Autograph note written to William Turner by Eyamba V
About the Project
This letter was written by King Eyamba V to William Turner. King Eyamba ruled over the township of Duke in the city-state of Old Calabar, now Calabar, Nigeria. 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 Eyamba 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 Eyamba and other rulers in exchange for palm oil, sugar, etc. Help us transcribe this important letter documenting Eyamba V’s efforts to find new business ventures with Europeans once slavery was abolished.
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