Calabar and the Efik Culture
at the time of Antera Duke's Diary
(adapted
from Sparks, Randy J., Two Princes of Calabar: An Atlantic Odyssey
from Slavery to Freedom. The William and Mary Quarterly 59.3
(2002)
Old Calabar is located along the Lower Guinea Coast in the
Bight of Biafra, separated from the Bight of Benin by the Niger
River Delta. The area had a well-developed trade long before
the arrival of Europeans. Old Calabar was founded by the Efik,
a branch of the Ibibio-speaking people, who moved to the Cross
River estuary in the early sixteenth century and lived primarily
as fishermen and traders (see Figure I below). We do not know
when Europeans and Africans first encountered each other at
Old Calabar. The Portuguese may have traded there as early as
the mid-seventeenth century, and English traders visited Old
Calabar as early as 1668 . English slave ships came more regularly
by the late seventeenth century, and the trade expanded rapidly
in the eighteenth century when the number of slaves exported
from the Bight of Biafra virtually doubled every decade from
1700 to 1750 , making the region a major source of slaves in
the transatlantic market. The majority of those slaves came
from Bonny, another major slave trading port in the Bight of
Biafra, with Old Calabar as the second most important center
of export. While the trade fluctuated from 1750 to 1770 , the
general trend was upward as the English trade increasingly concentrated
there. Slave exports from Bight of Biafra peaked in 1767 , the
year of the Robin Johns' capture, when at least 15,674 slaves
left the region. All told, approximately 1.2 million slaves
were transported from the Cross and Niger Rivers in the eighteenth
century. Merchants in Bristol and Liverpool dominated the trade
from Old Calabar, and approximately 85 percent of the slaves
exported from the area left on English ships.
Figure I: Old Calabar as it appeared in the eighteenth century,
based on Hope Masterson Waddell, Twenty-Nine Years in the West
Indies and Central Africa, 2d ed. (London, 1970; orig. pub.
1863) Map drawn by Rebecca Wrenn.
On the African side, the slave
trade was controlled by corresponding Old Calabar merchants
who used their profits and the firearms they acquired to expand
their power in the region. From their autonomous towns, the
Efik carried on an active commerce exchanging coastal products,
particularly fish and salt, for agricultural products, especially
yams and palm oil, from Ibo people in the interior. Their urban
settlements had populations as large as 2,000. The deep river
and numerous creeks provided easy access for the large canoes
the Efik used to transport their goods. Efik communities were
based on kinship and lineage groups and were organized at the
lowest level into family households (which included small numbers
of domestic slaves even before the arrival of the Europeans),
then into larger units known as houses (ufok) consisting of
the male descendants of an ancestor. Originally, the Efik were
divided into two lineage groups, but as the slave trade expanded,
the two subdivided into seven wards or city states. Given their
skill as traders, their trade networks to the interior, and
their fleets of canoes capable of ferrying large numbers of
people, the Efik were well positioned to capitalize on the arrival
of European merchants.
Efik communities grew in size
and number in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the
slave trade expanded, and this growth accounted for the subdivisions
of lineage groups and other changes in their society. Successful
slave traders required more and more canoes, manned by more
and more slaves, and became the masters of large numbers of
dependents. Before the expansion of the slave trade, the oldest
member of the family was head of the house, but as the trade
grew leadership passed to the wealthiest member of the house
(Etubom, "father of the canoe," as opposed to Ete
Ufok, "father of the house"). The new title Etubom
highlights the importance canoes played in the lives of the
traders, who could sometimes send out large fleets of them.
These increasingly large and powerful trading "houses"
commanded the labor of hundreds of enslaved rowers, soldiers,
relatives, domestics, agricultural workers, and other dependents.
Houses employed slave labor to raise crops on plantations and
to man canoes. Along with those men came their families and
the infrastructure necessary to support them. Houses that grew
rich enough and large enough might establish themselves as new
lineage groups, though they still acknowledged their descent
from the original lineage founders. By the 1760s, the most important
of these wards were Old Town, led by the Robin family and which
became the most commercially successful town up to the mid-eighteenth
century, and Duke Town (or New Town), led by the Duke family.
The Dukes built their settlement downstream from Old Town to
try and wrest control of the lucrative slave trade away from
their upstream rivals, and the two houses became bitter adversaries.
The establishment of new houses and towns was accompanied by
the introduction of a powerful secret society known as "Ekpe"
("Egbo" to Europeans). Membership was open to all
men, including slaves, though only freemen could advance beyond
the fifth of nine grades. Entry into each grade had to be bought,
so that membership in the upper grades was confined to wealthy
merchants. The society served several purposes; it helped to
integrate the new wards and promoted the expansion of the slave
trade and related commerce by enforcing the payment of debts,
levying fines, impounding property, and imposing trade boycotts
on individuals who violated its code. Over time, Ekpe spread
beyond Old Calabar to include those peoples with whom they had
close economic relations.
