The Yoruba people who came back, from Sierra Leone and from Brazil and Cuba, and what they built in Lagos: the mosques, the Brazilian quarter, the newspapers, and a babaláwo who carried Ifá back across the Atlantic.
The Yorùbá wey dem quote, the proverbs, oríkì, ẹsẹ Ifá, word list headwords, Odù names and citations dey exactly as the corpus record dem, for every language.
Two return migrations change di face of Lagos for di nineteenth century. Di Saro dem come from Sierra Leone, mostly people wey dem rescue from slave ships or dia children, dem dey speak English and dem na Protestant. Di Amaro or Agudá come from Brazil and Cuba, mostly people wey buy dia freedom or wey dem give freedom after many decades of slavery, dem dey speak Portuguese and plenty of dem na Catholic, even though good number of dem na Muslim. By di 1880s, di Brazilian returnees alone reach like nine percent of di population of Lagos .
Dem reach inside Yorubaland wey bin export dem, and dem bring back skills, capital, literacy, religion and building trades wey dem gain for di oda side of crossing wey no be dem choose am. Na dem make Lagos look di way e look today, and na dem make people dey practice Ifá for Bahia today in a way wey Yoruba babaláwo fit recognize.
Di Saro migration happen from di 1830s, comot from Freetown go Badagry, Abẹ́òkúta and Lagos. Di members na people wey British anti-slavery squadron rescue for sea, settle dem for Sierra Leone, convert dem, send dem go mission schools and give dem English names. Dem return as clerks, traders, teachers, printers, clergy, and later lawyers and doctors, and na dem work inside mission enterprise and colonial administration. Samuel Àjàyí Crowther, Samuel Johnson, James Johnson and Otonba Payne all belong to dis group, and dem get dia own separate files. Di study wey Jean Herskovits Kopytoff do na di standard account .
Di Amaro or Agudá migration dey different. Dem na people wey survive di Middle Passage and years or decades of slavery for Brazil and Cuba, get freedom, and pay dia own transport come back, plenty of dem after di Malê revolt for Bahia for 1835 and di heavy punishment wey follow am. Dem come with trades: bricklayer work, carpentry, joinery, tailoring, cabinet-making, and baking. Dem come as Catholic, or Muslim, or with òrìṣà practice intact, and many times all di three dey inside one family. And dem come dey speak Portuguese, na why Yoruba retain small vocabulary from am and why Catholic families for Lagos still dey bear names like da Silva, da Costa, Pereira, dos Santos and Vaughan .
Dem dey use di term Agudá across di Bight of Benin, for Lagos, Porto-Novo, Ouidah and Cotonou, for di same community, and di members keep dia distinct identity for generations .
Dia legacy wey people fit see pass na architecture. Di Brazilian quarter for Lagos Island, Popo Aguda, na returnee master builders build am with style wey dem bring back from Bahia: two-storey houses wey get arched windows, stuccoed and moulded facades, ironwork balconies, outside staircases and plenty plaster ornament . Dem dey call di style Afro-Brazilian or Brazilian Baroque now, and e be deliberate statement. People wey dem bin treat like property build houses wey announce say dem no be property.
João Baptista da Costa na di master builder wey dem normally credit with di design and construction of di major Afro-Brazilian mosques for Lagos, including di Shitta-Bey Mosque and di Central Mosque, wey use di Baroque churches of Bahia as pattern for im forms .
Di Shitta-Bey Mosque na di single building wey dem document pass. Dem start foundation for 1881 and dem finish di building on 7 February 1892, financed by Mohammed Shitta, one rich Sierra Leonean-born Muslim merchant, at a cost wey people record differently between three thousand and seven thousand pounds. Da Costa design am and one indigenous builder wey im name na Sanusi Aka assist am. Dem open am on 4 July 1894 for ceremony wey di Governor of Lagos, Sir Gilbert Carter, preside over, and wey Ọba Oyekan I and Edward Wilmot Blyden attend. For dat ceremony dem give Shitta di title Bey and di Ottoman Order of the Medjidie, third class, from Sultan Abdul Hamid II, na why people know am as Shitta-Bey .
Look wetin dat single event contain. Yoruba Muslim merchant wey dem born for Sierra Leone finance mosque for Lagos, wey Brazilian returnee design in di style of Bahian Catholic churches, wey indigenous Yoruba craftsman join build, wey British colonial governor open in front of di Ọba of Lagos and one West Indian-born Liberian pan-Africanist, and wey Ottoman Sultan honor. Dat na di nineteenth-century Atlantic world inside one single building, and di building still dey stand.
Bonfim do im own return go di oda direction, and na im be di single most important individual link between Yoruba religion for Nigeria and Candomblé for Brazil.
Dem born am for Salvador, Bahia, for 1859, to freed African parents wey connect with di Terreiro da Casa Branca do Engenho Velho, di oldest documented Candomblé house for Brazil . People still know am as Ojé L'adê and by di name Ajimúdà.
For 1875, when e dey sixteen, e travel with im papa Eliseu do Bomfim, wey be import-export trader of Yoruba goods, from Salvador go Lagos, for education and apprenticeship. E stay almost eleven years. E attend Church Missionary Society school for Alápákó Fàájì for Lagos, sabi English and Yoruba well, and along with mission schooling, dem train am inside Ifá and initiate am as babaláwo .
Dat combination na di main point. E be Brazilian-born son of freed Africans, wey dem send back to Yorubaland, wey acquire both Victorian mission education and complete Ifá initiation, con carry di two go back to Bahia.
E return for 1886, work as English teacher to rich Afro-Brazilians, and trade back and forth across di Atlantic, functioning as di main link between Bahia and di returnee community for Lagos . For Candomblé e hold important position inside di cult of male ancestors, babá egum, and senior post for Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá, and older literature describe am as di last babalaô of Bahia .
Na him be honorary president of the big Afro-Brazilian Congress wey dem hold for Bahia and na him lead the União das Seitas Africanas, wey be the first association of Candomblé temples, wey be institutional defence during the time wey Candomblé face police wahala . Him work with anthropologists Nina Rodrigues and later Ruth Landes and Édison Carneiro, and na one of the very few practitioners of him generation wey dem record and publish him own story, inside the autobiographical material wey dem publish today as O babalaô fala .
Him die on 3 November 1943, and newspaper dem for Bahia and Rio report him death.
Mohammed Shitta-Bey (die 1895), the merchant wey finance the mosque, and proof say no be all returnee elite dem be Christian .
Taiwo Olowo and Oshodi Tapa, for inside Kòsọ́kọ́'s commercial faction for Lagos, wey dem treat for the Lagos file.
John Payne Jackson (1848 to 1918), editor of the Lagos Weekly Record, and the Lagos press generally, wey be returnee institution.
Jacob Kẹ́hìndé Coker (1866 to 1945), the Ẹ̀gbá planter wey finance the African Church movement.
Herbert Macaulay (1864 to 1946), Crowther great-grandson, wey him career belong to the twentieth century and dem treat am for the later files of dis section.
Some returnees, from both sides, join hand for slave trade after dem gain their own freedom. Brazilian returnee merchants for Lagos, Ouidah and Porto-Novo include men wey trade enslaved people, and the commercial networks wey carry freed people go back home na the same networks for some cases wey carry enslaved people comot. The case wey people know pass, Francisco Félix de Souza for Ouidah, na Brazilian slave trader instead of returnee wey dem born for Africa, but the returnee communities of the Bight of Benin include him descendants and him business partners, and the boundary between returnee merchant and slave merchant no always dey clear.
Dis work talk am direct without adding anything on top and without using am take bring down the returnee communities, wey majority of the members na people wey dey rebuild their lives after slavery instead of making gain from am. The reason to talk am na say the Atlantic system no divide people into victims and perpetrators only, and any history wey do dat one no dey describe wetin really happen.
Captured as a boy at Òṣogun and sold three times in a day, he became the first African Anglican bishop, wrote the first serious Yoruba grammar and dictionary, translated the Bible into Yoruba, and was broken at the end of his life by younger European missionaries.
James "Holy" Johnson, Mọjọlá Agbébí and the generation of Sierra Leonean returnee clergy who took mission Christianity, found it would not admit them to leadership, and built African churches instead.
A dynastic quarrel inside one Lagos family, a British bombardment in December 1851 justified by the slave trade, and the cession of 1861 that made Lagos a British colony and began the conquest of Nigeria.
The history and structure of Candomblé in Brazil, why the nations matter, the great Bahian terreiros and the women who led them, the regional variants, Umbanda as a distinct formation, and the current situation under evangelical pressure.
The courtyard compound and its rain-catching impluvium, the palace as the same building at maximum scale, the town laid out around palace and market, the Afro-Brazilian houses of Lagos, and how little of it is still standing.
The island town with three overlapping origins, its Àwórì land-owning chiefs, its Benin-derived kingship, the 1851 bombardment and 1861 cession, and the Brazilian quarter the returnees built.