The Scottish doctor William Balfour Baikie led the first expedition up the Rivers Niger and Benue in which not a single European succumbed to malaria. The expedition was sent out in 1854 by a previous explorer, Macgregor Laird, who was supported by the British Government. There were 12 Europeans, and 54 “persons of colour” on... Continue Reading →

On the 3rd of December 1795 the Scottish explorer Mungo Park left the town of Pisania in the Gambia with a few African attendants to begin his journey to locate the River Niger. He had traveled but a few miles on his donkey, when a number of local people came running up and stopped his... Continue Reading →

In the age of West African exploration, the River Niger and the region around it devoured white men with unseemly relish. In the late 18th and early 19th century, the British sent out a number of expeditions to map the course of the mighty river, most of which ended predictably. In 1825, when Royal Navy... Continue Reading →

Winston Churchill’s famous WW II speech, “We shall fight on the beaches…we shall fight in the fields and in the streets…” was often quoted by the Igbo-speaking people of Eastern Nigeria at the beginning of the civil war in Nigeria in 1967 (also known as the Biafran War).  We secessionist Igbos had just been invaded... Continue Reading →

In the last two posts, we saw that free West Africans visited Europe throughout the centuries of the slave trade. Some were sent as ambassadors by rulers, others went as merchants looking to negotiate trade, some went as students, and yet others just went to see what Europe was like. An obvious question—or series of... Continue Reading →

William Ansah Sessarakoo, nicknamed “Cupid,” was a huge celebrity in London. His name was constantly in the newspapers and news magazines, and he was in great demand for gatherings, invited everywhere in high society. Poetry and plays were written about him, and he had been presented at court. All the ladies of fashion knew his... Continue Reading →

Dom Domingos, a prince of Warri in southern Nigeria, traveled to Portugal to spend 8 years studying in Lisbon—and a total of 10 years in Portugal—before marrying a Portuguese noblewoman and returning to his home in West Africa. His father the Olu—meaning King—Sebastian of Warri, had sent him to Portugal to study the mysterious ways... Continue Reading →

In his chapter on the effects of the Atlantic slave trade, Walter Rodney, author of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, engages in the typical sleight of hand found in much of the book. He admits that, with minor exceptions, what happened between Africans and Europeans on the coast was trade. In other words Africans traded slaves for... Continue Reading →

Many Africans around the world today refuse to believe that coastal Africans were not only active partners and participants with Europeans in the Atlantic Slave Trade, but actually controlled the trade on the coast and the interior. I have been involved in a number of African web forum debates where people have stoutly insisted that... Continue Reading →

Sometime around 1883, in my ancestral home of Eke some miles east of the River Niger in Nigeria, the widow Chinazungwa Ijeonyeabo, was brought before the terrible oracle of Ani Amankwo for judgement. She was one of the four wives of Ozo Omulu Onwushi the wealthy farmer who had died a few years earlier. She... Continue Reading →