Letter to William Turner from Eyo Honesty II

About the Project

This letter was written by King Eyo Honesty II in Old Calabar, Nigeria to Captain William Turner in Liverpool, England. Between 1720 and 1830 over one million enslaved men and women were forced onto British slave ships based in Old Calabar. Although the British had banned the slave trade in 1808, slavery was not banned in all British territories until 1833, and traders from other nations continued to purchase slaves at Calabar until 1842. This letter dates from the historically important moment when the two most prominent Efik kings at Calabar, Eyo Honesty II and Eyamaba V, gave-up their trading monopoly over the supply of slaves captured in the interior, and replaced it with a plantation system for the cultivation of palm oil. By the 1840s Calabar had become the center for the export of palm oil to industrial Britain. This letter documents various aspects of the trading partnership and the friendship between Turner and the Old Calabar kings. In particular, the informal “trust trade” system derived from the slave trading days, whereby Turner and other European traders traded manufactured goods (rum in particular) to Eyo Honesty and other rulers in exchange for palm oil, sugar, etc. Help us transcribe this important letter documenting Eyo Honesty II’s efforts to find new business ventures with Europeans once slavery was abolished.

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