In 1849, a British sea captain called Frederick Forbes arrived in the West African kingdom of Dahomey. He had been sent by the British Government to persuade King Ghezo to cease selling his fellow Africans whom he had captured in war to European slave traders. The British had banned slave trading in their empire in 1807 and were using their naval might to intercept slave ships bound for the Americas. Their approach to African nations engaged in the trade was initially diplomatic in order to avoid war. Conflict with Dahomey over its human trafficking would have been especially costly as it was the region’s great power. So highly militarised was it that the Europeans who had visited nicknamed it “Black Sparta”. As for Forbes, he was not optimistic about his mission’s success.
According to his published autobiography, Six Months’ Service in the African Blockade, even if an African monarch were persuaded that slave trading was immoral, he could not be induced to abandon the lucrative trade because his subjects who benefited from it would have conspired with the Europeans who bought the slaves to assassinate him. It was for that reason that Forbes knew all previous attempts to persuade Ghezo had come to nothing. The King had cordially received every embassy from the British, put on for each occasion a welcoming yet menacing display of his wealth and military power, and then immovably refused to give up the trade. Nevertheless, Forbes pressed on with his grim mission. What else could he do: he was under his Government’s orders. The display of recently decapitated human heads still oozing with blood as he passed through Ghezo’s palace courtyard must have seemed to him failure’s gruesome portends.
During his audience with Ghezo, Forbes endeavoured to persuade him with what was becoming the stock argument against the slave trade when in dialogue with African kings: that if slaves were not sold but employed to cultivate wild land, the nation would become great and rich. To bolster his case, Forbes presented Ghezo with a letter from Queen Victoria in which she expressed her opposition to the slave trade alongside gifts of silks and cloths. But the King was in no mood to listen. As he pointed out to Forbes, had the British not been the most prolific participants, “the first of white men”, as he put it, in the trade?
Though Forbes did not convert Ghezo to abolitionism, he did not leave empty-handedly. As if to underscore his commitment to the slave trade, among the gifts Ghezo gave Forbes to give to Victoria was a slave girl. Diplomatically, Forbes accepted the child and on his return to London, presented her to the Queen. As it was Forbes who had brought her to Britain on HMS Bonetta, the girl was named Sarah Forbes Bonetta (her African name is unknown). She remained a favourite of the Queen and later married the British African James Pinson Labulo Davies who had made his fortune in the palm oil business.
As for Ghezo, he was coerced into signing in January 1852 a treaty with Britain renouncing the slave trade after the British had resorted to blockading his ports. Persuasion had failed, but might prevailed. Ghezo was assassinated in 1864 by a sniper from an enemy state, Abeokuta. With the expansion of the very profitable palm oil business as an alternative, slave trading declined and eventually died out when Dahomey was conquered by the French Empire. In 1960, Dahomey gained its independence and is known today as Benin.
The moral of this story may already be transparent to you. There are those who claim that the U.K. owes enormous reparations for its involvement in the slave trade, but who never acknowledge African complicity in the trafficking. If reparations are owed, and I have argued that they are not, why are the people of Benin not being pressured into paying compensation? Of course they should not be, just as Britain should not be – but this double standard is a consequence of the abominable untruth that white people are uniquely violent and evil, and that slave trading is a manifestation of this inherent turpitude. Yet, objective historians and anthropologists will confirm that slave selling and owning was a ubiquitous human phenomenon. It remains the case today according to the UN, and tragically continues in Africa.
Therefore, let us say to those clamouring for Britain to make restitution for its slave trading past but who omit from their charge-sheet African guilt, and any other civilisation’s guilt, for the same thing; who regard Britain as inherently, incurably and idiosyncratically racist, and who view black people only as victims: consider King Ghezo, his people and all the other African monarchs and people who owned and traded slaves. Yes, look on their depraved deeds and despair, for they demonstrate that your use of history is biased, your anthropology is bankrupt and your demands are baseless.
Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020). First published on the New Conservative.
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