By Stephen D. Behrendt
In his diary, Antera Duke (ca.1735-ca.1809) wrote the single surviving eyewitness account of the slave exchange via an African service provider. a pace-setter in overdue eighteenth-century previous Calabar, a cluster of Efik-speaking groups within the go River area, he resided in Duke city, forty-five miles from the Atlantic Ocean in what's now southeast Nigeria. His diary, written in exchange English from 1785 to 1788, is a candid account of way of life in an African group on the peak of Calabar's in another country trade. It presents important info on outdated Calabar's financial task either with different African businessmen and with ecu send captains who arrived to alternate for slaves, produce, and provisions. This re-creation of Antera's diary, the 1st in fifty years, attracts at the most recent scholarship to put the diary in its historic context. Introductory essays set the level for the previous Calabar of Antera Duke's lifetime, discover the variety of trades, from slaves to provide, during which he rose to prominence, and persist with Antera on buying and selling missions throughout an in depth advertisement hinterland. The essays hint the cost and improvement of the cities that comprised previous Calabar and survey the community's social and political constitution, rivalries between households, sacrifices of slaves, and witchcraft ordeals. This version reproduces Antera's unique trade-English diary with a translation into common English on dealing with pages, in addition to wide annotation. The editors draw on Antera's first language, Efik, to light up his diary. The Diary of Antera Duke furnishes a uniquely worthy resource for the heritage of precolonial Nigeria and the Atlantic slave exchange, and this re-creation enriches our figuring out of it.
Read or Download The Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader PDF
Best africa books
Shorelines: A Journey Along the South African Coast
Award successful go back and forth writers Chris Marais and Julienne du Toit pack their trusty bakkie and force the total size of South Africa's shorelines, from Alexander Bay within the west to Kosi Bay within the east, assembly the bizarre and the glorious, the felony and the loopy parts of beach South Africa en course.
Coppernica, a rustic which bears a terrifying fictional resemblance to the Belgian Congo, is engaged within the fight for independence, the blood of violence, the clinging greed and moribund assumptions of white imperialism. Caute, additionally a political historian (Communism and the French Intellectuals, 1914-1960) has a dramatic snatch of background; he's capable of make this publication communicate via person realities in the scope of its setting--Africa, Europe and the U.
Kenya: A History Since Independence
Due to the fact that independence in 1963, Kenya has survived approximately 5 many years as a functioning countryside, with general elections, its borders intact, and with no experiencing conflict or army rule. notwithstanding, Kenya's independence has regularly been circumscribed through its failure to go beyond its colonial earlier: its governments have didn't in achieving enough dwelling stipulations for many of its electorate and its politics were fraught with controversy - illustrated such a lot lately via the post-election protests and violence in 2007.
Extra resources for The Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader
Sample text
About a century after Efik migrated from Creek Town, groups settled the Guinea Company villages to the north and Old Town and Duke Town to the south. Though one cannot date these migrations to specific years, it is reasonable to suggest that the Efik arrived at Creek Town in the late sixteenth century and families settled new villages in the first half of the seventeenth century. Following Efik tradition, European documents confirm the senior status of the Ambo, Duke, Henshaw, Robin, and Cobham families.
Before the publication of Antera Duke’s diary in 1956, scholars knew the precise date of death for only one pre-1850 obong—Efiom Edem (“Great Duke Ephraim”), who died on October 14, 1834. ”12 Antera Duke also recorded an obong’s death, that of Ephraim Duke’s father, Duke Ephraim (Edem Ekpo), on July 4, 1786:“[A]bout 4 clock morning Duk Ephrim Dead soon after come up to Look way putt to grown” (“About 4 o’clock in the morning Duke Ephraim died. Soon after we came up to look where to put him in the ground”).
Ephraim fired back, leading Bishop and Jackson to hoist one of his sons to the yardarm of each vessel. Jackson then threatened to sail from Old Calabar with the Old Town youths, and that if Robin John tried to board Bishop’s vessel Jackson would cut off his head and send it to Duke Ephraim. ” In spite of his call for renewed British business, by 1780 Ephraim Robin John had been marginalized, and so had the market power of Old Town. 2. Old Calabar families selling slaves to the Liverpool ship Dobson, July 1769–January 1770 A.