Diplomacy Without Conversion: African Agency in Portugal’s Relations with Benin and Warri, 1485–1725

James Akpu

doi:10.20944/preprints202607.0853.v1

Submitted:

11 July 2026

Posted:

13 July 2026

You are already at the latest version

Abstract

Why did Portuguese diplomacy survive in Benin and Warri while Christian conversion failed to produce lasting social transformation? What explains the survival of diplomatic exchange in the face of the fragility of missionary success? This paper explores the diplomatic and religious aspects of Portuguese relations with the kingdoms of Benin and Warri from the late fifteenth century to 1725. It argues that African political agency, rather than European initiative, was the decisive structural feature of early Afro-Portuguese relations in the Bight of Benin. Diplomacy endured because the Oba of Benin and the Olu of Warri found Portuguese engagement useful for trade, prestige, military advantage, and external legitimation. Christianity, however, failed to achieve lasting social transformation because it threatened the sacred foundations of kingship in Benin and, in Warri, remained largely a court religion rather than a socially translated and locally sustained faith. The divergence between diplomatic success and missionary failure was therefore not incidental: it reflected African rulers’ capacity to select, adapt, and refuse foreign influence according to local political priorities.

Keywords:

Portugal

;

Warri

;

Benin

;

Early Modern History

;

diplomacy

;

conversion

;

Christianity

;

African history

;

West Africa

;

age of discovery

;

Catholicism

;

Capuchins

;

Augustinians

Subject:

Arts and Humanities - History

Introduction

Between the arrival of Portuguese navigators in the Bight of Benin in the 1470s and 1480s and the effective withdrawal of sustained Portuguese commercial presence after 1700, the kingdoms of Benin and Warri maintained complex relationships with the Portuguese crown and its agents. These relationships encompassed trade, formal diplomacy, missionary evangelisation, and cultural exchange, yet they produced markedly uneven outcomes: diplomatic ties proved durable, while Christianity never achieved the institutional rootedness Portugal sought.

Conventional historiography has favoured the European side of this interaction and has viewed such interactions as an extension of Portuguese expansionist activities.[1] For example, according to the work by J.O. Ijoma of 1982, the factors that led to Portuguese exploration were commerce, crusades, and science. The works on Ughoton emphasise Portuguese commercial enterprise as the major driving force behind such interactions.[2] Recent interpretations of Duarte Pires’s famous letter of 1516 are also preoccupied with European representations of African politics.[3] However, this paper takes a slightly different stance. In this paper, the point will be made that the agency of Africans rather than the business or spiritual intentions of the Portuguese was the dominant structure in Afro-Portuguese relations in the Bight of Benin through 1725. Diplomacy prospered because it worked to the advantage of the Benin and Warri leaders who were able to get valuable trading commodities, weaponry, prestige, and even spiritual legitimation from this relationship. Christianity could not gain any foothold in this region because of the instrumental use of religion by African leaders.

Portuguese Motives and West African Realities

Portuguese expansion along the West African coast in the fifteenth century emerged from the close relationship between monarchy, commerce, Christianity, and royal strategy. The conquest of Ceuta in 1415 gave the Portuguese crown direct contact with North African commercial networks. It sharpened elite interest in the gold, ivory, and enslaved-person trades that moved across the Sahara. Prince Henry the Navigator, although not himself a seagoing explorer, became an important patron of Atlantic and West African voyages.[4] From his base in southern Portugal, he sponsored expeditions to the Madeira Islands and along the western coast of Africa, encouraged the accumulation of navigational knowledge, and helped link crusading ambitions with the search for trade and Christian allies beyond the Muslim-controlled routes of North Africa.[5] His patronage therefore gave Portuguese expansion an ideological and institutional framework: voyages could be justified as commercial ventures, an anti-Islamic crusade, geographical inquiry, and missionary obligation simultaneously. After Henry’s death, the exploratory impulse became more directly integrated into royal policy.

Under King John II of Portugal, who reigned from 1481 to 1495, the crown resumed African exploration with renewed intensity and placed it under tighter royal control.[6] John II had already been entrusted with the Guinea trade and African explorations before becoming king, and once on the throne, he sponsored voyages by Diogo Cão to the Congo River and Angola coast and by Bartolomeu Dias, whose rounding of the southern tip of Africa in 1488 demonstrated the possibility of a sea route to the Indian Ocean.[7] These royal initiatives were not merely exploratory; they aimed to secure commercial monopolies, mark territorial claims, strengthen the authority of the crown over nobles and merchants, and present Portuguese expansion as part of a wider Christian political project. In this setting, Portuguese kings could describe exploration and trade not only as economic enterprises but also as religious obligations, including the promotion of Christianity beyond Europe.[8]

To understand why African agency proved decisive, it is necessary first to establish the nature of Portuguese objectives. Ijoma identifies three principal motives behind Portuguese expansion along the West African coast: commercial ambition, crusading zeal, and scientific curiosity. Prince Henry the Navigator, having learned in 1415 at Ceuta of the trans-Saharan trade networks linking North Africa to the Sudan, sought to redirect this commerce to Portugal while bypassing Muslim intermediaries.[9] At the same time, the spread of Christianity south of the Sahara formed an important ideological component of Portuguese expansion.[10]

Portuguese exploration along the coast proceeded systematically. By 1475, the Portuguese had reached the Bight of Benin, and by 1482, they had arrived at Congo.[11] Commercial organisation followed discovery: the coast was divided into contracted monopolies auctioned in Lisbon, while the Cape Verde Islands functioned as a regional entrepot.[12] This system was designed less to destroy African trading networks than to insert Portugal into them. Operating from the Island of São Tomé, the Roman Catholic priests visited Warri and Benin between 1477 and the succeeding years, although according to Fashola and Babalola, the first Christian missionaries in Nigeria came to Benin from Portugal in 1512.[13]

When the Portuguese reached Benin in the 1480s, they encountered a polity of considerable political sophistication. Benin possessed a structured monarchy, elaborate court ceremonial, a strong regional economy, and a flourishing artistic tradition.[14] By the early sixteenth century, it had emerged as a major regional power. Ryder argues that the Portuguese entered into meaningful engagement with Benin largely because they sought captives for barter on the Gold Coast.[15] The initial encounter therefore arose from Portuguese commercial need rather than from any ability to dictate terms. The port of Ughoton (Gwato) was central to this relationship. Founded, according to tradition, in the eleventh century and associated with Prince Ekaladerhan, it had become Benin’s principal port by the fifteenth century.[16] Through Ughoton, Afonso d’Aveiro travelled to Benin City in 1485 or 1486 during the reign of Oba Ozolua, whose military campaigns produced captives for the slave trade.[17] Benin thus welcomed Portuguese goods and recognition, but the relationship was established from the outset on terms substantially shaped by the Oba and his court. Relations between Benin and Portugal grew stronger, and trade in ivory, local fabric, pepper, and slaves expanded.[18]

Warri’s Origins and Portuguese Contact

Before examining Portuguese-Benin relations in depth, it is necessary to establish the origins of Warri, whose relationship with Portugal developed along a parallel but distinct trajectory. Peter P. Ekeh’s account associates the name ‘Warri’ with Afonso de Aveiro, the Portuguese explorer whose surname, through linguistic transformation, became linked to the region.[19]

Warri’s political origins were closely connected to Benin. The Itsekiri people, ruled by the Olu of Warri, trace their origins to Prince Ginuwa of Benin, who left Benin City before the Portuguese entered the western Niger Delta.[20] Ginuwa and his successors eventually settled at Ode Itsekiri with the support of local Urhobo and Ijaw communities. Warri therefore inherited important political traditions from Benin while developing a distinct diplomatic orientation of its own. This genealogy matters because it helps explain why Portuguese engagement with Warri did not encounter a politically unformed society, but rather a kingdom already accustomed to managing external relationships in ways compatible with local authority. When missionaries later concentrated their efforts there, they faced a ruler prepared to cultivate outside ties only where they served dynastic and political interests.

The Diplomatic Structure: Benin, Warri, and Portugal

The most striking feature of the Benin-Portuguese relationship from its earliest phase was its fundamentally diplomatic character. When Oba Ozolua received Afonso d’Aveiro in the late fifteenth century, he did not simply permit trade; he established a formal relationship by sending Ohen-Okun, the chief of Ughoton, to Portugal as Benin’s ambassador. Ohen-Okun was no ordinary envoy but a figure of major ritual and administrative importance: chief priest, port administrator, and a direct descendant of the settlement’s founder. The visit of Alfonso ‘d’ Aveird and the subsequent arrivals of missionaries met with some success in Benin, as some churches were built and some converts made, including one of the princes and a good number of the chiefs. Despite this, Christianity remained a minority religion confined to the palace of the Oba while most of the people continued in their traditional religions.[21] This mission should be understood as an assertion of sovereignty rather than an act of submission. By dispatching a figure of such prominence, Benin signalled both its status and its determination to control the terms of engagement. Other accounts record that Ozolua’s son also travelled to Portugal and was received with ceremony before returning on the Portuguese king’s ship. Such exchanges inaugurated a sustained pattern of diplomatic reciprocity.

In August 1515, at the Oba Esigie’s invitation, a group of Capuchin monks set out for Benin; however, by the time they arrived, the Oba was preoccupied with the Idah War.[22] The missionaries adopted a ruler-centred strategy of conversion, hoping that if the Oba accepted Christianity, his subjects would follow by royal command. In practice, they gained only limited access to him, seeing him no more than a few times over nearly two years, and eventually left Benin without success. The Portuguese ambassador Duarte Pires’s letter of 20 October 1516 to King Dom Manuel I is central to understanding this relationship. Although shaped by Portuguese assumptions, it nevertheless acknowledges the strength and complexity of Benin’s political order and the difficulty of converting the Oba. The need to explain Benin’s institutions to the Portuguese crown itself reveals that European observers recognised the kingdom as a formidable political power. Benin’s ambassadorial exchanges, formal letters, and controlled commercial engagement were therefore expressions of autonomy, not dependency.

When three other missionaries visited in 1538, the Oba showed little renewed interest in Christianity, partly because Portuguese trade had declined and because the missionaries failed to provide the firearms and ammunition he had requested.[23] The export of firearms and ammunition to non-Christian states was prohibited during this period. This era saw the waning of Portuguese naval and commercial power on the West African coast, as the French, English, and Dutch increasingly competed for dominance in the Benin trade. Frustrated by the Oba’s resistant stance, crippled by insufficient provisions, debilitated by frequent illnesses, and anxious about European rivals — particularly the French — the missionaries made little progress.

In 1542, Portuguese priests from the Diocese of Lisbon accompanied traders to Benin to convert the Oba, if his baptism would bring the kingdom into Christianity. The Oba received them courteously and even sent his son to Portugal for education, but his interest remained primarily commercial and diplomatic rather than religious. The mission failed for both practical and cultural reasons: the priests lacked effective interpreters, had limited access to the Oba amid civil conflict, and misunderstood local religious traditions. By treating Benin’s indigenous religion as diabolical and expecting the Oba to abandon it entirely, they misread the foundations of royal authority. As guardian of the kingdom’s ritual order, the Oba could not embrace Christianity without weakening the sacred basis of his rule. Hence, the Catholics were the first missionaries to set foot on Nigerian soil, although this attempt, as E.A. Ayandele described it, was “futile, feeble and spondaic”.[24]

When Portuguese activities failed in Benin, they turned to Warri. Warri’s relationship with Portugal developed along comparable diplomatic lines, although with distinctive features reflecting its scale and geographic position. By the seventeenth century, Warri rulers were addressing the monarchs of Portugal and Spain in formal correspondence and expected to be treated as sovereign peers. Even after Portuguese trade with Warri declined in the mid-seventeenth century, these diplomatic contacts persisted, indicating the political value Warri attached to international recognition.

Church historians note that Augustinian missionaries from São Tomé visited Warri and that the Olu permitted his son to be baptised under the name Sebastien.[25] Sebastien later sent his own son, Domingo, to Portugal for education; Domingo returned with a Portuguese wife, and their son, Dom Antonio (Olu Erejuwa), strengthened the association between Roman Catholicism and the royal household when he became Olu.[26] For much of the period between 1570 and 1733, Warri rulers publicly professed Christianity, but this royal household faith appears to have had limited effect on the wider population.[27] The apparent contrast with Benin should therefore not be overstated: in Warri, as in Benin, Christian commitment remained concentrated at court and was closely tied to diplomatic symbolism, trade opportunities, and political differentiation. Some scholars argue that missionary links with Portugal helped Warri articulate a more autonomous position vis-à-vis Benin, suggesting that conversion functioned as a political resource as much as a religious one. The Itsekiri people aspired to independence from Benin and required weapons should their pursuit of autonomy lead to war. For them, sustaining relations with Portugal served as a strategic guarantee of arms supply. Moreover, these weapon imports presented significant commercial opportunities for the Itsekiri.[28]

By the mid-eighteenth century, the most visible traces of Christianity in the region were limited to religious objects such as crucifixes, statues of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, and sacred vessels.[29] Eventually, even these remnants of early Roman Catholicism were largely erased by the disruptive impact of the slave trade.[30] Beyond the missionaries’ entanglement with the overseas slave trade, Church historians have identified several key factors that contributed to the failure of the earliest attempts to plant Christianity in pre-colonial Nigeria. These included the restrictive influence of the Portuguese crown’s patronage rights on missionary policy, European rivalry, financial difficulties, negative European perceptions of the local people (often viewed as mere objects of curiosity), religious intolerance, superficial Christianity, cultural and linguistic barriers, the difficulty of training African priests in Europe, a general lack of empathy, and the absence of seminaries on the African mainland.[31] There was also a scarcity of missionaries. J. Baur argues that priests from São Tomé refused to live in mission houses in Warri, as they saw it as a poor fishing community, whose effectiveness was further reduced by climate and disease.[32] Toward the end of the period, setbacks in Europe—including the expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal and elsewhere, the anti-clericalism of the French Revolution, and Napoleon’s actions against the Pope—also weakened missionary activity. D.O. Olayiwola, by contrast, emphasised the missionaries’ economic and political interests as a major cause of failure.[33] Taken together, these factors meant that the early European effort to establish Christianity securely in Nigeria ultimately failed.

Despite these formidable challenges, strategic island bases in West Africa—particularly Cape Verde and São Tomé—continued to serve as vital hubs for missionary activity. These islands provided a constant supply of European traders, priests, and missionaries, functioning as the primary launch points for evangelical efforts directed at the mainland. In the seventeenth century, for example, Augustinians from São Tomé ventured to the Guinea Coast despite significant obstacles. Bishoprics were established on São Tomé with jurisdiction over Upper and Lower Guinea, while Franciscan monks (later joined by Jesuits) operated from Cape Verde and made determined conversion efforts along the Upper Guinea Coast.[34] Similarly, Italian Capuchins based in São Tomé dispatched missionaries to Lower Guinea, with notable activity in Warri and Benin. To address the chronic shortage of European clergy, efforts were made to cultivate a local priesthood: seminaries were founded in Cape Verde and São Tomé.[35] Their graduates carried out much of the evangelical work during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even as São Tomé and Príncipe faced priest shortages and Cape Verde endured a prolonged absence of a bishop for nearly thirty years.

The Limits of Christian Conversion: Sacred Kingship and Political Resistance

The creation of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, or Propaganda Fide, reveals that missionary failure in Benin was not simply the result of neglect or poor organisation. Before 1622, Rome authorised evangelisation but did not directly coordinate missionary activity; after the Congregation was founded, it recruited missionaries, distributed funds, facilitated evangelisation, and used missionary reports to determine the creation of prefectures, vicariates, and dioceses. In 1646, Propaganda Fide received reports on the Benin mission from Fr Columbin of Nantes and Fr Francisco de Pomplona, and on that basis created the Prefecture of Benin in 1648. The institutional machinery of the Catholic mission had therefore become more elaborate, but organisation alone could not overcome the political and ritual conditions that African rulers controlled.

Propaganda Fide assigned the Prefecture of Benin to the Spanish Capuchins, and Fr Angel de Valencia was appointed its prefect in 1648. On 12 February 1651, he set out for Benin with twelve priests. Three died during the journey, and three more died shortly after arriving in Benin, exposing the practical fragility of European missionary schemes. More importantly, Fr Angel and the remaining missionaries were unable to establish meaningful communication with the Oba or to gain sustained access to the structures through which Benin’s religious life was governed. When Fr Angel attempted to stop a ritual human sacrifice, the chiefs reacted angrily and ordered the missionaries to leave. Eventually, the Capuchins had to leave for the Portuguese island of Príncipe. The incident shows that missionary failure was not merely logistical; it reflected the missionaries’ inability to recognise that ritual authority belonged to the Oba, the chiefs, and the kingdom’s established religious order. Later Italian Capuchin missions to Benin were similarly unsuccessful because they confronted the same limits of access, translation, and local consent. This episode reinforces the paper’s central claim: even when European religious institutions became more organised, their influence remained limited by African agency. Benin’s rulers and the chiefs controlled access to the Oba, defended the ritual foundations of kingship, and determined which forms of foreign engagement could be admitted without endangering local authority. Missionary failure therefore arose not simply from European weakness, but from the capacity of African political and religious systems to define the terms of contact.

Diplomatic engagement strengthened African rulers, but Christianity posed a more fundamental challenge to established authority. In Benin, the Oba was not merely a political sovereign; he stood at the centre of the kingdom’s ritual order and cosmological legitimacy. Oral traditions concerning the celestial origins of early kingship and the later consolidation of the Eweka dynasty underscore how inseparable royal authority was from sacred office. The Oba functioned not only as monarch but also as the principal custodian of ritual life and the symbolic guarantor of political order. From this perspective, conversion to Christianity would have entailed more than a change of personal belief; it would have threatened the very basis of dynastic legitimacy. Portuguese missionaries assumed that the conversion of the ruler would secure the conversion of the kingdom. Still, this strategy rested on a limited understanding of how deeply secular and sacred authority were integrated in Benin. To embrace Christianity fully would have required the Oba to displace the religious foundations on which his sovereignty depended.

Benin’s rulers therefore distinguished carefully between diplomatic accommodation and religious transformation. They welcomed embassies, pursued trade, and occasionally appropriated Christian symbols, yet they protected the ritual basis of kingship. When missionaries returned in 1538, royal enthusiasm had diminished, particularly once it became clear that evangelisation would not be accompanied by the forms of military support or strategic advantage the Oba desired. Benin’s limited engagement with Christianity was thus neither accidental nor inconsistent; it reflected a sustained policy of selective appropriation under conditions defined by local political priorities.

Portuguese contact did not transform Benin’s religious order in the manner missionaries envisioned, but it did leave a significant imprint on courtly culture and visual representation. Scholarship on Benin art has shown that imported materials, especially brass, contributed to the development of the kingdom’s celebrated bronze tradition.[36] Representations of Portuguese figures and Catholic motifs in works associated with the reign of Oba Esigie do not demonstrate deep Christianisation; rather, they reveal Benin’s capacity to absorb foreign symbols into a visual language that affirmed royal power, diplomatic reach, and cosmopolitan prestige on distinctly Benin terms.

Warri appears, at first glance, to offer a more substantial case of missionary success, since its rulers publicly professed Christianity for an extended period. Closer examination, however, suggests that Christianity in Warri remained embedded in dynastic strategy rather than producing broad religious transformation. The baptism of Sebastien and the education of royal heirs in Portugal were politically significant acts that linked the Olu’s household to Atlantic networks of prestige, trade, and diplomatic recognition. These developments did not amount to a comprehensive reordering of Warri’s religious life; rather, they demonstrate the ability of the royal court to convert Christian affiliation into a resource of political distinction.

The pattern of correspondence reinforces this interpretation. Even after Portuguese shipping became less regular after the mid-seventeenth century, Warri continued to maintain contact with Portugal. Complaints about the infrequency of Portuguese vessels reveal that the relationship retained symbolic and political significance beyond immediate commercial exchange. Christianity in Warri thus functioned less as an autonomous religious triumph than as one element within a larger strategy of sovereign self-presentation.

The limits of Christian transformation in Warri became increasingly clear over time. By the eighteenth century, the most visible traces of Catholicism often survived as religious objects and courtly symbols rather than as evidence of deeply rooted congregational life. Crucifixes, statues, and sacred vessels could be retained within royal households as markers of prestige and Atlantic connection while being detached from their original devotional context. As in Benin, the crucial point is not that European influence was absent, but that it was continually reinterpreted through local political priorities. Hence, Warri adopted more Christian language, ritual association, and dynastic symbolism than Benin, yet even there Christianity did not decisively displace the political logic of sacred kingship. The success of diplomacy and the limits of conversion remained conditioned by the same underlying structure: rulers accepted what strengthened authority and resisted what threatened to relocate it.

Ryder, Ocho, and the Problem of Court Christianity in Warri

A.F.C. Ryder’s archival reconstruction of the Warri mission and Okechukwu Hilary Ocho’s recent missiological interpretation sharpens the central argument of this paper. Ryder shows that Christianity in Warri was never simply imposed by Europeans; it survived, declined, and revived according to the political choices of successive Olus, the availability of priests, the rhythms of Atlantic trade, and the constraints imposed by Portuguese and Roman missionary institutions.[37] Ocho, drawing heavily on Ryder’s evidence, shifts attention from chronology to missionary disposition, arguing that the lack of empathy, cultural adaptation, and sacrificial commitment among some missionaries contributed decisively to the failure of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century evangelisation.[38] Taken together, the two authors show that the Warri case cannot be reduced either to African indifference or to European missionary weakness alone. It was the interaction between African political calculation and missionary inconsistency that produced a Christian presence strong enough to mark the court but too fragile to transform society.

The other argument that follows from this synthesis is that Warri developed a form of court Christianity without social translation. Christian symbols, names, sacraments, correspondence, and diplomatic gestures were successfully translated into the language of royal legitimacy, but not into durable local institutions, vernacular teaching, or popular religious practice. Ryder’s evidence makes this clear: Augustinian missionaries founded Santo Agostinho, the Olu’s son was baptised as Sebastian, Domingos was educated in Portugal, and later rulers repeatedly requested priests, vestments, statues, and sacramental assistance. Yet the same record also shows long absences of clergy, dependence on merchant shipping, reluctance among priests to reside in Warri, and periodic collapse into nominal Christianity. Ocho’s contribution is to explain why these institutional failures mattered morally and culturally: missionaries who would not share the people’s hardships, learn their language, or distance themselves from the slave trade could not generate the trust necessary for religious consolidation. Christianity therefore remained legible at the level of diplomacy but insufficiently embodied at the level of community.

The above argument also refines the comparison between Benin and Warri. Benin resisted Christianity more openly because full conversion threatened the sacred foundations of the Oba’s authority. Warri, by contrast, domesticated Christianity within the royal household because it could be made useful for diplomacy, trade, and political differentiation from Benin. Yet the difference between the two kingdoms was one of strategy rather than surrender. In both cases, African rulers controlled the terms on which Christianity entered the political order. The Oba limited religious engagement to protect sacred kingship; the Olu appropriated Christian affiliation to strengthen dynastic prestige and external legitimacy. Ryder’s account of repeated royal appeals for priests does not undermine African agency; it confirms it, because Warri rulers actively sought the forms of Christianity they considered useful, while the depth and continuity of conversion remained contingent on local priorities and missionary capacity.

The early relationship between the Portuguese and Africans at the Bight of Benin had more to do with selection, adaptation, and rejection by the Africans rather than unilateral expansionism by the Europeans. Ryder gives us the documentation through royal baptisms, embassies, letters, churches, lack of priests, reliance on trade, and recurrent failure. Ocho gives us the interpretation that the mission was doomed to failure whenever it did not involve empathy, adaptation, and solidarity. In other words, Christianity did not take root in Warri either due to the inability of Africans to adopt it or the lack of institutional backing for the missionaries, but due to its failure to move from the palace to a religion of trust in a community.

Conclusion

Portuguese contact with the Kingdoms of Benin and Warri can hardly be understood as an example of unilateral European expansionism. Diplomacy flourished because of African interest in maintaining it. For Benin, the exchange of ambassadors, control of commercial ties, and selective cultural borrowing strengthened the sovereign position of the state, while for Warri, the use of Portuguese and Christian ties increased the prestige of the dynasty. In both cases, however, the presence of the Portuguese was contingent on the African understanding of mutual benefits. This was also true of conversion. Benin rejected Christianity as an instrument of undermining the spiritual foundations of the rule of the Oba, while Warri used Christian names, symbolism, and ceremonies to reinforce the status of the dynasty. Christianity for Warri was essentially a religion of the court rather than of the people.

African agency shaped every decisive outcome of the encounter. Portuguese traders, missionaries, and envoys could open channels of contact, but they could not determine their meaning or consequences. Diplomacy succeeded because it could serve African sovereignty; conversion failed where it required rulers and communities to relocate the foundations of authority, trust, and sacred power.

References

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He was named after King Sebastião of Portugal (1568-78). See R. Hickey (1995) Sixteenth century Augustinian missions revisited. Orita: Ibadan Journal of Religious Studies 27(2): 78–89; K. Koschorke, F. Ludwig, Delgado M, et al. (2007) A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450-1990: A Documentary Sourcebook. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing; A. Strathern (2018) Catholic missions and local rulers in Sub-Saharan Africa. In: Po-Chia H (ed.) A Companion to the Early Modern Catholic Global Missions. Brill, pp. 151–178.
See Bengt Sundkler & Christopher Steed, A history of the Church in Africa (Cambridge, 2000); Adrian Hastings, The church in Africa, 1450-1950 (Oxford, 1996), Patrick Harries and David Maxwell (eds), The spiritual in the secular: Missionaries and knowledge about Africa (Grand Rapids, 2012). Olu Erejuwa, who ruled from 1720 to 1800, consolidated Warri’s independence from the Benin Empire, then the most powerful kingdom in the region. During this period, the Itsekiri prospered through the ivory and slave trades with Dutch and Portuguese merchants. For a fuller discussion, see Michael Crowder, The Story of Nigeria, (Faber and Faber, London, 1978 (1962).
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Ryder, Missionary Activity, p. 2;
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Ayegboyin and Fatokun, The Church in West Africa, p. 23.
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Falola and Adediran, Islam and Christianity, p. 86.
Falola and Adediran, Islam and Christianity, p. 86.
See Charles Gore, Art, Performance and Ritual in Benin City (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007); Digital Benin Project, https://digitalbenin.org/ Accessed 10 June 2026; Barbara Plankensteiner, Benin Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria ( Ghent: Snoeck Publishers, 2007); Bryna Freyer, Royal Benin Art in the Collection of the National Museum of African Art (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1987); Folarin Shyllon, “Unraveling History: Return of African Cultural Objects Repatriated and Looted in Colonial Times,” in Cultural Heritage Issues: The Legacy of Conquest, Colonization and Commerce, eds. James A. R. Nafziger and Ann M. Nicgorski (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 159–68.
Ryder, A. F. C. “Missionary Activity in the Kingdom of Warri to the Early Nineteenth Century.” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 2, no. 1 (1960): 1–26.
Ocho, Okechukwu Hilary. “Beyond Conversion: The Need for Empathy and Sacrificial Commitment in Mission. A Case Study of the Portuguese Mission to Warri.” Missiology: An International Review (2026): 1–10.

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