320 J. Michael Turnerreceive the names of valuable contacts in the field at IFAN, helping to orient
the researcher.
Benin remains the cultural and historical centre of Brazilian influence
in Africa. Despite a change in official nomenclature, (ex-Dahomey) and a
radical change in national government (Marxist-socialist), this economically
poor country, in particular its coastal cities, are a reflection of nineteenth-
century Bahia, Brazil. Bahian culture and social divisions were all transported
by the former Bahian slaves during their peregrinations to the West African
coast.^30 Research was never easy to accomplish in Benin even during the period
when it was called Dahomey and boasted a triumvirate presidency.^31 The
National Archive has neither catalogue nor any form of organization, seem-
ingly defying any system of organization and defying all archivists, foreign
or national, to devise a suitable one. During the period before the revolution
(most recent?) the researcher could travel freely throughout the country and
conduct interviews, collecting oral history at will. Unfortunately this is no longer
true. The National Research Institute in Porto-Novo, the Institut de Recherche
Appliquée au Dahomey IRAD or IRAB, when visited by the writer in 1975
had received no new funding from the revolutionary government, and was
completely paralysed, being unable to publish a new edition or number of its
monograph series Études Dahoméennes, or its infrequent but often excellent
journal of the same name. The museum in the Portuguese fort in the coastal
town of Ouidah had also come under more strict government control. While
many of the most valuable documents had been burned by Portuguese officials
in 1963 when they abandoned the fort on demand of the Dahoman Govern-
ment, in 1975 there remained some useful resources for the study of Brazilian
influence in Africa. The records of the Ouidah Roman Catholic Mission
(African Fathers based in Lyons, France and in Rome) while incomplete in
Dahomey, remain open to public use (at least as of 1976) providing baptism,
marriage, birth and death certificates for the returned Afro-Brazilians.^32
Curbing the researcher's ability to collect oral data is obviously a handi-
cap, particularly as the Brazilian-Dahoman families spread themselves along
the coast between Benin and Togo and Benin and Nigeria. In the writer's
research interviews proved critical in supplementing lacunae encountered in
the documentation, not only in the African archives but also in European
sources. Any study of Brazilian historical influence in Africa, also any assess-
ment of the African reaction to current Brazilian diplomatic offensives on the
continent must take into account the oral data which was collected over time
and with repeated sessions between interviewer and interviewee. In Benin this
is no longer possible and constitutes a serious loss to any researcher, as all
research must now receive clearance from the Ministry of the Interior
after the lengthy process of being approved for a research visa to work in
Benin.