palace, there are two interesting aspects of the Benin Cloth that struck me as a child and these pop out now. The first is how the Benin Cloth is worn. Woven in fine threads and rather stark, the Benin Cloth when made into local dress especially for men, appear rather different from cloths of other parts of the West African region. This is so because of an unusual ‘sewn-on-appliqué’ (I just made up this compound word) or, rather, ‘raised embroidery’ method where symbols like the eben and ada and geometric designs appear either sewn or as if glued onto the entirely plain, finely woven cloth.
The other aspect is the stern sparseness of the design, which is further emphasized by strategic placement of symbols.
It would seem that these were clothing specific to courtly or formal wear especially as these aesthetic qualities create a formal effect. Normal Benin Cloth would be dyed and patterned accordingly during that process, and would have far less aesthetic tension.
Another interesting and likely aspect that comes to mind in thinking of the highly stylized sternness (i.e. strictness of what symbol should go where and how few, etc) is that there may have been a two-tiered aspect to the local textile economy, which may have also affected perhaps the business, even practice of weaving. The ‘sewn appliqué’ ones may have been intended for use locally and the simply dyed and plain woven cloths the ones for export — after all, it would have served no one to have nonBenin (ie export targets) looking like palace court members! Nor would foreigner buyers have daily if any use for such highly specific garments. What this possibly means is that once the budding native textile economy was stunted from European involvement (ie, the Europeans became the manufacturers of the cloth they had hitherto purchased from Africans between 1500s to early 1600s), women simply stopped weaving. This suggestion, why it may satisfy our questions regarding the sudden disappearance of the economy, sadly sheds no light on why the very art of weaving, as practiced by Edo women within their homes, simply disappeared. Especially when one considers that within the palace and in order to keep the royal court supplied with the first tier of formal cloth, the art of weaving supposedly continued and is still in practice there to date.
Today, the BENIN CLOTH economy does not exist, and weaving culture, save for that being done at the palace, seem to have been forgotten; and whether or not this can be entirely blamed on ‘colonialism’ is up to the Benins. That no culture of weaving survived amongst the people themselves seem altogether part of an all too familiar indifference, which plagues modern Africa, and certainly implicates the current political systems as much as it does the surviving traditional architecture -- especially as the knowledge appear to have been retained within courtly customs.
The question then is, for a people who held on firmly to their ancient bronze making art forms, why hasn’t the art of weaving and its skills been resurrected?
The interesting point to consider, and although no Edo scholar has given us insight into this, is that women were the weavers of the 'Benin Cloth'. Which the text by Kriger confirms. This is significant when we consider that the Esigie ban against slavery in 1506 did not at first include women. Meaning the indifference to weaving that ensued might as well be gendered. Followed by the competition from outside, new and/or faster 'automated' sources making loom weaving, a painfully slow process, unsustainable as livelihood. Because large swathes of the BENIN CLOTH was actually the common, every day cloth that would have been easy to replace by foreign supply creating a dearth of demand for local weavers.
The fact that today a guild of ‘Royal weavers’ existed or perhaps continues to exist somewhere in the palace yet the art of weaving as knowledge is today entirely unknown amongst the common Benin folk shows much neglect of an art form that surely can be revived.
A known, traditional skill amongst everyday folk simply forgotten is an odd thing indeed. It would indeed be a wonderful thing for the traditional cultural council to revive or (re)introduce the old art of BENIN CLOTH loom weaving to Edo.
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| Oba Akenzua II. Here the king is in courly casual dress designed by the palace cloth makers, with raised embroidered or sewn on symbols. |
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A statue of Emotan an Edo woman who, in the late 1300s to early 1400s, operated the first daycare for children in Benin City
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| A Street in Benin City, 1897. Cloth type non-courtly dyed cloth possibly cotton, with geometric dye patterns |
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A group of elders being interrogated by the invaders, 1897. Cloth type non-courtly dyed cloth possibly cotton, with geometric dye patterns |
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| close up of the garment of Oba Ovoramwen, 1897, Benin Kingdom. We highlight the insignia of the garment of the king, which we at first took for a design of the kingly staff, the eben and ada! But it seems more a foreign insignia cloths brought for the king to wear during the photos shoot ro prove Benin King has been captured. In those humiliating days when the city wasted and the Edo people murdered in mass numbers by the 1200 maxims, the British held a destroyed Benin City in limbo as they deliberated over a place of exile for Oba Ovoramwen. |
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| Oba Ovoramwen, 1897 |
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