'This horrid hole': Royal authority, commerce and credit at Bonny, 1690-1840

Journal of African History

Volumn 45, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 363-392

  Lovejoy, Paul E ^a   Richardson, David ^b  

^a YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF HULL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Credit; Nigeria; Pre colonial; Slave trade; State

Indexed keywords

CREDIT PROVISION; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; SLAVE;

EID: 19044394505     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853704009879     Document Type: Review

References (143)

1. Avner Greif, 'Institutions and international trade: lessons from the commercial revolution', American Economic Review, 82 (1992), 128-33;
2. idem 'On the political foundations of the late medieval commercial revolution: Genoa during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries', Journal of Economic History, S4 (1994), 271-97;
3. Douglas C. North, 'Institutions, transactions costs, and the rise of merchant empires', in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires: State Power and World Trade 1350-1750 (Cambridge, 11997), 22-41.
4. On cross-cultural trade aspects of this, see Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984).
5. R. M. Jackson, Journal of a Residence in Bonny River on Board the Ship Kingston during the Months of January, February and March 1826 (Letchworth, 1934), 133. Jackson was ship surgeon on the Kingston.
6. On Old Calabar, see Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, 'Trust, pawnship, and Atlantic history: the institutional foundations of the Old Calabar slave trade', American Historical Review, 104 (1999), 333-55;
7. and idem and idem, 'From slaves to palm oil: Afro-European commercial relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1741-184', in David Killingray, Margarette Lincoln and Nigel Rigby (eds.), Maritime Empires (Manchester, 2004), 13-29.
8. For one example of personal ties and their limitations, see Kenneth Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1993), 145-6.
9. As E. J. Alagoa has observed, trade between the delta and the interior was long standing;
10. see 'Long-distance trade and states in the Niger Delta', Journal of African History, 11 (1970), 319-29.
11. For descriptions of Bonny town, see John Adams, Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo, with an Appendix Containing an Account of the European Trade with the West Coast of Africa (London, 1823; Cass reprint, 1966), 136-7;
12. Jackson, Journal of a Residence, 68, 143-4.
13. David Richardson, 'Profits in the Liverpool slave trade: the accounts of William Davenport, 1757-1784', in Roger Anstey and P. E. H. Hair (eds.), Liverpool, the African Slave Trade, and Abolition (Liverpool, 1976), 71-2.
14. Richard B. Sheridan, 'The commercial and financial organisation of the British slave trade, 1750-1807', Economic History Review, 11 (1958-9), 249-63;
15. Jacob Price, 'Credit in the slave trade and plantation economies', in Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge, 1991), 313-17.
16. K. O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830-1885 (Oxford, 1956).
17. Others have since extended Dike's insight with respect to trade in both the Delta and other regions. For the Bight of Biafra, see A. J. H. Latham, 'Currency, credit and capitalism on the Cross River in the pre-colonial era', Journal of African History, 12 (1971), 600-5.
18. For other regions, see, for example, Ray Kea, Settlements, Trade and Politics in the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast (Baltimore, 1982),
19. and Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830 (Madison, 1988).
20. Adams, Remarks, 245. Emphasis in the original. Though we recognize Adams's insight on the role of trust in giving credit, we are sceptical of his claims about the levels of credit advanced at Old Calabar relative to Bonny, at least by the 1790s.
21. See Kea, Settlements, Trade and Politics.
22. On coastal loading times, see David Eltis and David Richardson, 'Productivity in the transatlantic slave trade', Explorations in Economic History, 32 (1995), 477-8.
23. On coastal prices of slaves, see David Richardson, 'Prices of slaves in West and West Central Africa: toward an annual series, 1698-1807', Bulletin of Economic Research, 43 (1991), 21-56.
24. There is a possible parallel here with inland expansion of the frontier of white settlement in the United States in the nineteenth century, the rate of which seems to have been related, among other things, to movements in international commodity prices (in this case for raw cotton and for wheat), to shifts in terms of trade, and to inflows of international capital (Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860 [Englewood Cliffs NJ, 1961], 70;
25. idem, 'International capital flows and the development of the American West', Journal of Economic History, 16 [1956], 493-505).
26. In addition to the articles by Greif cited earlier, see Oliver E. Williamson, The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (New York, 1985);
27. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York, 1995).
28. David Eltis, Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson and Herbert S. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-Rom (Cambridge, 1999).
29. David Northrup (Trade without Rulers: Pre-Colonial Economic Development in South-Eastern Nigeria [Oxford, 1978], 52-3) suggests that Elem Kalabari held its premier position for most of the seventeenth century, but also notes that, of the two, Bonny was 'the dominant port' by the end of the century. On the figures produced by Northrup, Old Calabar was the leading port in the Bight by 1700.
30. Also see John Thornton, 'African background of the slave cargo of the Henrietta Maria', unpublished paper. Thornton draws on Dutch and Portuguese sources on Elem Kalabari in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when it emerged as the principal port in the eastern Niger delta.
31. Table 2 overstates the share of each of the three ports, since slaves were shipped at other places in the region such as Andoni, Cameroons, Gabon, Nazareth and Cape Lopez. These were all smaller slave ports than Elem Kalabari, though the growth of slave shipments from places east of the Cross River means that Table 2 gives a slightly exaggerated view of the relative importance of slave embarkation in the delta, especially after 1750.
32. These figures may understate Bonny's dominance, especially from the 1790s, since it appears that by this time Elem Kalabari had lost its status as 'an independent state', its inhabitants being 'compelled to take their merchandize to Bonny for sale, yet are not permitted to have any communication with the shipping' (Adams, Remarks, 136).
33. 4).
34. In 1762 a report to the Chamber of Commerce of Nantes suggested that Bonny was part of Elem Kalahari and was 'l'endroit don[t] les Anglais tirent le plus de captifs', shipping each year some 12,000 slaves in some 30 ships. It was observed that 'il n'y a point dendroit ou la traite sois plus faciles et plus commodes' (Archives Départmentales de la Loire-Atlantique, Nantes, C 738, fo. 76, extrait de mémoire donne par M Lepinay en septembre 762). Liverpool and Bristol merchants were aware of Bonny's importance in the slave trade before the 1780s. As noted in 1772, while there were 'two Liverpool & 1 Bristol Vessel at Newtown & 1 Liverpool man at old Town' in Old Calabar in June 1772, in August 'there were thirteen Sail at Bonny giving about £20 Ster[ling] a head for Slaves' (15 Dec. 1772, David Tuohy to John Chilcott, Tuohy papers, 380 TUO 2/1, Liverpool Record Office). Similarly, Joseph Banfield, who was involved in 12 voyages to Africa, mainly from Bristol, noted that on his voyage to Elem Kalabari in the John in 1771 there were 'at that time in the river 15 sail of vestles and as many more at Bonny'. He also noted that, as a result, 'the natives had rose the Slaves to such an Exorbitant price that the Vestles in General short of their purchase neare One half' (Joseph Banfield MSS, Huntington Library, San Marino, California). The competition presented by Bonny was also understood by 1780 by the traders of Old Calabar, who in seeking to attract more interest from Liverpool merchants, observed that they 'have Slaves Same a[s] Bonny or other place' (Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, 'Letters of the Old Calabar slave trade 1760-1789', in Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould [eds.], Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic [Lexington KY, 2001], 109).
35. Sheila Lambert (ed.), House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century (145 vols.) (Wilmington DE, 1975), LXIX, Report of the Lords of Trade Committee of Council on the Present State of the African Trade, 1789, 39. According to Norris's figures, at this time Bonny and Elem Kalahari were the most important single sources of slaves shipped throughout Atlantic Africa, accounting for just under one fifth of the estimated total shipment of 74,200 slaves a year. Norris claimed that 38,000 slaves a year were carried away in British ships. In the same report, another trader, James Penny, also of Liverpool, suggested that shipments from Bonny and Elem Kalabari totalled 14,000 annually at this time, with 11,000 being carried in British ships and the rest in French. I b i d. 47
36. Adams, Remarks, 143.
37. I b i d. According to Adams (245, 248), duties on ships at Old Calabar were £250, or £100, more than at Bonny. At Old Calabar, moreover, duties depended on the size of ship, whereas at Bonny all ships paid the same rate. A contemporary of Adams, the Bristol merchant, James Jones, complained in 1788 that duties at Bonny and Elem Kalahari were 'very high being much more than at any other part of the Coast' but also acknowledged that the tax was 'on every Ship alike without distinction as to size', encouraging the employment of ships in the Bonny trade Of 200-50 tons or more and capable of carrying shiploads Of 400-600 slaves (26 July 1788, James Jones to Lord Hawkesbury, in Elizabeth Donnan [ed.], Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America [4 vols.] [Washington DC, 1930-5], 11, 589). As loadings of 400-600 slaves were much less common at Old Calabar, Jones's remarks may not have been inconsistent with those of Adams.
38. As he sailed for Old Calabar in 1762, the master of the Marquis of Granby, Ambrose Lace, was told to 'use your utmost endeavours to keep down the Coomeys which in Generall are to extravagant therea nd For which you have no Return at least not worth any thing to the Ownery';
39. Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque, with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (London, 1897; 1966 edn.), 486.
40. For complaints about sharp rises in comey at Old Calabar in the late 1780s, see Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Chancery Masters Exhibits C 107/12, Richard Rogers to James Rogers, 29 Oct. 787.
41. A. J. H. Latham, Old Calabar 1600-1891: The Impact of the International Economy upon a Traditional Society (Oxford, 1973), 20-1. The figures cited by Latham actually show that in four of the five years covered up to and including 787 more Liverpool ships expected to trade at Elem Kalabari and Old Calabar together and to carry away as many, if not more, slaves than at Bonny.
42. Susan M. Hargreaves, 'The political economy of nineteenth century Bonny: a study of power, authority, legitimacy and ideology in a delta trading community 1790-1914 (Ph. D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1987), 143, 181-2.
43. Bonny's challenge to Old Calabar's supremacy was implicitly acknowledged as early as 1729 when the Bristol merchant, Isaac Hobhouse, was informed that while four ships were reported trading at Old Calabar, 'four or five Ships were at Bonny, but no p[ar]ticular acco[un]t'; 3 Jan. 729, Tyndall & Assheton to Isaac Hobhouse, Hobhouse papers, Avon County Library. Ongoing research relating to extending and revising the dataset of slave voyages published by Eltis et al. (Slave Trade Database) suggests that the data presented in Table 2 may well understate the importance of Bonny before the mid-1730s.
44. On the shift from personal to impersonal exchange, and the institutional and political conditions necessary to support it, see Douglass C. North, Understanding the Process of Economic Change, Institute of Economic Affairs, Occasional Paper 106 (London, 1999), 21-2.
45. Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Trust, pawnship, and Atlantic history'.
46. On the adoption of pawnship as a credit security mechanism in other places, including the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, the Windward Coast, Cameroons, Gabon and the Loango Coast, see Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, 'The business of slaving: pawnship in Western Africa, c. 1600-1810', Journal of African History, 42 (2001), 67-89.
47. Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Slaves to palm oil'.
48. Referring to Bonny, Jackson suggested in 1826 that 'from the middle of the last century to its close, the English held exclusive possession of its traffic, which consisted entirely of Slaves'. He drew particular attention to Liverpool traders who were said to have carried away 15,000 slaves a year from Bonny at the end of the eighteenth century. See Jackson, Journal of a Residence, 144-5.
49. For data on Liverpool ships trading to Bonny in 1751-5, see Eltis et al., Slave Trade Database.
50. For late eighteenth-century data, see Stephen D. Behrendt, 'The British slave trade, 1785-1807: volume, profitability, and mortality' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1993), 302. Behrendt's data also show, however, that the spread of firms involved in British trade to Bonny increased in the decade before abolition in 1807. Interestingly, three firms also dominated British trade to Bonny's neighbour, Elem Kalabari, around 790, though they were not the same as the ones that controlled the trade to Bonny (Behrendt, 'Slave trade', 301).
51. The importance of such knowledge is revealed by the correspondence of the Bristol merchant, James Rogers, who was a major investor in voyages to Old Calabar in 1783-93 but also financed occasional voyages to Bonny. In the latter case, Rogers sometimes sought advice from experienced Liverpool traders, and on one occasion even bought an appropriate ship and fitted it out at Liverpool. On this occasion, however, he appears to have disregarded advice from his Liverpool correspondent relating to the season of trade at Bonny, an oversight that seems to have cost him dearly. PRO, C 107/13, correspondence with Captain William Woodville 1789-91. Data on British merchant involvement in the slave trade to each of the ports of the Bight of Biafra in 1750-1807 may be found in Eltis et al., Slave Trade Database.
52. Jackson, Journal of a Residence, 144;
53. Jackson observed that each of the 'principal Traders' at Bonny kept 'a large establishment, having at least from five to ten Wives & perhaps thirty Slaves or more' (148-9).
54. For an earlier description of the principal merchants of Bonny and its component principalities, see P. E. H. Hair, Adam Jones and Robin Law (eds.), Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa 1678-1712 (2 vols.) (London, 1992) (hereafter Barbot, West Africa ), 11, 675. According to Barbot, the 'Town of Great Bandy' consisted around 1700 of about 300 houses and was 'well Peopled with Blacks, who employ themselves in trade'. Barbot listed several of the leading traders.
55. Ebiegberi J. Alagoa and Adadonye Fombo, A Chronicle of Grand Bonny (Ibadan, 1972), 45-9.
56. On patterns of control at Old Calabar after 1750, see Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Trust, pawnship and Atlantic history'. Although the relative standing of merchant families at Old Calabar shifted between the 1720s and c. 1770, there is evidence of similar patterns earlier in the century;
57. see Stephen D. Behrendt and Eric J. Graham, 'African merchants, notables and the slave trade at Old Calabar, 1720: evidence from the National Archives of Scotland', History in Africa, 30 (2003), 37-61.
58. Brouillard de traite 1790, 1 J 679, Archives Départementales de la Loire-Atlantique, Nantes.
59. PRO, C 107/15.
60. PRO, C 107/59.
61. Hugh Crow, for example, referred in his account of his last slaving voyage to Bonny in 1807 to John Africa, who had been to Britain at least once. Crow claimed that John Africa was nicknamed Billy Pitt by shipmasters on account of his 'political abilities and general acquirements', which included 'the favour or confidence' of King Pepple. Hugh Crow, Memoirs of the Late Captain Hugh Crow of Liverpool (London, 1830), 139. The accounts of a ship that traded at Bonny c . 1810 reveal that John Africa, Tom Allison, Finebones, Jew Jew Boy and Jew Jew House were involved in trade; see Brig Stephen trading accounts, Papers of John Leigh & Co., PRO, C 108/214. For a more general listing of the names of the trading houses at Bonny in the nineteenth century, some of which included names identical with or similar to those mentioned by European traders in 1790-3,
62. see Alagoa and Fombo, Chronicle, 50-66.
63. Evidence of William James, in Lambert (ed.), Sessional Papers, LXIX, Report of African Trade, 49.
64. One disk or bracelet was inscribed to 'Tom Buck of Grandy Bonny, an Honest Trader, he sold me 20 Slaves' from the ship Liverpool, and was one of three such bracelets given to local traders by the same ship, which made voyages to Bonny in 1782-5 (Albert Dock, Liverpool, National Maritime Museum on Merseyside NMGM 1961.57;
65. Eltis et al., Slave Trade Database, voyage ids 82321, 82322, 82323). Other examples of inscribed bracelets or disks, inscribed to 'John Pepper' and to 'Young West India of Grandy Bonny' by Liverpool and Bristol ships are to be found, respectively, at National Maritime Museum on Merseyside, NMGM 4427M, and at the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, Thomas Clarkson collection, TCCI 282.
66. Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, particularly the African (London, 1788), 125-6. Emphasis in the original.
67. Adams, Remarks, 140.
68. Crow, Memoirs, 139.
69. The earliest known resident of Bonny to visit England was the so-called 'Duke of Lorrain', a nephew of the then 'King of Bandie', who voyaged to London in 1702, well over a century before Crow put pen to paper on his memoirs. The visit was evidently brief, the 'Duke' returning to Bonny within a year of his arrival in London, whereupon he was expected to become a linguist (or 'linguister') in the service of the Royal African Company. PRO, T 70/151, p. 292. Tradition suggests that in the sixteenth century a son of King Asimini visited Portugal (Alagoa and Fombo, Chronicle, 7).
70. At least one French trading firm in the 1820s, however, thought it appropriate to write a letter of introduction in French to the king of Bonny, reminding him of earlier dealings (Serge Daget [ed.], Répertoire des expéditions négrières françaises à la traite illégale (1814-1850) [Nantes, 1988], 423).
71. On Liverpool shipmasters, including those who traded at Bonny, see Stephen D. Behrendt, 'The captains in the British slave trade from 1785 to 1807', Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 140 (1991), 79-140.
72. For an early description of social gatherings of Europeans and Africans at Bonny, see Barbot, West Africa, 11, 675. Hugh Crow reported attending a similar meeting in 1807 at the 'Palavar or Parliament-house', attended by King Pepple, 'all the Jew-Jew-Men [priests], and the Chiefs'. The objective of meeting was to discuss the illness of one of the wives of King Holiday (Halliday) (Crow, Memoirs , 139). Jackson noted a social meeting with King Pepple in July 1826 where the king 'chatted with us, for more than two hours' (Jackson, Journal of a Residence, 135).
73. In 1702, the master of the ship Hunter took away from Old Calabar the brother 'of a great man here', who had been 'under Confinemt. On board his ship for a Debt, that he pretends of 11 slaves that is owing to him by another man' (15 Apr. 1702, Captain William Read to the Royal African Company, PRO, T 70/175, fo. 23). This instance of pawning in the export slave trade of Old Calabar pre-dates the earliest previously known case of such pawning by some sixty years (Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Trust, pawnship and Atlantic history', 350).
74. Pawning in the export slave trade of the Gold Coast pre-dates as far we know that at Old Calabar, perhaps by as much as several decades. For a fuller discussion of the extent of pawning, see Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Business of slaving', 25-50.
75. Lambert (ed.), Sessional.Papers, LXXI, Minutes of Evidence, 1790, 17.
76. Crow, Memoirs, 225.
77. For reports of stocks of trade goods at Bonny, see Adams, Remarks, 139-40;
78. Jackson, Journal of a Residence, 74, 143-4.
79. Crow, Memoirs, pp. 60-1. In 1826 Jackson reported that King Pepple had given to the king of Warri goods equivalent to three ships' cargoes for the hand of his daughter (Journal of a Residence, 135).
80. The practice of extending loans to the Bonny king and other local merchants is also reported by Barbot (West Africa, 11, 675, 689).
81. For the debate over the ethnicity of slaves leaving the Bight of Biafra, see Douglas B. Chambers, '"My own nation": Igbo exiles in the diaspora', Slavery and Abolition, 18 (1997), especially 73-7, where it is argued that 80 per cent or more of slaves exported were Igbo, and David Northrup, 'Igbo and Igbo myth: culture and ethnicity in the Atlantic World, 1600-1850', Slavery and Abolition, 21 (2000), 1-21, where it is argued that in the century after 1730 Igbo-speakers accounted for 'perhaps 60 per cent' of slaves leaving Bonny and much smaller proportions leaving Old Calabar (14). For data on ethnicity in 1821-2, see Northrup, Trade without Rulers, 60-2.
82. Adams, Remarks, 130.
83. Eltis et al., Slave Trade Database.
84. Children comprised 29 per cent of the slaves taken from Old Calabar between 1730 and 1807 (N=81 voyages); this was almost exactly double the ratio of children on ships leaving Bonny in the same period (N = 92 voyages) (Eltis et al., Slave Trade Database). It is difficult to be precise about how children were defined in eighteenth-century voyage records, but it seems reasonable to assume an age of up to 14 years. There were contemporary suggestions that the health of slaves supplied at Bonny may have been better than those at Old Calabar, with the result that Bonny slaves were perhaps more able to survive the Atlantic crossing and even fetch higher prices in the Americas. One Liverpool firm noted in 1762 that 'Callebar is Remarkable for great Mortality in Slaves' (14 Apr. 1762, Crosbies & Trafford & Co. to Ambrose Lace, in Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque , 486). Later, in 1788, James Jones of Bristol claimed that he 'allways declined sending' ships to Old Calabar and Cameroons 'as they are Sickly, and the Slaves inferior to any other, very Weakly and liable to great Mortality' (British Library, Add. MSS 38416, fos. 154-5). Such views are corroborated to some extent by mortality data for the middle passage. While passage times from Old Calabar and Bonny to America were not significantly different, ships leaving Old Calabar in 1730-1807 lost 21-4 per cent of slaves shipped (N=93 voyages) compared to 15-5 per cent on ships leaving Bonny (N=142 voyages);
85. Eltis et al., Slave Trade Database. One merchant noted in 1774 that a slave dealer of Kingston, Jamaica, had sold 'all his prime Cargoes of Bonny and Gould Cost Cargoes in Town, and the bite and Calabar Ships he has sent to Montegua bay', the implication being that the latter offered a better market for poorer quality slaves; 30 July 1774,
86. John Fletcher to Peleg Clarke, in Donnan (ed.), Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, 111, 292.
87. Clarkson, Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, 31. This important point was noted by Gwilym Iwan Jones in The Trading States of the Oil Rivers: A Study of Political Development in Eastern Nigeria (London, 1963), 46: '[Elem] Kalabari and Bonny were in a position to supply slaves more speedily and in greater numbers than any other Oil River port'.
88. British Library, Add. MSS 38416, fos. 154-5. By this time, Jones's claim was echoed by others; Minutes of Evidence to House of Lords on the State of the Trade to Africa, 1793, in F. W. Torrington (ed.), House of Lords Sessional Papers 1792-3 (Dobbs Ferry NY, 1975), 1, 304.
89. Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London, 1788), 16.
90. Clarkson, Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, 31.
91. Alagoa and Fombo, Chronicle, 3.
92. For a brief discussion of Bonny's commercial network, see Dike, Trade and Politics,
93. Northrup, Trade without Rulers, 129.
94. According to Falconbridge, the fairs were 'held at uncertain periods, but generally every six weeks, [when] several thousands are frequently exposed to sale, who had been collected from all parts of the country for a very considerable distance round'; see Account of the Slave Trade, 12. Adams (Remarks, 129-30) heard that Igbo slaves were purchased at fairs held every five or six weeks at several villages on the banks and rivers of the interior. In 1789, James Penny told the Parliamentary enquiry that goods were carried to inland markets about 80 miles upstream (Lambert [ed.], Sessional Papers, LXIX, Report of African Trade, 47). Others giving evidence before Parliament in 1788-90 made similar comments. In 1826 Jackson described 'the Eboe Country' as the 'principal resort for Trade' of Bonny traders (Jackson, Journal of a Residence, 151).
95. For a discussion, see Northrup, Trade without Rulers, 106, 129. Northrup notes that 'the Ngwa-Ndoki area was a major nexus for trade since through it ran routes from Bende and points north, from Ogua and Owerri, and from the Anang country'. The fairs at Bende and Uburu were held every 28 days, alternating at 14 day intervals, and connected with networks of markets held every four days in rotation. For a discussion of Ndoki-Bonny relations,
96. also see Robin Horton, 'Some fresh thoughts on eastern Ijo origins, expansions and migrations', in Nkparom C. Ejituwu (ed.), The Multi-Disciplinary Approach to African History: Essays in Honour of Ebiegeri Joe Alagoa (Port Harcourt, Nigeria, 1998), 217-22.
97. Thornton, 'African Background of Henrietta Maria'.
98. For a discussion of Aro expansion, see Kenneth Onwuka Dike and Felicia Ekejiuba, The Aro of South-eastern Nigeria, 1650-1980 (Ibadan, 1990), 96, 102, 176-8, 198-202;
99. Northrup, Trade without Rulers, 104-7, 114-45;
100. Jones, Oil Rivers, 69, 70;
101. and G. Ugo Nwokeji, 'The Biafran frontier: trade, slaves and Aro society, c. 1750-1905' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1999), 38-45. Nwokeji argues that 'European trade encouraged Aro forays in the hinterland' (44), but, unlike us, does not link this to credit arrangements.
102. Dike and Ekejiuba, Aro, 146, citing an unpublished manuscript by the Bonny historian, Adadony Fombo.
103. See also Alagoa and Fombo, Chronicle, 6.
104. Horton, 'Some fresh thoughts', 220-2.
105. Alagoa and Tombo, Chronicle, 3-8 (quotation, 6).
106. On his visit to Bonny in 1699, Barbot was somewhat dismissive of the use of the title of king. Noting that, in common with other places in Guinea, Europeans used the title to refer to the chiefs or captains of the villages near Bonny, he went on to suggest that they 'are at best such kings as the two and thirty that Joshua defeated at once' (West Africa, 11, 701 n).
107. Jones, Oil Rivers, 37-8, 47.
108. Alagoa and Tombo, Chronicle, 9.
109. Jones, Oil Rivers, 107-8, 115. Andoni's subordination to Bonny was institutionalized through the transfer of its juju, whose totem was the iguana, to Bonny. It is significant that the power of this shrine, which was not evident to Barbot when he visited Bonny at the end of the seventeenth century, came to supplant the simingi juju as the most powerful at Bonny (Hargreaves, 'Political economy', 36-9). There is evidence that Andoni occasionally supplied slaves directly to Europeans in the eighteenth century but such occurrences were rare relative to the trade at Bonny.
110. Jones, Oil Rivers, 47.
111. Alagoa and Tombo, Chronicle, 9-11.
112. There were various shrines at Bonny, including the ikuba (or iguana) shrine, which, together with its house of skulls, was appropriated from Andoni and fell under Perekule control. Ikuba became associated with protection of trade, supplanting in importance, as noted earlier, the principal deity of simingi at Juju Town (or Finama), where pilotage was arranged. There were also shrines at Ayama, Fibiri and Kalaibiama, the one at Fibiri being consulted on matters relating to canoe house affairs, selection of the king and expeditions to interior markets (Hargreaves, 'Political economy', 35-9). Juju shrines also regulated social behaviour, including miscegenation with whites. According to Jackson, writing in 1826, whites were considered 'a superior race', being reverenced 'as Jujews', and mixing of blood between Africans and whites was outlawed, mulattoes being 'instantly destroyed', a fate that also befell twins and their mothers (Jackson, Journal of a Residence, 152).
113. Perekule's nomination of the slave, Allison Nwaoju, as alabo is said to have initiated the right of slaves to become heads of houses (or ama-alabo) (Alagoa and Tombo, Chronicle, 46). When this happened is unknown, but as noted earlier, a trader named Allison, possibly Allison Nwaoju or one of his descendants, was a major supplier of slaves to ships visiting Bonny in 1790-3. Other reforms allegedly introduced by Perekule included making aspirants to chieftaincy demonstrate military capability (or mgbi aki, win a cannon ball) (ibid. 11). Such changes clearly challenged ancestry as a benchmark for leadership of houses, while reinforcing Perekule's own status as amanyanabo.
114. Hargreaves, 'Political economy', 141-6, 153-5.
115. In his memoirs of voyages made before 1807, Hugh Crow, for example, referred to 'Pepple and Holliday [i.e. Halliday]', as being 'relations and copartners in the throne' (Crow, Memoirs, 217), but it is also clear that Crow saw Pepple as being 'Superior' to Halliday, maintaining an ascendancy over him 'in a high degree'. On another occasion, when Pepple and Halliday were said to have disagreed, the latter, being 'the weaker party', is said to have been 'obliged to fly with his friends to Fish Town for protection, and there remain until the dispute was adjusted by the intervention of the priests' (211). The continuing pretensions of the Halliday family to authority may have rested on the fact that when Perekule deposed Awusa, the latter allegedly retained an important item of regalia - an ivory horn (or edu) - which in 1972 was said to be still in the custody of the Halliday House (Alagoa and Tombo, Chronicle, 10). Alagoa and Tombo make some attempt to establish a king list for Bonny, going back to the sixteenth century (ibid. chs. 2-5), but their chronology before 1800 is contested.
116. On the difficulty of reconstructing Bonny's history, see Jones, Oil Rivers, 105-12;
117. Hargreaves, 'Political economy', 135-72.
118. Jones, Oil Rivers, 43;
119. Alagoa and Tombo, Chronicle, 11.
120. Barbot, West Africa, 1, 675.
121. I b i d. 687-9.
122. I b i d. 696. Emphasis added.
123. For a description of the visit of the amanyanabo to the various juju houses and the procession to newly arrived ships, see James Holman, Travels in Madeira, Sierra Leone, Teneriffe, St. Jago, Cape Coast, Fernando Po, Princess Island, etc. (London, 1834), 376-7;
124. Jackson, Journal of a Residence, 73-9,
125. Jones, Oil Rivers, 108-9;
126. Hargreaves, 'Political economy', 165.
127. 15 Sept. 1702, The Royal African Company to the Great King of Bandie, PRO, T 70/151, pp. 292-4.
128. e siècle, ed. Serge and Michele Daget (Paris, 1978-84), 1, 421.
129. Baillie to owners of the Carter, 31 Jan. 1757, in Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque, 481-2.
130. Evidence of James Fraser, in Lambert (ed.), Sessional Papers, LXXI, 16. Fraser also claimed that 'there has been an instance of a king being set up and supported by the masters of ships laying in the River'.
131. PRO, C 107/59, 9 Apr. 1793, John Goodrich to James Rogers. Goodrich's remarks are consistent with suggestions that the king of Bonny died in 1792, though precisely who died and succeeded at this time remains a matter of debate; see Hargreaves, 'Political economy', 152.
132. In 1790, Vincent Magouet, master of the French ship, Guerrier, was advised to visit the king and 'le presser d'ouvrir la traite, pour pouvoir acheter de suite ce qui vous est necessaire, pour caser, ne pouvant rien acheter sans que la traite soit ouverte par le roi' (Archives Départementales de la Loire-Atlantique, Nantes, Observations Utiles sur Bany, 1790, 1 J 679). Writing in 1801 to the London merchant, Thomas Lumley, about fitting out a ship for Bonny, one Liverpool trader suggested that it was 'going to pay King Pepple another visitt'; PRO, C 114/2, 28 Mar. 1801, John Livingstone to Thomas Lumley. Similarly, in 1820-1, a French ship was said to have been furnished with its 'Eboe' slaves by 'le roi Pepper', who brought them 'de l'interieur de l'Afrique'; Daget (ed.), Répertoire, 130. A few years later, in December 1825, the master of La Fortunée, J. J. Gimbert, found 'dix batiments qui ave traite avec le Roi a passer chacun a son tour d'aprês le Reglement etabli par Messieurs les Capitaines que aucun batiment ne pourre traiter avec le peuple'. Gimbert noted that trade with other merchants was not allowed until twenty days after arriving at Bonny (ibid. 392).
133. In 1792, the number of slaves shipped from Bonny totalled over 12,000, the second highest annual figure in the period 1783-1807. Numbers shipped slumped from the 1792 level by some 90 per cent during the following three years, before returning to a new peak in 1800. A similar exercise for Old Calabar reveals a much shallower fall in shipments of slaves in 1793-5 from that port than at Bonny. Data from Eltis et al., Slave Trade Database, search using the principal port of slave purchase as Bonny or Old Calabar, and dates of departure from Africa >1782 and <1808.
134. The king agreed to supply slaves only of 'Belle calité', and to pay a penalty of 60 slaves should he fail to meet the deadline agreed (Daget [ed.], Répertoire, 392).
135. Hargreaves, 'Political economy', 218-30.
136. North, Economic Change, 22.
137. Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Trust, pawnship and Atlantic history', 351-2.
138. On tensions at Old Calabar related, among other things, to pawnship, see Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, 'Anglo-Efik relations and protection against illegal enslavement at Old Calabar, 1740-1807', in Sylviane Diouf (ed.), Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Athens OH, 2003), 101-21.
139. Also see Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Odyssey (Cambridge MA, 2004), 10-33.
140. This is an important qualification and there is some evidence of malfeasance on the part of kings at times. In 1825, for example, King Opubo Pepple failed to supply within the expected time the number of slaves he promised to a French captain, but also refused to pay the penalty for failure that the latter thought they had agreed. The penalty was subsequently renegotiated, and the captain eventually sailed with 25 slaves more than the 230 stipulated in his original agreement with the king, so some compensation for delays in delivering slaves seems to have been paid by the king. Whether the slaves were of the quality expected is another matter; between 1 May and 17 July 1826, 123 of the 255 slaves shipped died (Daget [ed.], Répertoire, 392-3).
141. Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Trust, pawnship and Atlantic history', 352.
142. On the importance of perceptions, see Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, 'Introduction: institutional analysis and economic history', Journal of Economic History, 60 (2000), 414-17.
143. For a general overview of African ports involved in the slave trade, see David Eltis, Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, 'Slave-trading ports: towards an Atlantic-wide perspective', in Robin Law and Silke Strickrodt (eds.), Ports of the Slave Trade (Bights of Benin and Biafra) (Stirling, 1999), 12-35.