Gulf of Guinea

The Gulf of Guinea opened West Africa's coastal markets to Atlantic shipping, while African canoe crews linked ships offshore with communities beyond the surf. On its northern shore, the Bight of Benin connected lagoon routes and inland roads with ports such as Ouidah. Food, cloth and imported manufactures passed through these markets alongside the captives whose forced embarkation made the coast a centre of the Atlantic slave trade.

Ouidah first prospered under the Hueda kingdom. In 1727 Dahomey conquered it, gaining a maritime outlet through which royal officials and African merchants dealt with European traders. Forts and trading establishments represented competing foreign interests, but access to supplies and inland sellers remained dependent on African intermediaries. Captives reached the shore through warfare, kidnapping and successive sales, before being carried across the ocean. British prohibition of its own slave trade in 1807 did not immediately end this traffic: commerce through the Bight continued under other flags and illicit arrangements. By the early nineteenth century, these waters joined local maritime labour to a long-distance trading system whose wealth depended heavily on dispossession and enslavement.