African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin--Madison

Britain and the Hydra in the Bight of Benin: Towards a History of the Abolition of theInternal Slave Trade in the Oil Rivers and Its Hinterland, C. 1885-C. 1943Author(s): A. E. AfigboSource: African Economic History, No. 31 (2003), pp. 1-18Published by: African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin--MadisonStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3601944Accessed: 23/04/2010 09:43

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aspuw.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

African Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin--Madison is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to African Economic History.

http://www.jstor.org

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN

TOWARDS A HISTORY OF THE ABOLITION OF THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE IN THE OIL RIVERS AND ITS

HINTERLAND, C. 1885-C. 1943'

A.E. Afigbo Department of History and International Relations

Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, Nigeria

he Bight of Biafra, especially the portion of it later christened the 'Oil Rivers,' came into the limelight of modern world history first as a notorious source for the "black cargoes" of

the 'old Atlantic system,' secondly as a major storm center of the campaign against that system by the British Foreign Office and the Royal Navy from about 1807, and thirdly as a major anchorage of British imperialism on the morrow of the eclipse of the trans-Atlantic slave trade after about 186o. With the exception of the Sudanic part of Northern Nigeria, which acquired literacy in Arabic from a very early date, the Oil Rivers, along with the Bight of Benin, has over the rest of Nigeria the advantage of written historical records going back some three and half centuries. It is not surprising therefore that with the rise of modern African Studies from about the late nineteen-forties, she came to attract an army of students of history and related disciplines. Reckoning only with those of them who have brought out major academic monographs dealing with, or at least touching on, her past, a quick check would give a list containing the following names among others - K.O. Dike, J.C. Anene, E.J. Alagoa, G.I.Jones, T.N. Tamuno, K.K. Nair, A.J.H. Latham, S.J.S. Cookey, W.I. Ofonagoro, Monday Noah, D. Northrup, R.O. Ekundare, and the great missionary historians such as J.F. Ade Ajayi, E.A. Ayandele, F.K. Ekechi and O.M. Tasie. In this impressive cavalcade we have political historians, political and economic historians, pure economic historians, economic and social historians as well as pure social historians.2

All this scholarly attention devoted to our very small area notwithstanding, the history of the slave trade in the region can still be said to be somewhat neglected, whether we are talking about the

African Economic History 31(zoo3): 1-I8.

2 A. E. AFIGBO

Atlantic or the post-Atlantic phase of it. Not only is there no extended or comprehensive historical or sociological account of that phenomenon in the overall context of the societies of the region, but also our knowledge of the campaign for the abolition of the trade itself, or for the abolition of its end product, slavery, cannot be said to be in a very satisfactory state. With specific reference to the movement for the abolition of slavery, we have only the two book chapters by V.C. Uchendu and Don Ohadike, which, though devoted to the Igbo, may still be described as somewhat general in nature. We also have the journal article on the abolition of slavery in Nkanu, Enugu State, by Carolyn Brown, which, though specialized and closely researched, is limited in territorial and demographic scope, being concerned only with one clan of the Igbo-speaking peoples.3 The situation with the history of the abolition of the slave trade itself is even less satisfactory. Perhaps the only publications pointing in that direction, though not conceived and written primarily as contributions to abolitionist literature, are the three journal articles by the present author written as long ago as the nineteen-seventies, which deal with the Aro Expedition of 1901-1902 and with the crisis faced by the Aro in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the primary slave traders in the zone and in the wake of the advance of British imperial interests.4 On the Ibibio and the Ogoja, the other important hinterland peoples treated also in the present study, we appear to have nothing at all. Both Alan Burns and Margery Perham, writing more or less generalized texts in the nineteen-twenties and the nineteen-thirties, respectively, had asserted that the British were unwavering in their commitment to abolish the slave trade in the south-eastern Nigeria area, but neither of them made any visible effort to show what form the campaign took.'

This state of scholarship in the matter of the abolition of the internal slave trade in the Oil Rivers and its hinterland would seem to suggest the existence of an iron law that rules the pursuit by historians of their profession. That law appears to state that documents have an irresistible attraction for practitioners of the craft - whether the documents are written or oral, carved in stone, wood, or bone. In other words, historians may be hardheaded rather than romantic crusaders for explanation but they would normally carry on their campaign in such corners of their disciplinary terrain as promise them rich rewards in the source materials for their work. This is all

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN 3

the more likely to be the case in situations where the work in question is undertaken for purposes of earning a higher degree. All the major monographs mentioned in the first paragraph of this paper, except that written by G.I. Jones, emerged from submissions made for the award of higher degrees. That none of them focused on whatever there was of the campaign for the abolition of the internal slave trade in our zone of interest can be explained largely by reference to the fact that the imperial records that helped to attract them to the zone and its history had pretty little to say about that campaign. Its choice as the subject for a higher degree thesis was therefore not a particularly attractive option for any one looking for his basic initiation into Clio's

highly crowded and therefore ruthlessly competitive academic

territory. By the time the Atlantic phase of the campaign against slave

trade ended, in any case by the eighteen-sixties, the men of the "bible and the plough," who saw the solution to the problems posed by the slave trade in the interior of Africa in terms of empowering the African to do for himself in order to co-operate with his external

helpers on a basis of equality in the process of transforming the continent, had lost the argument and the action. The apostles of

unblinking commercial imperialism which was only a step away from

political imperialism, or indeed from total imperialism, had won

through and shoved humanitarianism and philanthropy into a dingy and moldy corner. For our area of interest, Dike's Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830-1885 shows how the music changed in dramatic fashion with the achievement of the Lander brothers in establishing that the supposedly mysterious Niger emptied into the Atlantic

through the maze of creeks and waterways over which the European slave traders had gained mastery in the preceding two centuries or so. To some extent, Thomas Fowell Buxton's The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy,6 with its starry-eyed romantic ideal of making the African stand on his own feet, was issued a little late.

On the Niger, especially after the epoch-making achievement of the Landers, the challenge was how to master the navigation of that

waterway in order to use it to overwhelm the Sudan interior with

European commerce and commercialism, while in the Oil Rivers, the

challenge was how to refashion the old ways and means of doing business there to suit and promote the new trade. As long as the traditional collaborators of the European traders, that is, the African

4 A. E. AFIGBO

middlemen, were able to supply the new items of commerce in

exchange for the industrial products from Europe, what happened in the hinterland was of little interest to the Europeans who, in any case, were in no hurry themselves to penetrate that interior yet.7 The

question of law and order in the interior which would raise the issue of slave dealing (that is slave-recruiting and slave-selling) would only arise later when it came to be considered necessary for Europeans or

agents directly under their control to go in and take a hand in the assembling of the items of trade and their movement to the ports. With the changed situation which dawned after 1830 or so, the official

representative of the British Government in the Oil Rivers, whether this was the commander of the Preventive Squadron or, from 1849, the Consul backed up by the Naval Squadron, began to see his duty first and foremost as the protection of British interests, which translated into the protection of the trade of British subjects. From the standpoint of our study, one important consequence of this development was that reference to the slave trade and its abolition became rarer and rarer in the communications that went between the men on the spot in the Oil Rivers and their principals back home. The dominant questions became commercial and political - the issue of relationships existing amongst the competing European traders, between them as a group and their African counterparts, the form and extent of control over affairs in the Oil Rivers to be exercised by the local representative of Britain, and then the interests of rival foreign governments in the region and how best to ward them off. It is these issues about which the surviving records carry much information that constitute the foci of most of the studies conducted in this area during the period covered by this study.

Indeed, until about the closing years of the nineteenth century you search these records virtually in vain for meaningful information on the internal slave trade either as it affected the city states of the coast or as it obtained in the interior or as it helped in determining official policy. This observation applies even to the period after the increased note of urgency, which the General Act of the Brussels Conference (1889) was supposed to bring to the matter of abolishing the slave trade and other barbarous customs and practices in the African interior. It is also significant from the standpoint of our discussion here that for our area of interest Colin Newbury found nothing on the slave trade and slavery before 19oo worthy of inclusion

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN 5

in his massive collection of documents on British policy towards West Africa." Also noteworthy is the fact that none of the treaties, which the agents of the British Government entered into after 186o with the kings and rulers of this region, the so-called treaties of protection, that is, mentioned anything about slave dealing and the supposed on-going campaign against it.9 When in 189o, Acting Consul George F. Annesley drew up rules and regulations defining the powers and duties of the Governing Councils which he proposed should be set up to maintain "peace and order" in the city states, the only reference he made in the document to the slave dealing issue was to the effect that it was the duty of the President of the Council to "report any attempt to export slaves" - a non-issue if ever there was one since the external slave trade under which slaves were exported had long ceased to exist. The more pressing issue of importing slaves into the delta from the interior was ignored.'o

It was not only that the issue of the slave trade and its abolition had long since been elbowed out of the center stage in British imperial calculations by such other realities as the need to advance British trade and to fight off competition from rival European nations. But the whole issue of slave dealing (trading in slaves and/or keeping slaves) had come to be looked upon as, more or less, a kind of benign tumor on the bodies of the societies of this region and which, therefore, did not necessarily call for any emergency response. Part of the truth was that through close contact and study, Britain's men on the spot had come to understand the local conditions that went with enslavement in these societies and, as in nearly all such situations, understanding all had almost come to mean forgiving all. The opinion on and attitude to slave trading and slavery, which built up amongst the British community in the Oil Rivers, was encapsulated in a memorable statement by the encyclopedic Harry Johnson as he wrote his last report on the Oil Rivers in 1888. In this emerging view, the world of the Oil Rivers was for the average slave almost an open society - he could trade and amass wealth and influence for himself and even become a ruler of men and women, as had been the case with Jaja of Opobo and many others in Bonny and Calabar. "Slaves in the Niger delta are so exceptionally treated as a rule," wrote Johnson, "and have so much power and independence of their own, that they do not desire to be freed from dependence on the household to which they are attached."" This opinion became the refrain for the men who

6 A. E. AFIGBO

assumed the helm of affairs after him in the Oil Rivers and its hinterland until about 1915, when Lugard brushed it aside for his own reasons. It also captured the ears of the Government in London, thus making it possible for nothing dramatic to take place in this area of moral and social change for decades.

Throughout the nineteenth century, no proclamation or formal statement was made against the slave trade and slavery in the region. If slavery, the end product of the slave trade, was not that bad, then the process by which people became enslaved could not have been such an unmitigated evil, especially where it did not involve violence, which would tend to disrupt trade. Indeed it would appear that in this area and throughout the nineteenth century, this process, by which cheap labor moved into the delta from the interior and thus buoyed up the ability of the coastal middlemen to expand their search for legitimate goods in the interior, was regarded as a good thing for the victims - transfer from the supposedly unrelieved barbarism of the interior to the partially Westernized or Westernizing societies of the coast." It is interesting to note that even though people like Jaja of Opobo and Nana of the Benin River were known to be great slave dealers and to have continued to recruit slaves from the interior even as they were dealing with British Government representatives in the Bight, no charge of slave dealing was ever brought against them, not even when it became necessary later to depose and exile them. Summarizing their 'crime' in August 1895 Sir Claude MacDonald, the Commissioner and Consul General said:

The deposition of Nana was a parallel case to the deposition of Jaja. They had both become very powerful trader Chiefs, and terrorized, to a very great extent, not only the trade of the younger Chiefs, but also that of Europeans. I cannot speak personally of Jaja, for his downfall and the events leading to the same took place before I came to the rivers; but with regard to Nana, I can say that he had become so powerful, his people and canoes so numerous, that he, or rather his people, had become the paramount people in the land, a power they used entirely for their own advancement and for the crushing of any of the minor Chiefs who interfered with their trade or themselves.'3

However, it was not only that the men on the spot had persuaded themselves and their superiors back home in London that in the Oil

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN 7

Rivers and its hinterland the issue of slave trade and slavery was not such a crying or urgent scandal. They had also persuaded themselves and their principals that the matter required "most careful and

judicious handling to avoid serious immediate difficulties which might give rise to entire dislocation in the affairs of Government, trade and Tribal control."'4 Owing to: (i) shortages in the number of European staff available to the fledgling colonial government in the Bight; (ii) the need to as much as possible harness through the traditional rulers expert knowledge of the local territory, customs and traditions; and (iii) the peculiar demands of communication in the delta and its adjoining maze of rivers, rivulets and creeks; the British needed the support and cooperation of the coastal chiefs to run the local administration and to push into the interior in the interest of trade. To play the role expected of them at the level of local administration, the chiefs needed their authority over their subjects, who were for the most part slaves or of slave descent, to be upheld. Similarly, to assume the role mapped out for them in expanding legitimate trade, they needed undiminished control over their existing subjects as well as the opportunity to periodically augment the numbers of those subjects through fresh recruitments from the interior by means of purchase and other unspecified methods. All these showed, and the British understood they showed, that a doctrinaire approach to the abolitionist project was contra-indicated. Sir Ralph Moor, the High Commissioner of Southern Nigeria, wrote in i9oI:

It is in my view of the utmost importance to the success of the Territories that the Coast Tribes of middlemen be supported by the Government and that all possible steps be taken to enable them to maintain their position both as regards trade and numbers, also that their native systems of government should be strenuously upheld and enforced with such improvements as may from time to time be found for the general welfare of the people and country."

There was thus for this period a meeting of minds, that is an alliance, between the British (the would-be abolitionists) and the leaders of coastal society (the entrenched slave dealers). For as long as conditions existed that made this alliance necessary and possible, that is, the extended dependence by the British on the local knowledge and

8 A. E. AFIGBO

the local maritime technology of the coastal chiefs, the British would

approach the matter of abolition with caution and circumspection. In the event, the British took only one positive or direct step

against the internal slave trade in the Oil Rivers in the nineteenth

century. The action was to end what was known as "debt slavery" or

"chopping." This was the practice by which a creditor was entitled to seize a debtor or anyone related to him towards the liquidation of a bad debt. The British found the practice unacceptable not just because it led to enslavement, but more importantly because it frequently led to retaliation by the kinsmen of the debtor, which in turn would lead to further reprisals and thus on occasion to war between the two

groups and to the disruption of trading activities in a whole region. MacDonald dealt with this practice by taking two steps. The first was to establish Consular and Vice-Consular courts in such areas as were

already under British control to handle all such and related cases thus

making it unnecessary for a creditor to take the law into his own hands. On this, MacDonald reported as follows to the Foreign Office:

Since the establishment of the present system of administration in the Protectorate, July 1891, permanent stations have been erected, and a regular system of Government organized at Old Calabar, Opobo, Bonny, Degema, Brass, Warri, Benin and Sapeli, and minor stations which are visited at intervals by Consular officers at Itu, Unwana, Okoyan, Uwet and Aquetta. At all these centres, which cover the coast region and a certain extent of the interior, Consular Courts have been established, and the principles laid down for the settlement of questions relating to domestic slaves and enslavement for debt.'6

The second step was to hold extensive meetings and discussions with the chiefs and leading peoples in the areas under Government control to educate them on the evils of "chopping." MacDonald further disclosed:

As soon as an Administration has been established in a district and a sufficient constabulary force enrolled and drilled at headquarters to enforce any orders of the Court, the Chiefs of the district were assembled, and it was pointed out to them that the practice of seizure and enslavement was contrary to the best interest of the community, and therefore could not be permitted; besides it was

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN 9

against the wishes of Her Majesty the Queen, with whom the Chiefs had made Treaties and to whom they were under Treaty obligations; it led to reprisals on the part of the tribe whose people had been seized, and as often as not involved the whole tribe in a war which led to a general stoppage of trade and the destruction of property and loss of life."'7

The Chiefs, he said, usually saw "the wisdom of this" and complied as a result of which "many disputes arising out of transactions in trade, which a few years ago would have ended in mutual enslavement and probable bloodshed have been settled in the Courts, or by arbitration."'8

But apart from this limited direct assault on the slave trade in the period, there was what we may call an indirect assault also, which took the form of an attempt to implement the recommendations of the Brussels Act. We treat this effort as indirect because the Brussels Act was a broad-spectrum prescription for advancing European imperialism in Africa rather than a targeted attack on the internal slave trade and slavery as such, even though it was so camouflaged. The Brussels Conference, which claimed to have met to concert measures aimed at helping to "pierce the darkness which envelops whole populations" in Africa, had prescribed seven actions which European nations which had territories in Africa should take in order to ensure the arrival of that pax Europeana which would eliminate the slave trade and sister barbarous practices. As is well known, these included the introduction of civilized administrations with effective military and police presence; the building of roads and railways; the effective takeover of the navigation and control of inland waterways and lakes; the introduction of modern means of communication by telegraphy; the abolition of trade in fire-arms and the use of military expeditions and flying columns to overawe and subdue such communities as would not go into treaty relations with their new overlords and live as prescribed in the treaties."' Perhaps the British were already committed in a vague sort of way to some such program even before the meeting of the Brussels Conference, as could be seen in the ideas and activities of men like Consuls Hewett, Johnson, and Annesley.Zo But after 1889 the prescriptions of Brussels became a definite benchmark, which Britain's men in the Oil Rivers tended to refer to as often as they found it necessary to draw the balance sheet

Io A. E. AFIGBO

of their achievements there. Thus in concluding the Annual Report on the Niger Coast Protectorate for the year 1894-95, Sir Claude MacDonald wrote as follows:

In compliance with the terms of the Brussels Act, military posts have been instituted at five points in the interior, forming a chain of some 50 miles from and parallel to the sea; the first at Uwet, on the Calabar River; Itu on the Cross River; Aquetta on the Opobo River, Degema in the New Calabar district, and Sapele in the Benin district. At all these places substantial European houses have been built, and at Degema and Sapele permanent barracks, for the accommodation at each place, for one company. Native barracks could be run up for any number of men in a very few days. So far as Aquetta and Uwet are concerned...road making will have to be commenced... The whole of the above-mentioned waterways are at present covered by the Protectorate launches...2

Similarly, when the following year (1896) the Foreign Office asked Sir Ralph Moor, who had meanwhile taken over from MacDonald as Commissioner and Consul-General, to send in a report on what he was doing to expand British trade in the interior, he presented his reply in a manner that would suggest he had the Brussels Act before him as he responded. According to him, his program included the following activities:

(a) Small peaceful expeditions to explain the aims of the government and to open friendly relations.

(b) The organization of native councils of chiefs in all towns which accorded a friendly reception.

(c) Surveys with the view to determining the best directions for roads to the interior - with the resources of the area specially in mind.

(d) Treaties of peace and friendship but also the punishment of offending towns where possible.

(e) Patrolling the waterways to suppress piracy."2

In other words, the British spent most of the nineteenth century along the coast not only mustering the resources and building up the administrative and military theory, structure, and practice with which to carry the Brussels anti-slave trade and anti-slavery program into

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN II

the interior. They had also begun in a cautious way infiltrating that program into the hinterland. This build-up of resources included the recruitment of the delta middlemen into their motley army of standard bearers of the flag of legitimate trade. Indeed, throughout that century it was the Ijo and Efik middlemen of the coast who constituted the vanguard of this movement while the European traders hugged the waterways of the delta and the creeks and the banks of such major inland waterways as the Niger and the Cross River, to the annoyance and disgust of men like Harry Johnson and Ralph Moor."3 To the extent that legitimate trade and the slave trade were incompatible, the drive of the delta middlemen into the hinterland was a step against the slave trade, in spite of their continued recruitment of new slaves in a bid to expand their capacity for handling more legitimate trade.

However, towards the end of the century, in any case by about 1896/7, this expanding commerce and all that went with it ran into the internal slave trade in its most unregenerate form as represented by the Aro trading network - a network which stretched with varying degrees of intensity from just behind the Ijo and the Efik of the coast to the Igala and the Idoma of the Benue valley to the north, and then from about the eastern borders of the Benin empire to about what later became the boundary between the British in Nigeria and the Germans in the Cameroons. This network or business interest was opposed to: (i) the abolition of the slave trade and slavery; (ii) the extension inland of the trading interests and activities of the coastal middlemen and their British sponsors beyond the line where the swamps of the coast met the terra firma of the interior; and (iii) the expansion inland of British political and administrative claims and pretensions. The result was that wherever the British and their coastal collaborators set their feet beyond the traditional limit, they met with overt and covert hostility and intrigue, which forced some of them to beat an undignified retreat or to bribe their way through. With this the British came to a new awakening - that the internal slave trade was not in fact that benign even if its end product in delta society could be described and treated as that. In fact, by 1895 Sir Claude MacDonald was already darkly hinting that the program aimed at bringing the interior under effective British control would be "a matter of time, money, and lives" because it would involve "the suppression of slave markets, wherever found, the prevention of inter-tribal wars and the

12 A. E. AFIGBO

strict application of the Indian Act."' The aftermath was the resurrection and the ruthless application, from about 900oo, of the methods of "blood and iron" which had characterized the campaign of the Royal Navy against the external slave trade in the Atlantic and the West Coast. Dr. P.A.Talbot, who served in these parts both as a political officer and as a government anthropologist, made a count of the military expeditions and promenades which the colonial government launched in this region between about 19oo and I914 against towns and communities accused of slave dealing, cannibalism, human sacrifice, and obstruction of legitimate trade and got a tally of about 40!25

This new awakening was to some extent reflected also in the documentation of Government business because more frequent references came to be made to the slave trade and to measures taken against it in explanation of aspects of official policy. In addition, definite actions came to be taken by the Government against the slave trade, slave traders, and slavery. A proclamation was issued making slave dealing a criminal offence punishable on conviction with seven years imprisonment with hard labor (901o). Another proclamation was issued to promote the building of roads since communication was seen as one of the more telling blows that could be directed against barbarism (1903). British currency was introduced and promoted, as it was believed to have a double corroding effect on slave trade and slavery. On the one hand, it was believed to undermine slave trading through promoting legitimate trade. On the other hand, it was expected to undercut the use of slaves as currency - or what Moor called "ambulatory currency."'26 Finally, the missionaries and the traders who had hugged the head waters of the coast for nearly a century were waved into the interior to administer the coup de grace to the naked cannibals and slave traders of Igboland, Ibibioland, and Ogoja through letting the corroding influences of their wares - materialism and churchianity - percolate into all the recesses of these societies still reeling from the impact of a conquest that had no parallel in their history.27

Convinced that they had routed the slave traders of the Oil Rivers and its hinterland, disarmed them through the systematic destruction of their guns, closed their slave markets and blown up the oracles by means of which they recruited slaves, the British set up what they considered an appropriate and adequate regime of courts

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN 13

and constables to monitor the resulting situation. With that they sat back more or less in the expectation that their much trusted socio- cultural cocktail otherwise known as pax Britannica would before long close more or less painlessly the sinister chapter on slave trade and slavery in our area of interest. That is to say, after the chain of measures recapitulated above, the British resumed their nineteenth century position in this matter. What remained of the abolition of the internal slave trade and slavery, they believed did not any longer call for direct or urgent action. The end in view would come about as a by- product of the general civilization of the people under colonialism. This expectation came all the more into the ascendant after the running battle with the Aro which raged around the two institutions of the Ibini Ukpabi oracle and the Agbagwu regional slave market and fair from about IgoI to about 1927, the story of which has been told by this author in another publication.zs

On the surface of it, this posture appeared to be justified by the fact that fewer and fewer cases of slave dealing came before the courts, and of the few that came it was not always possible to obtain the kinds of evidence that would justify the conviction and punishment of the accused. But of course the courts and constables were not designed to be pro-active in their approach to this matter, nor did they exist specifically to focus on slave dealing questions. Their range and activities covered all varieties of infraction of colonial laws and regulations. Writing on these matters as early as 1904, Mr. A.B. Harcourt of the Cross River Division had observed as follows:

I can only say that the vigilance exercised by officers in this direction may have been the cause of fewer cases of slave trading having come under notice but at the same time the fact must not be disguised that it may in part be due to increased cunning on the part of those concerned therein.29

Events in the nineteen-thirties were to reveal that Mr. Harcourt was dead right with regard to his view that the slave dealers of the Biafran hinterland were changing their tactics in order to beat the colonial government and its laws and institutions. Indeed, with the end of what was called "pacification," that is the defeat and disarming of the Igbo, the Ibibio, and Ogoja peoples, many changes were introduced into the modes of the accursed trade by its votaries. It became a trade

14 A. E. AFIGBO

in children, mainly in which the victims were procured either through professional kidnappers or through parents in straitened economic and social circumstances. The slave markets also had been made to undergo a transformation in methods and use. They had been turned simply into venues where demanders and suppliers met to place and receive orders or to agree on prices before repairing to settlements and villages situated not far from the market centers for the demanders to make payments and take deliveries.3"

It was not until 1932 that the Government was shocked out of its complacency by a revelation in the Annual Report for Owerri Province for that year, which said that "in the Okigwi Division there has been a considerable increase of cases of slave-dealing and child stealing." The crimes, it said, were "particularly common in the Obowo area where there appear to be gangs who carry on a steady trade in stolen children.'"3' When the Government set up a special police squad to go into the matter, it was able to uncover a great deal of information which showed that children born in the thickly populated parts of Igboland and Ibibioland had for some time faced and were still facing a special peril. Through kidnapping and the mindless co-operation of impoverished parents, many of them were being sold into slavery southwards to the delta and northeastwards to

Ogoja, where apparently insatiable demands for them existed. It was also discovered that while there were local intermediaries who picked up the children from kidnappers and willing parents, it was still the Aro who co-ordinated the whole business and undertook the movement of the children out of Igbo and Ibibio lands into the delta and Ogoja.32

Handicapped as the Government was by severe lack of staff and other resources, the campaign was waged in a desultory fashion from November 1933 to May 1936, when it was called off. It was called off not because the scourge had been brought under control, but simply because the Government found itself unable to sustain the effort. It had gone into the campaign believing the illegal trade was being run by an organized gang whose leaders could be apprehended and given such exemplary punishments as would deter all others. It is surprising that, knowing what they did by this period about the social-political and economic organization of Igbo, Ibibio, and Ogoja communities, the Government deluded itself with such expectations. Within a few months of the onset of the campaign, the Secretary for the Southern

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN I5

Provinces was already bemoaning the fact that "reports tend to show that the practice of child stealing in the Owerri and Ogoja Provinces is extremely common" and that the detection of the culprits is

"considerably... difficult" because the trade is "so widely carried on by individuals and not by organized gangs controlled by a few persons.""

Margery Perham has described the British conquest of the

peoples of the Oil Rivers and its hinterland as a 'struggle with the

hydra.'34 One can appropriate that language in characterizing the

campaign against the slave trade amongst the same peoples. In 1943 the Government was still battling with how to amend the law in this matter in order to close all the legal loopholes, which offered

unrepentant slave dealers some escape route when arraigned in the courts." But of course the truth of the matter was that only a small fraction of those involved in the trade stumbled against the provisions of the law and thus ran the risk of prosecution. The greater number did not, managing to escape detection. This latter group thus went on

merrily enriching themselves at the expense of children, especially female children who continued to be sold under fictitious claims of child marriage well into the nineteen-fifties and beyond. There is indeed not enough evidence to reach the conclusion that the British saw the end of the internal slave trade in our area of study by the time their rule in Nigeria came to an end. To date, children in parts of the

region continue to face perils, which look suspiciously like survivals from the dark days of the slave trade. A case in point would be the chain of child abductions and kidnappings, which led in 1996 to the violent explosion in Imo State, popularly known as the Otokoto Riots.

Notes

'This article was written while the author was a Visiting Fellow in African Studies, St. Anthony's College, Oxford University, England. 2 K.O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830 - 1885 (Oxford, 1956); K.O. Dike and F.I. Ekejiuba, The Aro of South-East Nigeria 1650 - 1980 ( Ibadan, 1990); J.C. Anene, Southern Nigeria in Transition 1885 - z9o6 ( Cambridge, 1966); E.J. Alagoa , A History of the Niger Delta (Ibadan, 1972); G.I. Jones, Trading States of the Oil Rivers (Oxford, 1963); T.N. Tamuno, The Evolution of the Nigerian State : The Southern Phase 1861 -1914 (London, 1972); K.K. Nair, Politics and Society in South Eastern Nigeria 1841 - 1906 (London, 1972); A.J.H. Latham, Old Calabari6oo - 189z: The Impact of International Economy upon a traditional Society (Oxford, 1973); S.J. Cookey, King Jaja of the Niger Delta: His Life and Times 1821 - 1891 (New York, 1977); W.I. Ofonagoro, Trade and

16 A. E. AFIGBO

Imperialism in Southern Nigeria (New York, 1979); M.E. Noah, Old Calabar:The City States and the Europeans

18oo - 1885 (Uyo, Nigeria, 1980); D. Northrup, D. Trade

Without Rulers: Pre-colonial Economic Development in Eastern Nigeria (Oxford, 1978); R.O. Ekundare, An Economic History of Nigeria z86o - 196o (London, 1973); J.F.A. Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria: The Making of a New Elite 1842 - 1891 (London, 1965); E.A.

Ayandele, Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria 1842 - 1914 (London, 1966); O.M. Tasie, The Missionary Enterprise in the Niger Delta 1864 - z198 (Leiden, 1978); F.K. Ekechi,

Missionary Enterprise and Rivalry in Igboland 1857 - 1914 (London, 1977).

3 V.C. Uchendu, "Slaves and Slavery in Igboland, Nigeria" in S. Meirs and I.

Kopytoff, eds. Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, (Madison, Wisconsin, 1977); Don Ohadike, "The Decline of Slavery Among the Igbo" in S. Meirs and R. Roberts, eds. The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, Wisconsin, 1988); Carolyn Brown, "Testing the Boundaries of Marginality: Twentieth Century Slavery and Emancipation Struggles in Nkanu, Igboland 1920 - 1929" Journal of African History 37 (1996).

4 A.E. Afigbo, "The Aro Expedition of 1901 - 1902: An Episode in the British

Occupation of Ibo Land" Odu, Journal of West African Studies New Series, 7 (April 1972); idem, "The Nineteenth Century Crisis of the Aro Slaving Oligarchy" Nigeria Magazine iio-Iz (1974); "The Eclipse of the Aro Slaving Oligarchy 1901-1927" Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 6/1 (December 1971). The most ambitious and sustained effort to study the slave trade among the Igbo to date is the Ph.D. thesis written for the University of Toronto in 1999 by G. Ugo Nwokeji on "The Biafran Frontier: Trade, Slaves and Aro Society 1750 - 1905" whose focus is on "the rise, expansion, composition, and consequences of the Atlantic Slave trade in the Bight of Biafra." This work is still to be published and made available to a wider audience. We are still very much in need of a study or studies of the phenomenon that will cover the entire space of the Bight and its hinterland as well as the entire span of its history from about 165o on. ' M. Perham, Native Administration in Nigeria (Oxford, 1937), 30; A. Burns, History of Nigeria (London, 1929. Revised edition, 1978), 215. 6 T.F. Buxton, The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1939), 301-2. 7 0. Ikime, Merchant Prince of the Niger Delta (Ibadan, 1968), 188; Despatch No. 394 of 25 August 1902 to C.O. in C.S.O. 1/13, Southern Nigeria Despatches to the Colonial Office (C.O.).

8 C.W. Newbury, British Policy Towards West Africa: Select Documents 1875 - 1914 (Oxford, 1971), 340-343. 9 See, for instance, the treaty with Opobo included as Appendix C in J.C. Anene, Southern Nigeria in Transition. All these treaties, in any case all those from the

eighteen-eighties on, took the same form. So See Regulations dated i September and signed by Acting Consul G.F. Annesley in F.O. 84/2020, Despatches to the Foreign Office (F.O.) from the Oil Rivers Protectorate. " See Report on the Oil Rivers District, West Coast of Africa, by H.H. Johnston, enclosed in Despatch dated I December i888 in F.O. 84/1882.

BRITAIN AND THE HYDRA IN THE BIGHT OF BENIN 17

" See Despatch of 7 July i901 from Sir Ralph Moor in C.O. 52o/12, Despatches from Protectorate of Southern Nigeria to the Colonial Office (C.O.); see also Despatch No.

421 of 6 May 1896 from Ralph Moor in F.O.2/Ioi ~3 See the Annual Report of the Niger Coast Protectorate for 1894-1895 enclosed in Confidential 219 of 20o August 1895 in F.O.2/84. 14 Despatch No. 298 of 17.12.1895 from Claude MacDonald in F.O. 2/85; see also

Despatch dated 7 July 1901 from Moor in C.O.52o/i2, Southern Nigeria Despatches to the Colonial Office. '~ See the Despatch dated 7 July 1901 in C.O.52o/iz, Southern Nigeria Despatches to the Colonial Office. 16 Conf. No.219 of 2o August 1895 with the Annual Report for 1894 - 1895 in F.O. 2/84, Despatches to the Foreign Office from the Oil Rivers Protectorate. 17 See Despatch No. 298 of 17.12.95 from Claude MacDonald in F.O. 2/85, Despatches from the Niger Coast Protectorate to the Foreign Office. '8 See Note 16 above. 19 J.C. Anene, Southern Nigeria in Transition, II4; H.S. Wilson, The Imperial Experience in Africa South of the Sahara since 1870 (Minneapolis, 1977), 122 ff.

20 Anene, Southern Nigeria in Transition, Chapter III; Ikime, Merchant Prince of the

Niger Delta, 68. 2' See Annual Report for the year 1894-95 enclosed in Despatch Conf. 219 of 20 August 1895 in F.O. 2/84, Despatches from the Niger Coast Protectorate to F.O. 22 See Despatch No. 50 of 14.6.1896 from R. Moor in F.O.2/roi, Despatches to the

Foreign Office from the Niger Coast Protectorate; see also Anene, Southern Nigeria in

Transition, 184. 23 See Report on the Oil Rivers District by H.H.Johnston, enclosed in Despatch of i December i888 in F.O. 84/1882, Despatches to the Foreign Office from the Oil Rivers

Protectorate; see also Despatch No. 394 of 25 August 1902oz from Moor to C.O. in

C.S.O.I/13, Southern Nigeria Despatches to C.O.

24 See Annual Report for 1894-95 enclosed in Despatch No. Conf. 219 of 20o August 1895 in F.O. 2/84, Despatches from the Niger Coast Protectorate to F.O. 25 P.A. Talbot, Peoples of Southern Nigeria (Oxford, 1926), 4 Volumes. See Vol. I, 213- 217, 230, 236-237, 257 ff.

26 See Despatch No. 9 of 7 July 901o from Ralph Moor in C.O. 52zo/z, Despatches to the Colonial Office from the Southern Nigeria Protectorate. 27 Ayandele, Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria; idem, Nigerian Historical Studies (London, 1979), especially Chapter 8 on "The Collapse of Pagandom in Igboland," 167-191; Ekechi, Missionary Enterprise and Rivalry. The word churchianity is generally used in Nigeria to capture the fact that apart from knowing they should go to church

every Sunday, the initial droves of new converts had no real grasp of the principles and practices of Christianity. 28 Afigbo, "The Eclipse of the Aro Slaving Oligarchy," 3-24. 29 See Report by A.B. Harcourt dated 03.o3.o4 enclosed in Despatch No. 154 of II.o4.o4 in C.O. 520/24, Despatches from the Southern Nigeria Protectorate to C.O.

18 A. E. AFIGBO

30 Conf. No.9/2/33 of 5 January 1934 by Major J.W.Garden, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Slave Dealing Report for December 1933 in the file C.I36 Child Stealing RivProf 2/1/24, at the National Archives, Enugu. 3~ C.S.O. No. 28994: Slave Dealing and Child Stealing, Southern Provinces, i. See the Extract from the Annual Report, Owerri Province 1932. 3z C.S.O. No. 28994 Slave Dealing and Child Stealing. See Strictly Confidential

S.P.9994/I7 of 23.11.33 from the Secretary, Southern Provinces, Enugu, to Chief Secretary to Government, Lagos. 33 See Note 3I above. 34 Perham, Native Administration in Nigeria, 28. 31 C.S.O. 28994: Slave Dealing and Child Stealing, Southern Provinces, 54-66.