Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Map of the Bight of Biafra and Its Hinterland
- Preface
- Foreword by Paul E. Lovejoy
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Aro in the Atlantic Context: Expansion and Shifts, 1600s–1807
- 3 The Trade Diaspora in Regional Context: Aro Commercial Organization in the Era of Expansion, 1740–1850
- 4 Culture Formation in the Trading Frontier, c. 1740 to c. 1850
- 5 Household and Market Persons: Deportees and Society, c. 1740–c. 1850
- 6 The Slave Trade, Gender, and Culture
- 7 Cultural and Economic Aftershocks
- 8 Summary and Conclusions
- Notes on Sources
- Sources Cited
- Index
2 - The Aro in the Atlantic Context: Expansion and Shifts, 1600s–1807
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Map of the Bight of Biafra and Its Hinterland
- Preface
- Foreword by Paul E. Lovejoy
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Aro in the Atlantic Context: Expansion and Shifts, 1600s–1807
- 3 The Trade Diaspora in Regional Context: Aro Commercial Organization in the Era of Expansion, 1740–1850
- 4 Culture Formation in the Trading Frontier, c. 1740 to c. 1850
- 5 Household and Market Persons: Deportees and Society, c. 1740–c. 1850
- 6 The Slave Trade, Gender, and Culture
- 7 Cultural and Economic Aftershocks
- 8 Summary and Conclusions
- Notes on Sources
- Sources Cited
- Index
Summary
The dramatic rise of the slave trade in the Bight of Biafra during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was remarkable, notwithstanding the dense population of the region's hinterland. Of all the captive-exporting regions of Atlantic Africa, Euro-American buyers had the least incentive to trade in the Bight of Biafra. Its harbors were apparently the most unpleasant, discouraging Euro-American slavers from building permanent bases. The mortality rates of captives from the region were significantly higher than other African regions – 18.3 percent, compared to 10.8 percent among captives from all other regions combined. In the Americas, Euro-American slavers got lower prices for captives from Biafra than from any other African region. The region supplied the largest proportion of females in a trade that placed a premium on males. During the seventeenth century, when the proportion of females embarked on African ports was at its highest, only the Bight of Biafra actually sent more females than males to the Americas – 50.6 percent as opposed to the African average of 41.5 percent (Table 6.1). That the region's slave trade experienced rapid expansion after 1650 despite the aforementioned impediments is attributable, at least in part, to its ability to deliver captives quickly and efficiently during the sugar revolution in the Americas.
The outlines of the process by which the Aro attained dominance of the inland Bight of Biafra trading system that fed the region's ports are clear enough, but linking the process to oscillations in the Biafra Atlantic trade and working out its basic chronology are another matter.
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- The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of BiafraAn African Society in the Atlantic World, pp. 22 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010