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Nigeria EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADE IN WEST AFRICA
A desire for glory and profit from trade, missionary
zeal,
and considerations of global strategy brought Portuguese
navigators to the West African coast in the late fifteenth
century. Locked in a seemingly interminable crusading war
with
Muslim Morocco, the Portuguese conceived of a plan whereby
maritime expansion might bypass the Islamic world and open
new
markets that would result in commercial gain. They hoped
to tap
the fabled Saharan gold trade, establish a sea route
around
Africa to India, and link up with the mysterious Christian
kingdom of Prester John. The Portuguese achieved all these
goals.
They obtained access to the gold trade by trading along
the Gulf
of Guinea, establishing a base at Elmina ("the mine") on
the Gold
Coast (Ghana), and they made their way into the Indian
Ocean,
militarily securing a monopoly of the spice trade. Even
the
Christian kingdom turned out to be real; it was Ethiopia,
although Portuguese adventures there turned sour very
quickly.
Portugal's lasting legacy for Nigeria, however, was its
initiation of the transatlantic slave trade.
By 1471 Portuguese ships had reconnoitered the West
African
coast south as far as the Niger Delta, although they did
not know
that it was the delta, and in 1481 emissaries from the
king of
Portugal visited the court of the oba of Benin. For
a
time, Portugal and Benin maintained close relations.
Portuguese
soldiers aided Benin in its wars; Portuguese even came to
be
spoken at the oba's court. Gwatto, the port of
Benin,
became the depot to handle the peppers, ivory, and
increasing
numbers of slaves offered by the oba in exchange
for coral
beads; textile imports from India; European-manufactured
articles, including tools and weapons; and manillas
(brass
and bronze bracelets that were used as currency and also
were
melted down for objets d'art). Portugal also may have been
the
first European power to import cowrie shells, which were
the
currency of the far interior.
Benin profited from its close ties with the Portuguese
and
exploited the firearms bought from them to tighten its
hold on
the lower Niger area. Two factors checked the spread of
Portuguese influence and the continued expansion of Benin,
however. First, Portugal stopped buying pepper because of
the
availability of other spices in the Indian Ocean region.
Second,
Benin placed an embargo on the export of slaves, thereby
isolating itself from the growth of what was to become the
major
export from the Nigerian coast for 300 years. Benin
continued to
capture slaves and to employ them in its domestic economy,
but
the Edo state remained unique among Nigerian polities in
refusing
to participate in the transatlantic trade. In the long
run, Benin
remained relatively isolated from the major changes along
the
Nigerian coast.
The Portuguese initially bought slaves for resale on
the Gold
Coast, where slaves were traded for gold. For this reason,
the
southwestern coast of Nigeria and neighboring parts of the
present-day Republic of Benin (not to be confused with the
kingdom of Benin) became known as the "slave coast." When
the
African coast began to supply slaves to the Americas in
the last
third of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese continued
to look
to the Bight of Benin as one of its sources of supply. By
then
they were concentrating activities on the Angolan coast,
which
supplied roughly 40 percent of all slaves shipped to the
Americas
throughout the duration of the transatlantic trade, but
they
always maintained a presence on the Nigerian coast.
The Portuguese monopoly on West African trade was
broken at
the end of the sixteenth century, when Portugal's
influence was
challenged by the rising naval power of the Netherlands.
The
Dutch took over Portuguese trading stations on the coast
that
were the source of slaves for the Americas. French and
English
competition later undermined the Dutch position. Although
slave
ports from Lagos to Calabar would see the flags of many
other
European maritime countries (including Denmark, Sweden,
and
Brandenburg) and the North American colonies, Britain
became the
dominant slaving power in the eighteenth century. Its
ships
handled two-fifths of the transatlantic traffic during the
century. The Portuguese and French were responsible for
another
two-fifths.
Nigeria kept its important position in the slave trade
throughout the great expansion of the transatlantic trade
after
the middle of the seventeenth century. Slightly more
slaves came
from the Nigerian coast than from Angola in the eighteenth
century, while in the nineteenth century perhaps 30
percent of
all slaves sent across the Atlantic came from Nigeria.
Over the
period of the whole trade, more than 3.5 million slaves
were
shipped from Nigeria to the Americas. Most of these slaves
were
Igbo and Yoruba, with significant concentrations of Hausa,
Ibibio, and other ethnic groups. In the eighteenth
century, two
polities--Oyo and the Aro confederacy--were responsible
for most
of the slaves exported from Nigeria. The Aro confederacy
continued to export slaves through the 1830s, but most
slaves in
the nineteenth century were a product of the Yoruba civil
wars
that followed the collapse of Oyo in the 1820s.
The expansion of Oyo after the middle of the sixteenth
century was closely associated with the growth of slave
exports
across the Atlantic. Oyo's cavalry pushed southward along
a
natural break in the forests (known as the Benin Gap,
i.e., the
opening in the forest where the savanna stretched to the
Bight of
Benin), and thereby gained access to the coastal ports.
Oyo experienced a series of power struggles and
constitutional crises in the eighteenth century that
directly
related to its success as a major slave exporter. The
powerful
Oyo Mesi, the council of warlords that checked the king,
forced a
number of kings to commit suicide. In 1754 the head of the
Oyo
Mesi, basorun Gaha, seized power, retaining a
series of
kings as puppets. The rule of this military oligarchy was
overcome in 1789, when King Abiodun successfully staged a
countercoup and forced the suicide of Gaha. Abiodun and
his
successors maintained the supremacy of the monarchy until
the
second decade of the nineteenth century, primarily because
of the
reliance of the king on a cavalry force that was
independent of
the Oyo Mesi. This force was recruited largely from Muslim
slaves, especially Hausa, from farther north.
The other major slave-exporting state was a loose
confederation under the leadership of the Aro, an Igbo
clan of
mixed Igbo and Ibibio origins, whose home was on the
escarpment
between the central Igbo districts and the Cross River.
Beginning
in the late seventeenth century, the Aro built a complex
network
of alliances and treaties with many of the Igbo clans.
They
served as arbiters in villages throughout Igboland, and
their
famous oracle at Arochukwu, located in a thickly wooded
gorge,
was widely regarded as a court of appeal for many kinds of
disputes. By custom the Aro were sacrosanct, allowing them
to
travel anywhere with their goods without fear of attack.
Alliances with certain Igbo clans who acted as mercenaries
for
the Aro guaranteed their safety. As oracle priests, they
also
received slaves in payment of fines or dedicated to the
gods by
their masters as scapegoats for their own transgressions.
These
slaves thereby became the property of the Aro priests, who
were
at liberty to sell them.
Besides their religious influence, the Aro established
their
ascendancy through a combination of commercial acumen and
diplomatic skill. Their commercial empire was based on a
set of
twenty-four-day fairs and periodic markets that dotted the
interior. Resident Aro dominated these markets and
collected
slaves for export. They had a virtual monopoly of the
slave trade
after the collapse of Oyo in the 1820s. Villages suspected
of
violating treaties with the Aro were subject to
devastating raids
that not only produced slaves for export but also
maintained Aro
influence. The Aro had treaties with the coastal ports
from which
slaves were exported, especially Calabar, Bonny, and Elem
Kalabari. The people of Calabar were Efik, a subsection of
Ibibio, while Bonny and Elem Kalabari were Ijaw towns.
The Ijaw, who occupied the tidal area in proximity to
the
Igbo, had wrested a frugal living from the sale of dried
fish and
sea salt to the inland communities for centuries before
the rise
of the slave trade. Traditionally, they had lived in
federated
groups of villages with the head of the ranking village
presiding
over general assemblies attended by all the males. During
the
heyday of the slave trade in the eighteenth century, the
major
Ijaw villages grew into cities of 5,000 to 10,000
inhabitants
ruled by local strongmen allied with the Aro. Their
economies
were based on the facilities they offered to slave
traders. They
were entrepreneurial communities, receiving slaves from
the Aro
for resale to European agents. Personal wealth rather than
status
within a lineage group was the basis for political power
and
social status. Government typically was conducted by
councils
composed of leading merchants and headed by an
amanyanabo
(chief executive), an office that in time became
hereditary.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the area that was
to
become Nigeria was far from a unified country.
Furthermore, the
orientation of the north and the south was entirely
different.
The savanna states of Hausaland and Borno had experienced
a
difficult century of political insecurity and ecological
disaster
but otherwise continued in a centuries-long tradition of
slow
political and economic change that was similar to other
parts of
the savanna. The southern areas near the coast, by
contrast, had
been swept up in the transatlantic slave trade. Political
and
economic change had been rapid and dramatic. By 1800 Oyo
governed
much of southwestern Nigeria and neighboring parts of the
modern
Republic of Benin, while the Aro had consolidated
southeastern
Nigeria into a confederation that dominated that region.
The Oyo
and the Aro confederations were major trading partners of
the
slave traders from Europe and North America.
Data as of June 1991
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