Oba Ewuare Trade with the Portuguese
It was during the reigns of the Oba Ewuare (r. c.1440–1473), his son Ozolua (r. c.1481–1504), and his grandson Esigie that the kingdom of Benin, which was located in the Yorubaland in present-day southwestern Nigeria, reached its zenith in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Benin was located in the Yorubaland (r.1504–1547). In order to solidify his hold on power, Ewuare relied on his subjects’ conviction that kings possessed divine qualities.
The king was revered and feared because it was believed that he could influence things like the climate, fertility, harvests, and social harmony. On the basis of this information, Ewuare put into effect reforms with the intention of reducing the power of the uzama, which are hereditary chiefs who traditionally take part in the selection of the oba.
To remove their influence over the order of succession to the throne, he established the principle of primogeniture as the governing principle. This rule was eventually implemented by the chiefs themselves, which stymied the growth of large lineage support groups and added more power to the Oba Ewuare. Ewuare, on the other hand, required chiefs in order to oversee the day-to-day administration of the kingdom and to collect tributes from the villages, the majority of which contributed to his financial holdings.
In order to further dilute the authority of the uzama, he appointed additional “town” and “palace” chiefs, all of whom were directly beholden to him. Over the course of a century, there were many shifts in the king’s level of authority.
The expansion of Benin’s empire, on the other hand, was largely unaffected by palace skirmishes. Ewuare and his successors frequently conducted military operations during the dry season in order to extend Benin’s frontiers in all directions: eastward to the Niger delta, southward to the sea, and westward into Yoruba country. As a result of these victories, Ewuare was dubbed “Ewuare the Great,” and his son, Ozolua, was dubbed “Ozolua the Conqueror.”
The vitality and stability of the kingdom were displayed in a variety of different ways throughout the century that was dedicated to expansion. Eware reconstructed the nation’s capital, Benin City, and partitioned it into two parts: the larger part housed the majority of the city’s inhabitants, while the smaller part was reserved for the royal palace and the country’s most prominent citizens. Additionally, he enhanced communication by issuing orders for the construction of broad avenues and smaller streets that intersected with each other.
Benin was a city that had walls and moats surrounding it and measured 25 miles in circumference during the sixteenth century. The creative industries thrived. Casting techniques in Benin were improved by craftsmen as more copper and brass were brought into the country via trade. They produced bronze bas-reliefs that represented the Oba, his court, and his interactions with the Portuguese, in addition to the palace art and elaborate altar pieces that they were known for producing. These remind me of the medieval tapestries that were popular in Western Europe.
They are an important historical record. According to tradition, Ewaure was the first Oba of Benin to make contact with the Portuguese, who were at that time exploring the region. This may be a reference to Ruy de Sequeira’s journey to Africa in 1472. There is a good chance that European goods arrived in Benin before the arrival of Europeans themselves.
According to the writings of Portuguese eyewitnesses, when the Portuguese first arrived in Benin, they discovered a large centralized state that was already engaged in political and commercial relations with a number of different regions, some of which were quite far away.
At that time, the Portuguese were the only Europeans interested in conducting business in the area. By the 1480s, their strategy consisted of making the trade with the Guinean coasts a monopoly for the Portuguese. Their forts and ships stationed in the region were designed to keep other Europeans out of the region as much as they were intended to control the local African population. The Portuguese believed that forming an alliance with Benin would provide them with access to substantial markets for their own wares.
Through its interactions with Europeans, Benin was able to acquire firearms, powder, metals, salt, and cloth. In return, they provided the Europeans with palm oil, ivory, cloth, beads, pepper, and slaves. It does not appear that any of the other exports came from local sources, with the exception of slaves, who were a natural by-product of the wars that Benin fought.
It appears that Benin’s location at a junction of east-west and north-south trade was one of the factors that contributed to the country’s wealth. Pepper was the only commodity that Benin initially exported to Europe (before the Portuguese were successful in establishing their spice trade with Asia), and only a small number of slaves made their way to the continent.
Beads, cloth, and slaves were some of the first things the Portuguese traded for gold in African ports along the Gulf of Guinea. Gold was the commodity from West Africa that the Portuguese desired more than anything else at the time. Benin, on the other hand, was never heavily involved in the slave trade despite Portugal’s growing interest in slaves throughout the entirety of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese initially sought slaves to supplement the labor force in Portugal; later, they sought slaves to work on newly established Portuguese plantations off the west African coast and in the Gulf of Guinea.
Benin, however, did not become heavily involved in the slave trade. The Portuguese had difficulty conducting business with Benin due to the fact that the kingdom was located approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) inland. They constructed a fort in the year 1487 at a location known as Ughoton (Gwato), which was the closest their ships could get to Benin City.
They had to travel approximately 40 miles inland from the ocean via perilous rivers in order to get there, and even then, the only way to get to the capital was via an additional 19 miles of land travel. Benin maintained control over both the rivers and the land routes.
Labor was the foundation of authority in this region; the Portuguese were few in number and were forced to rely on the native people of the area for military support, fresh water, and provisions. They were only able to conduct business in Benin with the Oba and his authorized agents on the terms that he had established. They left Ughoton after about 30 years because they found the Oba’s conditions to be too onerous, particularly the new ban on the export of male slaves. In later times, individual Portuguese merchants hailing from the Gulf of Guinea islands were responsible for the majority of commercial activity.
Despite this, the Portuguese departure from Ughoton did not mark the end of relations. It would appear that both Europeans and Africans were exploring the possibilities of what they could learn from one another. Oba Esigie sent a delegation to Portugal in 1514, complaining about Portuguese slaving activities and asking for a Christian mission and firearms at the same time. Oba Esigie’s request was granted. The provision of firearms was Benin’s top priority when it came to the Portuguese. On the other hand, King Manuel I was hesitant about selling weapons to pagan people.
The Portuguese took this request to be the chance they had been hoping for and had been waiting for all along. Even though he learned Portuguese, permitted the establishment of a Christian mission, and allowed his son Orhogba and some officials to be baptized, the oba did not accept baptism for himself. In reality, the oba was far less interested in Christianity than he was in acquiring firearms. By the end of the century, there was almost no longer any contact between the Portuguese and Benin.
Also Read: British invasion of the Benin Kingdom in 1897
