Daryll Forde - Efik Traders of Old Calabar: Containing the Diary of Antera Duke Together with an Ethnographic Sketch and Notes and an Essay on the Political Organization of Old Calabar

Volume 25

Edited by
DARYLL FORDE

First published in 1956 by Oxford University Press for the International African Institute.

This edition first published in 2018

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1956 International African Institute

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ISBN: 978-0-8153-8713-8 (Set)

ISBN: 978-0-429-48813-9 (Set) (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-58638-3 (Volume 25) (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-50428-0 (Volume 25) (ebk)

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Edited by DARYLL FORDE

Containing

THE DIARY OF ANTERA DUKE

an Efik Slave-Trading Chief of
the eighteenth century

together with

AN ETHNOGRAPHIC SKETCH
AND NOTES

by D. SIMMONS

and an Essay on

THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF
OLD CALABAR

by G. I. JONES

Published for the

INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN INSTITUTE

by the

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
1956

Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4

GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON

BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI CAPETOWN IBADAN

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

T HE Efik of Old Calabar, on the Cross River estuary in what is now the Calabar Province of Nigeria, were famous in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among the trading peoples of the Oil Rivers of West Africa. This stretch of the West African coast, which included the Niger Delta and the estuary of the Cross and Calabar rivers, took its name from the trade in palm-oil which developed in place of the notorious slave-trade that was gradually suppressed by the British in the first half of the nineteenth century. The main rivers and the innumerable creeks here provided a network of waterways into the interior, which the slave-raiders and oil traders commanded with their fleets of large canoes. From their coastal settlements these African traders dealt with their European counterparts who lived in their ships that were moored close by. In return for slaves and oil they obtained supplies of European goods, and not least the firearms which enabled them to dominate the hinterland. The wealth and power to which this gave rise led to the growth of considerable communities and of miniature but fiercely competitive trading empires in such centres as Bonny, Brass and later Opobo, on the Niger Delta, and in Old Calabar.

The Efik, originally a small branch of the Ibibio-speaking peoples who had moved south-east to waterside settlements on the Cross River estuary where they lived mainly as fishermen, had found their opportunity in the slave-trade. Their communities grew and multiplied during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the success of this traffic. Some outstanding features of their life have long been known from the vivid accounts of events and customs written by early European travellers and traders and later by the British Consuls and the missionaries. These have described the wealth, prestige and pomp of the houses of successful trader-chiefs and the remarkable power of the Egbo Societya graded association of freemen which controlled and was controlled by the wealthy leaders of the Efik towns.

In their relations with the European traders, who were for the most part fleeting visitors with neither the interest nor the training to learn an African language, the Efik soon appreciated the importance of acquiring a trade language in which to carry out their transactions. Thus at Old Calabar, and in the other trading centres of the Oil Rivers, there developed, through intercourse with the English traders and seamen, a jargon which was mainly English in vocabulary although the constructions were often modelled on those of Ibibio. Europeans adopted it in their dealings with Africans and it was carried from place to place on the West Coast where it merged with other jargons, similarly developed, to become in the eighteenth century a fairly standardized pidgin English.

The value of written records, especially of transactions, was also recognized by the Efik traders, and some of them were effectively instructed in writing by Englishmen from the ships. Several published narratives of the early nineteenth century refer to the keeping of accounts and journals by the leading Efik at this time. Adams quoted passages from a manuscript written by a leading chief, Eyo Honesty, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was, moreover, at the request of Efik notables, largely on account of their desire for schooling, that the Church of Scotland Mission arrived at Calabar in the forties of last century.

Unfortunately, few, if any, of these early Efik documents appear to have survived or to have been closely studied. It was, therefore, with great interest that we learnt of the preservation of part of a diary written at Calabar in the late eighteenth century by Antera Duke, a leading trader and senior member of Egbo. This has afforded an opportunity, not merely to publish an important document concerning the history of Old Calabar, but also to provide an ethnographic background and a sociological interpretation for this and other early-writings on the Efik.

Antera Dukes diary was brought to the notice of the Institute by the Rev. Dr. A. W. Wilkie, C.B.E., formerly of the Church of Scotland Mission, Calabar. The original text, consisting of daily entries for the years 1785 to 1788, was written in Antera Dukes own hand in a large folio volumesuch as might have been used as a ships log-bookwhich had, apparently, been given to him by one of the officers of a slave-ship anchored off Duke Town, Calabar. The volume was brought to Scotland some time during the nineteenth century by a missionary from Calabar and deposited in the library of the United Presbyterian Church offices in Edinburgh. After the union of this Church with the Free Church of Scotland, the library was transferred to new offices in George Street, Edinburgh, and placed under the care of the late Mr. William Valentine, at that time a senior clerk in the Foreign Mission Offices of the Church and later Assistant Foreign Mission Secretary. Mr. Valentine discovered the diary and showed it to Dr. Wilkie who immediately recognized its great historical interest. Having read the whole diary with careand some difficulty, for discoloration of the paper and fading of the ink made portions of it hard to decipherDr. Wilkie made a number of lengthy extracts from it before returning the volume. During the war the offices of the United Church of Scotland suffered bombing and, though measures had been taken to store books and records in safety, some of theseincluding, it is feared, Antera Dukes diarywere unfortunately destroyed. The extracts made and preserved by Dr. Wilkie, are, therefore, all that remains of a fascinating personal record, which is also a unique and valuable source of information on the social life and customs of the Efik people and their relations with European traders nearly 200 years ago.