Gorée Island, Senegal - The bastion of slave trade in West Africa

By Wale Ojo-Lanre just back from Dubai - updated: Wednesday 03-06-2009

The Slave House: Point of No Return Pic. by
Wale Ojo-Lanre who was in SenegalGorée is a small island, 900 m in length and 350 m in width sheltered by the Cape Vert Peninsula. Now part of the city of Dakar, it was a minor port and site of European settlement along the coast. Being almost devoid of drinking water, the island was not occupied before the arrival of Europeans. The Portuguese were the first to establish a presence on Gorée (c. 1450), building a small stone chapel there and using land as a cemetery.

Gorée is known as the location of the House of Slaves (French: Maison des esclaves), built by an Afro-French Métis family about 1780–1784. The House of Slaves is one of the oldest houses on the island. It is now used as a tourist destination to dramatize the horrors of slave trade throughout the Atlantic world. Well known in the West because of this museum, Gorée was actually relatively unimportant in the slave trade. The claim that the "house of slaves" was a slave-shipping point was refuted in 1959 by Raymond Mauny, shortly afterward the first professor of African history at the Sorbonne.[3]

Probably no more than a few hundred slaves a year departed from here for transportation to the Americas. They were more often incidental passengers on ships carrying other cargoes rather than transported on slave ships. After the decline of the slave trade from Senegal in the 1770s and 1780s, the town became an important port for the shipment of peanuts, peanut oil, gum arabic, ivory, and other products of the "legitimate" trade. It was probably in relation to this trade that the Maison des Esclaves was built.(1)

The island of Gorée was one of the first places in Africa to be settled by Europeans, the Portuguese setting foot on the island in 1444. It was captured by the United Netherlands in 1588, then the Portuguese again, again the Dutch — who named it after the Dutch Island of Goeree, and the British took it over under Robert Holmes in 1664.

After the French gained control in 1677, the island remained continuously French until 1960, when Senegal was granted independence. There were brief periods of English occupation during the various wars fought by France and England between 1677 and 1815.

Gorée was principally a trading post, administratively attached to Saint-Louis, capital of the Colony of Senegal. Apart from slaves, beeswax, hides and grain were also traded. The population of the island fluctuated according to circumstances, from a few hundred free Africans and Creoles to about 1,500. There would have been few European residents at any one time.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Gorée was home to a Franco-African Creole, or Métis, community of merchants with links to similar communities in Saint-Louis and the Gambia, and across the Atlantic to France's colonies in the Americas. Métis women, called signares from the Portuguese senhora, were especially important to the city’s business life. The signares owned ships and property and commanded male clerks. They were also famous for cultivating fashion and entertainment. One such signare, Anne Rossignol, lived in Saint-Domingue (the modern Haiti) in the 1780s before the Haitian Revolution.


Goree IslandIn February 1794 during the French Revolution, France was the first nation in the world to abolish slavery. The slave trade from Senegal stopped. However, in May 1802 Napoleon re-established slavery after intense lobbying from sugar plantation owners of the Caribbean départments of France. The wife of Napoleon, Joséphine de Beauharnais, daughter of a rich plantation owner from Martinique, supported their position.

In March 1815, during his political comeback known as the Hundred Days, Napoleon definitively abolished the slave trade to build relations with Great Britain. (Scotland had never recognized slavery and England finally abolished the slave trade in 1807.) This time abolition continued.

As the trade in slaves declined in the late eighteenth century, Gorée converted to legitimate commerce. The tiny city and port were ill situated for the shipment of industrial quantities of peanuts, which began arriving in bulk from the mainland. Consequently, its merchants established a presence directly on the mainland, first in Rufisque (1840) and then in Dakar (1857). Many of the established families started to leave the island.

Civic franchise for the citizens of Gorée was institutionalized in 1872, when it became a French “commune” with an elected mayor and a municipal council. Blaise Diagne, the first African deputy elected to the French National Assembly (served 1914 to 1934), was born on Gorée. From a peak of about 4,500 in 1845, the population fell to 1,500 in 1904. In 1940 Gorée was annexed to the municipality of Dakar.

Gorée is connected to the mainland by regular 30-minute ferry service – pedestrians only; there are no cars on the island. It is Senegal’s premier tourist site and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. It now serves mostly as a memorial to the slave trade. The built-up urban core of the island is geared to tourism. Many of the historic commercial and residential buildings have been turned into restaurants and hotels.

At World Museum Day celebration in Ibadan - Nigerians call for more funding for Museum

By Wale ojo Lanre

L-R. Mr. Adeola Olayinmika, president,
Museum Society, Mrs. Ireti Kola-George,
Curator, National Museum of Unity, Ibadan
and Chief Mabinuori Adeboye, Aare Latosa
during the celebration of the world museum
DayRECENTLY, the world celebrated the International Museum Day with the theme: “Museum and Tourism,” a commemorative effort to remind all and sundry of the cultural essence of history and heritage of the people and how to sustain, protect and preserve for the generation to come, to see, appreciate and uphold.

In Nigeria, the celebration was a national event where different cultural and heritage custodians and institutions from government, corporate and private organisations put up different platforms to mark the event.

For the National Museum of Unity, Ibadan, though the event was not too elaborate, but the contribution of key stakeholders and friends of the museum, who were present added value to the celebration as sensitive issues confronting and militating against the practical promotion and utilization of the potentialities in Nigeria museums were discussed with claims of how to make the museum a viable source of revenue for Nigeria.

Speaking at the event, the curator, National Museum of Unity, Ibadan, Mrs. Ireti Kola-George called on Nigerians to rejuvenate the culture of visiting, embracing and promoting the ingenuity and legacy of legends and heritages in the museum.

Kola-George explained, “The museum is the most valuable tourists’ attraction. Most tourism leading countries of the world use it as a unique point of reference and promotion, to boost tourists, traffic, because it does not only project the heritage of the people but also define and tell correctly, the core cultural affinity that exists among the people; who they are, where they came from, what they do and represent, how distinct they are, why they are unique in their ways of life and finally their occupations and trades.”

The curator, however, frowned at the way people perceived the museum, “to be a shrine or idol park.” She added that this same attitude by Nigerians have not only made the museum under-utilized but also denied it from boosting tourists’ traffic and revenue for the museum, thereby depriving people from benefitting from it.

Kole-George called on the private sector, through the public and private partnership initiative, to make the museum resource known by patronising the museum through different investing avenues, and also to make people know the link of the museum to the common man and how it can be of benefit to him.

The chairman of the occasion, who is also the president of the Museum Society, Mr. Adeola Olayinmika said, “the museum is not a government affairs alone, even when it has the statutory right to regulate and create smooth environment for its day to day activities. We must also note and look for ways of attracting the private and corporate organisations vis-a-vis educating everyone in Nigeria to see the museum as a place to visit and the significants of having a story-house of our heritages and be proud to protect them.”

“Also the government should look into improving on the funding of the museum so that it would be able to meet up with different marketing, management, maintenance and promotional logistics, to give Nigeria the pride of positioning itself as one of the most unique sources of antiquities collection in the world.”

Olayinmika, however, tasked the media, that he described as the only catalyst that can be used positively, to reach the government in the course of actualising the purpose of the museum which must be powered by effective funding.

A friend of the museum, Prince Tunde Odunlade, who has travelled wide and near, preaching the gospel of the genuineness of Nigeria cultural heritage, people, arts, antiquity, also captivated guests at the venue of the Museum Day as he composed a song for the rebranding Nigeria initiative, said that museum is a honey inside the rock which must be used to better the lot of Nigeria if adequate attention is focused on its rich potentials.

Prince Odunlade added that the theme of this year’s celebration, “Tourism and Museum” was unique and for tourism to work effectively, museum also must be positioned for the world to see, but first, tourists need essential amenities to thrive so that the business can practically boom.”

Speaking on law guiding the museum, another friend of the museum, Dr. Ladipo, described the law guiding the antiquities and museum as very antique, thereby called on government to give property right, an understanding priority by compensating owners and custodians of arts and antiquities, who are willing to donate to the museum adding that it will not only give them a sense of belonging but will show that the government also appreciate their support.

Dr. Ladipo explained that “since the original owners and custodians of the museum collections did not sell or smuggle it out of the country at least for this, they need to be rewarded. So there is need for the government to change the rule to include property right and the price attracted to it.”

Corroborating this statement, Chief Mabinuori Adeboye, Aare Latosa, a prominent culture exhibitor of the Aare Latosa dynasty, who spoke in an undiluted Yoruba language said Nigeria must rise up to the call of the museum because it is the only thing left to trace our route and heritage.

According to him “if there is someone out there offering a million for an antiquity and the government want the same collection for free, no right thinking person will want to respond to that but if the government compensates the person or family with something and still goes further to immortalize the name of the family where the antiquities came from by inscribing their name on plaque where the collection is displayed, they will be happy and still invite others to do same.”

While calling the government to always put the right peg in the right hole, Are Latosa disclosed that there was a time he decided to donate a statue of over a century ago to the museum and instead of the authority to welcome it, they discouraged him by refusing the gesture all in the name of western religion.

“I was not happy at all, because it is the government that should be begging for it, not the custodians who are ready to give it out on a platter of gold. The import of the museum collection should be spelt out for anyone occupying post of authority at the museum, culture and religion are two parallel lines that cannot meet, Chief Mabinuori added.

’Wale Olapade