The coast stretching from the mouth of the Volta to the Mono carried, for nearly three centuries, a blood-chilling name: the Slave Coast. Aného, then Petit Popo, was one of the departure points for this trade that tore millions of Africans from their land. Today, the city lives with this memory. It does not hide it. Nor does it parade it. It carries it like one carries a scar: with the dignity of those who survived.
A Geography of Passage
Petit Popo occupied a strategic position on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. Halfway between the fortified trading posts of Elmina and Cape Coast to the west and the Kingdom of Abomey to the east, the city was a natural stopover for slave ships sailing up the coast from Brazil, the Caribbean, or directly from Europe. The lagoon offered shelter for boats. Local kings controlled access to interior trade routes.
Unlike Ouidah, its neighbor in present-day Benin, Petit Popo never housed a permanent European slave fort. The Portuguese, Dutch, Danes, and English stopped there, negotiated, loaded, and left. This lack of fortification had a paradoxical consequence: it allowed the Guin sovereigns to retain greater autonomy in their transactions.
The Trade: Between Guin Kings and European Captains
The slave trade in Petit Popo operated under a system that placed the Guin kings in a relatively strong position. The Europeans had no colony, no garrison. They had to negotiate every cargo with local authorities. The Lawson and Adjigo kings levied taxes on each ship, set prices, and selected the captives offered for sale.
This reality in no way diminishes the horror of the trade. The captives came from the interior, sometimes from very far away: from Mossi country, the Kingdom of Dahomey, the borders of Ashanti territory. They arrived in Petit Popo after weeks of walking—chained, starving, terrified. Some were prisoners of war. Others were victims of raids. Still others were common criminals handed over by their own communities.
The surviving commercial archives—notably the logbooks of Dutch and English ships—provide staggering figures. At the height of the trade, around 1780, several hundred captives passed through Petit Popo each year. Multiplied over decades, tens of thousands of human beings were torn from their land through this single point on the coast.
The End of the Trade: Abolition and Reconversion
The abolition of the slave trade by Great Britain in 1807, and then by France in 1815, did not immediately end the commerce. Brazilian and Cuban demand remained high, and slave ships continued to operate under flags of convenience. The Royal Navy deployed a squadron along the West African coast to intercept suspicious vessels. Petit Popo, like other ports, became a clandestine embarkation point.
It wasn't until around 1850 that the trade truly ceased in Petit Popo. The Guin kings converted their economy toward the trade of palm oil, cotton, and copra. The city began a new phase in its history, marked by the return of the Afro-Brazilians—the Agoudas—descendants of former slaves who came back to settle on the coast.
Memory Today
Aného does not have a slavery museum. There is no imposing memorial monument, no Door of No Return like in Ouidah. The memory of the slave trade is more discreet, more ambivalent. It lives in family stories, in songs that evoke the departed, in the names of certain neighborhoods that recall the inhabitants' origins.
For travelers who wish to understand this history, the path is less marked than in Ouidah. One must speak to the elders. Listen to the tales of those whose ancestors were merchants, soldiers, captives, or freedmen. Visit Glidji and the sacred forest, where ceremonies continue to honor vanished ancestors. Walk along the Atlantic beach and remember that every wave washing onto this sand witnessed the unthinkable.
The Slave Coast is not a turned page. It is a geological layer of Togolese memory, buried under new constructions but never truly gone.
Archaeological Traces and Buried Memory
Few material traces of the slave trade remain in Aného today. The memory is in the landscape:
- The beach from which pirogues departed to reach ships anchored offshore.
- The lagoon, a transit route for captives from the interior.
- Family names evoking Brazilian origins (Olympio, de Souza).
- Oral histories passed down in certain families, never written.
In 2018, archaeologists from the University of Lomé identified fragments of European ceramics and glass beads in the deep layers of the Glidji site.
The Paradox of Guin Memory
Several reasons explain why Aného never institutionalized its memory of slavery:
- Guin elites served as intermediaries, making the memory ambivalent.
- The absence of a European fort deprives the city of a strong symbolic site.
- The authorities' prioritization of other heritage sites.
- A tradition that favors oral transmission rather than museification.
What the Visitor Can Do
On the Beach at Twilight
Walk on the sand thinking of the pirogues that set sail. No sign indicates it, but this beach is a site of memory.
In the Afro-Brazilian Quarter
Observe the houses of the Agoudas—a heritage of the return of slave descendants from Brazil.
With the Elders
Some are willing to talk if you know how to listen. Their stories constitute the living memory of the trade.