See also Europeans: Texts and Sources
THE PORTUGUESE IN WEST AFRICA
- Newbury C W, The Western Slave Coast and its Rulers Oxford 1961(quotations and notes)
- 17 When, 80 years after losing Mina (1637) and Axim (1642) the Portuguese came back to the Western slave coast, commercial initiative and finance for their venture was supplied not from Lisbon but from Brazil. (This brings us to about 1720)
23 In 1721 the Portuguese from Bahia constructed a fort of their own (at Whydah?)
Slave trade from Whydah reached its zenith in 1716: French 6000 English and Portuguese 7000 Dutch 1500
24 Staples of trade from Bahia were gold and tobacco. Gold tempted the personnel of other European factories to sell slaves to the Bahia merchants on their own account, rather than to the declining companies. Tobacco, a coveted item of consumption in the native markets, could be imported cheaply from Brazil and sold at about six times its original value to the French and English who found it essential to their trade. In June 1743 the Portuguese fort at Whydah was destroyed and it director Bazilio and his deputy were expelled to Bahia.
24 In effect by the 1760s all officials were private merchants in league with one or more native brokers, buying up slave lots with goods from the forts and selling them at the highest price to ships' captains.
36 A new type of slave factor from Brazil appeared towards the end of the 18th century and kept the slave trade vigorously alive. Unlike the interlopers of previous years, Brazilian creoles were permanent settlers in the ports of the Bight of Benin. Their origins were diverse, their language Portuguese, and they had in common commercial abilities as well as in most cases part African parentage which enabled them to rise to positions of confidence and influence in the coastal chiefdoms while their business connections with Bahia and Havana made them ideal entrepreneurs during the last intensive phase of the Atlantic slave trade.
37 Such was Francisco Felix Da Souza who drifted from Brazil in about 1788 and was for a time a commander of the Portuguese fort at Whydah. Turning to the slave trade he worked on his own account.
39 Small fry merchants of Bahia: da Cruz Rios, Gomes Bello, Guerino Antonio, Lopez Guimaraes.
Brazilian dealers on the W Coast paid with rum, tobacco, molasses, cottons and knives.
Blake, JW, Europeans in West Africa 1450-1560
Boxer, C. R,Portuguese Society in the Tropics 1510-1800
Boxer, C. R,The Golden Age of Brazil 1695-1750 Berkely 1962
Boxer, C. R,Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire 1415-1825 Oxford 1963
Boxer, C. R,Salvador da Sa and the struggle for Brazil and Angola 1602-1686
Boxer, C. R,The Colour Question in the Portuguese Colonial Empire 1415-1825 Oxford 1961
Boxer, C. R,The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825 London 1969