Politics of Memory

Making Slavery Visible in the Public Space

Ana Lucia Araujo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136313158
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The public memory of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, which some years ago could be observed especially in North America, has slowly emerged into a transnational phenomenon now encompassing Europe, Africa, and Latin America, and even Asia – allowing the populations of African descent, organized groups, governments, non-governmental organizations and societies in these different regions to individually and collectively update and reconstruct the slave past.

This edited volume examines the recent transnational emergence of the public memory of slavery, shedding light on the work of memory produced by groups of individuals who are descendants of slaves. The chapters in this book explore how the memory of the enslaved and slavers is shaped and displayed in the public space not only in the former slave societies but also in the regions that provided captives to the former American colonies and European metropoles. Through the analysis of exhibitions, museums, monuments, accounts, and public performances, the volume makes sense of the political stakes involved in the phenomenon of memorialization of slavery and the slave trade in the public sphere.

Part I

Slavery and Slave Trade
in National Narratives

1 Transnational Memory of Slave Merchants

Making the Perpetrators Visible in the Public Space

Ana Lucia Araujo

Over the last twenty years the public memory of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery emerged as a global phenomenon in various Atlantic centers in the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Places of remembrance of the Atlantic slave trade, such as memorials, museums, and monuments, very often emphasizing victimhood, depict naked and starving black bodies packed in slave ships. In Gorée Island, Cape Coast, Elmina, and Ouidah, these traumatic journeys are represented by gates and doors of no-return that mark the transition to confinement, forced migration, and forced labor. However, official initiatives, most of them led by UNESCO, also had unexpected outcomes. In Brazil, Benin, and England, memorialization of slavery has also helped rehabilitate the memory of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity. By considering this complex context, this chapter examines the public memory of three slave merchants who were deeply in involved in the Atlantic slave trade in three different societies located in three different continents (Brazil, present-day Republic of Benin, and England): Francisco Félix de Souza (1754–1849), Joaquim Pereira Marinho (1816–1887), and Robert Milligan (1746–1809). This chapter seeks to explain how despite the official international projects aimed at promoting the memory of the victims of the Atlantic slave trade, the memory of these perpetrators continues to occupy a prominent place in the public space. Although these three individuals plied their slave-trade activities in three different continents, several elements of their public memory remain very similar. Indeed, in Brazil, England, or Benin, these three slave merchants are almost never depicted as perpetrators, but rather as benefactors and great businessmen. This chapter sheds light on the public representations of these slave merchants and how these three societies, which were deeply involved in the Atlantic slave trade, dealt with the memory of the victims and the memory of the perpetrators in the public space.

TRANSNATIONAL MEMORY OF SLAVE MERCHANTS

The rise of the memory of slavery not only allowed the descendants of the victims to occupy the public space to promote the heritage of their ancestors and to formulate demands to redress past wrongs, but also offered the opportunity to the descendants of perpetrators and other auxiliaries in the slave-trade business to give their own point of view about the slave past of their families. Depending on the context, the public memory of the perpetrators and their descendants acquired political and even religious contours. In some countries, by expressing regret and addressing public apologies for the errors of their ancestors, the families of the perpetrators are also acquiring public visibility. In other countries, despite the construction of new monuments and memorials honoring the victims of the Atlantic slave trade, numerous public statues honoring individuals highly involved in the slave trade business remain intact and unquestioned.

Francisco Félix de Souza (1754–1849)

In 1727 the West African Kingdom of Dahomey seized Ouidah, the capital of the Kingdom of Hueda, gaining access to the coast. Over the years Ouidah became the second most important African slaving port after Luanda (Angola). Most enslaved men and women embarked in Ouidah were sent to Bahia, in Brazil. During the eighteenth century, numerous Brazilian and Portuguese slave merchants settled in Ouidah, where in 1721, the Portuguese founded the fortress São João Batista da Ajuda.¹

The Brazilian slave merchant Francisco Félix Souza settled in the Bight of Benin in the early nineteenth century and soon became one of the most prosperous slave merchants of the region. By that time, the Dahomean King Adandozan (r. 1797–1818) and de Souza had a disagreement related to the Atlantic slave trade. Adandozan sent the slave merchant to prison, where he had contact with Prince Gakpe, who was Adandozan’s half-brother. De Souza contracted a blood pact with the prince and helped him to organize a coup d’état. In 1818, Adandozan was deposed, and Prince Gakpe was enthroned and became King Gezo. To reward de Souza, the new king conferred upon him the position of his commercial intermediary in Ouidah. Eventually, de Souza’s nickname “Chacha” became the title of the highest representative of the de Souzas. After the death of de Souza, the first Chacha, the King of Dahomey selected and nominated his successor, and today the family chooses the Chacha.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, de Souza became not only one of the most important slave merchants in the Bight of Benin, but also a legendary figure who is still part of the collective memory of Republic of Benin (former Kingdom of Dahomey). Since 1835, de Souza helped former slave returnees from Brazil to settle in Ouidah. Paradoxically, some of these returnees soon became prosperous slave merchants as well, and together with the slave traders already established in the Bight of Benin, they formed an Afro-Luso-Brazilian community. The existence of descendants of former slave merchants and former slave returnees—some of whom were followed by their former slaves and who became slave merchants once established in West Africa—reinforces the plural memories of slavery in the region.² This complex configuration sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish who were the victims and who were the perpetrators.³

Like other slave merchants of his time, de Souza continued making a profit from the Atlantic slave trade after 1815, when the Anglo-Portuguese treaty had already declared illegal the slave trade from West Africa, including the Bight of Benin. Although at the time of his death in 1849 de Souza had significant debts with King Gezo, as well as with Brazilian and Cuban merchants, he was one of the wealthiest slave merchants in West Africa, his fortune essentially made in the illegal slave trade business. Today the de Souzas still keep economic and political power not only in Benin, but also in other West African countries.

In the early 1990s, several public initiatives aiming at commemorating and memorializing the slave past were developed in the Republic of Benin. These various official projects such as the UNESCO’s Slave Route project and the Vodun festival Ouidah 92 left important marks in Ouidah’s public space. As part of the Vodun festival held in February 1993, a Slaves’ Route displaying one hundred monuments and memorials was unveiled in Ouidah and became a place of pilgrimage visited each year by several thousands of tourists from Benin and abroad. Although some monuments and memorials were placed along the route to mark actual historical sites, other statues do not indicate any specific point of reference but rather emphasize the idea of continuity. Most of these statues represent Vodun deities, and many others depict enchained and kneeling enslaved men and women.⁴

Nevertheless, the first station of the Slaves’ Route in Ouidah is not dedicated to the victims of the Atlantic slave trade, but honors a perpetrator: Francisco Félix de Souza.⁵ The station is named Place des enchères (Auctions Square) or Place Chacha.⁶ This square is located in the Adjido quarter, behind the de Souza family compound, which is the location of de Souza’s old house, still occupied by the head of the family, Honoré Feliciano Julião de Souza (Chacha VIII). The Place des enchères is also located in the same zone in which a slave market existed in the past. However, the sculpture created by the Beninese artist Cyprien Tokoudagba that marks the square represents an amazon of Dahomey’s army, a female warrior with naked breasts and horns. At first sight, the public memory of slavery underscored in this monument is not related to the Brazilian slave merchant, instead it refers to his partner, King Gezo (r. 1818–1858). Just as his predecessors did, Gezo waged military campaigns annually against neighboring kingdoms: most of these war prisoners were sold and sent into slavery in the Americas. Upon the cement base of the monument at the Place des enchères, one reads: “In this place and under this tree were held public slave auctions during which the slaves who would be embarked to the Americas were exchanged for shoddy goods.” In 1999, six years after the festival “Ouidah 92,” another commemorative plaque displaying “Place Chacha” was placed next to the monument, associating the statue of the amazon and the square with de Souza.

In 1993, when the statue representing the Amazon was unveiled, de Souza’s old house was almost abandoned. In 1995, when Chacha VIII was appointed, he decided to restore Francisco Félix de Souza’s house and to build a new four-story “palace” at the same place where his old residence was located. The new imposing building, situated behind the Place Chacha, symbolizes the power of the de Souza family, which still persists today.

Also in the de Souza compound there is a memorial to honor the Francisco Félix de Souza. Although it has existed for many years, it became accessible to the public only in the 1990s, when the Chacha VIII was appointed. Despite de Souza’s slave trade activities, his descendants are proud of their ancestor, and over the past few years the members of the family have been making efforts to rehabilitate his memory, depicting him not as a slave trader but as a great entrepreneur.⁷

During a visit to the memorial, family members emphasized the de Souzas’ bonds with Brazil, and justified the merchant’s activities by insisting that slave trading was indeed a legal activity at the time, even though de Souza and his sons continued trading in slaves years after its prohibition. According to the family’s point of view, de Souza contributed to the development of Africa by introducing new goods and new crops to the region, including the oil palm tree. Among others, in a speech during a ceremony held in the family compound, the spokesman of Chacha VIII, stated that the late Francisco Félix de Souza “spent without count his strength and his wealth in favor of the weak against the strong, the oppressed against the oppressor.”⁸

Inside the memorial, Francisco Félix de Souza’s old bedroom is still intact. In it one finds not only his original Brazilian wood bed, freshly made each day as if he were alive, but also his tomb. The room reinforces the idea that he remains among his family members and has become a major symbol of the family’s original connection with Brazil and reveals the political influence still exerted by the de Souza family over the Afro-Luso-Brazilian community and other communities in Ouidah. This sanctification of de Souza increases the family’s authority, which reaches beyond the political, economic, and family arenas to also gain a religious dimension.

De Souza’s reputation as a generous man started when he was still alive. According to some descendants of slaves who were owned by de Souza, he was not perceived negatively by his slaves, but rather seen as a benevolent man.⁹ Indeed, to British travelers of the nineteenth century, such as Frederick Forbes, de Souza’s values ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge Studies in Cultural History
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Slavery and Slave Trade in National Narratives
• Part II Slavery and Slave Trade in the Museum
• Contributors
• Bibliography
• Index