Calabar

Calabar stands among the rivers and creeks of the Cross River estuary, where the Efik built trading settlements in reach of ships from the Atlantic. Known to Europeans as Old Calabar, its communities included Creek Town, Old Town and Duke Town. The port became a major outlet for captives taken from the interior, and its prosperity was closely bound to the Atlantic slave trade. Efik merchant families traded with ships anchored in the river, drawing on connections that extended through the surrounding country and across the ocean.

Efik merchants and European captains competed and bargained for control of this commerce. In 1767 a dispute between trading communities ended in a massacre when British slave-ship crews intervened against Old Town. The struggle strengthened rival families, including merchants of Creek Town and Duke Town. Among the latter was Antera Duke, whose surviving diary records trade, ceremonies and daily life in the late eighteenth century.

Britain prohibited its own slave trade in 1807, but ships of other nations continued to visit the coast. In 1815 the British naval vessel HMS Comus entered Duke Town and seized seven Spanish and Portuguese slave ships. The traffic in enslaved people had already connected Calabar to distant Atlantic societies, at terrible human cost to the people forced aboard those vessels.