Fonti orali, trascrizioni e ‘costruzione’ della tradizione: alcune considerazioni sulla cronologia del regno di Porto-Novo(Hogbonu)

The discovery of an unpublished manuscript, written in 1877, allows the author to reexamine certain historical and historiographical issues concerning the chronology of the Porto-Novo kingdom defined in a well known book edited by some native writers (1953) and blindly accepted by subsequent publications. The mixture of several stories, transmitted both in writing and orally, between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century suggests the creation of a tradition on the origin of the kingdom that reveals a clear divergence with regard to the genealogy of the dynasty between a more ancient tradition (the above mentioned manuscript) and the more recent one (the book of 1953). In this divergence two aspects have special relevance: the rivality with the more potent ‘brother’ kingdom of Dahomey and, related to the colonial context, the desire of providing Porto Novo with a written history according to the cultural European standards.