In this region of Africa, the presence of Brazilians, and that of Africans who returned from captivity in Brazil, extends from the present-day city of Lagos in Nigeria to Accra in Ghana. This paper focuses on the case of Benin, ${ }^{1}$ where such presence is highly significant today in historical, cultural, economic and political terms. It was mainly through these Brazilians (slave traders and formerly enslaved people) that this region had systematic access to the social codes of  
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[^0]:    1 The process of social identity construction that has been exacerbated in Benin is analysed by me in more detail in Guran 1996, 2000, 2007, 2010, 2014.  
western culture, manufactured goods and a language of universal expression, to name but a few examples. It was the Agudás ${ }^{2}$ who guided the region into the era of durable construction, with brick buildings made by reproducing the techniques and the style of nineteenth-century Brazilian architecture (Costa e Silva, 1989a; Da Cunha, 1985b; Sinou and Oloudé, 1988; Sinou, 1995).  
The importance of the 'Brazilians' in terms of the local economy is highlighted by Verger (1968, p. 611) using an extract from the edition of 1 March 1882 of the Journal Officiel des Établissements Français du Golfe du Bénin, which shows that 'Seven of the twenty-five trades (wholesalers) established in the country were "Brazilians", along with seventy-eight of the one hundred and four merchants (retailers); i.e. one third of the traders and half of the merchants'. Long before that, from 1845 to 1846, the English traveller John Duncan was already greatly impressed by the level of organization of the 'Brazilian' community, which he presented as being the main engine of the economy (1847).