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Child Slaves in Pre-colonial Nigeria, c .1725–1860

2012; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 33; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0144039x.2011.622122

1743-9523

Olatunji Ojo,

African history and culture studies

Abstract During the eighteenth century, the number of child slaves leaving the 'Nigerian' region for the Americas increased and almost doubled after 1820. While the increase reflected shifts in the operations of the Atlantic trade, it also revealed the significance of slavery in pre-colonial Nigerian societies, which historically retained more child slaves than were sold abroad, even when the productivity of some children was uncertain. With a focus on the internal (intra-Nigeria) slave trade, this article examines the attraction of child slaves, their modes of enslavement, treatment and status, and the impact of slavery on children. Notes James A.U. Gronniossaw, A Narrative of the Most Remarkable Particulars in the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniossaw, an African Prince, Written by Himself (Bath: G. Gye, 1770), 7–8. On the Central Sudan coastal trade, see John Adams, Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo (London: Whittaker, 1823), 222; George A. Robertson, Notes on Africa (London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1819), 287–291; and Paul E. Lovejoy, Caravans of Kola: The Hausa Kola Trade 1700–1900 (Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1980). Gronniossaw, Narrative, 6–9. See G.O. Olusanya, 'The Freed Slaves' Homes – An Unknown Aspect of Northern Nigerian Social History', Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3 (1966): 523–538; Emmanuel A. Oroge, 'The Institution of Slavery in Yorubaland with Particular Reference to the Nineteenth Century' (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1971), 261–274; Paul E. Lovejoy and Jan Hogendorn, Slow Death to Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Adiele Afigbo, The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Southeastern Nigeria, 1885–1950 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006); Virginia Salamone and Frank Salamone, The Lucy Memorial Freed Slaves' Home: The Sudan United Mission and the British Colonial Government in Partnership (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007); and Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). Paul E. Lovejoy, 'The Children of Slavery – the Transatlantic Phase', Slavery & Abolition 27, no. 2 (2006): 197–217; Paul E. Lovejoy, 'The Central Sudan and the Atlantic Slave Trade', in Paths towards the Past: African Historical Essays in Honor of Jan Vansina, ed. Robert W. Harms, Joseph C. Miller, David S. Newbury and Michelle D. Wagner (Atlanta: African Studies Association Press, 1994), 347–350; Paul E. Lovejoy, 'Biographies of Enslaved Muslims from the Central Sudan in the Nineteenth Century', in The Sokoto Caliphate: History and Legacies, 1804–2004, ed. H. Bobboyi and A.M. Yakubu (Kaduna, Nigeria: Arewa House, 2006), 1: 187–216. On some Nigerian child slave memoirs, see Archibald John Monteith, 'Archibald John Monteith: Native Helper and Assistant in the Jamaica Mission at New Carmel', Callaloo 13, no. 1 (1990): 102–114; Daniel B. Thorp, 'Chattel with a Soul: The Autobiography of a Moravian Slave', Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 112, no. 3 (1988): 433–451; Phillip D. Curtin, ed. Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967). Elizabeth Isichei, Igbo Worlds: An Anthology of Oral Histories and Historical Descriptions (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978); Lovejoy, 'Biographies of Enslaved Muslims'; Jerome Handler, 'Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in Barbados', Slavery & Abolition 19, no. 1 (1998): 129–140; and Jerome Handler, 'Survivors of the Middle Passage: Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in British America', Slavery & Abolition 23, no. 1 (2002): 25–56. For folk stories, see Kola Onadipe, The Boy Slave (Ibadan, Nigeria: African University Press, 1966); Abubakar Balewa, Shaihu Umar (London: Longman, Green, 1967). The Harriet Tubman Institute at York University, Toronto, has a rich collection of slave biographies. I thank the administrators for providing access to the collection. W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 4. Also see Paul E. Lovejoy, 'Autobiography and Memory: Gustavus Vassa, alias Olaudah Equiano, the African', Slavery & Abolition 27, no. 3 (2006): 317–347. Gronniossaw, Narrative, 7–9. Ibid., v, 7–9. Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers and Joseph C. Miller, eds., Children in Slavery through the Ages (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009). David Eltis, 'Nutritional Trends in Africa and the Americas: Heights of Africans 1819–1839', Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12, no. 3 (1982): 453–475. H. F. C. Smith, D. M. Last and Gambo Gubio, 'Ali Eisami Gazirmabe of Bornu,' in Africa Remembered: Narratives by West African from the Era of the Slave Trade, ed. Phillip C. Curtin (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976): 199–216. Ibid., 207–208n14–18. Crowther to William Jowett, 22 February 1837, CA1/079/2, Church Missionary Society Archive [hereafter CMSA] (microfilm, Marlborough, 1997). Available from Center for Research Libraries, Chicago; Sarah C.M. Tucker, Abbeokuta; or Sunrise within the Tropics: An Outline of the Origin and Progress of the Yoruba Mission (London: James Nisbet, 1853), 17; Jesse Page, Samuel Crowther: The Slave Boy Who Became Bishop of the Niger (London: Partridge, 1892), 24. Crowther is possibly the 15-year-old slave with unknown name and faint marks on his temple who landed from the Feliz Esperanza in June 1822. See Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (London, 1789), 1: 29. In the twentieth century, teachers in Ghana and Nigeria determined if a child was ripe for grade one if the right hand, stretched across the head, touched the left ear. B.J.A. Matthews, 'Assessment Report on Ikale District, 1927–31', 176, MLG (W) 8/1, Nigerian National Archives, Ibadan (hereafter, NAI). Mazi A.O. Igwi, 'The Outline History of Nnochiri Oriaku', Nigerian Field 16, no. 4 (1951): 168–170. James Richardson, Narratives of a Mission to Central Africa in 1850–1 (London: Chapman and Hall, 1853), 2: 202–203. See Walter Hawthorne, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400–1900 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003); G. Ugo Nwokeji, The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra: An African Society in the Atlantic World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Martin A. Klein, 'The Slave Trade and Decentralized Societies', Journal of African History 42, no. 1 (2001): 49–65. Thomas King, Journal, 7 April 1850, CA2/061, CMS and 'African Wars', Church Missionary Gleaner (hereafter, CMG) (1858): 16. Samuel Johnson, The History of the Yorubas from the Earliest to the Beginning of the British Protectorate (1921; Lagos: CSS Books, 1976), 206–210, 345–354, 367–381. Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (London: Macmillan, 1976), 29–30. 'Ogbuamazia Egbeama, aged c.90, in Obeledu, 2 August 1972', in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 48; Nwokeji, Slave Trade and Culture. Isaac Parker, 'Minutes of the Evidence…', in House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Sheila Lamber (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1975), 73: 124–137. 'Testimony of John Ashley Hall', in Abridgement of the Minutes of the Evidence: Taken before a Committee of the Whole House on the Slave Trade (London: House of Commons, 1790), 2: 513. Adams, Remarks, 129–130. Equiano, Interesting Narrative, 47–48, 55. Vincent Caretta and Paul E. Lovejoy have vigorously debated the African origin of Equiano. See Vincent Caretta, 'Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity', Slavery & Abolition 20, no. 3 (1999): 96–105; Lovejoy, 'Autobiography and Memory'. Equiano, Interesting Narrative, 6. Ibid., 48–83. Monteith, 'Archibald Monteith'. Crowther, Journal, 25 March 1845, CA2/031, CMS; Ajayi K. Ajisafe, History of Abeokuta (Bungay: Richard Clay, 1924), 61. Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 282–283. William Baikie to Samuel Crowther, 2 March 1862, CA3/04a, CMS. Sai Akiga and Rupert East, Akiga's Story: The Tiv Tribe as Seen by One of Its Members (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 380–382. David Williams and James A. Maser to CMS Secretary, 24 November 1879, CMS (Y) 2/2/3, NAI. 'Testimony of James Frazer', in Abridgement of the Minutes, 2: 15–17; Daryll Forde, ed., Efik Traders of Old Calabar (London: Oxford University Press, 1956); Obaro Ikime, Niger Delta Rivalry: Itsekiri–Urhobo Relations and the European Presence 1884–1936 (London: Longman, 1969), 60–63; Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, 'Trust, Pawnship, and Atlantic History: The Institutional Foundations of the Old Calabar Slave Trade', American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (1999): 347–352. 'Deposition signed 22 Aug. 17[67]', in Lace to Thomas Jones of Bristol, 11 November 1773 and R.J. Ephraim to Lace, 19 July 1773, in Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque, with an Account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (London: Heinemann, 1897), 539–541. See also Orrock Robin John to Jones, c.1769. Cf. Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, 'Letters of the Old Calabar Slave Trade, 1760–1789', in Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic, ed. Vincent Caretta and Phillip Gould (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 102–103. Williams, Liverpool Privateers, 533–548. King George to Lace, 13 January 1773 and an undated letter, in Williams, Liverpool Privateers, 543–546. Also see King George to Jones (n.d., 176[9]?) and Grandee Ephraim Robin John to Jones, 16 June 1769, in Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Letters of the Old Calabar', 103. Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). See Antera (Ntiero) Duke, Diary, 7 July 1785, in Daryll Forde, 'The Diary of Antera Duke, an Efik Slave-Trading Chief of the Eighteenth Century', in Forde, Efik Traders, 35; William Butterworth, Three Years Adventures, of a Minor, in England, Africa, the West Indies, South-Carolina and Georgia (Leeds: Edward Barnes, 1822), 96–97. James Frederick Schön, Journal, Egga, 1 October 1841, in James Frederick Schön and Samuel Crowther, Journals of Rev. James Frederick Schön and Mr. Samuel Crowther Who Accompanied the Expedition up the Niger in 1841 (1842; London: Frank Cass, 1970), 181. On panyarring, see Lovejoy and Richardson, 'Trust' and Olatunji Ojo, 'Èmú (Àmúyá): The Yoruba Institution of Panyarring or Seizure for Debt', African Economic History 35 (2007): 31–58. Thorp, 'Chattel with a Soul', 436. Ibid., 447–448. Dandeson C. Crowther to Thomas Hutchinson, 1 September 1880, CA3/013/35, CMS. Adolphus C. Mann, 6 July 1856, CA2/066, CMS; George Meakin, Journal, Oyo, 14–20 June 1858 and 8 August 1859, CA2/069/10, CMS. 'Report of the Ijaye Relief Committee', 1 October 1861, CA/011, CMS; Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 209; Ajisafe, History of Abeokuta, 66; Emmanuel A. Oroge, 'Iwofa: An Historical Study of the Yoruba Institution of Indenture', African Economic History 14 (1985): 76. William Allen and T.R.H. Thomson, A Narrative of the Expedition Sent by Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger in 1841 (1848; London: Frank Cass, 1968), 362; William B. Baikie, Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwora and Binue Commonly Known as the Niger and Tsadda in 1854 (London: Frank Cass, 1966), 255–256, 273, 364, 381; James Vaughan, 'Mafakur: A Limbic Institution of the Margi (Nigeria)', in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 92. Oroge, 'Iwofa', 76. 'Andreas Josua Ulsheimer's Voyage of 1603–1604', in Adam Jones, German Sources for West African History 1599–1669 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983), 40; Allen and Thomson, Narrative of the Expedition, 1: 243–244. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (London: Heinemann, 1958), 27–28, 53. On blood debt, see N.W. Thomas, Anthropological Report on the Ibo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria, I: Law and Custom of the Ibo of the Awka Neighborhood (London: Harrison, 1913), 60, 108–116; Akiga and East, Akiga's Story, 207; Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 293; and Nwokeji, Slave Trade and Culture, 104, 126. Jennifer Lofkrantz, 'Ransoming Policies and Practices in the Western and Central Bilād al-Sūdān c.1800–1910' (PhD diss., York University, Toronto, 2008), 70. Ibid., 42, 67, 78. Curtin, 'Joseph Wright of the Egba', in African Remembered, 317–334. Mann, Slavery, 218. Equiano, Interesting Narrative, 47. Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 131, 443–444; interview with Bello Iyanda, Olomi, Ibadan, 14–15 July 1999. See the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://www.slavevoyages.org. Benjamin Campbell to Earl of Clarendon, No. 35, 7 December 1855, FO 84/976, National Archives, Kew. Afigbo, Abolition. Clapperton, Journal, 13 December 1825 and 16 January 1826, in Jamie Bruce Lockhart and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Hugh Clapperton into the Interior of Africa: Records of the Second Expedition 1825–1827 (Leiden: Brill, 2005): 131–33, 137, 152. Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Miers, 'African "Slavery" as an Institution of Marginality', in Miers and Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa, 67. See also Claire C. Robertson and Martin A. Klein, eds., Women and Slavery in Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997). Clapperton, Journal, 14 December 1825, 13, 14 and 20 January, and 7 February 1826; Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 307. Heidi Nast, Concubines and Power: Five Hundred Years in a Northern Nigerian Palace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005); Paul E. Lovejoy, 'Concubinage in the Sokoto Caliphate (1804–1903)', Slavery & Abolition 11, no. 2 (1990): 159–189. Allen and Thomson, Narrative of the Expedition, 247. Equiano, Interesting Narrative, 58. S.W. Koelle, Polyglotta Africana or A Comparative Vocabulary of Nearly Three Hundred Words and Phrases in More Than One Hundred African Languages (London: Church Missionary House, 1854), 7–8. Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 376. Fred Morton, 'Small Change: Children in the Nineteenth-Century East African Slave Trade', in Campbell et al., Children in Slavery, 55–70. Fraser to Malmesbury, 20 February 1853, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 63, Class B #1 and enclosures 1–6. Frazer himself had four slaves (three boys and a girl) 'given to him as presents'. See Campbell to Clarendon, 23 July 1853, despatch 15, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 63, Class B. 'The Narrative of Samuel Ajayi Crowther of Oyo', in Africa Remembered, 289--316. Baikie, Narrative, 255–256, 273, 364, 381; Olusanya, 'Freed Slaves' Homes', 525; Kopytoff and Miers, 'African "Slavery"', 53. C. A. and D. Hone, eds., Seventeen Years in the Yoruba Country: Memorials of Anna Hinderer Gathered from Her Journals and Letters 3rd ed. (London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1873); Equiano, Interesting Narrative, 48–83; Crowther to Jowett, 22 February 1837. Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 60; H.R. Palmer, ed., 'The Kano Chronicle', Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute 38 (1908): 75, 77; H.R. Palmer, 'History of Katsina', Journal of African Society 26 (1927): 219. Interview with Rafiu Delesolu, Ile Dele, Oje-Ibadan, 7 August 1999. For a related view, see Kim Bok-Rae, 'The Third Gender: Palace Eunuchs', in Campbell et al., Children in Slavery, 135–151. Stephen Behrendt, A.J.H. Latham and David Northrup, Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 29. Bernd Baldus, 'Responses to dependence in a serville group: the Machube of Northern Benin' in Suzanne Miers and and Igor Kopytoff, eds., Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977). 'Story of Euphemie Bought Near Onitsha', in Sr. Marie Claver to Sainte Enfance, 15 July 1891. Cf. Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 293–294. Interview with Okwumabua of Ogetu, aged c.90, 25 July 1974. Cf. Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 144. Equiano, Interesting Narrative, 48–83. 'Autobiography of David Okparabietoa Pepple', Niger and Yoruba Notes, 13–14. On ransoming, see Olatunji Ojo, '"[I]n search of their relations, to set at liberty as many as they had the means": Ransoming Captives in Nineteenth Century Yorubaland', Nordic Journal of African Studies 19, no. 1 (2010): 58–76; Jennifer Lofkrantz, 'Protecting Freeborn Muslims: The Sokoto Caliphate's Attempts to Prevent Illegal Enslavement and Its Acceptance of the Strategy of Ransoming', Slavery & Abolition 32, no. 1 (2011): 109–127. S.J.S. Cookey, King Jaja of the Niger Delta: His Life and Times (New York: Nok, 1974); S.J.S. Cookey, 'An Igbo Slave Story of the Late Nineteenth Century and Its Implications', Ikenga 1, no. 2 (1979): 1–9; Walter Ofonagoro, 'Notes on the Ancestry of Mbanaso Okwaraozurumba Otherwise Known as Jaja of Opobo 1821–1891', Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 9, no. 3 (1978): 145–156. See African Origins website, http://www.african-origins.org. Mann, Slavery, 69. Equiano, Interesting Narrative, 63–64; Crowther to Jowett, 22 February 1837; N.W. Thomas, Anthropological Report on the Edo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria (London: Harrison, 1910), 1: 90–91; S.F. Nadel, A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), 106. Curtin, 'Joseph Wright'; Paul E. Lovejoy, 'Civilian Casualties in the Context of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade', in Daily Lives of Civilians in Wartime West Africa: From Slavery Days to Rwandan Genocide, ed. John Laband (London: Greenwood, 2006), 17–50. Hinderer, Journal, 11 July 1854, in Hone and Hone, Seventeen Years, 104. Peter C. Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 192. Interviews with Comfort Ogunleye, Ijelu-Ekiti, 30 June 2001 and Abigail Ajibade and Marian Iyanda, Omu-Ekiti, 24 June 2001. Interview with Sadiku Afolabi, Ibalogun Street, Omu-Ekiti, 5 July 1999 and 20 May 2001. Additional informationNotes on contributorsOlatunji Ojo Olatunji Ojo is in the Department of History, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Ave., St. Catharines, Ontario L2S 3A1, Canada.