|
|
|
Two Princes of Calabar: An Atlantic Odyssey from Slavery to Freedom
Randy J. Sparks
| IN 1767,
English traders captured and sold into slavery Little Ephraim Robin
John and Ancona Robin Robin John, young members of one of the ruling
families of Old Calabar, a major slave trading port in the Bight
of Biafra. Parts of their remarkable story have been known since
the eighteenth century and have been mentioned briefly by a few
scholars in the field. What has been previously unknown to scholars
is the existence of a series of letters written by the young princes
themselves, tucked away in the papers of Charles Wesley. These rare
documents are among the earliest records from enslaved Africans
in their own hand and make it possible to document their story in
almost every detail. In many ways the young men and their odyssey
from slavery to freedom is so exceptional that it might appear to
have little relevance to the larger history of the slave trade in
the eighteenth century. Were it not for the letters and the wealth
of detail they provide—details that can be fully documented through
the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database—the truth of their picaresque
tale might be called into question. Though clearly unusual, the
young men's strange odyssey offers insight into a complex world
that historians are only beginning to understand, the transracial
Atlantic community of the eighteenth century. As individuals they
represent a group that historian Ira Berlin identified as "Atlantic
creoles," Africans who lived in a West African coastal community
and who had acquired European languages and culture and a thorough
understanding of the commercial links between their homeland and
the slave traders.1
More specifically, they belonged to an important and under-studied
group of Atlantic creoles; they were slave traders and connected
by long-standing business and personal ties to other slave traders
in Africa and England. |
1 |
| Through
their eyes, often through their own words, their unfamiliar world
begins to reemerge. The most innovative work on the eighteenth-century
transatlantic community has focused on the Portuguese slave trade
where a long and extensive contact created close commercial, cultural,
and intellectual exchange between the Portuguese and Africans in
West Africa and Brazil.2
The experience of the Robin Johns offers an opportunity to explore
these networks as they existed between the English and West Africans,
particularly in Old Calabar, at a crucial stage in the development
and consolidation of pan-Atlantic trade. Their case also serves
as a reminder that the Atlantic community has a long history, that
the African diaspora has been "created and re-created" over several
centuries, and that this community has a chronology and a particularity
that scholars are only now beginning to articulate.3
In addition, their experience highlights an important aspect of
slavery: the efforts of enslaved Africans to free themselves. The
difficulties and successes the Robin Johns encountered suggest that
Atlantic creoles were in a far better position to achieve freedom
than Africans without their skills and cosmopolitan worldview.
|
. . . |
There are about 13616 more words in this article.
Please log in (or, if you are not yet an
authorized user, please go to the
User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
|
