The Bight of Benin, or Bay of Benin, is a bight in the Gulf of Guinea area on the western African coast that derives its name from the historical Kingdom of Benin.
Historical associations with the Atlantic slave trade led to the region becoming known as the Slave Coast. As in many other regions across Africa, powerful indigenous kingdoms along the Bight of Benin relied heavily on a long established slave trade that expanded greatly after the arrival of European powers and became a global trade with the colonization of the Americas.[2] Estimates from the 1640s suggest that Benin (Beneh) took in 1200 slaves a year. Restrictions made it hard for slave volume to grow until new states and different routes began to make an increase in slave trade possible.[3]
Cultural references
The coast of Benin with Cotonou port in the background
The Bight of Benin has a long association with slavery, its shore being known as the Slave Coast. From 1807 onwards—after slave trading was made illegal for Britons—the Royal Navy created the West Africa Squadron in order to suppress and crush the slave trade. These efforts were magnified after 1833, when slave trading was made illegal throughout the British Empire. These efforts would continue until the 1890s, and cost Britain significant sums of money, and the Royal Navy hundreds, if not thousands, of sailors’ lives from tropical diseases.
The old Royal Navy rhyme says:
Beware, beware the Bight of the Benin, for few come out though many go in.
A variation goes:
Beware beware, the Bight of Benin: one comes out, where fifty went in!
Beware and take care of the Bight of Benin. There's one comes out for forty goes in."[5]
In R. Austin Freeman's 1927 novel A Certain Dr. Thorndyke, Chapter II, "The Legatee," mention is made of this location. The scene is the Gold Coast colony in Africa where the character Larkom asks, "How does the old mariners' ditty run? You remember it. 'Oh, the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Benin, One comes out where three go in.'" Life expectancy was short in this locale due to the prevalence of Blackwater fever.
The author Philip McCutchan has written a book titled Beware, beware the Bight of Benin.
A short story by Elizabeth Coatsworth, "The Forgotten Island" (1942), deals with a treasure from Benin. A variation of the rhyme is also mentioned.[6]
Flash For Freedom!, George MacDonald Fraser's 1971 picaresque novel of Harry Flashman's misadventures in—among other places and situations—an English stately home, the 1840s slave trade, antebellum plantation life, and meeting with then-congressman Abraham Lincoln, quotes another variant of the couplet:
Oh, sailor beware of the Bight o' Benin.
There's one as comes out for a hundred goes in.
In Patrick O'Brian's novel The Commodore (1996), Dr. Maturin recites the rhyme when he learns of his ship's destination. Commodore Aubrey checks him, telling him it is bad luck to say that out loud on the way in.
The rhyme is also partially quoted in chapter Context(6) of John Brunner's novel Stand on Zanzibar. The Bight of Benin (as well as the fictional republic of Beninia) is mentioned throughout the novel.
David Bramhall's series of novels "The Greatest Cape" also mentions the rhyme, one of the characters in the first volume, The Black Joke, having been a pirate and a slaver.
In 2007, a collection of short stories entitled The Bight of Benin: Short Fiction by Kelly J. Morris was published by AtacoraPress.com. The stories are set in Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria.
History
On 1 February 1852 the British established the Bight of Benin British protectorate, under the authority of Consuls of the Bight of Benin: the republic of Benin and Bight of Benin were named after the Kingdom of Benin extending eastward from Cape St. Paul to the Nun outlet of River Niger.
Term
Protectorate
May 1852 – 1853
Louis Fraser
1853 – April 1859
Benjamin Campbell
April 1859 – 1860
George Brand
1860 – January 1861
Henry Hand
January 1861 – May 1861
Henry Grant Foote
May 1861 – 6 August 1861
William McCoskry (acting)
On 6 August 1861 the Bight of Biafra protectorate and Bight of Benin protectorate were joined as a united British protectorate, ultimately to be merged into Nigeria.
The history of Nigeria can be traced to the earliest inhabitants whose remains date from at least 13,000 BC through early civilizations such as the Nok culture which began around 1500 BC. Numerous ancient African civilizations settled in the region that is known today as Nigeria, such as the Kingdom of Nri, the Benin Kingdom, and the Oyo Empire. Islam reached Nigeria through the Bornu Empire between and Hausa Kingdom during the 11th century, while Christianity came to Nigeria in the 15th century through Augustinian and Capuchin monks from Portugal to the Kingdom of Warri. The Songhai Empire also occupied part of the region. Through contact with Europeans, early harbour towns such as Calabar, Badagry and Bonny emerged along the coast after 1480, which did business in the transatlantic slave trade, among other things. Conflicts in the hinterland, such as the civil war in the Oyo Empire, meant that new enslaved people were constantly being "supplied".
The Benin Expedition of 1897 was a punitive expedition by a British force of 1,200 men under Sir Harry Rawson. It came in response to the ambush and slaughter of a 250 strong party led by British Acting Consul General James Phillips of the Niger Coast Protectorate. Rawson's troops captured Benin City and the Kingdom of Benin was eventually absorbed into colonial Nigeria. The expedition freed about 100 Africans enslaved by the Oba.
The Fon people, also called Dahomeans, Fon nu or Agadja are a Gbe ethnic group. They are the largest ethnic group in Benin, found particularly in its south region; they are also found in southwest Nigeria and Togo. Their total population is estimated to be about 3,500,000 people, and they speak the Fon language, a member of the Gbe languages.
The Bight of Biafra, also known as the Bight of Bonny, is a bight off the west-central African coast, in the easternmost part of the Gulf of Guinea.
The Slave Coast is a historical region along the Atlantic coast of West Africa, encompassing parts of modern-day Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. It is located along the Bight of Biafra and the Bight of Benin that is located between the Volta River and the Lagos Lagoon.
The Africa Squadron was a unit of the United States Navy that operated from 1819 to 1861 in the Blockade of Africa to suppress the slave trade along the coast of West Africa. However, the term was often ascribed generally to anti-slavery operations during the period leading up to the American Civil War.
John Beecroft was an explorer, governor of Fernando Po and British Consul of the Bight of Benin and Biafra.
Igbo land, east is the indigenous homeland of the Igbo people. It is a cultural and common linguistic region in southeastern Nigeria. Geographically, it is divided into two sections by the: an eastern and western.Its population is characterized by the diverse Igbo culture
Articles related to Nigeria include:
Colonial Nigeria was ruled by the British Empire from the mid-nineteenth century until 1 October 1960 when Nigeria achieved independence. Britain annexed Lagos in 1861 and established the Oil River Protectorate in 1884. British influence in the Niger area increased gradually over the 19th century, but Britain did not effectively occupy the area until 1885. Other European powers acknowledged Britain's dominance over the area in the 1885 Berlin Conference.
Nana Olomu (1852–1916) was an Itsekiri chief and palm oil merchant from the Niger Delta region of southern Nigeria. He was the fourth Itsekiri chief to hold the position of Governor of Benin River.
Igbo Americans, or Americans of Igbo ancestry, or Igbo Black Americans are residents of the United States who identify as having Igbo ancestry from modern day Bight of Biafra, which includes Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe & Nigeria. There are primarily two classes of people with Igbo ancestry in the United States, those whose ancestors were taken from Igboland as a result of the transatlantic slave trade before the 20th century and those who immigrated from the 20th century onwards partly as a result of the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s and economic instability in Nigeria. Igbo people prior to the American Civil War were brought to the United States by force from their hinterland homes on the Bight of Biafra and shipped by Europeans to North America between the 17th and 19th centuries.
The Igbo of Igboland became one of the principal ethnic groups to be enslaved during the Atlantic slave trade. An estimated 14.6% of all enslaved people were taken from the Bight of Biafra, a bay of the Atlantic Ocean that extends from the Nun outlet of the Niger River (Nigeria) to Limbe (Cameroon) to Cape Lopez (Gabon) between 1650 and 1900. The Bight’s major slave trading ports were located in Bonny and Calabar.
The Kingdom of Benin, also known as Great Benin or Benin Kingdom is a kingdom within what is now southern Nigeria. It has no historical relation to the modern republic of Benin, which was known as Dahomey from the 17th century until 1975. The Kingdom of Benin's capital was Edo, now known as Benin City in Edo State, Nigeria. The Benin Kingdom was "one of the oldest and most developed states in the coastal hinterland of West Africa". It grew out of the previous Edo Kingdom of Igodomigodo around the 11th century AD, and lasted until it was annexed by the British Empire in 1897.
Lagos Colony was a British colonial possession centred on the port of Lagos in what is now southern Nigeria. Lagos was annexed on 6 August 1861 under the threat of force by Commander Beddingfield of HMS Prometheus who was accompanied by the Acting British Consul, William McCoskry. Oba Dosunmu of Lagos resisted the cession for 11 days while facing the threat of violence on Lagos and its people, but capitulated and signed the Lagos Treaty of Cession. Lagos was declared a colony on 5 March 1862. By 1872, Lagos was a cosmopolitan trading centre with a population over 60,000. In the aftermath of prolonged wars between the mainland Yoruba states, the colony established a protectorate over most of Yorubaland between 1890 and 1897. The protectorate was incorporated into the new Southern Nigeria Protectorate in February 1906, and Lagos became the capital of the Protectorate of Nigeria in January 1914. Since then, Lagos has grown to become the largest city in West Africa, with an estimated metropolitan population of over 9,000,000 as of 2011.
The Treaty of Cession, 6 August 1861 or the Lagos Treaty of Cession was a treaty between the British Empire and Oba Dosunmu of Lagos wherein Dosunmu, under the threat of military bombardment, ceded Lagos Island to Britain, whilst retaining the title and powers of Oba, subject to English laws.
The Treaty Between Great Britain and Lagos, 1 January 1852 was an agreement between Great Britain and Oba Akitoye, the newly installed Oba of Lagos. The treaty was signed following British victory during the Reduction of Lagos.
The Brass River is one of the branches of the Nun River, which in turn is a branch of the Niger River, in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. In the 19th century the river was an important trading route, first for slaves and later for palm oil. Brass River Crude Oil is named for a refinery on the river.
The Reduction of Lagos or Bombardment of Lagos was a British naval operation in late 1851 that involved the Royal Navy bombarding Lagos under the justification of suppressing the Atlantic slave trade and deposing the King (Oba) of Lagos, Kosoko, for refusing to end the slave trade.
The Benin–Nigeria border is 809 km in length and runs from the tripoint with Niger in the north down to the Bight of Benin in the south.
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