Adolo is not the subject of this 1987 article but it is interesting to note how mere mention of him supports the argument we are about to make here. For a nation so enamoured by arriving Europeans, Benin's history with various European nations was one fraught with recurring decisions by various Benin kings to block or ban trade with the Europeans. These objections — as we find with Oba Adolo, father of no other than Oba Ovoranmwen himself — were evermore frequent and to do with the same recurring reasons that Esigie had in that first and early ban a good three centuries back, which was the European nature and choice of what they the European increasingly preferred to trade in: human beings. Benin’s decision in banning and withdrawal must and deserves to be seen as a gesture of the refusal (against the contemporaneous norm of what was expected of ‘African Kingdoms’) by the African. Was the Benin refusal the prevalent attitude of the kingdom or merely intermittent? Was it informed