Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents some comments from a pancocojams post's discussion thread and from an email that was sent to me about the Guin/Mina people and languages of Togo and Benin, West Africa..
This pancocojams post also presents a brief overview of the West African nation of Togo and the West African nation of Benin. This post also presents several articles/journal excerpts about the history and present information about the Guin/Mina people of Togo and Benin, West Africa.
The content of this post is presented for historical and cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
****
OVERVIEW OF TOGO
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Togo#Ethnic_groups
"Togo..., officially the
Togolese Republic (French: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa.
It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the
north.[7] The country extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its capital
and largest city Lomé is located.[8] Togo covers 57,000 square kilometres
(22,008 square miles), making it one of the smallest countries in Africa, with
a population of approximately 8 million,[9] as well as one of the narrowest
countries in the world with a width of less than 115 km (71 mi) between Ghana
and its slightly larger eastern neighbor, Benin.[10][11]
From the 11th to the 16th century, various tribes entered the region from all directions. From the 16th century to the 18th century, the coastal region was a major trading center for Europeans to purchase slaves, earning Togo and the surrounding region the name "The Slave Coast". In 1884, Germany declared a region including present-day Togo as a protectorate called Togoland. After World War I, rule over Togo was transferred to France. Togo gained its independence from France in 1960.[12][2] In 1967, Gnassingbé Eyadéma led a successful military coup d'état after which he became president of an anti-communist, single-party state. Eventually, in 1993, Eyadéma faced multiparty elections, which were marred by irregularities, and he won the presidency three times. At the time of his death, Eyadéma was the longest-serving leader in modern African history, having been president for 38 years.[13] In 2005, his son Faure Gnassingbé was elected president. He continues to hold the office as of 2021."...
****
OVERVIEW OF BENIN
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin
"Benin..., officially the Republic of Benin (French:
République du Bénin) (formerly known as Dahomey), is a country in West Africa.
It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the
north-west, and Niger to the north-east. The majority of its population lives
on the small southern coastline of the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of
Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean.[9] The
capital of Benin is Porto-Novo, but the seat of government is in Cotonou, the
country's largest city and economic capital. Benin covers an area of 114,763
square kilometres (44,310 sq mi)[3] and its population in 2018 was estimated to
be approximately 11.49 million.[10][11] Benin is a tropical nation, highly
dependent on agriculture, and is a large exporter of cotton and palm oil.
Substantial employment and income arise from subsistence farming.[12]
The official language of Benin is French, with several
indigenous languages such as Fon, Bariba, Yoruba and Dendi also being commonly
spoken.
[...]
Little is known of Benin's early history. From the 17th to
the 19th century, the main political entities in the area were the Kingdom of
Dahomey, along with the city-state of Porto-Novo, and a large area with many
different nations to the north. This region was referred to as the Slave Coast
from as early as the 17th century due to the large number of people who were
kidnapped and trafficked to the New World during the Trans-Atlantic slave
trade. After slavery was abolished, France took over the country and renamed it
French Dahomey. In 1960, Dahomey gained full independence from France. The
sovereign state has had a tumultuous history since then, with many different
democratic governments, military coups, and military governments. A
Marxist–Leninist state called the People's Republic of Benin existed between
1975 and 1990. In 1991, it was replaced by the current multi-party Republic of Benin.[14]"...
****
COMMENTS ABOUT THE GUIN / MINA LANGUAGES AND PEOPLE
These comments were posted by an anonymous contributor in the discussion thread for this 2021 pancocojams post entitled " "Yevu" And "Obroni" (Ghanaian Referents For White People And For Foreigners, Including Black People Who Were Weren't Born & Raised In Ghana)" https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2021/08/yevu-and-obroni-ghanaian-referents-for.html
(Numbers are added for referencing purposes only)
1. AnonymousAugust 6, 2021 at 5:31 AM
"In Togo and Benin where Mina(some sort of creole language
mainly derived from Ewe) is spoken, "Yevu" is pronounced
"Yovo", and a common custom by kids in both countries is to say
"Yovo, yovo bonsoir!"(White person, white person, good evening!"
when they see a white person.
Historically the full song was part of the colonial period. French missionaries arrived bearing gifts as means to attract and win over support of the communities."
Reply
2.
"Thanks, Anonymous for sharing that historical and
contemporary information about the Creole language Mina in Togo and Benin/
-snip-
*I corrected my spelling error in this quote.
**
Reply
Anonymous, August 6, 2021 at 3:19 PM
"There are a people in Togo, specifically the town of Aneho,
called the "Guin". They come from Ghana but migrated in Togo
centuries ago. Their ancestors were Ga and Fante. After a while, their
ancestors mixed with local Aja & Ewe and adopted a lot of their culture.
Pure Ga is still spoken by some Guin in Togo, and that's what we call
"Guin-gbe", or language of the Guin.
Mina is a language derived mainly from Ewe but that also got
Aja, Ga, English, and French influences in it. That's why I said it's a creole,
similar to how Lingala in Congo is a creole. It's called Mina because some of
the ancestors of the "Guin", of Aneho people, were Fante traders from
ElMINA in Ghana.
Mina became a lingua-franca in Southern Togo and Benin,
because it was mutually intelligible with Ewe/Aja and other "Gbe"
languages, and easily learned. It was useful for trade in the region and still
is.
While Mina is derived mainly from Ewe, you can still find Ga words in Mina because of the Ga origins of the Guin. An example is "kakla", which means knife. It's not an Ewe word but people in Togo and Benin who speak Mina and are not Guin use it all the time.
As for Yovo, yes Westernized blacks can sometimes be called
"Yovo" if they have foreign mannerisms. Mixed people are also called
Yovo."
-snip-
I posted another comment to that discussion thread giving Anonymous my email address and suggested that he or she write me there. Here's a portion of the subsequent email that I received:
..."It's going to be hard finding resources on Togo, the Guin etc... in English. Can you read French?
[...]
ARTICLE AND JOURNAL EXCERPTS ABOUT GUIN/MINA PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES
[These excerpts are numbered for referencing purposes only.]
Excerpt #1
From:
"Not to be confused with Mina language (Cameroon).
Gen (also called Gɛ̃, Gɛn gbe, Gebe, Guin, Mina, Mina-Gen,
and Popo) is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo in the Maritime
Region. Like the other Gbe languages, Gen is a tonal language.
There were 200,000 Gen-speakers in Togo in 1991, and 130,000
in Benin in 2006.[1]"
****
Excerpt #2
" "Ewe" is the umbrella name for a number of groups
that speak dialects of the same language and have separate local names, such as
Anlo, Abutia, Be, Kpelle, and Ho. (These are not subnations but populations of
towns or small regions.) Closely related groups with slightly different
mutually comprehensible languages and cultures may be grouped with Ewe, notably
Adja, Oatchi, and Peda.
Fon and Ewe people are often considered to belong to the same, larger grouping, although their related languages are mutually incomprehensible. All these peoples are said to have originated in the general area of Tado, a town in present-day Togo, at about the same latitude as Abomey, Benin.
Mina and Guin are the descendants of Fanti and Ga people who left the Gold Coast in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, settling in the Aneho and Glidji areas, where they intermarried with Ewe, Oatchi, Peda, and Adja.
The Guin-Mina and Ewe languages are mutually comprehensible, although there are significant structural and lexical differences.
[…]
The coastal areas of Benin, Togo, and southeastern Ghana are flat, with
numerous palm groves. Just north of the beach areas is a string of lagoons,
navigable in some areas. An undulating plain lies behind the lagoons, with a
soil of red laterite and sand. The southern parts of the Akwapim ridge in
Ghana, about 120 kilometers from the coast, are forested and reach an elevation
of about 750 meters."....
-snip-
I reformatted this excerpt to enhance its readability.
****
Excerpt #3
Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings of “Mina” (Again)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Robin Law
Extract
The term “Mina,” when encountered as an ethnic designation
of enslaved Africans in the Americas in the seventeenth to nineteenth
centuries, has commonly been interpreted as referring to persons brought from
the area of the “Gold Coast” (“Costa da Mina” in Portuguese usage),
corresponding roughly to modern Ghana, who are further commonly presumed to
have been mainly speakers of the Akan languages (Fante, Twi, etc.) dominant on
that section of the coast and its immediate hinterland. In a recently published
paper, however, Gwendolyn Hall has questioned this conventional interpretation,
and suggested instead that most of those called “Mina” in the Americas were
actually from the “Slave Coast” to the east (modern southeastern Ghana, Togo,
and Bénin), and hence speakers of the languages nowadays generally termed “Gbe”
(though formerly more commonly “Ewe”), including Ewe, Adja, and Fon. Given the
numerical strength of the “Mina” presence in the Americas, as Hall rightly
notes, this revision would substantially alter our understanding of ethnic
formation in the Americas.
In further discussion of these issues, this paper considers in greater detail than was possible in Hall's treatment: first, the application of the name “Mina” in European usage on the West African coast itself, and second, the range of meanings attached to it in the Americas. This separation of African and American data, it should be stressed, is adopted only for convenience of exposition, since it is very likely that ethnic terminology on the two sides of the Atlantic in fact evolved in a process of mutual interaction. In particular, the settlement of large numbers of returned exslaves from Brazil on the Slave Coast from the 1830s onwards very probably fed Brazilian usage back into west Africa, as I have argued earlier with respect to the use of the name “Nago” as a generic term for the Yoruba-speaking peoples."
Notes
[…]
2. "Law, Robin, “Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: ‘Lucumi’ and ‘Nago’ as Ethnonyms in West Africa,” HA 24(1997), 205–19Google Scholar; for the argument that the generic use of “Nago” in West Africa represents feedback from Brazil, see ibid., 212-15."
3. "An interesting question, which however cannot be pursued here, is whether/how far European usage in the Americas distinguished between the Akan and Ga-Adangme language groups. The English in the late seventeenth century did distinguish between “Cormantine” or “Gold Coast” slaves and the “Allampo,” i.e., Adangme, the former being much preferred: Phillips, Thomas, “A Journal of a Voyage made in the Hannibal of London” in Churchill, Awnsham and Churchill, John, comps., Collection of Voyages and Travels (6 vols.: London, 1732), 6:214Google Scholar; Law, Robin, ed., The English in West Africa 1685-1688: The Local Correspondence of the Royal African Company of Englan,d 1681-1699, Part 2 (London, 2001), 415Google Scholar (doc. 973: Edwyn Steede and Stephen Gascoigne, Barbados, 12 May 1686). But the distinction seems to have been lost in later English usage, and to be altogether absent in that of other European nations, which referred generically to “Mina” slaves."
24. "Local tradition in fact generally states that the Minas arrived at Little Popo only after the foundation of Glidji by the Accra settlers. But given the contemporary evidence for the existence of Little Popo already in the 1650s, this is probably a fiction intended to legitimize the authority of the Glidji kings over the coastal town.
A force from Little Popo which raided Ouidah in 1728,
although reported in an English source as comprising “Accras” with other allied
peoples, was described in a French source as “les Minois du Petit Popo:”
Archives Nationales, Section d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence, C6/25, Du Petitval,
4 October 1728; cf. Law, , Slave Coast, 289 Google Scholar."
[...]
30. "This is suggested by the fact that they called the language
of Dahomey and Porto-Novo “Djedje” (or “Gegi,” etc.), i.e., “Jeje,” a term
which although current in Brazil already in the eighteenth century had not (to
the best of my knowledge) previously been recorded in West Africa: see also
Matory, J. Lorand, “The Trans-Atlantic Nation: Reconsidering Nations and
Transnationalism,” paper presented at the conference on “Rethinking the African
Diaspora: The Making of a Black Atlantic World in the Bight of Benin and
Brazil,” Emory University, Atlanta, April 1998Google Scholar."
[...]
32. "A later account by another member of the mission noted
explicitly that Grand-Popo, by its language and culture, did not belong among
the “Minas,” but rather among the “Djedjes:” Bouche, Pierre, “Notes sur les
républiques minas de la Côte des Esclaves,” Bulletin de la Société de la
Géographie, 6/10 (1875), 93–100Google Scholar."
[...]
50. "Peixoto, António da Costa, Obra Nova de Língua Geral de
Mina, ed. Silveira, Luís and Lopes, Edmundo Correia (Lisbon, 1945)Google
Scholar; modern edition, de Castro, Yeda Pessoa, ed., A Língua Mina-Jeje no
Brasil: um falar Africano em Ouro Preto do século XVIII (Minas Gerais,
2002)Google Scholar. For analysis see Yai, Olabiyi, “Texts of Enslavement: Fon
and Yoruba Vocabularies from Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Brazil” in
Lovejoy, Paul E., ed., Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (London, 2000),
102–12 Google Scholar."
51. "And providing the first documentation of this ethnonym, which is not attested in West Africa itself before the nineteenth century. The vocabulary also gives “Gamthòmè” for “as minas [the Minas].” This is interpreted by the editor Yeda Pessoa de Castro as Gentome, “Gen country,” i.e., Little Popo, but it seems more likely to refer to Minas Gerais in Brazil than to the “Minas” in Africa, perhaps from gan, “metal.”
Type: Research Article
Information: History in Africa , Volume 32 , 2005 , pp. 247
- 267
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/hia.2005.0014 [Opens in a new
window]
Copyright: Copyright © African Studies Association 2005
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