Sundiata, Ibrahim. From Slaving to Neoslavery: The Bight of Biafra and Fernando Po in the Era of...

From Slaving to Neoslavery

The Bight of Biafra and Fernando Po in the Era of Abolition, 1827-1930

Ibrahim Kt:_undiata

The University of Wisconsin Press

CONTENTS

Maps and Figures Preface

Introduction

Chapter One The Island Background

Indigenous Origins and Society Aborted Slaving

Chapter Two Aborted Antislaving

The Genesis of an Antislaving Base Establishment The Question of Impact The Disease Factor

· Chapter Three Spain in the Bight

Fernando Po in Antislaving Diplomacy Spain and Rio Muni The Development Decade, 1858-1868 The Cubans in Africa Colonial Torpor

Chapter Four Trade and Politics

The Colonial Nucleus Company Versus Peasant Development The Inculcation of Values Racism and Competition

Chapter Five Islanders and Interlopers

Society and Change "Trading in Boobe"

vii

ix xi

3

9 13 17

21 22 25 27 34

38 39 45 47 50 54

56 56 61 65 68

74 75 82

viii

Chapter Six The Cocoa Economy

The Black Planters The Spanish Presence Femandinos: Continuity and Change The Problematic of Black Enterprise

Chapter Seven The Search for Labor

Slavery and Neoslavery Recruitment: Rio Muni Recruitment: Cameroon Recruitment: The Kru Labor Abuse and the British Labor Abuse and the African Farmers Labor Agreements, 1914-1930

Chapter Eight Creole Culture and Change

The Protestant Paradigm Life-Style Hispanicization

Chapter Nine The Bubi: Acculturation and Resistance

The Attack on Tradition The Bubi and the Labor Question Instruments and Elements of Change

Epilogue A "Model" Colony The Creation of the "Model" Colony

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Contents

90 92

101 111 115

119 119 122 124 126 130 137 140

146 146 149 152

160 164 167 172

177 177 178

187

190

224

245

MAPS AND FIGURES

Maps

1.1 The Biafran Region 5.1 Fernando Po in 1841 6.1 Fernando Po Plantation Locations, c. 1913 10.1 Land Distribution Between Social Categories, 1941

Figures

2.1 Slave Ship Captures, 1825-1839 6.1 Recorded Cocoa Production and Exports, 1899-1930

ix

11 76

112 181

29 107

PREFACE

This work concerns a portion of Equatorial Guinea, one of the world's most isolated countries. During my first visit twenty-five years ago, I was placed under house arrest and my research destroyed.

This book is the reconstruction and fruition of that research. It has involved travels in Great Britain, Spain, and the United States. Most rewardingly, it took me back to Equatorial Guinea. Much had changed; much had not. Access to information was easier. However, many persons who had been living repositories of history were dead. I mourn their deaths both as a closing off of historical memory and as the loss of kind and fascinating interlocutors.

Hopefully this work will justify its long gestation. I wish to thank all of those colleagues who have made it possible. In Boston Patrick Manning and David Northrup made excellent suggestions and criticisms. Gwendolyn M. Hall, a friend and an historian of encyclopedic scope, read the manuscript early on and made greatly appreciated suggestions. I am also very thankful for the information and feedback provided by Gervase Clarence-Smith, Teresa Pereira Rodriguez, Ralph Austen, David Eltis, Cord Jakobeit, Daniel Headrick, Max Liniger-Goumaz, and Gonzalo Sanz Casas. In Equatorial Guinea Samuel Ebuka and Trinidad Morgades provided friendship and orientation, as did the late Constantino Ochaga Nve Bengobesama. My oral informants, many of whom have now passed on, were exemplars of courage in the face of adversity. I thank them all, especially the late Abigail Mehile, Fernanda Broderick and Edward Barleycorn.

There are many scholars whose work has inspired this project, most notably Jan Vansina. In a different vein, the same could be said of the work of Philip Curtin, who mentioned the importance of Fernando Po more than a generation ago. At the level of moral support, this work could not have

XI

xii Preface

been completed without the good wishes and faith of Betsy Elderedge and David Plank.

I thank the University of Wisconsin Press, which has seen this long process to fruition. I am particularly grateful to Raphael Kadushin of the press and his staff. The manuscript itself was prepared by Susan C. Isaacs, who saw it go through many changes. G. Patton Wright served as proofreader and did an excellent job of picking his way through a welter of languages and styles. The translations in the work are my own. I thank John Kraman, my graduate assistant, who was indefatigable. Because of his efforts and those of my other helpers, any errors of analysis or fact are entirely my own.

From Slaving to Neoslavery

Introduction

In the 1960s Fernando Po (present-day Bioko), an African island larger than Zanzibar or Mauritius, was a model of colonial development. A plantation system based on cocoa and coffee cultivation benefited both European capital and indigenous cash crop farmers. In 1960 exports from Spanish Guinea, of which Fernando Po was the economic mainstay, were the highest per capita in Africa ($135). Six years later the colony was the fifth largest African cocoa producer, after the much larger territories of Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Cameroon. Literacy was over 80 percent, and per capita government expenditure was higher for the whole of Spanish Guinea than it was in Spain itself. 1 · ·

Fernando Po is the largest of a series of islands in the Gulf of Guinea, the majority of which have been part of the world economy since the fifteenth century. They gained importance as fifteenth-century European sugar growing shifted from the Mediterranean to Madeira and then to the West African coast. As Fernand Braude! noted, "the discovery of the Cape Verde islands in 1455, and of Fernando Po and Sao Tome in 1471 ... brought into being a coherent economic zone, based essentially on trade in ivory, malaguetta [pepper] ... gold dust ... and the slave trade. "2 By the early sixteenth century Sao Tome was the world's largest sugar plantation economy. It provided the model for developments in Brazil, the Caribb.ean, and, ultimately, the American South. 3

3

4 Introduction

Remarkably, Fernando Po stood outside these developments. When compared with the other Guinea Islands, it appeared to be a "developmental failure." In spite of volcanic soils suitable for plantation agriculture, the territory entered the world economy only in the late nineteenth century. European colonization attempts in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries foundered. The indigenous people, the Bantu-speaking Bubi, remained unconquered by European imperialism until the opening of the twentieth century. This delay resulted both from their political and cultural resistance to colonization and from difficulties created by the physical environment in which they live.

On Fernando Po, as elsewhere, ecology played a momentous historical role in determining the fate of European colonizing attempts. For example, Walter Rodney has pointed out that sugar plantation agriculture and settlement in Guyana were, in fundamental ways, constrained by the physical environment.4 Of the Americas in general, Marvin Harris notes that demography and epidemiology influence landholding patterns, patterns of racial intermixing, methods of social control, and the general open or closed nature of labor systems. 5 Philip Curtin has shown that tracking the movement of European administrators and landowners to the tropics cannot avoid the question of epidemiological costs. 6

Unfortunately, little discussion has focused on African islands. Yet it is obvious that these territories, so important from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, were prime examples of intercontinental migration and epidemiological impact. Fernando Po's history argues against any "teleological" explanation of the movement of capital into new areas. Capital, like nature, may abhor a vacuum, but it is constrained by material conditions. Although some imperialists argued that Fernando Po must be developed simply because it was "there," European economic exploitation was restrained by a plethora of environmental factors. Sleeping sickness, malaria, and other tropical diseases are still, or have been, present on the island. It shares with the rest of West and Equatorial Africa the prevalence of falciparum malaria and trypanosomiasis. These diseases, along with yellow fever, have had a detectable, but differential impact on settlement. Trypanosomiasis was a continuing problem for the African population; malaria has been of most concern to would-be European colonizers.

As late as 1910 Sir Harry Johnston remarked that Fernando Po "is one of the most beautiful islands in the whole world, yet although it has no great tracts of marsh, [it] is nevertheless very unhealthy for Europeans in the coast districts. "7 He estimated that.its undercolonized state would soon pass away: "Btelna what a successful, healthy, prosperous European colony has grown

Introduction 5

up under the Portuguese on the not far distant island of Sao Thome, there is no reason why, under an energetic Spanish administration, a similar fate should not be in store for Fernando Po." Thirty-one years later a: spokesman for the Franco regime expressed a similar hope and, at the same time, acknowledged the force of the environment: "The Portuguese, blood of our blood, bear centuries of adaptation on Sao Tome and Principe, neighbors of Fernando Po and Annob6n. There is no tabu, nor any racial or climatic impossibility, which, by its existence, would mean our expulsion as a colonizing country. "8 However, it was only in the post-World War II period, when epidemiological impediments had been overcome, that this hope became a full reality.

Fernando Po's experience speaks to the larger issues of overseas expansion and the creation of plantation economies in the tropics. The island's pre-nineteenth-century history is not the history of alien colonization. Rather, it is the story of the repulse of that colonization by the indigenes and the environment. The territory reminds us that ecology is more than just the mise-en-scene of the historical drama; it can, under certain circumstances, determine the pace of the drama's unfolding or, whether the drama will take place at all.

The history of the big island in the Bight calls for a broader and deeper examination of the general role of ecology in intracontinental and intercontinental migration. European plans to employ Asian, Arab, and AfroCaribbean labor in the Bight were not consistently followed through, in part because of the disease factor. Obviously, this factor is not confined to the Bight of Biafra, although its salience there was greater than elsewhere in Africa. In the 1860s, a German anthropologist opined that "in ... Fernando Po and Zanzibar aliens could neither live nor become acclimated, whilst the natives enjoy good health. "9 Of course, in the comparative case of Zanzibar, nineteenth-century immigrants from the Arabian peninsula did, over time, become acclimated. However, newcomers from Asia did not enter without paying an epidemiological price. 10 As Zanzibar colonial medical reports indicate, alien settlement and residence were very much

. ilfccted by disease. 11 For instance, hyperendemic malaria had a clearly · visible differential impact on the settlement patterns and viability of various .;191a~u'"''u groups. Writing of the East African island, Frederick Cooper has

the role of hegemonic ideology, world markets, and praedial labor ,., •. "'"'"'" in molding island plantation systems. 12 To the resistance of labor

be added the resistance and interaction of the environment itself. ·After the 1820s permanent alien settlement did, in spite of epidemiological

mpedl:meJilts, become implanted on Fernando Po and increasingly impinged

6 Introduction

on the Bubi. The changes undergone by the islanders in the nineteenth century raise a number of broad questions and provide one scenario for Bantu state-formation. On Fernando Po it is possible to see the forces impelling socio-political change, especially those contributing to the rise of central political institutions. Increased trade, principally in palm oil, and pressure from outside groups led to the creation of a paramount authority over the more than twenty-five political units on the island. At the same time, contact with outsiders brought new diseases, followed by precipitous population decline.

In the early nineteenth century the most persistent outsiders were the British. For the twenty years following 1821 Fernando Po was the cynosure of their interest in Niger Delta region. Some saw it as the future emporium of West Africa, the "free" labor antipode of Zanzibar. Britishers as diverse as the parliamentary abolitionist Thomas Powell Buxton and the proslavery geographer James MacQueen proclaimed the island essential to antislaving or to commercial success in Africa. The latter urged his compatriots to "Plant the British standard on the Island of Socotra [in the Indian Ocean]-and upon the Island of Fernando Po-and inland upon the banks of the Niger, and then we may say Asia and Africa-for all their productions and wants-are under our control." 13 The development of a British antislaving base in the years from 1827 to 1835 was the partial fruition of this idea. The Buxton-inspired Niger expedition of 1841 used the island as the launch site for a grand, but unsuccessful, attempt at the "civilization" of the African interior. A few years later the island was the focus of a Jamaican colonization scheme, and in the earlY. 1850s Edward Jones, an African-American missionary from South Carolina, envisioned it as the gateway for evangelization of the region east of the Niger Delta.

Before and after the British, other Europeans also attempted to settle on Fernando Po. Spain laid claim to the island in 1778, but an attempt to establish a slaving base ended in failure in 1781. For most of the early nineteenth century there was no Spanish representative, and Madrid thought of selling the island to Britain. A spasm of colonial activity occurred in the 1860s when Fernando Po received approximately six hundred Cuban immigrants as part of an unsuccessful colonization scheme. After 1868 Spain kept its claim, but maintained only a minimal administration. Metropolitan interest increased again in the twentieth century, and the Bubi were brought under Spanish control in 1904. In the following decade

. metropolitan· planters and commercial interests entered the colony in increasing numbers. Cocoa and coffee production increased over 100 percent between 1910 and 1925, and by 1930 Europeans were economically

Introduction 7

dominant. 14 The impact of this "development" on the Bubi was devastating. In 1912 they numbered only around 6,800 or 54 percent of the population. 15

By 1936 they accounted for only 36 percent of the population. 16 Like the Wahadimu on Zanzibar, they had been pushed into a marginal position.

Unlike Zanzibar or the Mascarenes, nineteenth-century Fernando Po was not a classic slave plantation economy managed by non-Africans. Outside labor and managers both came, in the main, from African societies on the West African coast. A perdurable legacy of the British occupation was the creation of an African settler population largely descended from recaptured slaves. By 1830 these mostly Igbo freedpeople and their liberators constituted the largest British establishment in the Bights of Benin and Biafra region. To the original recaptured slaves there were later added immigrants from Sierra Leone and elsewhere on the coast. Gradually, they coalesced into a community known as "Fernandino." By the 1840s the settlers were already engaged in the palm oil trade with the Bubi. By the 1880s many were prosperous cocoa farmers who employed Mende and Kru migrant labor. Fernando Po, against all expectations and stereotypes showed "that," in the· words of Christopher Fyfe, "given suitable conditions, [Western-educated Africans] could prosper in agriculture. "17 The island was a magnet for persons seeking an outlet for their capital or enterprise. Many succeeded in activities they found difficult or closed in British West Africa.

Using Fernando Po as an example, Richard Burton asked in the 1860s whether or not the world had "been sufficiently cleared to dispense with forced labor. "18 Indeed, greater inputs of coerced labor and capital would have been needed to exploit the island as successfully as nineteenth-century Silo Tome, Principe, or Zanzibar. As it was, labor tended to shift, over time, toward "conditions analogous to slavery." Given the difficulty of procuring willing wage labor, employers tried to bind workers to the island. Recently Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts have observed that "slavery in Africa sometimes ended suddenly, causing widespread disruption, and sometimes petered out with apparently minimal repercussions. "19 In the case of Fernando Po, coerced labor linked to traditional slaving networks petered out with maximal repercussions. Wage labor has been present since the early nineteenth century, but has failed to overcome the objective circumstances which led to attempts to tie workers to plantations. The failure of Fernando Po and its neighbors to produce a self-replicating population created policies which made the distinction between slave and contract worker at times no more than nominal. One outcome of this situation was a "slavery" scandal in 1929. On the largest of the Guinea Islands the lack of a labor catchment area and a precipitous population decline raised, and

8 Introduction

continue to raise, serious problems for those intending to impose the plantation model.

We must avoid seeing "slavery," in and of itself, as necessarily incompatible with European imperialism in all areas of Africa after the Scramble. On the contrary, in the Gulf of Guinea, the triumph of British-imposed abolition and emancipation coincided with the increasing exploitation of the worker and the tying of the laborer to the plantation. The development of various forms of forced labor and slavery was not linear, but fluctuated with the intensity of economic activity. The introduction of coffee and cocoa increased the value of bound workers and emphasized their role as producers rather than as dependents. Far from collapsing, traditional slaving networks interdigitated with the new traffic in "contract laborers." And, it must be remembered, these plantation economies were, or were to become, among the most productive in colonial Africa.

Chapter 1

The Island Background

Jan Vansina notes that "the establishment of the English at Clarence on Bioko in 1827, and of the French on the Gabon Estuary in 1839 ... launched a direct assault on the western Bantu worldview. "1 This is the history of that first assault and its agents, African and European. It is a story of settlement and labor. What began in the 1820s was finally to result in the marginalization of Fernando Po's indigenous population and the creation of a plantation economy dependent on numbers of imported African laborers.

Before the third decade of the nineteenth century, Fernando Po, unlike its neighbors, was largely unknown to outsiders. The largest Guinea Island is forty-four miles long from northeast to southwest and measures twenty-two miles across. At its nearest point, the island lies approximately twenty miles from the African mainland. Its mountainous relief is formidable. In essence, Fernando Po is the steep peak of a submerged volcano. The group of islands to which it belongs is basaltic and rests on a seabed platform. Over time the platform has sunk, causing the islands to dip to the southwest. This slippage is evident on Fernando Po, where the southern coast drops abruptly into the sea. The island was, at one time, a peninsula of the mountainous and volcanic Cameroon region. At some distant time, during a seismic disturbance, the ocean broke in and separated the island from the mainland. A continuous submerged ledge, about thirty miles in breadth and lying at a depth of from 200 to 290 feet, connects the island with the

9

10 The Island Background

mainland. On either side of this ledge the ocean suddenly increases to a depth of six thousand feet. Between Sao Tome and Principe and the southern end of Fernando Po, the depths range from nine to ten thousand feet. 2

Fernando Po's highest peak, an extinct volcanic crater known as the Pico de Basile (formerly Pico de Santa Isabel), reaches 9,480 feet. The second most prominent is the Pico de Moka, or Biao. The third is the Grand Caldera, the semicircular remnant of an extinct volcano. Out of this last peak flows the Thdela River, the largest watercourse in the southern part of the island. In the south also lies the crater lake Moka (previously Lake Loreto), some five thousand feet above sea level. To the north of this lake, along the mountainous ridge of the island, are other smaller crater lakes.

Its rugged topography deprives Fernando Po of much easily cultivable land. Arable terrain lies around the perimeter in a band around four miles

. wide and at an average height of sixteen hundred feet above sea level. The use of small rivers and creeks is inhibited by wet and dry seasons. Normally watercourses flow only during the wet season from April to October. All the Guinea Islands are pluvial and have average yearly temperatures of 80°F. From July to September the weather is drier.

Fernando Po's interior was once heavily forested, and there are still areas of virgin forest. Vegetation varies greatly because of differences in altitude. Flora is mixed; at least 826 plant species exist. The island contains subalpine heaths, monsoon forests, subtropical forests, as well as tropical lowlands in the north. There is a marked similarity between the flora of Cameroon and that of Fernando Po. At the same time, climate and vegetation differ greatly from those of southeastern Nigeria. There are mangroves on Fernando Po, but they do not compare with the dense growths of continental wetlands. In coastal areas, there are coconut groves on the landward sides of beaches. The oil palm (Elaeis guineesis) grows in coastal regions and has been of major historical significance.

Fernando Po's neighbors, Sao Tome and Principe, are located about 275 and 125 miles, respectively, off the northern coast of Gabon (see Map 1.1). In spite of their relatively small size, they have been historically very significant and present a striking contrast to Fernando Po's comparative obscurity. The geography of the three islands, however, is quite similar. The two smaller islands have a total area of 372 square miles; Sao Tome is thirty miles long and twenty miles across. The 6,640-foot Pico de Sao Tome is the highest point on the two islands; in addition, there are ten other elevations over 3,500 feet. Principe is about ten miles from northeast to southwest, and five miles across. Like Sao Tome, which is ninety miles

The lslan.d Background 11

away, Principe has a rugged coastline. The northern portion of the island is relatively flat. Again, like Fernando Po and Sao Tome, the southern portion is craggy. Principe's highest elevation is the Pico de Principe at 3,110 feet.

The groundwork for European plantation agriculture in the Guinea Islands was laid when the Portuguese arrived on Sao Tome in 1470. Within a

Nigeria

Cameroon

French Congo

Map 1.1. The Biafran Region SOURCE: Billy Gene Hahs, "Spain and the Scramble for Africa: The 'Africanistas' and the Gulf of Guinea" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1980), p. 4.


generation the island had become an important home and entrepot for sugar plantation agriculture. This development occurred only after several obstacles had been overcome, the most serious being the peopling of the territories. Portuguese, Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Genoese were lured or forced to the islands. Over the years Portuguese convicts, designated degredados, and Jewish exiles were transported to the Bight of Biafra. More importantly for future developments, the holders of land grants were authorized to trade in slaves with the mainland. The majority of the captives brought to the island came from the kingdom of the Kongo. Female slaves were imported for the specific purpose of creating an island population.

Greater and greater numbers of slaves were exported from the mainland as the sixteenth century progressed. Four to five thousand slaves per annum were exported from Angola to Sao Tome around 1530.3 In 1548 the number was between six and seven thousand. Intra-African trade was also important business during this time. Four to six Sao Tome-based ships were busily employed in taking slaves to the Gold Coast from the kingdom of Benin in the period between 1510 and 1540.

Although sugar production boomed in the early sixteenth century, the prosperity of Sao Tome did not outlast the first one hundred years of colonization. There were many reasons for the decline of the sugar culture, including a major slave revolt in 1595. The most serious damage to the sugar industry on Sao Tome, however, was caused by competition from new areas of production, notably Brazil. By the end of the sixteenth century, sugar cultivation on the island had ebbed into insignificance and, increas~ ingly, African slaves were shipped directly to Brazil. Gradually, Principe became the more important of the two islands economically. In 1696 the Cacheu Company set up a permanent slaving base there; the company had already acquired the license (asiento) to supply slaves to Spanish America. The seat of government was eventually moved to Principe in 1753.

Why, despite their geographic similarities were Sao Tome and Principe regarded so differently from their bigger neighbor? Why did the early Portuguese avoid Fernando Po? In 1500 colonists on Sao Tome were granted trade with Fernando Po, but made little headway. On Fernando Po in 1507 a would-be sugar planter, Luis Ramos de Esquivel, saw his installations destroyed by the Bubi. Twenty-two years later, a Portuguese mariner complained to the king of Portugal that an area near the island produced malaguetta pepper, but that his countrymen neglected to exploit the trade.4

It could perhaps be argued that the Portuguese did not use Fernando Po because they already had territory enough.5 The idea of self-limiting tropical

The Island Background 13

exploitation is intriguing, but ignores the fact that the Portuguese colonized the other Biafra Islands, including relatively' small territories like Annob6n. In the early sixteenth century Sao Tome and the other Guinea Islands demonstrated that sugar growing was highly profitable. Before extensive Portuguese investment in Brazil there would have been little cause for Europeans to avoid Fernando Po because of fears of overproduction.

Certainly Sao Tome was better situated than Fernando Po for navigation under sail. It is near an "intertropical convergence zone"; winds are northerly north of it and southerly south of it. Ships sailing to Portugal from the Guinea Coast could sail southward from Sao Tome's vicinity and then use the southerly wind to carry them out into the Atlantic before taking the prevailing westerlies back to Europe. Fernando Po, however, was not convenient. Sailing between it and the mainland was difficult given sixteenth-century marine technology. In 1529 the Portuguese Crown was informed that ships were being outfitted with oars to get there from Sao Tome. Around 1600 a Dutch navigator advised ships "to pass by all the rivers which are inside the bend [of the Bight of Biafra] because there is nothing profitable to do there, and if one happens to fall behind the island of Fernando Po, one is in danger of staying there all one's life without escaping. "6 Two centuries later, the same view was voiced by British mariners using considerably more sophisticated technology. 7

The island's location was not the only possible impediment to European colonization. Unlike Sao Tome and Principe, Fernando Po was inhabited at the time it was first visited by the Portuguese. Fernando Po may have had as many as thirty thousand people at one point during the early nineteenth century. This would have given it a population density of fifteen people per square kilometer overall. In those areas available for habitation the densities would have been as high as thirty people per square kilometer. 8 For Europeans, the smaller and less mountainous islands of Sao Tome and Principe would have had the advantage of being easier to control with a limited pool of manpower.

Indigenous Origins and Society

We should remember that reconstructing the past from the "anthropological present" is always fraught with difficulties. In Africa this is perhaps nowhere more true than on Fernando Po where an eventual tide of European cultural imperialism engulfed the inhabitants, obscuring old values and traditions. For the Bubi, one of the most isolated peoples of Bantu Africa,


change in the nineteenth century was momentous. During that time they entered the palm oil trade, created a central political authority, and neared · extinction. All the while, their view of themselves and their past changed radically. Unfortunately, it is only through the prism of colonial culture that we can attempt to see the lineaments of the precolonial. A further misfortune is that, due to the political exigencies of present-day Equatorial Guinea, much of what we know of Bubi culture call be obtained only by consulting the written records of outsiders; fieldwork on the island has been at a standstill for the past quarter century. 9

Would-be sixteenth-century colonizers spread the legend that it was impossible to settle Fernando Po because the Bubi poisoned the water supply. This was. an early, but incorrect, explanation of the high mortality Europeans experienced. In 1642 Antonio de Maris Carneiro, a Portuguese, said that it was impossible to land without a guide who knew the land because the indigenous people maintained no trade or other contact with outsiders. 10 At the end of the century, Willem Bosman observed: "The island of Fernando Po is inhabited by a savage and cruel sort of people, which he that deals with [them] ought not to trust." He added, "I neither can nor will say more of them." 11 A century later, when the Portuguese from Principe thought about establishing a base on Fernando Po, they commented that "language which they [i.e., the islanders] spoke was [unknown] to us Portuguese and they were only understood my means of signs .... "12

The core of the island population inhabited Fernando Po at least a millennium before the visits of the first Europeans in the late fifteenth century. The term "Bubi" was first applied to the islanders in 1821 by a British naval officer. It supposedly derives from the Bubi word for man, boobe in the north and moome in the south. The Bubi call Fernando Po Oche in the north and Oricho in the south. In the north the indigenes call themselves Bochoboche and in the south Bochoboricho. Outsiders are referred to as Bapot6. 13

Early Bantu speakers themselves arrived in Gabon between 1500 and 1000 B.C. Jan Vansina holds that Bubi culture reflects that of the Western Bantu in general at the time their migrations began. He concludes that early Western Bantu culture "was purely neolithic and the archaeological evidence must therefore relate to 'neolithic' sites, not sites from the Iron Age. "14 The Bubi are associated with a sequence of stone-using cultures: Cabonera (400-800 A.D.), Bolaopi (800-1300 A.D.), Buela (1300-1700 A.D.), and Balombe (1700-1900 A.D.). The most recent culture developed as the population of Fernando Po grew, and mountainsides were cleared and persisted


long after the introduction of metal weapons and tools by nineteenth-century African and European settlers.

Bubi origins are old and mixed; the "language cluster of Bioko" was one of the first language groups to break away from the parent Western Bantu. 1s

There are four principal Bubi dialects and various secondary ones. In some cases they are not mutually intelligible. The principal ones are found in the north, in the northeast, in Ureka in the south, and in the southeastern areas of Batete and Balacha. The latter two dialects are most different from the others. 16

The four dialects within the "language cluster of Bioko" indicate a composite population. The island's rugged terrain and the small size of incoming groups would account, in part, for the extreme fragmentation in such a confined space. From oral evidence it is obvious that some of the islanders are fairly recent arrivals. Early in the twentieth century Sir Harry Johnston thought that occasional groups of Basa, Isubu, or Bakwerri from Cameroon might have landed on the east coast of Fernando Po at various times. 17 In the 1950s the linguist Malcolm Guthrie placed the Bubi in the "Bube-Benga" group of coastal Cameroon and Rio Muni. In his classification the group included "Bube" (or Ediya), Batanga, Yasa, Kombe, and Benga. 18 Linguistically, this classification is flawed. However, very interestingly, many Bubi traditions indicate migration in the present millennium. Early in the twentieth century an ethnographer observed that "as proof of the view that the Bubi [fairly recently] came from across the sea, an oar was shown to me in one of the small villages near Ribiri, with which the ancestors were [said] to have propelled the canoes." 19 Some traditions in the north say that the population is autochthonous, while others in the south speak of fairly recent settlement.

The sheer volume and detailed quality of the migration accounts are intriguing. Those who have made attempts to systematize and synthesize them say that migration occurred in four waves, the last of which were the Batete and Bokoko Bubi. Such ~gration can be put within the context of the Great Migration of Bantu peoples in equatorial Africa. Vansina surmises, on the basis of largely linguistic evidence, that the migrants described in oral tradition were iron-using conquerors by or before the fourteenth. century. For instance, the Batete and the Bokoko in this view formed part of a highly coordinated system of conquest. The Bokok~, ~ band of warriors, were the vanguard, followed by political leaders, women, and dependents. The rearguard was made up of Batete warriors. "The military advantage of the immigrants probably lay in their use of massed spearmen, whose first lines were protected by huge shields and cuirasses,


and in their practice of fighting until the enemy surrendered without conditions, so that the victors could destroy enemy settlements and disperse their inhabitants. "20 In addition to superior organization, the new Bantu invaders would have had the advantage of iron weapons during the initial period of conquest. The newcomers superimposed themselves on the existing population and, at some point, adopted their language.

Based on traditions of origin and migration, the Bubi form several subgroups. The fundamental division is between those of the north and those of the south. The northern groups are the Baney, Basakato, and Batete; the southern are the Buebbe, Baabba, Baloketo, Babiaoma, Bareka Batete, and Bokoko. On the island groups often migrated and overlapped. For instance, the Babiaoma first resided at Concepcion on the eastern side of the island; later migrants pushed them toward San Carlos (Luba) Bay on the western littoral. The Baabba and the Baloketo migrated from the vicinity of Bilelipa on the eastern shore and extended their sway over the highest portions of the south.

During the nineteenth century this population's material culture was sparse; the most common possessions were digging sticks, canoes, conical straw hats, and short pieces of logs used as pillows. The islanders kept chickens and collected honey and palm oil. They hunted antelopes, deer, monkeys, squirrels, and other forest animals. Interestingly, fishing was a far less important source of food. Perhaps because of fears of seaborne invaders, it was practiced by only a few scattered fishing villages.

Yams were the staple crop. Men alone were allowed to eat them, and each chief participated in yam planting rituals, along with his relatives and dependents.' In addition to yams, the Bubi also grew cocoyams (malanga). They were harvested in January, when the yam crop had been consumed. Cocoyams were planted, interspersed between rows of yams, a month or two after yams were planted. Women raised the cocoayams and consumed them; men ate them only in cases of dire necessity. Once harvested, the crop was stored in piles separated by beds of dried grass. Sugar was also a major crop.

Recently, Vansina has come to the conclusion that "contrary to the typical description, the Bubi were not organized in segmentary patrilineages, did not practice matrilineal succession, had no secret societies, no formal agegrading system, and did not live just in compact villages. "21 What some have seen as matriclans, he now says, on closer examination, are villages. 22

Among the Western Bantu these were collections of Houses, that is, aggregations of kin, dependents, and wives around the person of a "Big Man." Houses were clustered into villages, whose existence was ephemeral


due to the out-migration and reorganization of Houses. A group of villages constituted a district, a unit often called a "tribe" by early travelers.23

Before the fourteenth century, Bubi political organization had developed certain novel features. · Districts disappeared before the large-scale migrations from the coast, although they were subsequently reintroduced. As elsewhere among the Western Bantu, early villages were composed of Houses, but on Fernando Po the villages were inhabited for only part of the year. The chief function of the village was as a place for the settling of disputes, and it became a small-scale version of the western Bantu district.24

House members dwelt separately in hamlets on their own lands during the major farming seasons.

Aborted Slaving

In the three centuries following the Portuguese arrival in the Bight, the Bubi and their island remained largely outside the trade networks established by Europeans. This was in spite of the fact that the Biafran region was the center of a burgeoning slave trade. The area supplied far more captives per mile of coast or square mile of economic hinterland than any other part of Africa. 25 More than a decade ago Philip Curtin suggested that after 1730 the number of slaves traded increased sharply. According to his data, from 1741 to 1750 a yearly average of 7,100 slaves was exported. This number supposedly increased to about 12,500 per annum in the 1760s and 1770s. According to this scenario, eighteenth-century slaving peaked in the last decade of the century when an average 17,400 persons was shipped per year.

Biafran slaving was probably even more important than has previously been estimated. Recently, using a wider range of sources, David Richardson has ·shown that the flow of captives from the Biafran region was much steadier· throughout the century and much greater in volume than earlier thought. For instance, Biafran slave exports were seven times larger than previously assumed by writers such as Paul Lovejoy.26 Already, in the first decade of the eighteenth century, the area embarked 23,130 slaves or 6.4 percent of the West and West-Central African total. Forty-five percent of the slaves embarked from western Africa came from the Bight of Biafra. and West-Central Africa in the period 1710-29. Instead of roughly 63,900 slaves being exported from the Biafran region in the 1740s, the new figures indicate higher numbers (i.e., 76,790 in the decade 1740-49).27 In the next decade the number rose to 106,100 or 18.2 percent of the West and West-Central African total. Overall, about 40 percent of the Africans shipped


from West Africa in British ships in the period between 1700 and 1807 were embarked from the Bight of Biafra. 28 For the period from 17 61 to 1810, the region supplied, even at Curtin's low estimate, more than one person ,in every six in the Atlantic slave trade. 29 By the late eighteenth century some previously fairly uninvolved peoples like the Duala of Cameroon were increasingly drawn into the burgeoning traffic. 30

Fernando Po stood outside these developments. A German ethnographer spoke to Bubi informants around 1916 and came to the conclusion that

[l]t is not probable that this [i.e., Portuguese slaving] happened on any great scale, or that it occurred in the form of slave robbing against single tribes or villages which had shown themselves unfriendly to the Portuguese . . . . Obviously, for the most part, as the Bubi have told me, slaving was never more than a matter of the more or less forcible abduction of single persons . . . . [Supposedly,] the whites never penetrated much farther inland than about Moka (Riabba) because the Bubi, in spite [of being armed] with wooden spears, were nevertheless too dangerous for them, because the Bubi knew the terrain and [because] the whites would be easily overpowered in the thick vegetation .... 31

One consequence of the slave trade, an unplanned one, was the establishment of maroon settlements. In the early 1780s a Spaniard observed: "It is known that the southern part of Fernando Po is inhabited by a great number of slaves, refugees from Principe and Sao Tome. These miserable creatures, whom the Portuguese used to treat with excessive rigor, today enjoy complete liberty and live in a kind of republic that is governed by its own laws and without any dependency on the part of the people of the country. "32 In the following century the Bubi still distinguished between the Potugi ("Portuguese"), descendants of maroons, and genuine Bubi, although the maroons had assimilated Bubi culture in its entirety. Insofar as Fernando Po had a role in the slave trade, it was as a provisioning station. Yams were sold to occaisonal passing slavers, and the island's produce was well known ~ for its quality.

In the late eighteenth century it did seem as if the island would, at last, be drawn fully into the orbit of the overseas slave trade. In 1765 the Portuguese noted that a group of British merchants, who traded east of the kingdom of Benin, had asked for rights on the island. In the years 1766-67 the British Chancellor of the Exchequer seriously considered funding a force. Partially as a response, in 1772, Vicente Gomes Ferreira, governor of


Principe and Sao Tome, sent his son, Manuel Gomes da Silva, to take possession, but nothing of substance came of this attempt.

In 1777 Portugal transferred Fernando Po and Annob6n to Spanish suzerainty. In April of 1778 an expedition left Montevideo bound for the Bight of Biafra. Finally, in. October of 1778, Spanish and Portuguese envoys landed on Fernando Po, and the new "owner" claimed possession. The Spanish were unaware of how the ecological conditions in the proposed new acquisition differed from those on Sao Tome and Principe. Settlement had barely commenced before it occurred to some members of the expedition that their government had been · duped. Jose de Varela y Ulloa, a frigate commander, wrote a report which outlined the situation of the new possessions. Most tellingly, he informed his superiors that the areas intended for Spanish slaving were not under Portuguese control. Simply put, "the Portuguese do not have any rights to this island [Fernando Po] save that of discovery, because they have never established themselves on it; nor have they ever conducted any commerce with its inhabitants." He further noted that "foreigners who trade on Principe have assured me that the principal village of Fernando P6o is in the northern zone and it is there that the English . . . supply themselves with provisions for the slaves that they buy in New and Old Calabar. This commerce. is done by means of iron bars, bells, knives, hooks and other trinkets with the drawback that the inhabitants do not like to see Europeans . . . . "33

In spite of misgivings, the Spaniards continued reconnoitering. In November the expedition sailed on to take possession of Annob6n, after brief stops at Sao Tome and Principe. En route the leader of the flotilla, the Conde de Argelejos, died and was replaced by Lt. Colonel Joaquin Primo de Rivera, who suffered a hostile reception from the Annobonese. The expeditionaries then sailed back to Sao Tome and, in late 1779, returned to Fernando Po, where they remained from November of 1779 to October of 1780. As time progressed, some black slaves and soldiers from the Spanish expedition deserted to the Bubi, taking weapons along with them. Heat, malaria, and the Bubi finally combined to defeat the Spanish enterprise. In September of 1780, mutiny erupted, and the entire expedition was forced to return to Sao Tome. As the Europeans fled, the Bubi sacked and burned the Spanish installations. Disillusioned with Fernando Po, the Spanish flotilla left Sao Tome for American waters in December of 1781 and arrived at Bahia, Brazil, in February of 1782. In 1783 a British expedition arrived and attempted to open trade with the Bubi, but met with no better success than the Spanish had.


In the early nineteenth century some Bubi continued to resist great involvement in external trade, whether slave or "legitimate." For instance, in 1810 an English merchant ship anchored at San Carlos (Luba) and was attacked by a group of Bubi, who then withdrew. In 1817 and 1819 the English government sent expeditions to reconnoiter the island. They did not make significant contact with the indigenes. In 1821 British expeditionaries did make contact with a black castaway from Martinique who had been on the island for more than thirty years. After appearing once, he disappeared, "perhaps prevented by the natives, from an impression that he . . . would get more than his share of knives and other articles which were given in exchange for poultry, yams, and other species of provisions. "34

The Bubi's avoidance of strangers was, no doubt, conditioned by their experience of sporadic slaving expeditions. In 1820 or 1821, for instance, Spanish traders entered into a slaving agreement with King Akwa of the Cameroons. The plan was to lure Bubi onto European ships, or, failing that, to seize a number violently. Akwa provided war canoes, and his men, along with their European confederates, raided the eastern coast of Fernando Po: "They accordingly landed well armed, but met with a stout resistance, which proved, however, unavailing; the invaders succeeded in making about 150 prisoners, whom they carried off to the West Indies, and killing as many more in the Skirmish. n35

The Bubi would seem to bear out J. D. Page's assertion that "the Europeans preferred to deal with societies which had developed monarchical governments, whose leaders had control of sufficient surpluses to make trade worthwhile. "36 This is an oversimplification, however. Certainly Europeans had little difficulty trading with the small-scale societies of eastern Nigeria. Also, servitude, especially the pawning of adulterers, existed among the Bubi. Given the fairly simple nature of the economy, however, it is doubtful that superiors could command sizable amounts of labor. Lack of a varied overseas trade, including captives, was probably more related to their limited technology and precarious demographic situation. When contact with ~ outsiders did occur in the nineteenth century, it precipitated rapid population decline.

Chapter 2

Aborted Antislaving

When nineteenth-century Britain attempted to occupy Fernando Po, its motives were far different from those of eighteenth-century Spain. The ideology of "free" wage labor was in the ascendant in industrializing England. In addition, the old slave-based South Atlantic system was seen as wasteful. The forced migration of thousands of unwilling laborers to the Americas was attacked as unnecessary. Africans, in situ, might trade enough tropical produce to obviate the need for slaving. In 1807 the British outlawed their own slaving and tried to force other powers into doing likewise. Treaties with various countries, including Spain and Portugal, gave the British navy the authority to seize foreign slavers. For instance, Spain, the soi-disant owner of Fernando Po, became a signatory to such a treaty in 1817. The binational Mixed Commission Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone, adjudicated the status and disposition of slaves ("recaptives") captured from slave ships.

Recently David Eltis has written a provocative work which comments on the inefficiency of much of this antislaving effort. Of the Bight of Biafra he says:

Measured in terms of losses inflicted per ship embarked, the impact of the navy was only slightly greater here than, say, in

21

22 Aborted Antislaving

the Bight of Benin. Most significantly the loss ratio averaged nearly 40 percent per annum in the years 1836-39 when slave exports underwent their final decline. But for the period 1821-39 the annual loss ratio explains only 6 percent of the annual variations in slave exports. And Bight of Benin ports experienced annual loss ratios of almost one third in the same period, without seeing any permanent decline in slave departures. It seems unlikely that ship losses alone brought the traffic to a close. A key event was the signing of the abolition treaties between the British and African rulers in the rivers [i.e., Niger Delta] that began in 1839 and continued into the 1840s. These, in effect, gave belligerent rights to the British if the trading states failed to abide by their terms. As Bonny and Calabar, unlike Dahomey, were well within range of the squadron's guns, a treaty here meant something more than did subsequent conventions in the lagoons of the Slave Coast to the west. 1

It is perhaps indicative of the oblivion into which Fernando Po had fallen that he makes no mention of Fernando Po, where the British maintained a

, base, at some expense, between 1827 and 1835. Since the antislaving base was more than a drawing board scheme and since it was approximately fifty miles from some slaving centers, one would assume that in the late twenties the Biafran trading states were already "well within range of the squadron's guns." British policy makers probably exercised a greater degree of rationality than Eltis gives them credit for. Whether their attempt to be more efficient succeeded is another question.

The Genesis of an Antislaving Base

The center for British antislaving activity, Freetown, was far from the Bight of Biafra. However, in the early 1820s at least 15,000 slaves were exported annually from the Biafran ports of Old Calabar and Bonny.2 The trade may have averaged about 12,500 a year in 1821-1830, with a peak of about 17,000 in 1825.3 Bonny and Old Calabar exported between 20,000 and 36,000 slaves in 1825-1826. Early in 1828 the average annual trade of the major Biafran ports was between 12,650 and 16,200.4 The annual traffic declined just over 10,000 during the period 1830-34. It rebounded and reached about 18,500 people in 1835. Subsequently, the flow of labor overseas dwindled to a trickle; it was only a few hundred a year in 1841-42. According to Eltis, slaves from the Bight of Biafra were 15.3 percent of the

Aborted Antislaving 23

total Atlantic slave trade between 1821 and 1843-some 227,000 individuals.5

The provenance of the recaptured Africans varied. British officials in Sierra Leone calculated that, in 1821-22, 42 percent of the slaves leaving Old Calabar were lbibio and 56 percent were Igbo. Two percent were of other origin. Composite numbers for the same years for Old Calabar and Bonny give 68 percent lgbo and 26 lbibio. A mid-century ethnic breakdown of Biafran recaptives in Sierra Leone gives the Igbo 46 percent, Hausa 24 percent, Cameroonian (Northwest Bantu) 18 percent, and lbibio 12 percent. 6 This breakdown probably does not accurately reflect the flow from the hinterland. Many Hausa slaves were shipped through Yorubaland and exited via the Bight of Benin. 7 Certainly most slaves recaptured by the British in the Bight of Biafra in the 1820s and 1830s were lgbo, most of whom had been captured just over 100 kilometers from their embarkation points. 8

Recaptured slaves taken to Sierra Leone often died on the thousand-mile voyage. Between 1819 and 1826, sixty-nine ships were taken before the Mixed Commission, but only four of these were taken north of Sierra Leone. The other vessels had been captured an average of 790 miles away. Seventeen of the captured ships had to sail against the wind for sixty days before reaching their destination. The passage to Sierra Leone from the Bights of Benin and Biafra could take as long as the transatlantic passage to Brazil.9 In 1827 a committee of Parliament concluded that it was "consonant to British feeling, to consider slaves as liberated from the moment of their capture by the King's ships . . . but under existing circumstances, the officers of the navy have it not in their power to alleviate . . . the sufferings of the negroes, which for a long time after capture, they are compelled to witness, and in which they too often largely participate. "10

Freetown had other drawbacks. For one, it was expensive. In 1824 the costs of its administration reached £95,000, an increase of 300 percent in ten years. 11 Another demerit was the climate. Europeans stationed there had the highest death rates of any stationed on the African coast. For Europeans the death rate was more than 400 per thousand per annum. 12 In May of 1822 one of the Spanish commissioners requested the removal of the court for health reasons. Conditions among recaptives also caused concern; the freed population did not replicate itself. In 1826, after more than thirty years' of immigration, the total number of inhabitants of Freetown was only 13,000. 13

Fernando Po presented a seemingly viable alternative to Sierra Leone. In 1821 a naval officer thought that "[with] a very trifling establishment ...


and a small depot for the supply of His Magesty's cruizers in the neighboring Bights of Biafra and Benin, the blockade of rivers in the Bights might be carried on without any intermission, because the river Old Calabar would require to be actually visited only once in three or four weeks. "14 In 1826 the commander of the West Africa squadron offered to remain in Africa and take charge of an establishment on Fernando Po, if Parliament would permit.

Medical opinion provided an additional argument in favor of removal from Sierra Leone. The state of knowledge pointed to Fernando Po as a "natural hospital for the low and marshy shores of the mainland. "15 The causes of malarial fevers were unknown, but various theories connected such diseases with decaying vegetable matter and swamps. Supposedly altitude or passage over water, or both, could destroy the effects of such "miasmas." In 1830 a Parliamentary committee concluded "that it [Fernando Po] is not more unhealthy than either the Gambia, Sierra Leone, or Cape Coast; and that when the neighbouring land shall be entirely cleared of Wood, there is reason to suppose that it will prove more healthy than any of the Settlements yet made on the Coast. "16

A clinching argument was "Legitimate Commerce," especially palm oil. Oil imports to Britain from West Africa reached 1,000 tons in 1810. 17

Prices reached a record high in the teens (£60 per ton in Liverpool in 1818, as compared to £30 in 1831). 18 Importantly, Fernando Po was near the major centers of production. By contrast, the area near Sierra Leone was commercially insignificant. In 1828, 4,461 hundredweight (cwt) of oil was imported from the Sierra Leonean and Gambian region; 7,350 cwt from the Gold Coast; and 114,335 cwt "southward from the River Volta, including Fernando Po. "19 Britishers G. A. Robertson, W. Hutton, and James MacQueen wrote to London urging occupation for commercial reasons. 20 In Robertson's view, the Oil Rivers were the navigable mouths of the Niger and, thus, philanthropy and profit dictated occupation of Fernando Po. Since, in his belief, Europeans could not survive on the coast, the big island in the Bight would serve as a permanent entrepot for the exchange of goods, including palm oil, with coastal African middlemen.

MacQueen, a geographer and ex-slave overseer in the West Indies, also concluded that the Oil Rivers were mouths of the Niger. In 1820 he suggested the British government thoroughly explore the course of the rivers. The following year he recommended that Sierra Leone be evacuated and that attention be shifted to the Bights. MacQueen reiterated the idea that Fernando Po was the "only proper station on the African coast, for our

Aborted Antisla'Ping 25

cruizers to watch and cut up the slave trade, which is, and while it continues, will always be, greatest on the coast opposite . . . . " Sierra Leone, however, was an unmitigated disaster: "We have not succeeded in any one undertaking which we had in view; we have done no good whatever; we have removed no existing evil . . . . Look at this enormous expenditure, and say what Great Britain and Africa have obtained in return. The reply must be made in one word-NOTHING. "21

Sierra Leonean interests struck back in this debate, arguing for the known against the unknown. The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertizer opined that, although it was true that voyages of antislaving squadron vessels had "occasionally been protracted by calms and contrary winds to four or five weeks . . . it is usually accomplished in much less time." Also, the newspaper argued that little was known of the Bubi or their attitude toward alien settlement. The British were "ignorant ... of the nature, extent, and capabilities of the soil of this island, and of the population, language, observances of the natives . . . . "22

By the middle 1820s the battle lines on Sierra Leone were clearly drawn. The colony was supported by the philanthropic African Institution and by those who championed direct government rule in West Africa. The already established base was opposed by West Indian interests, who were against antislaving activities per se, and by those deeply interested in pushing the palm oil trade. Thomas Powell Buxton and Sir George Murray defended Sierra Leone in Parliament, but by 1826 the idea of an insular base appeared already to have won the contest. An official report on Britain's West African colonies recommended moving the Courts of Mixed Commission. Britain would retain Sierra Leone with a reduced European staff. 23

Establishment

In January of 1827 the Admiralty was asked to send a seasoned officer to the island. The proposed settlement was to be under the jurisdiction of the governor of Sierra Leone, who was to supply black troops and a quantity of supplies. On June 27 instructions were given to Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen of HMS Eden to proceed.24 The Captain was a man whose experience seemed to fit him for his new post. Four years before, he had intervened against the Arab slave trade on the East African coast and proclaimed a short-lived and unsanctioned protectorate over Mombasa.25

Owen finally arrived at his new West African assignment on October 27, 1827, with his vessel, accompanied by the Diadem, a transport. The


settlement was christened Clarence in honor of the Duke of Clarence, the head of the Admiralty. Within weeks a path up the steep cliff surrounding a bay on the northern coast had been cut and a battery and a storehouse constructed on two small islets. Shore defenses were initiated, and the expedition began a small farm called "Paradise. "26

The Bubi did not offer military resistance. On Christmas Day, 1827, the British formally claimed Clarence and entered into a thriving trade with the islanders. Owen believed that eagerness for commerce kept the islanders honest. The indigenous punishment for theft was the amputation of the hands, and the captain observed that this was "apparently by no means an uncommon proceeding, as several who visited us were in that mutilated state. "27 Once the settlement was in place, Owen increasingly found that trade with the Bubi for yams and palm wine distracted many of his imported wor:kers from their tasks.

In late 1828 the settlement consisted of a lieutenant of the Royal African Corps and seventy-one noncommissioned personnel. There were 120 Sierra Leonean "native mechanics." Laborers, including liberated Africans, numbered 241. Owen's ship had a complement of two hundred, officers and crew. In late 1828 it was withdrawn, which left a militia, composed of 120 African artisans. The settlement also contained migratory contract laborers from the Windward Coast (in what is now Liberia), whose number was listed, rather vaguely, as between thirty and one hundred.

Owen landed slaves from captured vessels, although this strained his resources. Yet; mortality on ships bound for Freetown necessitated, in his mind, settlement on Fernando Po. For instance, one capture, the Henrietta, lost nearly one hundred Africans or one-fourth of her captives on a twentyday voyage to Freetown. This was after Owen had removed the seriously ill. In another case, he wrote that he had captured two slavers with four hundred slaves on board. 28 In order to lessen the burden on Fernando Po, recaptive women and children were allowed to accompany Sierra Leonean workers back to Freetown as wives or wards. Such outflow was more than matched by the influx of recaptives. This was partially caused by unclear instructions. In April of 1828 Owen reported the capture of a Spanish ship carrying 126 Africans, as well as the seizure of a Brazilian slaver. Request for guidance on the disposal of the people met with no definite response. By the time the impossibility of liberating slaves on Fernando Po according to the existing antislaving treaties had become manifest, a community of unadjudicated freedmen had come into existence. In March of 1829 the population was 1,277 and still growing. 29


Owen's proceedings were of dubious legality. Some of the slavers had been tried before Admiralty courts instead of before the Courts of Mixed Commission. Admiralty courts had the right to try piracy, but clearly their use circumvented the provisions of the bilateral antislaving treaties. The commission complained to the British Foreign. Office about the captain's methods, and the Admiralty was requested to reprimand him.

Feeling against the Fernando Po settlement continued in Freetown. In February of 1828 Owen was warned that he and the settlement had powerful enemies there. 30 In October Owen publicly attacked the colonial secretary. In early 1829 the captain was reprimanded for complaining of obstructionism. Owen was offered the option of leaving his naval commission and becoming a full-time administrator. He refused. In April of 1829 Lieutenant Colonel Edward Nicolls, former governor of Ascension, became superintendent of the settlement.31

Changes introduced by Nicolls did not meet with the approval of his predecessor; indeed, Owen viewed the new administration as arbitrary and exploitative. He took it upon himself to act as tribune of the Sierra Leonean workers and protested that his successor was keeping contract laborers beyond their time. Owen also accused Nicolls of changing the hours of work and physically coercing the recaptives to adhere to them. Nicolls, for his part, attacked his predecessor for his friendly working relationship with former slavers. He wrote the Colonial Office that he, Nicolls, had dismissed several foreigners who were former traffickers in human flesh.

Nicolls had more formidable adversaries than ex-Superintendent Owen. Clarence had been founded as a means toward an end; after its foundation it had taken on a life of its own. For both Owen and Nicolls the colony represented a permanent investment in the "regeneration of Africa." Like overly ambitious architects, they both formulated grand schemes whose scope exceeded their instructions. By the early thirties it was obvious that even the instructions themselves would not be carried out.

The Question of Impact

The British had, by the mid-1820s, formed a plan, which on the face of it, would have greatly increased the efficiency of antislaving. The trajectory of the trade in the years 1825-35 seemed, to them, to bear out the efficacy of their strategy. Unfortunately, their actions have been largely ignored in recent discussions of the Biafran trade. 32


Table 2.1. Slave Ships Captured by Owen's Forces, 1827-1830'

Number Ship Nationality Of Slaves Result

Nirzee 280 retaken Moskito Spanish 126 condemned Voadora Portuguese 61 condemned Feliz Victoria Spanish 2 condemned Jules Dutch 220 condemned Jeune Eugenie Dutch 50 condemned Fourmi Dutch 0 condemned Bolivar Spanish(?) 429 freed by French

Admiral Coquette Dutch 220 condemned Buenos Ayres Dutch 0 condemned Henriette Dutch 426 condemned Emprendedor Spanish 3 condemned Guadeloupienne retaken Mensaqeiro Brazilian 353 condemned Hirondella Dutch 1'12 condemned

Ismenia Brazilian 0 kept by Owen Portuguese 0 kept by Owen

St. Joao Brazilian 0 released by court

Voadora El Vencendorn Brazilian 0 released by court

• In addition there were a number of captures of small coastal vessels which Owen never declared and kept for his own use. SOURCE: Robert Thomas Brown, "William Fitzwilliam Owen: Hydrographer of the African Coast, 1774-1857" (Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1972), p. 334.

Between them, Owen and Nicolls did manage to stop over a thousand slaves from reaching their destination. Owen had, according to his own account, captured at least seven vessels and liberated 1,300 recaptives by November of 1828.33 According to the captain, he stopped twenty slavers and liberated 4,000 Africans between 1827 and 1829.34 According to a more· conservative estimate, he captured twenty vessels carrying 2,281 slaves (see table 2.1). The number of slaves recaptured by Owen and Nicolls was small in comparison to the total number of slaves exported. Also, on the face of it, their activities represent diminishing returns. In 1828-29 the number of captures from Fernando Po rose, and then declined. David Northrup's published data indicate that the number of Biafran slavers captured went from ten in 1829 to two in 1830.35 In 1836 the number was fifteen.


According to Eltis, the number of recaptured Biafran slave ships dropped from fourteen in 1829 to five in 1830. The number for 1832 was four. While the trajectories traced by Northrup and Eltis are not exactly congruent, they do show decreased captures in the years of the British occupation (see figure 2.1).

Clarence's impact was not immediate. Indeed, on cursory examination, it would appear negligible. Biafran slave exports in 1830 were well above the annual average of the previous decade and only twelve percent below the total for 1829, the highest volume year since 1807 (see table 2.2).

Yet, it must be remembered that, by 1832, the number was seven thousand less than it had been three years before. Exports for the decennium 1825-35 were at their lowest in 1831-32. Indeed the 1831-32 level of embarkations was twenty percent below the average for 1821-30.

16 r--------------------------------------------------. 14

12

II) 10 Q) .... ::I a. 8 (1j

u 6

4

2

t-, Northrup Eltls ,, ............ ,,, •••....... ,r•··•)-.;••••••••····· _..,_ a--+•••

I '

I '• I I

I ' •••••••••••••••••••••••··,'·•••••'''"'''\'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''"''''''''••••••••••• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I

...................... ,. ..... I I

0 LL--~~---L--~-J---L--L-~--~--L-~--~--L-~ 1825 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 1839

year

Figure 2.1. Slave Ship Captures, 1825-1839 SOURCE: David Northrup, "Slaves from the Bight ofBiafra Captured by the British Navy and Liberated in Sierra Leone, 1821-1939," in Trade without Rulers, Pre-Colonial Econqmic Development in Southeastern Nigeria (Oxford, 1978), pp. 235-39. David Eltis, printout (July 7, 1988) of list of slave ships embarking from the Bight of Biafra and disembarking in Sierra Leone, Fernando Po, or the Americas, 1827-1835. Also see David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987), pp. 250-51.


Table 2.2. Annual Transatlantic Export of Slaves from the Bight of Benin, Southward, 1821-1835 ('000)

Bight of Bight of Congo Southeast

Benin Biafra North Angola Africa Africa

1821 8.4 10.8 4.5 19.9 10.3 59.3

1822 10.7 12.4 7.9 23.7 8.6 68.9

1823' 4.5 8.0 2.8 18.8 8.5 45.8

1824 8.6 13.1 6.5 19.6 8.4 61.5

1825 12.0 16.3 2:.2 19.1 .M 67.2

1821-25 44.2 60.6 27.3 101.1 43.2 302.7

1826 11.6 8.7 6.4 23.6 7.4 61.4

1827 13.1 11.7 9.5 19.8 6.6 65.5

1828 13.3 15.4 15.0 25.5 14.4 90.1

1829 21.0 16.7 18.5 22.1 15.5 101.8

1830 .!ld 14.2 JL2 15.1 14.2 72.3

1826-30 70.5 66.7 58.3 106.1 58.1 391.1

1831 4.8 11.1 1.5 4.5 0.5 26.7

1832 6.5 9.7 1.0 9.8 0.4 32.0

1833 5.3 11.5 1.4 13.5 0.0 39.4

1834 9.1 15.1 3.8 20.6 0.6 54.0

1835 12.0 Md ..Qd 39.6 1d 91.6

1831-35 37.7 71.9 14.9 87.9 3.0 243.7

It could be argued that diminishing captures and a downward slide in exports indicate the essential irrelevance of antislaving efforts. Certainly there are market and other factors to be taken into account. For instance, Brazilian slave imports took a radical dip in 1830. Because of the anticipated cessation of the slave trade due to British pressure, the number of slaves

Aborted Antislaving . 31

imported dropped from 175,000 in the years 1827-30 to a trickle in 1831 and in 1832.36

Explanations attributing a dip in Biafran slave exports to Brazilian trends are not entirely convincing. The areas from which Brazil drew the majority of its slaves-Angola, the Bight of Benin, southeast Africa, and Congo North-appear far more attuned to fluctuations in the market. From 1830 to 1831 the Angolan trade declined by roughly 10,000 individuals. At the same time, southeast Africa, an area almost completely monopolized by Portuguese and Brazilian slavers, saw a decline of roughly 14,000. Bight of Benin exports went down by roughly 6,000; those for Congo North, by roughly 7,000 (see table 2.2). If David Eltis's figures are correct, the drop in Brazilian imports from around 41,000 in 1830 to 3,500 in 1831 can be accounted for by the corresponding numerical drop (37 ,000 slaves) in these usual catchment areas. It is perhaps significant that the majority of ships captured by the British on Fernando Po were neither Brazilian nor Portuguese (see table 2.1),37

To see the fall in the capture of slavers by 1830 as a failure is to miss the central point of the Fernando Po base. The issue is avoidance, rather than growing ineptitude on the part of the British. It was only after the firm establishment of Clarence that slavers began to stay away from the area. The British officials on Fernando Po strenuously argued that the base made it difficult for slavers to continue in the area as before, regardless of demand. Simply put, navigationally it was impossible for traffickers to cruise the Bight without the very high possibility of capture. Owen specifically maintained that slavers who braved the British presence took only two-thirds of their normal cargoes; on the Wouri Estuary in Cameroon, Duala slave exports ceased to be of any importance in part because of the threat of interdiction from Fernando Po.38 In the early 1830s Nicolls predicted that the trade in general in the region was on the wane. After 1832 British efforts at capture abated. Nicolls noted the effect. There were forty-two slavers, a "horde of miscreants, the refuse of all nations" in the region in late 1833. In the spring of 1834 he wrote that slavers, "thinking we are gone," had reinfested the area.39 Indeed, embarkations in 1835, the year Nicolls returned to England, were more than double what they had been three years before (see table 2.2).

The removal of the Clarence base did not mean the cessation of antislaving on the West African coast. In 1834-1836 there were fifty percent more cruisers there than in the period of the Fernando Po base. 40

There were more losses and seizures exacted on slavers in terms of both capture ratios and absolute numbers in the mid-1830s than before.41 In spite


of this, the trade expanded. It was, obviously, not an absolute decrease in ships and manpower in the wake of the Clarence experiment which permitted the upsurge in slaving.

Manpower and forces maintained are not the main point, however. Rather it is the deployment of resources and their greatest efficiency. A permanent base in the Bight of Biafra offered advantages which roving cruisers could not. Owen and Nicolls had been convinced that, with sufficient force, they could close down Old Calabar and its environs. Reviewing the data, their government concurred. In 1839 the British Colonial Office concluded that a Biafran base was essential because it "would probably involve a great abridgement both of costs and labor • • • • " 42 For the next two years the British seriously negotiated with Spain for the purchase of "essential" Fernando Po. The issue was not simply how much antislaving force was applied, but where that force was applied.

The area near Fernando Po experienced an economic shift and a definitive decline in slaving in the latter part of the 1830s. The prices of slaves slumped in the 1830s because of declining American demand and British antislaving activities.43 The falling export of labor was more than compensated for by increased exports of palm oil.

The British occupation impacted the trading area in various ways. In the long run it called for more and more intervention. The idea of foisting antislavery treaties on African states preceded the late 1830s. The very exigencies and frustrations of duty with antislaving squadrons no doubt prodded many British navy men, regardless of considerations of abstract humanitarianism, toward ad hoc interventions. Assigned to perform a task, but seemingly hamstrung by their inability to control slaving, many captains were tempted to expand their authority. An example is Owen, who believed African governments to be small and ineffectual. His abolitionism easily translated into cultural and political imperialism. He thought African culture was passive and awaiting a higher social and technological order. While engaged in hydrography in the coastal waters of Bonny, Owen saw no need to ask permission of the local king, Opubu, and decried the "deference and respect" shown the king by European traders. Owen, the abolitionist, complained: "They [the slave traders] administer to his whims and caprice . . . . Had a stranger heard the earnest consultation held by these people when the trade was closed upon this occasion, he would have been more inclined to think himself in the purlieus of St. James' than in a Negro town on the West Coast of Africa. "44

According to Owen, the region was divided into myriads of puny states. At the same time he had to recognize the power of men like Great Duke


Ephraim of Duke Town, Old Calabar, who supplied foodstuffs to Clarence. In 1828 and 1829 the Efik leader established plantations and apparently hoped to supply Clarence with fresh meat and other victuals. He also extended loans to oil traders and marketed their produce. The situation was ambiguous; to the antislavers, men like Duke Ephraim were the chief culprits in the slave trade. For his part, the African ruler was suspicious of the British presence. During Owen's tenure relations were tense and had to be subsequently smoothed over by a British mission to Old Calabar.

Owen believed that the raison d'etre of the Delta states was slaving and that it could be abolished only by "absolute subjugation and conquest, dictating our will. "45 Nicolls also envisioned spreading British sovereignty to the mainland; he sought to gain a foothold in Cameroon and briefly secured the cession of land from Bimbia Island to Rio Del Rey. In 1833 the colonel invited rulers of Bimbia, Old Calabar, Cameroon, Malimba, and Bonny to Fernando Po to form an antislaving alliance.

Nicolls doubtlessly hoped that the free cession of territory on the nearby mainland would supplement Fernando Po as a landing point for recaptured slaves. He pointed out to the Colonial Office that 78 out of 278 liberated Africans had recently died on the voyage from the Niger to Sierra Leone. This could be avoided if slaves could still be landed on Fernando Po or at a "convenient settlement on the opposite coast such as Amboises Bay or Bimbia. "46 The acquisition of territory in Cameroon, like Owen's previous undertaking in East Africa, was not· approved by the British government. Such ideas did not become part of the policy mainstream until the late 1830s.

Partially because of failure to get Spanish permission for an antislaving base on Spanish-claimed Fernando Po, work on the Clarence base stopped at the end of 1831. The Colonial Office asked the Admiralty to remove all supplies and persons not essential for the maintenance of a population of two hundred. In July of 1832 the same office warned the Foreign Office that if it could not resolve diplomatic problems by October, the Colonial Office would withdraw its support. In August of 1832 the British government decided to dismantle the establishment; on August 29, it told Nicolls to disperse his forces and evacuate. In October the Spanish were officially informed that the British proposals concerning the island were withdrawn.

Nicolls was greatly disappointed when he was told to disband the settlement and send recaptives to Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast. The colonel's task was complicated by the arrival of new recaptives. He did not arrive back in England until April of 1835. Even after his departure, evacuations continued. On June 29, 1835, a cruiser was dispatched to transport 152 Africans to Sierra Leone. Over a year later, on October 6,


1836, the Sierra Leone commissioners complained that these people had still not reached Freetown.

The Disease Factor

Even if British occupation had survived the Anglo-Spanish imbroglios of the 1830s, other factors would have militated against it. As a member of Owen's expedition noted: "All our attempts to penetrate into Africa, to establish a friendly intercourse with the people, and to abolish the traffic in human life are repelled, and frequently rendered abortive, by the fatal influence of the climate . . . . "47 In 184 7 a British government medical study found that the average number of yearly deaths of its personnel in West Africa between 1825 and 1845 was 54.4 per thousand mean force. This compared with 9.8 for the Home Fleet. In 1829, the year by which the Fernando Po establishment was firmly fixed, it was 255.1 per thousand mean force for West Africa, more than one in four. 48 The decision to abandon the island in the early 1830s was clinched by official information on "the excessive insalubrity of Fernando Po and the great expense which the Establishment would inevitably entail." John Hay of the Colonial Office agreed that it was "very doubtful whether any colony could be maintained in a position where the annual consumption of life and money would in all probability be more formidable than the Mother Country would be disposed to incur. "49 The Fernando Po experiment began as an attempt to prevent African deaths on the high seas; it foundered on the issue of European mortality in the tropics.

As early as the sixteenth century, the Biafran climate showed itself to be especially deadly for outsiders. On Sao Tome "the general debilitation caused by the inescapable heat and humidity . . . caused many attested cases of physical collapse . . . . [The] inability of the home government to secure the health of its agents is one vital cause of the independent and erratic course that the island took in its formative years. "5° Fernando Po was believed to be the great Biafran epidemiological exception. In 1827 a British admiral wrote to Owen that "if this new Settlement prove as much healthier than Sierra Leone as it's supposed to be, the whole of the establishment of the latter and indeed of our other Establishments on the Coast of Africa may by degrees be transferred to this Island. "51 Fernando Po's insularity and its altitude (a peak of over 9,000 feet) caused many to persist in seeing it as the safe gateway to Africa. 52


However, only at the outset did the island seem healthy for outsiders. In December of 1827, four of the Europeans were seized with fever, and two died. 53 Belief in the special clemency of the climate was further brought into question in May of 1829. Owen and his ship visited Freetown, and fever broke out among his men. The malady was not malaria, but yellow fever. The captain sailed from Freetown in hopes of avoiding further pestilence. By the time he reached Clarence, 40 men had died out of just over 130. Conditions were horrendous:

"The men were dying daily, amidst almost incessant rain and frequent tornadoes, accompanied with much thunder and lightning; the main-deck was crowded with sick, and constantly wet. The moral effects of these scenes became palpable in every countenance; while from the want of medical attendance, the surgeon and two assistant surgeons having died, it was impossible to pay the attention to the ventilation of the ship, or even to the personal comforts of the sick, which their situation required. "54

Between May 1, 1829 and December 1, 1829, 110 men died, 50 on board the Eden and the rest ·onshore. Of the total, only thirteen were Africans. 55

When Nicolls arrived in Sierra Leone shortly thereafter, he discovered that the Eden was credited with the introduction of the new plague. As a British doctor later noted: "The entire complement of the Eden was one hundred and sixty officers and men; making an allowance for a few that were not seized, and for those who recovered, the deaths must have exceeded two-thirds of the persons attacked. "56 Owen himself put his ship in quarantine off Fernando Po and waited for his replacement's arrival. This accomplished, he sailed for Ascension. When he reached that island, more than half of his men were dead or dying. 57

The fever spread to the British West African settlements. The fact that it had early peen reported on Owen's ship did nothing to improve Fernando Po's reputation. Over fifty percent of the men who arrived there from England in 1827 died, including all of the physicians.58 Nineteen of the thirty-four men in Nicolls' contingent died soon after their arrival. Only five of the forty-seven marines who accompanied him in 1829 survived two years. Nicolls was sick himself for most of the year. In 1831, 274 Europeans came down with fever. Many of these were not connected with the Nicolls expedition, but were palm oil traders or ex-slavers. The Clarence hospital took in 384 patients, of whom 79 died. Among the total number of cases, the number of nonfever illness was 110; 26 of these died. 59


In 1832 an English traveler wrote that the Commissioners in Freetown were very loath to move to the island in the Bight because "they considered [Sierra Leone] as a paradise in point of salubrity compared with their intended place of residence. "60 The Foreign Office had already concluded that, if the Commissioners were removed from Freetown, "they would only change their residence to a spot still more unhealthy to Europeans. "61 It was also felt that Clarence did not possess "those conveniences, which tend to lessen the effect of a baneful climate, [that exist] in an old established settlement." In 1842 it was reported that a British medical doctor believed "it [Fernando Po] to be as prejudicial [a place] to Europeans as could ... have been selected for a settlement. "62 ·

Yellow fever was an exceptional occurrence on the island, although it was to recur again in the century. Malaria was a constant. As mentioned, medical opinion had drawn a connection between fevers and altitude. Although the "miasma" theory of disease causation was faulty, it could lead to effective prophylaxis, since a carrier of malaria, Anopheles gambiae, has an upward range of only four thousand feet. By the 1830s it was obvious that Clarence, on the beach, was no less deadly than the mainland. The second British superintendent said that with sufficient laborers he would "soon get up to the elevation which would be healthy .... "63 The Niger Expedition was also aware of the need to reach a safe altitude, but Buxton erroneously thought it could be reached at only four hundred feet. 64 Others pointed out that Europeans would have to reach four thousand feet in order to be safe. In 1837 Macgregor Laird, the sponsor of several expeditions on the Niger, set the upper limit of the malarial belt at three thousand feet. Later he revised his estimate upward to five thousand feet. 65

In addition to various plans to establish mountain sanitaria, would-be colonists resorted to medicine. Owen opposed "energetic" measures, such as bleeding and the application of calomel; instead, "having witnessed the frequent and fatal result of 'energetic treatment,' he had imbibed a kind of horror of bleeding, and, at the same time, a predilection in favour of mild measures, probably from observing the greater success that attended the simple means employed by the natives and resident Europeans. "66

Quinine was one remedy of which Owen approved. In 1828 he noted that the settlement's surgeons employed it. 67 As elsewhere, ideas of the proper dosage varied. A British doctor reported that "quinine was given as usual, when the fever abated, in three-grain doses every third hour; but was supposed to be of but little utility until the alvine secretions became natural." The doctor thought: "Smaller doses of quinine only increase the febrile symptoms. "68 After Owen, Nicolls spoke of quinine as the colony's


"mainstay." The Baptist nnsstonary John Clarke used the drug as a prophylactic in the 1840s, but was probably not regular in its application. However, T. R. H. Thompson used quinine specifically as a preventive in the early 1840s. 69

In 1844 Baptist missionaries attempted to overcome the problem of European mortality in Africa by sending black West Indian immigrants to do their work on Fernando Ro. They hoped "that friends from Jamaica being in the first-place descendants of Africa and again coming from a tropical country would be able to stand the climate of Africa and not be subject to the African fevers." These suppositions proved incorrect. No provision was made for the West Indians falling ill, "but it was soon seen that all had to pass through the same ordeal and in some instances suffered as much as their European brethren. "70 The mission doctor tried to put the best face on the matter and concluded that "the Jamaica friends have all sickened, one only . .. [out of approximately forty] excepted. The sicknesses are commonly of a mild, tractable nature-nothing so alarming as those of the West Indies. "71 In spite of the doctor's optimism, the Jamaican Baptists returned to the West Indies in 1848. In the same year, the London Times called the Bights of Benin and Biafra "the most deadly sea," and Fernando Po "the most pestiferous land which the universe is known to contain. "72 Large-scale non-African settlement had to wait mitil the present century. In the waiting period, an African settler community began, prospered, and decayed.

1 Jniv R::.vrAIIth I

Chapter 3

Spain in the Bight

The British government's occupation of Fernando Po was over by 1835. By the early 1840s Spain had, in the eyes of Europeans, an uncontested legal claim. Madrid kept the island largely because it feared the effect of British possession on Spanish trade, specifically the slave trade, in West Africa. At the same time, a British consular presence after 1849 obviated the island's utility as a base from which to send African labor to the Antilles.

Political conditions in Spain did not favor the development of a consistent policy toward the Biafran territories in the nineteenth century. The French occupation (1808-1814) was followed by continued political instability and, finally, civil war (1833-1839). In this tumultuous era Spain's attention remained focused on the South Atlantic system-the growth in the Americas of tropical produce with African slave labor.

The South Atlantic system was not simply an anachronism in an era of free labor, but a response to new opportunities in a system previously monopolized by others. Philip Curtin has noted that the British feared competition from the "modem, slave-run plantations of Cuba and Puerto Rico." 1 What Spanish capital there was, was siphoned off to the burgeoning Caribbean, for which West Africa remained a labor catchment area. Indeed, Fernando Po's budget was not separated from Cuba's until 1884.2

Given the fact that Spain was not prominent in the eighteenth-century slave trade, its nineteenth-century performance was impressive. Nearly 500,000 slaves were landed in Cuba from 1821 to 1867.3 Between 1822 and

38

Spain in the Bight 39

1827, 111 ships sailed from Havana, and not one returned with what the British termed "legitimate commerce." Jose de Moros, officer of a Spanish merchantman, visited the Bights three times in the 1830s and estimated that at least a hundred ships left the area each year bound for Cuba. 4 The majority of these ships were negreros (slave ships).

Fernando Po in Antislaving Diplomacy

In 1816 a London pamphlet warned that "slave factories will be established on many points of the [African] coast; great numbers of ships will be built or purchased for the trade; and a vast capital will be employed in their outfit from Europe and the consignees at the Havannah and Cadiz will raise their heads into the ephemeral splendour and consequence which from the magnitude of the early returns generally distinguish houses embarked in this . . . commerce. "5 The Anglo-Spanish antislaving treaty of the following year was a continual sore point. Under its terms Spain had agreed to suppress the trade north of the equator immediately and to abolish all slaving after May 30, 1820. British cruisers were given a limited right of search. In return for Madrid's signing, Britain agreed to pay £400,000 to compensate for losses caused by abolition. The treaty was signed at the very time that the Spanish slave trade, which the occupation of Fernando Po had been meant to assure, began to "take off." It set off a flurry of trade; between 1817 and 1820, 67,059 African were sent to Cuba.6

When, in 1820, the 1817 treaty came into effect, a temporary check was placed on the Spanish slave trade. In 1820 only 4,122 slaves were imported into Cuba. 7 However, the shock of legal prohibition soon evaporated; for the next fifteen years the number of slaves taken to Cuba augmented considerably. In 1822, in an attempt to prevent evasion of the treaty of 1817, the British and Spanish negotiated an additional article. The treaty itself had provided that no vessel could be detained if slaves were not a~tually found on board. The new article provided that if there was clear and undeniable proof that slaves had been on board a captured vessel, antislaving cruisers could detain it and take it before the Mixed Commissions. 8

A new Anglo-Spanish antislaving treaty in 1835 extended the British right of seareh, and the number of Spanish slavers captured increased rapidly. From 1830 to 1835 the British West African Squadron had captured only ten negreros per annum on average. This average rose to thirty-five from 1835 to 1839. The Court of Mixed Commission in Freetown received thirty-five Spanish slavers in 1836; twenty-four were condemned under the terms of the

40 Spain in the Bight

1835 treaty.9 In 1844 the annual number of ships sailing from the Spanish Caribbean to West Africa was not less than one hundred, of which about twenty-five could be expected to be captured by the British antislaving squadron. 10

,

The continued British antislaving measures challenged the slavers to develop new evasive strategies. Clandestine bases on the coast held supplies of equipment and supplies to abet rapid departures. Foreign flags were used by Spanish vessels. Smaller ships, which were less easily sighted, were employed and sailed from the Caribbean carrying ballast. They rendezvoused at appointed places on the coast and separated in different directions when the antislaving squadron was sighted.

Some nineteenth-century observers argued that antislaving was the use of immoral means for a moral purpose, an argument that has echoes in the present debate over the interdiction of illegal drug traffic between South and North America. From Havana to Rio de Janeiro complaints were heard about the high-handedness of British officials, the misapplication of diplomatic clout, and the suborning of local officials. According to a present-day critic, David Eltis, some antislaving "elements were involved in supplementing the regular channels of law enforcement, gaining access to and using the official sources of information normally barred, to the private citizen, bribery, spying, breaking international law and even sponsoring activities that could only undermine the social structure of foreign slave societies. "11 For Eltis one of the central demerits of the nineteenth-century antislaving campaign was its frequent and flagrant violation· of international law.

When looked at from the vantage point of Fernando Po, the issue appears somewhat more nuanced. Although the men on the spot between 1827 and 1835 frequently took actions which violated their legal authority, they were just as frequently severely reprimanded by their superiors. Also, although Fernando Po was viewed as central to Biafran antislaving success, the British were unusually legalistic in their attempts to establish an antislaving base there. Spain, as the result of eighteenth-century treaties, claimed the territory from the Niger Delta to Cape Lopez in Gabon. This included the main palm oil centers. Given the paucity of Spanish "legitimate" trade or the shadow of Spanish authority in Old Calabar or Bonny, the disallowance of any claims would have been a possibility. Indeed, the possibility of taking over Fernando Po as a "derelict" territory was discussed. Yet, Britain did not "take" Fernando Po as Theodore Roosevelt "took" the Panama Canal. In the case of the Biafran island, possession was not nine-tenths of the law. It would be hard to justify a claim that British policy was simply


one of Machtpolitik throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. It was only in the late 1830s and early 1840s, at a time when efforts to obtain a Biafran base were failing, that the sacking of shore installations and threats against European slave merchants were begun in earnest.

Fernando Po's role in the debate on antislaving diplomacy and tactics needs to be reviewed in some detail. When, in the early 1820s, the British began to contemplate using the island, they were aware of possible objections. Opinions on how to proceed varied. There were several alternatives. On the one hand, British merchants could go and establish themselves on the island, after which time their government could suggest the transfer of the antislaving courts, assuming control of the island from the traders. Traders were fearful, however, of entering an area in which they had no protection from their government. On the other hand, the British could first approach the other states involved in the Court of Mixed Commission and propose that Great Britain intended to occupy an unoccupied island. The British government could also declare: "You had certain rights of possession or occupation in the island of Fernando Po which we presume you consider as obsolete. Therefore with your permission we will occupy the island . . . . "12 This last course also posed difficulties. A British Foreign Secretary observed that "notice to former owners of an intention to occupy a derelict goes very near to an admission that it is an intention which they may oppose if they will. "13

The British finally decided to announce the removal of the Court of Mixed Commission, omitting all reference to potential claims of Portuguese or Spanish sovereignty. In September of 1825 they proposed the move to the Portuguese, and Lisbon replied that the island was indeed theirs. Later the Portuguese corrected their mistake and informed London that Spain was the owner of the island. In February of 1826 Madrid was asked to consent to the transfer of the Anglo-Spanish commission to Fernando Po. Madrid answered that it would need more detailed information on the proposal before committing itself. Later, when the matter was pushed, the Spanish gave their verbal assent to the sending of an expedition. On the basis of this assurance the British proceeded.

In September of 1827 the Spanish strongly protested the British occupation. Madrid then offered to sell the island. It again complained, in early 1828, noting that it had positive knowledge of the arrival of the O;.ven expedition. Spain made it clear that any such occupation was in violation of the antislaving treaty of 1817. It said that the expressed "favorable disposition" to the transfer of the Mixed Commission was not a formal agreement. The British supplied the Spanish government with copies of its


intragovernmental correspondence and continued to negotiate. In December of 1829 Spain seemed to agree, in principle, to a base. However, full official assent was still not given, and in 1830 the British were still issuing assurances of their good intentions. In August Spain finally agreed to the transfer of the Mixed Commission. However, a new difficulty arose. The status of liberated Africans was a sticking point. In May of 1831 Britain asked Spain to allow liberated Africans to settle on Fernando Po as British subjects. Spain balked, and another impasse ensued.

In February of 1831 the British Board of Trade asked for retention of the island. In July, when members of Parliament asked, the government said that Britain might have to abandon its settlement if Spain held on to its claim. Commercial interests protested, and the government continued its efforts. The following September the British proposed the exchange of Fernando Po for Beque (Vieques) or Crab Island, a small island near Puerto Rico. The Spanish rejected the idea, pointing out that Fernando Po was far larger. Time lapsed, and the British abandoned the effort.

After the evacuation in 1835, British interest in the island continued. For more than a decade the island had been spoken of as the key to slave trade suppression, and the idea persisted. In the summer of 1837 Thomas Powell Buxton conceived of a scheme to open the heart of Africa by navigating the Niger. Part of the plan was the proposal that Britain should reoccupy Fernando Po. Under a system of free trade, the territory would prosper as Singapore had; it would also be the base from which expeditions could penetrate the mainland interior.

Buxton's ideas of introducing Africa to the "Bible and Plow" were not novel, but the enthusiasm generated by his idea of commercial penetration of the Niger region had great impact. In the summer of 1838 he approached his government with a plan which would go well beyond the antislaving squadron in the suppression of the trade. He proposed that treaties with African kings be made "from the Gambia in the West to Bergharmi [Bargirrni] in the East; and from the Desert on the North to the Gulf of Guinea in the South." 14 He also encouraged the government to promote legitimate trade with Africans as a way of weaning them away from the slave trade. Buxton and his supporters organized the African Civilization Society to provide the scientific staff. They asked the government to supply the ships and the official church missionaries. A privately organized Agriculti.Iral Association took charge of the construction and management of the model farm.

In July of 1838 Buxton approached his government about reoccupying Fernando Po. Foreign Secretary Palmerston was skeptical and favored


continuing the policy of interdicting slavers on the high seas, rather than establishing bases in Africa itself. 15 Nevertheless, in November of 1838 the government wrote Nicolls for information on the state of the island. 16 Soon the Foreign Office regretted "that the acknowledgement of the Spanish Sovereignty of Fernando Po, appears . . .. to have been made in terms so absolute and unqualified as to preclude the possibility of any further discussions between the British and the Spanish Governments on that point." Since the possession of the island was not in doubt, purchase from Spain on some terms was necessary: "The Sovereignty of that Island is an object of so much importance to Great Britain with a view to the suppression of the Slave Trade that that consideration [that is, compensation to Spain] ought not to oppose an insuperable obstacle to its acquisition." The value of the island was unknown, but the Colonial Office felt that "whatever abridges the labors and cost of effecting our purpose is so much saved from the National Expenditure, and as the possession of Fernando Po would probably involve a great abridgement both of costs and labor, it would be worth our while to pay for it more than the real value, however estimated. 1117

In the spring of 1839 negotiations on Fernando Po and Annob6n began again. In April the British proposed transfer to the Spanish government, which seemed disposed to sell. The Spanish studied the question and pointed out that, when Spain had offered purchase in 1828, the price asked had been £2,000,000. The British replied that this price was too high. The British Colonial Office suggested that if Madrid insisted on payment in money, the British might suggest taking over the entire cost of the Court of Mixed Commission. 18 Delay followed; negotiations dragged on until August of 1840 and then lapsed. To speed the cession, Britain increased its offer from £50,000 to £60,000.

In April of 1841 the Spanish government announced willingness to complete the sale. Payment for the islands would be used to reimburse British holders of Spanish bonds. The British drew up a draft convention and, on June 13, the Spanish government accepted it. On July 9 the treaty went before the Cortes. The proposed sale was ill-timed. Some members of the Spanish Cortes suspected that cession of Fernando Po was the price the liberal government of Baldomero Espartero was willing to pay for British support. Almost simultaneously, British attacks on Spanish nationals in Africa increased. In 1840 the British attacked several slaving bases, including the Rio Gallinas factories of Pedro Blanco, a Malagan slaver. They destroyed most of the shore installations and took nine hundred slaves back to Sierra Leone. Blanco, who had left the Rio Gallinas territory before the British attack, made a tour of the coast before his departure and


supposedly stopped, incognito, at Fernando Po. 19 His visit convinced him of the necessity of having a Spanish naval presence on the coast. An offer by him to represent Spanish interests there was ultimately rebuffed. However, the destruction of his property was ample proof of the vulnerability of Spanish trade to British seapower. Madrid saw the sackings of the Rio Gallinas factories as the outcome of economic competition. The government denounced British plans to obtain contract labor from the same area as used by Blanco. At the end of 1841 the Spanish foreign minister attacked these plans as nothing more than a ruse to cover attempts to continue to supply the failing British Caribbean with slave labor.20 Spanish Caribbean interests strenuously opposed giving ground to British antislaving efforts in West Africa. Cuban sugar production, based on black labor, went from 63,000 metric tons in 1821-1825 to 129,800 metric tons in the period from 1836 to 1840.21

Many Spaniards attacked the abandonment of Fernando Po as an attempt to wreck the colonial economy. The newspapers El Eco del Comercio and El Cangrejo also argued that if foreign bondholders were to be paid off with Fernando Po and Annob6n, others would, in time, ask to be compensated through the sale of the Philippines, the Marianas, the Antilles, the Canaries, or, even, the Balearics. 22 El Correo Nacional attacked the cession as little less than theft. It argued that if the government wanted to embark on the liquidation of the national and foreign debt, it was first necessary to know extent of the debt and who had first claim to repayment. Why should the demands of British bondholders be given priority? The loss of Fernando Po and its dependencies would not benefit the national treasury and would only demonstrate the ease with which the remaining colonial empire could be pried away. "The first thing that jumps into view in this project," said the paper, "is the futility and feebleness of the motives which are allege~ for such a grave business as that of ceding to the foreigner a part of the terntory of the nation." The sale was being imposed on a "State impoverished and weak after a bloody [civil] war of seven years; without commerce, without a navy, without resources, spirits cruelly divided by the effects of not so remote events in which the hand of the foreigner may, perhaps, not have been absent . . . . " The situation was comparable "to that of a needy magnate who pawns and sacrifices to a vain and immoral usurious interest all his goods, in exchange for living and sustaining one day, or, one week more, his luxury and his caprices. "23 Besides, Fernando Po w~ the economic gateway to West Africa. The newspaper echoed the sentiments expressed by George MacQueen twenty years earlier: "Open the map and


it will be seen that the island occupies the situation closest to the markets and, especially, to the powerful country of Timbuctu . . . . "24

In the face of such opposition, the proposal for the cession failed. Meanwhile, Buxton's brainchild, the Niger expedition, based on Fernando Po, also failed. The expedition had sailed to West Africa in April of 1841 charged with exploring the Niger and making treaties with the local kings. In addition, the flotilla planned to establish a model farm at the confluence of the Niger and the Benue. European mortality on the expedition was high. Fifty-five of the 159 Europeans who went out with the expedition in 1842 failed to return to Britain. 25 The renmants of the expedition up the Niger remained on Fernando Po during the dry season of 1841-1842, but were ordered not to return to their explorations. One vessel did enter the Niger in 1842, but the experiment, as originally envisioned was over. In 1842 a Select Parliamentary Committee suggested the purchase of Sao Tome or Principe, but the proposal was not acted upon. 26 British efforts to gain a permanent Biafran base had come to an end. Madrid kept Fernando Po. A second rate power with no established governmental presence in West Africa had refused to sell a seemingly useless property. The continued viability of the South Atlantic system and resentment at the new and violent phase in British antislaving tactics helped determine the issue.

Spain and Rio Muni

At the time that the cession of Fernando Po came before the Cortes, the small island of Corisco and Cape San Juan north of Gabon were centers of increasing Spanish slave trade. In 1840 this commerce received a rude shock. In November of that year the British attacked Corisco and captured Miguel Pons, second factor of the firm of Juan Fales and Company of Matanzas, Cuba. The head of the British expedition informed one of the local Benga leaders: "I come this day to destroy the Spaniard's houses ... if you permit any people to fire at English men-of-war's boats again, I will come and destroy your place also. "27 Three years later Britain told Spain that it planned to destroy slaving bases at Cabo Lopez, where Spanish slavers had retreated after the destruction of their Corisco stations. The French proposed an antislaving base farther south at what became Libreville.

The Rio Muni trade in the 1840s was dominated by the Benga, relative newcomers to the coast. The group inhabited twenty or thirty villages, on and offshore, and were already divided into two competing districts. The inhabitants devoted themselves to trade and cultivated manioc, peanuts, com,


and plantains. After establishing themselves on Corisco, some Benga moved farther south and settled in northern Gabon. Movement into the northern Gabon region probably occurred between 1830 and 1845, a time of increasing trade on the coast. 28 Corisco remained a center of the illegal slave trade as slaving in the Bight of Biafra declined rapidly in the late 1830s and moved southward. After 1842 almost all slave departures from the wider Biafran region were from Gabon and Cape Lopez. 29 The region was already visited by more than a hundred ships per year.30 In 1834 the Minorcan traders Baltasar Simo and Francisco Vincent set themselves up on Corisco. Responding to demand, the Benga engaged in a lively slave trade with their Enviko neighbors.

In 1841 Spain's minister of state, Antonio Gonzalez, proposed to the Senate that Spain send a government-sponsored expedition to the Bight of Biafra, including the Rio Muni region. Captain Juan Jose de Lerena left Spain in December of 1842 and arrived in Sierra Leone in early January to make an examination of the Court of Mixed Commission. In addition, he investigated the destruction of Spanish trading stations at Rio Gallinas. He also collected information on the free immigration of African labor to British plantations in Jamaica. De Lerena then continued on to the Bight of Biafra. One of the purposes of his mission was to maintain Spain's rights. Another, and not so loudly proclaimed aim, was to assure African trading partners of continued support.

De Lerena's most lasting contribution on Fernando Po was to rename the Clarence settlement Santa Isabel, although most of the inhabitants continued to call it Clarence throughout the nineteenth century. A disappointing discovery for the captain was that the Spanish population of Fernando Po was almost nonexistent. There were two Spaniards, plus a Mexican and a native of the Antilles. The two Spatiiards and the Mexican were former slavers. 31 De Lerena could do little but confirm an English trader, John Beecroft, as governor. After a stay of less than two weeks, he went on to Corisco to receive the fealty of the inhabitants. De Lerena observed that the "burning of the Spanish establishments by the English. in 1840 was premeditated . . . . [I]t made the natives hate the English and not permit them to set foot in their territory. "32 King Bonkoro I (Bafie) was so overjoyed with de Lerena's presence that he declared himself a Spanish subject.

Spanish imperialists later claimed that de Lerena received the allegiance of five hundred coastal chiefs, as well as authority over the Kombe, Bapuku, Enviko, and Balenke peoples. · In terms of practical development, however, there was no quick follow-up on the Spanish captain's voyage. On his


return, the government proposed another visit, but a new expedition was delayed by Spain's internal strife until July of 1845 when it departed Cadiz headed bY Nicolas Manterola and Adolfo Guillemard de Aragon. The latter was also Spanish consul in Sierra Leone. He arrived on Fernando Po on Christmas day 1845 and stayed for forty days. Guillemard de Aragon toured the island and made a trip to Corisco, the Elobeys, and Cape San Juan. On Corisco he reasserted the claim put forth by de Lerena.

If the Spanish had established a firm presence on Corisco, it probably would have served Fernando Po as a labor catchment area in the nineteenth century. As it was, the Benga received little assistance from official Spanish visits. Their willingness to accept Spanish assistance reflects their political and economic position. They were a rapidly shrinking coastal trading society. An unfortunate consequence of European visits was a high rate of venereal disease. Corisco was famous for the trading acumen of both its men and its women. The "Isle of Love" had a large number of "mammies" who provided trade goods and sexual services for European sailors. Unfortunately, as their population stagnated, the Benga were unable to push back migrants, such as the Fang, from the interior.

The Spaniards' trading partners were unable to stop fission within their own society. Increased . opportunities for trade increased violence among contending groups. New groups migrated toward the coast, while some groups moved away from the new "paroxysm of violence" in "a massive zone of turbulence [between] Cameroon and Gabon. "33 Within groups violence also increased. ·After the death of Bonkoro I around 1846 the succession was disputed by Bonkoro II, his son, and several imp;rtant leaders, most notably Munga. The latter won on Corisco, and Bonkoro II fled to the mainland and established his capital at Santome on Cape San Juan.

The Development Decade, 1858-1868

W. G. Clarence-Smith has said that, unlike the Spanish government, "the Portuguese crown possessed internationally. recognised sovereign rights in parts of Africa, a great asset in frustrating British naval attempts to control shipping in African waters. "34 It is not entirely correct to say that Spain had no areas of legal claim. On June 27, 1843, two years after its failure to purchase the island, the British government unequivocally recognized Spanish claims to Fernando Po. One difference between the Spanish and Portuguese was that the territory of the former lay close to areas of British trade.


The Spanish had not had time to build extensive slaving networks. In the 1840s and 1850s the idea of using Fernando Po for the purpose for which it was purchased in the eighteenth century was advanced by some Spaniards. The presence of a vigilant British consulate for the Bights of Benin and Biafran foiled any such plans.

As Spain entered a period of increased prosperity in the 1850s, the idea of opening West Africa to Spanish legitimate trade was appealing. Standing in the way, in the Spanish view, was the ruthless desire of the British to monopolize all of West Africa's commerce. Antislaving was just a ploy in economic competition. In the early 1840s the newspaper El Corresponsal claimed that "an English colony placed on Fernando Po would have in its hands [the power] to impede, or better yet, annul, completely the commerce of our Antilles with that part of Africa, because on the pretext that they are engaged in the slave traffic, the ships cruising there would all be registered, harassed and, perhaps . . . judged with injustice. "35 In 1844 Jose A. Irigoyen, Fernando Antonio de Alvear, and N. Dominques y Alvarez, members of the Tribunal de Comercio, protested that the antislaving treaties destroyed any chance for legitimate Spanish trade in Africa. 36

At mid-century the situation in the Spanish-claimed Biafran territories was an embarrassment for Spain and added fuel to anti-British sentiment. The only permanent "Spanish" official in the Bights of Benin and Biafra was John Beecroft. When he died in 1854, Madrid tried to appoint Domingo Mustrich. Mustrich headed a Barcelona trading company which was accused by the British of slaving; his factory at Badagry was supposedly infamous. Mustrich had sent several large slave shipments to Cuba in 1853 and 1854. He accompanied his "property," but the British government seized two of his shipments of disembarked Africans. On the West African coast, the antislaving squadron captured one of the Spaniard's ships, the Fernando Poo, and took it to Sierra Leone. Mustrich's candidacy fell apart, and William Lynslager, another Britisher, succeeded as the second "Spanish" governor of Fernando Po.

Spaniards continued to complain of British interdiction of legitimate Spanish commerce. In a session of the Cortes in June of 1856, a deputy from Barcelona demanded an explanation of the capture of a corvette by two English cruisers. Later, in August of 1857, the British captured the Conchita, a vessel owned by the Barcelona company of Jose Vidal y Ribas, in the Dahomean port of Ouidah. In Spain the condemnation of the ship raised a firestorm of protest. At the same time a rumor spread that the corvette Taimaida, owned by Carlos Montagut and Company, had been captured.


In 1858 the Sociedad Economica de Barcelona petitioned the government lo modify the antislaving treaty and to encourage colonization. The Sociedad also demanded the establishment of a Spanish naval station so that the right of search would be reciprocal. A member of Madrid's Sociedad Economica Matritense echoed the sentiments of many of his compatriots when he denounced the treaties with Britain. The latter was accused of neglecting no opportunity "to molest, detain and even seize and ruin, in the manner of pirates, our merchant ships, submitting them to the unappealable sentence of the so-called 'Mixed Tribunal,' although [the British] alone sit on it in Sierra Leone. "37

Demands for increased action by Spain in the Bight of Biafra met with a positive response. At the end of the 1850s Leopoldo O'Donnell, a former captain-general of Cuba, headed the Spanish government. His administration, for the first time in decades, undertook foreign adventures. O'Donnell encouraged Spanish colonial forays in places as disparate as Peru, Morocco, Indochina, Mexico, and Santo Domingo. In keeping with the general tenor of national policy, Spain decided to occupy Fernando Po.

After years of hesitation, an expedition headed by a naval officer, Carlos Chacon, steamed from Spain on April19, 1858, and arrived on Fernando Po on May 23. The expedition brought a prefabricated hospital capable of serving forty patients, along with medicines and supplies for six months. A building owned by the English firm of Horsfall and Company was purchased as a governor's residence. Chacon almost immediately began plans for the construction of roads, an improved dock, and a harbor light.

During this spurt of colonial activity in the Bight of Biafra, one Spaniard optimistically said that "this island [Fernando Po] is a precious jewel, destined to serve in time as the anchor of salvation for the white race in the humanitarian enterprise of African civilization and as an emporium for the commerce of all this western part of the continent. "38 Spaniards recognized, however, that an underpopulated island was of little economic value. In 1859 Chacon was superseded as governor by Jose de la Gandara, and a policy of European colonization began. The government sent circulars to the Spanish provinces encouraging emigration, and a royal decree promised free passage.39 The new governor's expedition carried 128 colonists and 166 military personnel. Madrid, having carefully prepared for the venture, was convinced of the island's salubrity, especially at the higher elevations. After reconnoitering, one Spaniard believed: "The costly and risky investigations . . . show the existence of many points in which rich towns will be able to be founded, as healthy as the best in Spain . . . . " The expedition guaranteed "the civilization and commerce of West Africa, and that with the


discoveries made on the mountain . . . colonization is assured forever. "40

Even more grandiosely, Governor P. Lopez de Ia Torre Ayl16n (1862-1865) advised his government to occupy the whole area between the Bonny River and Cape Esterias. A naval officer, Jose Pelion y Rodriquez, was commissioned to reconnoiter the area; he succeeded in producing an exhaustive multivolume survey, which was subsequently lost by the Spanish government.

From previous experience, it should have been evident that the climate was unsuitable for Europeans. In the 1830s, of the roughly 2,000 Spanish traders and sailors who visited Corisco, fever killed between 100 and 500.41

On the Guillemard de Arag6n-Manterola expedition of 1845, almost all of the 178 sailors and marines fell ill.42 With the mid-century push to colonize, the epidemiological factor again asserted itself. Late in 1859 Governor Gandara had to send some of the colonos to Corisco from Fernando Po for reasons of health. Half died, including the doctor. Yellow fever was supposedly brought from Havana in March of 1862; in two months, 78 out of 250 whites on Fernando Po died. More than half of a special military company of 166 men sent to garrison the island found its way into the hospital.43 After four years of European colonization, the project ended in failure.

European penal settlement held out certain attractions. In 1861 a presidio was created and thirteen prisoners transported from Malaga. They were too weak for agricultural labor and had, therefore, been confined to a scow, where fever took its toll. In 1866, nineteen political prisoners arrived as a consequence of a republican and. socialist movement in Andalucia. They remained in the colony only ten months; half of them falling victim to the climate and yellow fever. The following year the government began experimenting with sending colonial troops to the Canaries as a "seasoning" measure against tropical fevers. 44 Such a measure would have been of little use in the Biafran disease climate. Eight years later, when La Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Politicas debated penal settlement, Pedro Armengol y Comet warned his countrymen that to send prisoners to the Bight was as good as a death sentence.45

The Cubans in Africa

Spain, one of the last great transatlantic slaving powers, could perhaps have been induced to introduce black slavery into its African possessions in the 1860s. Slavery was not abolished in Puerto Rico until 1873 and in Cuba


until 1886. Despite this reluctance to abandon slavery, a Spanish royal order of August 18, 1859 proclaimed all slaves arriving on Fernando Po free. It was a proclamation specifically aimed at forestalling Portuguese claims for

, the return of runaway slaves from Sao .Tome and Principe. A further order of 1861 authorized the transport to Fernando Po of Africans recaptured from slave ships by United States cruisers.

Spain also prohibited slavery on Fernando Po, in part, to avoid foreign intervention. There was always the danger that if other countries thought of Madrid's presence on the island as only a blind for negreros, Spain's claims might be completely disallowed. When, in May of 1860, King William of Bimbia recognized a Spanish protectorate and agreed to supply Fernando Po with laborers, the British Foreign Office told its consul to warn the Spanish that such arrangements could easily promote a market for captives. 46 The treaty with Bimbia remained a dead letter. In the 1870s the Spanish traveler Manuel Iradier sadly noted that Spanish "commerce and navigation from 1865 onward had not counted on the African coast." He complained that the British caused legitimate trade to continue to suffer. For example, in 1866 the Encarnacion, registered in Barcelona, made the voyage to Fernando Po, but was turned back because it· had not obtained a license and safe conduct from London beforehand. 47 Spain was in the ironic position of clandestinely transporting black labor to the Caribbean, while denying itself the privilege of exploiting its African possessions by the same means. Fernando Po was forced to rely on an eclectic and unpredictable labor supply, a situation which persisted into the twentieth century.

One proposed solution to the problem of colonizing Fernando Po was the emigration of unwanted free blacks from the New World. Africans illegally landed in Cuba and freed according to the antislaving treaties (emancipados) were put forth as the solution to the labor problem in Spanish Africa. Their presence in Cuba since 1824 was subversive of the slave order, and in 1825 the captain-general of Cuba, Dionisio Vives, suggested that emancipados be taken to Africa. The need for labor drove Cuban planters in contradictory directions. On the one hand, it called for more Africans. On the other, fear of revolution called for black emigration. Suggestions were periodically made that emancipados be taken to Sierra Leone or, even, to Spain itself, where they would work on public projects. Haiti was also considered; in the early 1830s some were taken to the British colony of Trinidad.

Given the prevailing political and racial climate in Cuba, some freedpeople attempted to return to Africa on their own. In 1844 Jose Salome Valdes, an emancipado known as Veles, and ninety-seven other black men, along with their wives and children, bought their own passage to Africa.


Unfortunately, the ship that was to transport them belonged to Pablo Alvarez, an associate of Pedro Blanco. The authorities became concerned because of the large amount of provisions the vessel carried. The ship was condemned as a slaver, and the prospective repatriates did not make it to Africa. The following year the Duque de Sotomayor wrote to the Earl of Aberdeen that his government wanted to send free Cuban blacks and mulattoes to Fernando Po and Anno bon as voluntary emigrants. 48

Guillemard de Aragon's visit was supposed to help determine the feasibility of the project; nothing was done, although the numbers of emancipados continued to increase. They numbered 2,000 in Cuba in 1854 and were joined by another 14,417 during the following twelve years.49

The relative unimportance of Fernando Po is clear from the fact that the Cuban emancipados were not sent overseas until the 1860s. In 1859 a Spanish royal order accepted a proposal made by two Cubans to transport freedmen to Fernando Po. In the same year, a new plan to develop Fernando Po with a nucleus of free blacks was put forth. The plan stipulated that cadres of twenty-five men would clear bush, cut timber, and serve on naval vessels. A decree of May 28, 1861 proposed enlisting and sending seventy-five or eighty freedmen to replace half of a white infatitry company sent in 1859. Besides serving as soldiers, ex-slaves would be artisans and laborers. Paradoxically, the Havana slaving firm of Zulueta and its London branch, headed by Pedro de Zulueta, obtained the right to provide foodstuffs to the emigrants.

The role of the Zuluetas in the free emigration scheme was bound to raise susp1c1ons. Given their area of expertise, there was some fear that the emancipados might be taken to Fernando Po and then reenslaved. The founder of the firm, Julian Zulueta, had arrived in Cuba in 1832 as a poor immigrant. He invested in the slave commerce from the late 1830s to the middle of the 1860s. In 1845 his profits from the trade enabled him to become a large plantation owner. He used his official contacts to the best advantage and played a key role in the distribution of newly arrived slaves (bozales). He was the largest shareholder in the Expedici6n por Africa Company and the island's richest planter. By 1860 he probably owned more blacks than any other single person in Cuba. In March of 1866, while free black emigration to Fernando Po was still being considered, the slaves on the Zulueta plantations in Mantanzas withheld their labor, maintaining that they had been freed by the Cortes in Madrid. Troops were called in to make the slaves return to work, although there was no actual violence. 50

In Cuba there was no great rush to return to Africa. The authorities there inquired in September of 1861 if they should send emancipados a forciori.

' Spain in the Bight 53

Madrid replied that if sufficient volunteers did not present themselves, sixty blacks serving as soldiers and two hundred day workers were to be sent. The conditions of labor and the advantages conferred on those in the military company were defined by an order of March, 1862; in July another order set forth the terms under which the two hundred day laborers were to work. The emigration scheme came to fruition in 1862. 1\vo hundred black emigrants, indentured for seven years, arrived from Havana. The emigrants were to serve their terms and then be granted their unconditional freedom. In November of 1862, Madrid ordered another two hundred blacks sent. The following February further measures for their support were decreed, and the government approved a barracks for their lodging. Emigration had the support of the home government, but it soon became evident that there was a lack of coordination with the Cuban authorities. A letter to Cuba from Madrid in 1863 repeated previous requests, but no response was made. Another royal decree for emigration was issued in October, 1865. Under its terms, 103 Africans landed in September at El Gato, Cuba, were ordered to West Africa. 51

The Spanish government sought to generate favorable international opinion on the emigration of Cuban blacks by clarifying and ameliorating the emancipado status. In October of 1865 Madrid withdrew from the captaingeneral the power to assign freedpersons. All emancipados who had been in Cuba for five years were to be at liberty when their contracts were terminated. Africans recaptured from slavers were to be transported to Fernando Po or to the African mainland. Captain-General Domingo Dulce reassigned many of the blacks to labor in Cuba supposedly before he knew of Madrid's decree. He later justified his actions as necessary to protect Cuban agriculture. In March of 1866 the captain-general attempted to recall emancipados taken from slave ships and distributed among plantation owners. Few of the planters complied with his order. Finally he was forced by their demands to make the emancipados available for the sugar harvest.

Emancipado emigration was prohibited in September of 1866. The number of emigrants to this date remains somewhat indistinct. It is known that, in approximately one year of the emancipado scheme, 400 freedmen arrived voluntarily. In total, at least 563 blacks, Cuban-born and those recaptured from slave ships, were sent in the 1860s.52 As with previous colonization attempts, disease took its toll. In 1869 there were only 150 emancipados, 120 men and 30 women.53 Even so, the idea of Afro-Cuban emancipation lingered. In 1872 when the Ley Moret, partially abolishing Cuban slavery, went into effect, it gave freedmen the choice of remaining in Cuba or returning to Spanish Africa. 54


The end of the emancipatio scheme did not mean the cessation of Cuban immigration. An Antillean presence remained. By the late 1860s the dilatory attitude of the Cuban authorities on ex-slave emigration was matched by their enthusiasm for the expatriation of political dissidents. The Ten Years War (1868-1878) in Cuba saw a new type of settlement on Fernando Po. At the beginning of the conflict over a hundred political deportees arrived from Havana. Two hundred and fifty more rebels arrived in May of 1869, and the total number for the year reached four hundred.55

Unfortunately, mortality was high. On the fifteen-day voyage from Cuba, there were ninety-five sick and eight dead within a few days. Because of the death rate, a royal order soon prohibited such deportations. However, some Cubans stayed after receiving permission to leave, and many went into agriculture. For instance, tobacco cultivated by Cubans won a gold medal at the Amsterdam Exposition of 1878. Also, some of the Cubans transported in the 1860s were members of an expedition around Fernando Po undertaken in 1884-1886. Others were transported during the Cuban war of independence in the 1890s; in 1897 there were 119 such deportees on the island.56

The state of emergency proclaimed with the arrival of the early exiles was not lifted until 1904.

Colonial Torpor

Spain's mid-century colonial push, of which the Cuban scheme was part, was only an episode. The rhythm of Spanish activity in West Africa was out of sync with that of other colonial powers. The pace of the earlier Spanish boom slowed before the wider European scramble for Africa began. In the 1870s the Spanish merchant marine, which had seemed so promising, went into a steep decline in the face of foreign competition. Economic growth was considerably below that of the other industrializing countries, and the gap was probably greater in 1875 than it had been in 1845.57 Available funds went to special foreign-backed financial groups and to agricultural interests. In spite of grandiose plans, West Africa did not attract much Spanish capital, aside .from that necessary for the declining slave and ancillary trades. In the 1870s the Vizconde de San Javier, Jose Munoz y Gaviria, complained that "those possessions [i.e., Fernando Po and its dependencies], so rich in timber, are worthless for Spain because no one goes there to export it, nor has a single commercial house been established, and rare are the boats which arrive from time to time from Spain. "58 A


Spanish governor lamented that it was impossible to compete on the Guinea Coast, where British commercial and naval power was so much stronger.59

A royal decree of December 1869 created a consultative council to study the future of Fernando Po. The preamble questioned the utility of the possession and noted that "from 1858 to the present ... there is not one' meter of road, nor one solid bridge, nor even one masonry building, nor one newly created town, nor one native or Bubi conquered for Spanish civilization; everything remaining as it was twelve years ago. 11 The council concluded that Spain must 11 determine if that country contains enough favorable conditions for the creation for the State of an advantageous Spanish province . . . or if it will be more convenient to absorb the expense and abandon this project. 1160 The government settled on retrenchment. Direct passage of naval vessels between Spain and the colony was suspended, and the colonial government had to have its supplies transferred to English ships in the Canaries.

In 1872 the buildings and storehouses of the government were sold, except for the Catholic mission. In the mid-1880s English shipping arrived at Fernando Po four times per month and often stopped at San Carlos and Concepcion to take the island's produce to Great Britain. The German Woermann Line arrived, at most, twice monthly. Money from the metropole arrived irregularly, and the government was always in debt. English money was the medium of exchange, although old Spanish pesetas, worthless in Spain, were in circulation. A foreign visitor remarked: "On my journeys in the Bubi villages I have decidedly lived much better than the Europeans in Santa Isabel, particularly the Spanish officials who are served in the house of a dirty colonist for a lot of money. 1161 Colonial administration itself showed a marked lack of continuity. Between 1865 and 1910 there were over forty-five governors. The colonial torpor was lifted only in the wake of the Spanish-American War, when, divested of its Caribbean colonies, Spain tried in earnest to exploit its remaining tropical real estate.

Chapter 4

Trade and Politics

More than a quarter of a century ago, K. 0. Dike emphasized the importance of Fernando Po and wrote that British abandonment of the island "meant that the only possible base for the establishment of a British post to guard the growing trade of the oil rivers disappeared . . . . The absence of a permanent base from which to control the activities of British traders in the [Niger] Delta gave free rein to the elements of violence, disorder, and instability in the first 50 years of 'equitable traffic. "' 1 What should be realized is that the island continued to play a significant role in Biafran politics after 1835. The British consular presence after 1849 was of increasing importance in the arbitration of disputes among coastal societies. Furthermore, British economic and political influence continued to flow from the island. Much of this influence was carried forward by Africans claiming British protection. Sierra Leoneans and Fernando Po recaptives, pursuing their own interests, were a dynamic economic reality more than a generation after the failed British occupation.

The Colonial Nucleus

Unlike the Creoles of Sierra Leone, the recaptured Africans of Fernando Po lived in a noncolonial context. In 1843, four years before the granting of legal independence to African-American freedmen in Liberia, the people of

56

Trade and Politics 57

Santa Isabel found themselves nominally Spanish and practically free. The settlers had access to Western education, but escaped the direct imposition of European political domination. During the high point of British activity in the early 1830s, the Clarence settlement contained around 2000 people; this was higher than the population of many Delta villages at the beginning of the Atlantic trade. In the wake of the British government's withdrawal, there was a dip in Clarence's population. In 1835 it had 788 inhabitants, including migrant workers. By 1841 population had grown to 873. In 1848 it ranged between 800 and 900. In 1856 it was 982. The number slowly increased late in the century. In 1877 it was 1,106 and in 1885, 1,284.2

Clarence, or Santa Isabel, was a unique place, one where a black settler population could evolve without the checks imposed by an imperial power. It was a frontier where the "educated African" could fully exploit his natural environment and his fellow Africans. The town contained Western schools, medical care, commercial transactions, and a brothel for visiting sailors. A number of exotic transients passed through. In the early 1840s Baptist missionaries reported a visit "from a socialist, who avows his principles very boldly." He was "a man of colour from the Island of Nevis" who "said ... that he is surprised to see what people think of missionaries here, for they stone them in the West Indies."3 In 1841 there was "an [African] American, from Cape Palmas" working as a clerk in one of the local shops. Importantly, by the 1850s, Fernando Po was the residence of a British consul, the representative of all of the area's varied British subjects.

The coalescence of the Clarence community took place only gradually. The people landed from·1827 to 1835 were ethnically diverse, and they had undergone the demoralizing process of enslavement and, then, recapture and disembarkation in an alien place. In the years following 1835 the bulk of the settler population was composed of Sierra Leoneans, Cape Coasters (Fanti), Cameroonian (Bakwerri and Isuwu) and Calabar (Efik) migrant laborers, Kru laborers, runaways from Principe and Sao Tome (mostly laborers), and liberated Africans. In the mid-1850s the largest group among the surviving recaptives (65 out 238) were Igbo who had been traded through Aboh.4

Many cultivated plots while their "masters" engaged in trade with the interior or with passing ships. In the 1840s ties of dependency still persisted between these Igbo and some Sierra Leoneans: "Those who got them from the ship still keep them: they give them no wages; they often ·flog them .... None of the people of the town will hire them, if they wish to change their master or mistress, as this would be called taking away another person's servant; if they hide among the natives, they are sought out and natives are bribed to bring them back . . . . "5 On the island social distance

58 Trade and Politics

and labor subordination were both symbolic and instrumental. Black masters, as well as white ones, used corporal punishment to insure the performance of tasks. Additionally, physical punishment was viewed as inherent in the master-servant relationship. The ability to command labor was, like the ability to command wealth, a symbol of high status.

For a time, hired labor from the Biafran mainland was important. In 1835 there were 110 such workers, fourteen percent of the population. Thn years later, there were 374-around forty percent of the total population.6

Semi-skilled sawyers (26 in 1845) and carpenters (29 in 1845) stood above servants and laborers in the social hierarchy. 7 Somewhat higher in status were skilled workers and craftsmen: coopers, tailors, shipwrights, and sailors. In the mid-1850s the recaptives were outnumbered by 416 Africans from the coast (mainly Bimbia), who worked as artisans and servants. 8

Outside the town the bulk of the laborers were Kru migrants. In town, the Kru lived separately, and residential segregation was enforced.9

At the opposite end of the socioeconomic hierarchy from the laborers stood the major traders. They were a small group of European, Sierra Leonean, and Fanti immigrants. Most had arrived during the British occupation. Foremost among the traders was John Beecroft (1790-1854). He had served under Nicolls as superintendent of works and remained in Clarence after the 1835 evacuation. His eminence was reinforced by his dual position as both "Spanish" governor of the island (1843) and British consul for the. Bights of Benin and Biafra (1849). Indeed, the merchantgovernor is best known for his activities away from the island. As consul he traveled widely. He paid one visit to Gezo, King of Dahomey, and two to the Egba Yoruba. He occupied Lagos in 1851 and deposed King Pepple of Bonny in 1854. K. 0. Dike has maintained that "in time Africans came

· to look on the British Consul as the de facto Governor of the Bights of Benin and Biafra, "10 but this is an exaggeration. Beecroft had at his command considerably fewer personnel than did the British administration of 1827-1835. He had almost no staff and had to depend on the Royal Navy for transport. Rather than a governor of the Bights, he was principally an arbiter in matters of external trade.

Beecroft's deputy and successor as governor was another European trader, William Lynslager (1810-1864), a British subject of Dutch ancestry. He began his career in the Dutch navy; he then left it for the merchant marine and spent five years in Batavia. Shortly· afterwards he came to Fernando Po, where he earned a living by making and mending sails and making hats. His situation improved later when, during the official occupation, he was put in


charge of the British government's beach stores. At his death, Lynslager's trading business was taken over by his African wife.

Most prominent among the Sierra Leoneans was John Scott. After receiving an education from the Church Missionary Society, he came to Fernando Po in 1827 as a clerk and stayed on as treasurer for a British firm. Captain Wauchope, who visited Clarence in 1840, cited Scott as an example "that the African is not incapable of receiving instruction, or civilization, or discharging the duties of life in any situation to which he may be raised . . . . " The visiting captain had a check for £230 cashed by Scott and afterwards dined with him. Beecroft observed to Wauchope: "You will be surprised to hear, that ten years ago, that man [Scott] was in the hold of a slaver."ll Scott, who was probably supplied with goods by the London firm of Forster and Smith, owned a schooner and traded with the mainland. After he died in the 1840s, Beecroft lived with his widow.

Scott's partner was William Henry Matthews, another Sierra Leonean and also Scott's brother-in-law. Like Scott, Matthews had come to Fernando Po with Owen's expedition and, after starting out as a mechanic, was promoted to the position of African clerk in 1829. In 1845 a member of the Baptist mission sold the largest warehouse in Santa Isabel to Matthews and William Lynslager. By 1852 Matthews was the owner of a schooner and was trading along the Cameroon River for palm oil. After his death, his affairs were managed by his widow, whom a Spanish traveler observed to be "a black woman, who with her daughters . . . ;received an excellent education in England . . . and to this they owe the preservation of their house. "12 A visitor in the 1860s remarked on the business acumen of the widow and her daughters, who spoke English, French, and Spanish. 13

John Scott's son Jonathan showed early promise, but was unable to build upon the business established by his father. Jonathan Scott was born in Sierra Leone in 1826 and educated in England. He studied steam navigation for a short time in Woolwich and also served as a ship's carpenter in Liverpool. Jonathan accompanied Beecroft aboard the Ethiope on Beecroft's fourth ascent of the Niger in 1845, but their friendly relationship must have declined when Beecroft later accused the young man of murder in a Cameroon trade dispute. In early 1852 Scott was engaged by his uncle, Matthews, as a supercargo. Three years later he was embroiled with him in a dispute over his father's estate.

Another person who was to play a significant role in the community and its expansion was Samuel Richard Brew, scion of a well-known Fanti family. The Brews were from the Gold Coast town of Cape Coast. Samuel Brew was born there in 1819, the son of Richard Brew (1778-c.1849), a grandson


of an Irish slaver. The date of Brew's arrival on Fernando Po is unknown but early in his career he served as a clerk in John Scott's store. In 1840 h; was charged with a breach of trust and imprisoned for five months. He was a member of the Baptist Church and married twice, the second time to a ~aria Beecroft (it is not known whether she was related to John Beecroft) m 1855. After the expulsion of a Baptist mission in 1858, Brew followed it to Victoria, Cameroon, where he operated as a palm oil trader and agent for the German Woermann shipping line.

There were other important traders. Among them were Samuel Cooper, John Showers, T. H. Johnston, and Thomas Collins. It was such men who gave goods on "trust" to smaller-scale traders. These men were "able to have arrested those who left their employ; they made up [the city] council and thus had a role in what legal processes there were. They provided the Deacons of the Church. They built 'respectable houses' and were the literates in society; they could afford to send their sons to school. "14 After 1843, when the settlement's name was officially changed to Santa Isabel, the governing council was invested with control of the town and its environs. The council passed ordinances and imposed fines for drunkness, fighting, the carrying of firearms, and the selling of alcohol to the Bubi.

By the mid-1860s Beecroft, Lynslager, and most of the black traders connected with the British occupation were dead. Some new men came and prospered. The most successful was an Englishman, John Holt. His career mirrors changes in West African trade after the mid-century and . Fernando Po's changing relationship to them. Later the founder of a large commercial enterprise, Holt arrived on the island in 1862, while still in his early twenties, and found work with Lynslager. He remained on Fernando Po for twelve years, using the island as it traditionally had been used-as an entrepot and transshipment point. Goods were shipped to Britain via mail or cargo boat, and mainland "factories" were stocked from the island. In 1867 his only serious competitor retired from the trade, and the following year Holt began operations on the mainland by reopening a small post in Bimbia that Lynslager had used. Although the venture was not very successful, it marked a shift of interest away from the Biafran littoral. Subsequently, Holt traded in Gabon and Nigeria and rose to become a major investor in West Africa. By the time of his death in 1915, Fernando Po was a small part of the trader's interest in West Africa. Imperialism and the "trade frontier" had moved inland.


Company Versus Peasant Development

In the first half of the nineteenth century, would-be developers of Fernando Po faced several choices: "trade vs. agriculture, open trade vs. monopolized trade, peasant proprietorship vs. European-managed · plantations. "15

Development of Fernando Po was influenced by the larger debate on the economic future of West Africa. A. G. Hopkins notes: "For historians the [West African agricultural] schemes are especially noteworthy because they expressed the realisation that the external slave trade would not simply die of its own accord, and that a positive effort was required to find substitute exports. "16 Even before the abolition of the English slave trade, the Danes had experimented with European-controlled plantations in the Bight of Biafra. In 1802 Johan Wrisberg, a sometime governor of Fort Christianborg on the Gold Coast, tried to buy territory in Bimbia on the Cameroonian shore to carry out a plan for an agricultural colony. . A schooner, the Experiment, sailed to a small island off the coast and began a small settlement. As in other cases of planned European colonization in the region, it fell victim to disease. Interestingly enough, in light of the soon to be launched British crusade for "Legitimate Commerce," the establishment was sacked in 1803 at the instigation of Liverpool slavers. 17

After the failure of the Owen expedition, the British government's intention was certainly not to exploit Fernando Po for itself. Mere occupation, however, presented a series of questions which Britishers were forced to attempt to answer. Had the epidemiological problem been overcome, the economic history of the island would have been far different. The fact that Fernando Po was seen as a strategic stepping stone to other activities is irrelevant. As in the case of the Cape of Good Hope or even the Falklands, occupation would have brought in its train a demand for a modicum of economic self-sufficiency.

During the British occupation Owen had foreseen a classic insular economy in which landless peasants worked plantations containing the majority of the productive land. He claimed that he could create an economically viable colony in two years. Plantations run by white colonists (including convicts) could supplement the island's entrerot role. Clarence's proximity to the slaving areas of the Niger Delta promised a steady flow of liberated African labor. 18 .

"Developmental" schemes, like Owen's, were proposed, almost none of which came to fruition. For instance, in the wake of the evacuation of the British antislaving base, a British trading and lumber firm established itself. Superficially, the situation resembled that of British Honduras (present-day


Belize), where English commercial interests had gradually extended their authority since the seventeenth century. There, British lumberers operated in an area which was lightly populated and claimed by Spain. The indigenous population remained in the interior and only gradually came within the ambit of outside authority.

The similarities are deceptive, however. For one, Fernando Po was settled in the post-abolition period. Few voluntary migrants wanted to stay on the island. Thus, the British slave-using plantation and timber oligarchy that developed in Belize never had an opportunity to do so in the Bight of Biafra. Attempts to import coerced labor were tried, but they failed to create a labor force sufficient to support large-scale exploitation of the island. Also, the climate of the Mosquito Coast proved far less mortiferous than that of the Bights. 19

Owen favored plantation development; his successor favored peasant production spurred on by want and the ideology of free labor. Unskilled labor would become skilled; the island would be cultivated, and a useful property would be delivered to the British government. Nicolls believed that in the tropics black men were better laborers than whites. With a few officers to direct them and a small number of skilled Europeans to teach trades and cattle raising, he was convinced that he could mold the recaptives into model wage laborers.

Nicolls envisioned Africans as essential, but dependent, producers of raw materials. They should be taught how to repair, but not how to manufacture British products. "I am clearly of the opinion," said Nicolls later, "that confining the Natives of Africa to the production of the raw materials of their native land with which it so richly abounds, is the most advantageous employment both for that and this country (at least) for a very long time to come. "20 In the 1840s he thought that British companies and a black yeomanry might coexist if land on Fernando Po could be leased in perpetuity in return for six percent of gross production. Such a course was consonant with Nicolls's views on the role of trade. The former superintendent's method "for putting down slavery and the slave-trade by a safe and judicious mode would be for the friends of Africa to form a large and efficient commercial company, and let the British Government take up positions on the coast, giving the governor permission to accept the sovereignty of any territory that may be freely offered to him and pass an act to declare every man free that comes into these colonies. "21

In the wake of the British evacuation, government properties were sold to Richard Dillon and Company, a firm with ties to both Nicolls and John Beecroft. Dillon had first applied to trade on the island in 1831 and hoped


to break Liverpool merchants' hold on the Niger Delta trade by employing Beecroft as his mainland trading agent. The company did not achieve its aims and went bankrupt in 1836 through mismanagement. The West African Company, which bought Dillon out, was composed largely of Dillon's London creditors, led by J. Blunt, and used the ships Dillon formerly owned. The company wanted a transshipment point for gum copal, gum senegal, coffee, and grain, as well as a source of lumber. Beecroft served briefly as its agent and was succeeded by at least three others.

The company did not do well financially. Coercion of the resident recaptive population did little to increase profits. For most of its short existence the company's chief exports were palm oil and timber. In 1843 its last shipment to England was only ninety-eight casks of palm oilY This was especially unfortunate because the enterprise was liable to forfeit almost £2,000 if incapable of filling its chartered ships. Beecroft, the largest individual trader, also weakened his former employer. He bought up land around Santa Isabel and encouraged laborers to work for him at his trading establishment (New Town) on the western side of the island. In late 1842 a British naval officer suggested that the British government buy out the ailing firm. The company decided to leave the island after suffering losses amounting to £50,000.23 Its property and claims were sold to the Baptist Missionary Society.

The West African Company's tenure during the years from 1836 to 1843 highlighted the problems inherent in any concessionaire plan. Once established, the methods of the company agents had created protests from the free black population. The firm desired a landless population working in its lumbering and entrepot activities. This desire raised the same question that had surfaced during the establishment of Sierra Leone in the previous century-the question of purpose. Was the territory a philanthropic haven for freed slaves or tropical property to be run for profit? If the latter was the aim, Fernando Po would have to pay, and this could be accomplished only by prodding the resident labor force into company employ.

By the late 1830s, Nicolls, an advocate of some form of company rule, assumed the guise of protector and benefactor of the Fernando Po recaptives. Before leaving, he had given each householder a certificate giving him or her title to a home. The West African Company requisitioned some of these homes. In July of 1838 the former superintendent received a letter whiph denounced the company's demand for a symbolic rent payment from Santa Isabel's residents. "They dare not refuse," confided Nicolls's correspondent, "or are subject to be severely flogged or sent off the island to any of the neighbouring places, viz. Bimbia, Calabar, Cameroons or Bonny." The


liberated Africans themselves protested to Nicolls and said that they feared reenslavement. 24

The company's agents and overseers, at least one of whom had been employed in the Gambia and Brazil, forged ahead with plans to reduce the inhabitants to a docile labor force. Expulsions and imprisonments were frequent. When a company agent heard that sawyers were cutting timber and keeping the softwood for themselves~ he had their houses broken into and some planks confiscated. In protest over this and other actions, about fifty sawyers went to North-West Bay (San Carlos Bay) and returned only after the company's agent had given assurances that the actions would not be repeated.

Nicolls informed the British government of conditions on Fernando Po. It, in tum, demanded an explanation from the West African Company's secretary, who replied that his business was turning a profit. Given the loudly professed antislaving nature of British involvement, the government was troubled about reports of forced labor. The Foreign Office also thought "it singular that this self-formed Company should be levying Duties by their own Authority in an Island which belongs to the Spanish Crown. "25 A commander in the British navy had already refused to enforce the company's claims against some Old Calabar chiefs, a refusal which met with the government's approval. It was under these circumstances, facing financial loss and ambiguous legal status, that the West African Company withdrew.

The idea of company development died hard. In 1842 the African Agricultural Association hoped to raise £40,000 and to grow tropical produce on Fernando Po and its dependencies as if they were "West India Estates."

· Furthermore, the company proposed that "this large Estate of Clarence shall be divided into Farms as may be required by the present Settlers and those who may come from the Coast and those who may come from Liberia, the United States or elsewhere, to enjoy the feeling of independence, and a retreat from the contempt and contumely of supercilious ignorance and presumption." The immigrants would pay rent to the company and "have a vote on the laying on of Taxes in Clarence, which as a Free Port will eventually have as large, and as independent a Population as there is at present in Texas. "26 Unfortunately for its planners, the plan remained only at the drawing board stage. In 1844, Robert Jamieson, a Liverpool merchant who was Beecroft's sometime employer, suggested that an African association be formed for the Niger trade from Fernando Po. For £20,000 of capital spread over four years, a steamer could be placed on the Niger and palm oil taken to the island by tender. Beecroft made a trip for the fledgling association, but Jamieson subsequently turned his attention to other


African ventures. The following year MacQueen proposed the African Agricultural and Commercial Company. With Fernando Po as a base, the company could concentrate on trade at the junction of the Niger and the Benue. Like many of his previous plans, the company was never realized.

The Inculcation of Values

For the vast proportion of the nineteenth century, Fernando Po's exportoriented activities were dominated not by European concessionaires, but by African settlers. Their creation and nurturance was one outgrowth of the idea of the "Bible and the Plow." It rested on the notion that African societies would appropriate European religion and that, motivated by a desire for European manufactures, African ruling classes would redirect their societies' economies in ways complementary to those of Europe. At the same time, antislaving gave rise to groups of recaptives who could serve as the vanguard of socioeconomic change. In 1787 Freetown, Sierra Leone, was founded as a "free" labor experiment; twenty years later Britain abolished its slave trade. Soon, from the Gambia to the Bight of Biafra, liberated slaves were urged to engage in agricultural schemes based on wage labor and the demands of the world market. Often these communities of liberated slaves were of the type the economic historian Ralph Austen calls "creole" ("Afro-European," culturally and/or physically).27 Many engaged in middleman trade. At a certain level, and to varying degrees, they were "Westernized." They had, usually through missionary agency, appropriated cultural traits which emanated from the capitalist West. 28

The inculcation of the proper values of the wage labor system started during the official occupation. It was Nicolls who first elaborated a plan to "civilize" the disparate recaptive elements in Clarence. To the second superintendent, the liberated Africans in Clarence were little different from the lower orders at home: "The intellect of a Negro is in no way deficient, he is only what all ignorant and savage men are and equally capable of being instructed and enlightened with the rest of the human race. "29 Work and vocational training were necessary. Just as reformers in the metropole, in the words of David Brion Davis, wanted "to inculcate the lower classes with various moral and economic virtues, so that workers would want to do what the emerging economy required," so Nicolls hoped that the liberated


Africans would, through the internalization of the proper attitudes, transform themselves into willing wage laborers. 30 The colonel said:

The liberated African when first taken from a Slave Ship requires to be subjected to a peculiar mode of management in order to render him a useful member of the Community-In his own Country his state even at the best is a species of Slavery, as he is robbed by his Chief of whatever Property he may acquire that is more than sufficient for his own support; deprived thus of every stimulus to industry, he is consequently the laziest of Human Beings, and until he can be taught some of the wants of civilized life, and convinced that by his own exertions he can obtain the means of satisfying them it is both cruel and impolitic to abandon him to his own guidance . . . . It is therefore some time after he comes amongst us before he can believe his bondage is ended, and still longer before he feels any security of our keeping faith with him respecting the indoucements [sic] held out to make him work.31

Nicolls's experiment in pedagogy was short-lived. It ended with the withdrawal of the official British presence. The chief inculcators of the values of nineteenth-century Britain were to be English missionaries. In 1841 two Baptists, Rev. John Clarke of Jericho, Jamaica, and Dr. G. K. Prince, arrived. Their visit was inspired by the ideas of William Knibb, a proponent of West Indian colonization in Africa.. After visiting the Cameroons and Fernando Po, Clarke and Prince took back a favorable report of the possibilities of mission work. The Baptist Missionary Committee decided to establish a permanent ministry, and two groups set out for West Africa. One left from England and arrived in September of 1843. Rev. Clarke and Rev. Alfred Saker headed another group which left Jamaica in December of 1843 and landed on Fernando Po in February of 1844, carrying forty-two West Indian immigrants.

The newcomers were quartered among the town's African residents and soon began to grumble. The climate was not as healthy as was supposed. In addition, the Jamaicans were not given useful tasks, and their inactivity added to their discontent. The Europeans looked upon them as "educators" in the larger and more figurative sense. The immigrants saw themselves as fit for positions as classroom teachers and saw no reason why school management was chiefly reserved for Europeans. Resentment was inherent in the situation. African children were also seen as having a bad moral influence on the immigrants' offspring.· The West Indians asked to send


their children home. Early in 1846 the Jamaican teachers requested to go as well when it appeared that the Spaniards would expel the mission. The mission was not expelled, but the difficulties facing the immigrants did not abate. In 1848 an English pastor returned to Jamaica with the dissatisfied settlers. An ambitious and ambiguous scheme had come to an end.

In spite of the failure of the Jamaican colonization scheme, the Baptist mission continued and left a durable legacy. Guillemard de Aragon, who disapproved of Protestantism was forced to acknowledge the mission's utility: "The blacks have acquired habits of industry . . . . In consideration of this, the last Spanish commissioner [in 1843] ... permitted one of them [the missionaries] to remain in order to prevent the ruin of such healthy principles . . . . "32 For some residents, Western education aided ii:J. trade and provided entree to employment. The mission functioned as an institution which gave some in the community tools with which to achieve worldly social and economic aspirations. While these aspirations might not seem inconsistent with the spiritual aims of the British missionary, the meaning of the process was different for the missionary and the missionized. Indeed, the potentially missionized might overlook the separation of means and end, and view them as synonymous. Some missionaries became aware of this and cautioned against materialism. ·

The Baptists frequently criticized the labor practices and sexual morality of the settler community. The missionaries' purchase of the West African Company's rights also grated on the governor and his colleagues. For instance, in 1844 Rev. John Clarke disagreed with Scott, Matthews, and Lynslager on the use of the cleared ground in and around the town. Beecroft wrote to Nicolls protesting the property claims of the missionaries. The colonel, in turn, complained to the Spanish ambassador in London. In late 1845 serious disputes occurred; it was partially in response to these that the Spanish expedition of 1845 visited Fernando Po. The Spanish proclaimed Roman Catholicism the religion of the colony. Although an expulsion order was ultimately overturned, the temporal claims of the missionaries were ended.

The Baptists' land claims were not the only source of tension. Some settlers, both African and European, were critical of the level of education provided by the Baptist mission. In the 1850s Lynslager said that "the instruction given in the school in connection with the Church of the Baptist Mission, has been of such an inferior nature, that those of the inhabitants here who could afford the means, have been under the necessity of sending their children to Sierra Leone to receive an education . . . . "33 The Church Missionary Society Grammar School in Freetown was seen as a remedy to


the limited educational horizon of Clarence/Santa Isabel; its curriculum of mathematics, Biblical and English history, Greek, geography, and music made it highly attractive to those who could afford it. In 1853 Edward Jones, an African-American Anglican missionary, visited and took four Santa Isabel youths back to Sierra Leone. Three years later the British consul urged Bishop Crowther of the Church Missionary Society to consider the possibility of establishing an Anglican mission on Fernando Po.

When the Chacon expedition arrived in 1858, Roman Catholicism was again proclaimed the sole religion. The Baptist missionaries decided to depart for Cameroon. In early 1859 a British ship was sent to aid evacuation. The emigrants numbered from 100 to 150 persons, more than two-thirds of them women and children. Most went off to found the Baptist mission town of Victoria (Limbe). The majority of the creoles stayed.

Racism and Competition

Some nineteenth-century racists attacked the idea that Africans themselves could develop their continent's agricultural potential. By mid-century those at home and abroad who fought a rearguard action against the doctrine of wage labor fell back upon doctrines of Africa's natural abundance and Africans' "natural" indolence. In 1849 Thomas Carlyle argued in The Nigger Question that experience proved that something besides wages was needed as a spur to industry in the tropics. 34 Increasingly, such views found their followers. The stereotype of the "lazy African" persisted and grew in force after the Scramble for Africa. Western education, once seen as an aid to the Africans' production for export, now supposedly aggravated the aversion to farming. Also, educated Africans were of decreasing utility to white administrators and merchants. The unyoking of the "Bible and the Plow" was possible only in a situation where outsiders managed and governed and where Africans were basically drawers of water and hewers of wood.

By the 1850s the relationship between creoles in the Bight and their erstwhile British trading partners and mentors was in a state of flux. Rising trade competition, combined with increasing racism, created new problems. The introduction of steamship service between the Bight of Biafra and Britain in the 1850s meant that numerous small creole traders from Sierra Leone and Fernando Po could now export palm oil on their own. European traders often viewed these small competitors as the. bane of commerce. As friction increased, the creoles often appealed for protection as British subjects to the


consul on Fernando Po. In the end, their appeals went unanswered. By the 1880s the changed attitude toward creoles, already evident in Sierra Leone, was apparent on Fernando Po, too. The difference was that, on the island, European authority was largely powerless to transform its prejudices into policies.

The African societies of the eastern Delta and Cross River regions were also ambivalent about these "English blacks." The year before steamer service started, the Rev. Edward Jones brought some lgbo recaptives to Fernando Po and then proceeded on to Old Calabar. Jones was told that Efik recaptives could be resettled, and in October, 1854, the first party arrived. Most lived in Duke Town near an English mission. The next year two began to trade in palm oil, a move which angered British traders on the river. Men like Peter Nicholls, a Sierra Leonean recaptive, did very well.35

In general creoles, whether from Sierra Leone or Fernando Po, traded, engaged in crafts, and claimed to be beyond the authority of local officials. Also problematic was their purchase of slaves to whom they later gave emancipation papers. In 1858 King Duke, one of the Efik leaders, wrote to Fernando Po that "a number of Sierra Leone men and others have come here to reside in my town and now these men say they are Englishmen and British subjects and are not amenable to any law of mine . . . . "36 The following year two Sierra Leoneans were deported. The Efik asked for a general expulsion.

What concerned the British more than the slave issue were trade delays and attendant violence. In 1855 an important incident occurred. British supercargoes complained that oil was being held up because, instead of paying their trust, the Efik were selling to Sierra Leoneans. Efik King Eyo II, the most important trader, had traded with Peter Nicholls. In retaliation, Black Davis, a Sierra Leonean trader, and Eyo's son were both seized and imprisoned on a British vessel. Later, more of Nicholls's oil was seized from the beach where it was stored prior to export. The following year a British captain seized palm oil belonging to the Sierra Leonean Daniel Hedd. Nicholls, disgusted, had already returned to Sierra Leone.

Recognition as British subjects became extremely important for creoles wanting to do business in the Bights of Biafra and Benin. Unfortunately for them, the British government was of the opinion that British supercargoes were not responsible under English law for their behavior towards S~erra Leoneans and others beyond areas of British jurisdiction. The situation was especially painful for the Fernando Po community. They dwelled in a town that housed the British consulate and were "ruled" by the British consul in the name of Spain. Further confusion in the status of settlers on Fernando


Po was created in 1852 when the Royal Navy landed thirty-eight slaves from Lagos at the request of King Akitoye of Lagos. Three years later Benjamin Campbell, British consul in Lagos, designated Fernando Po as a place of exile for Sierra Leoneans convicted of crimes in the town.

In March of 1853 Beecroft wrote to the British government in an attempt to establish the nationality of the black population on Fernando Po and was told that they were not British. 37 In spite of this disclaimer, on the arrival of Consul Thomas Hutchinson in 1856, a group of inhabitants introduced themselves to him "as British subjects, several of whom are liberated Africans who were landed here when our Government had the loan of the Island, and some of us have emigrated here . . . from Freetown . . . . " The group urged the consul "to more firmly establish our commercial relations with England. "38 Hutchinson asked for clarification and was informed that they were not British subjects.

In 1857, an incident occurred which reveals how far relations between the British and Fernando Po's black settlers had deteriorated. In March of that year, Governor Lynslager and a creole carpenter, Thomas Williams, had a violent argument. The creole was sent to prison, but managed to escape with the tacit connivance of two black constables. Hutchinson, still the British consul, was much alarmed, fearing that "such an open defiance as this might prove the first step to an insurrection-he [Lynslager] and I being the only official personages in a colony containing a thousand negroes . . . . " Members of the community attempted to calm the situation, but Williams later organized a protest meeting. The governor was infuriated and wanted to arrest one of Williams's supporters, the prominent trader Peter Nicholls. The white crews of British merchantmen were called in. Hutchinson prevailed on the governor not to use them, "although the sailors had not reached their ships, when half a dozen negroes appeared at the comer of Governor Lynslager's garden and defied him to fire. "39

Santa Isabel was· aroused by the affair, and a warning was given to the governor:

Such act of cruelty [i.e., the imprisonment of Williams] has greatly excited us if not exactly but almost to a sens [sic] of "Rebellion" . . . . Surely if a man who is endowed with intellectual powers and feelings like any other individual whether white or black is treated thus-surely we as inhabitants will similarly be treated alike . . . if this young man had been killed on the very spot . . . then [it] will not lead us to a sense of rebellion only-but a total insurrection and bloodshed . . . . 40


The protesters demanded the restoration of the town council which had been established in the 1840s and then fallen into disuse. This demand for political participation fell on deaf ears. The African community stood disillusioned. The British consul had been far from neutral in the dispute; a group of residents accused him of "instigating Governor Lansteger [sic] . . . to proclaim war against the inhabitants of this place, subjecting them to create mutiny which will lead to the great destruction and ruin of this Island." The European power which was the focus of a kind of cultural and political loyalty seemed openly hostile to black political aspirations. Furthermore, it disowned them. The residents announced to the British representative: "you have declared to us in times past that we are not British, neither Spanish subjects, but we do well know that we have been liberated by the hands of British cruisers, and brought to this Island, we therefore consider ourselves (altho' under the Spanish flag) as British subjects. "41 The consul dismissed these protests as the work of semi-educated malcontents, noting the author was "a native of Sierra Leone who is the clerk to Mr. Peter Nichols [sic], a negro trader of the colony. "42

Into this highly charged atmosphere the early anthropologist and pseudoscientific racist Richard Burton . stepped as consul in 1861. He already detested "Westernized" Africans. During his tenure, creole traders received little backing and much overt hostility. In Freetown he had observed that "[the Creole] drinks, he gambles, he intrigues, he over-dresses himself . . . . "43 Burton was quite convinced that Africans were best off as simple laborers and that Europeans were their born supervisors. On Fernando Po he struck an African he considered too familiar and was accused of not remitting estate funds to a Sierra Leonean widow. He most admired the "simple" Bubi, the group which mostly clearly fit within his perceptions of "the Negro's Place in Nature." "Though ... highly conservative," Burton wrote, the Bubi "is not as some might imagine, greatly destitute of intelligence: he pronounces our harsh and difficult English less incorrectly than any West African tribe, including the Sierra Leonite. "44

Above all else, Burton rejected any African claim for equality before the law or for political participation. He complained that "we-in these days-read such nonsense pure and simple as 'Africa for the Africans.' "45

Burton was the "Africanist" par excellence. He, in the eye of his European contemporaries, combined the latest theories with on-the-spot observation. His opinions carried weight simply because he had seen so much of Africa. To doubters, he argued that "touching the African, it may be observed that there are in England at least two distinct creeds: 1. That of those who know him; 2. That of those who do not. "46 Burton felt that the relation between


the laborer and the controller of labor in the tropics must involve compulsion. Simply put, climate made labor in the tropics difficult and wants few. Africans would have to be forced to "work." While on the island he opined that "no white who has lived long in the outer tropics can prevent feeling that he is pro tempore the lord, master and the proprietor of the black humanity placed under him. "47 In practice, such views undergirded the expansion of European authority. In Old Calabar Burton set up a Court of Equity composed of European trading agents and the two principal Efik political authorities. Significantly, in this arrangement, the consul had the final say.

In Burton's view there was no room for educated Africans or creole traders. He was not alone in disparaging a group the British had previously carefully cultivated. In 1856 Lynslager had written the British consul, asking him to "give every possible publicity to the fact that no immigrants from Sierra Leone or Lagos will be allowed to land here unless provided with a certificate of good character. "48 In the early 1860s the price of palm oil declined, but immigrants from Sierra Leone continued to come to the Bight and to settle on Fernando Po. In 1865 there were approximately fifty Sierra Leoneans in Old Calabar. As late as 1874 the tailors, carpenters, and other artisans there asked the consul to determine whether or not they were due British protection, a question apparently not answered satisfactorily because two years later many African settlers fled Old Calabar out of fear for their lives.

British consuls in general were far from sympathetic to African settlers. In 1869 Consul C. Livingstone gave permission for chiefs to punish individuals who claimed British citizenship. Nine years later, when King Archibong of Old Calabar hoped to expel all creole immigrants, the British consulate there described immigrants as "the most meddlesome and dangerous people on the Coast. "49 Although the government in London agreed, it officially refused to withdraw its protection. Nevertheless, creoles in Old Calabar seemed to sense the tenuousness of their position. At the end of 1878 there were only twenty-six left, half the number living there in 1864.

As imperialism expanded, small-scale middlemen, creole or otherwise, were not needed. European traders increasingly abandoned hulks and established onshore trading posts in Old Calabar. The West African Company began operations there in 1864; Miller Brothers, in 1868; the United Africa Company, in 1879. Already in 1866 there were seventeen foreign companies doing business in Old Calabar waters. Six years later there were twenty-four Bristol, Liverpool, and Glasgow firms, plus one


German and one Dutch firm. Together these enterprises had 207 European employees, 419 African artisans and cooks, 2,000 Kru laborers, and 55 trading posts. 50

As the partition of Africa loomed, and then took place, the estrangement between British authorities ~d creoles continued and grew. This was evidenced on Fernando Po, as elsewhere. In 1879 an altercation occurred between Nathaniel Cooke, a Sierra Leonean immigrant, and the Spanish governor. The British consul was loath to support the African British subject. After Cooke threatened to write to London, the consul dismissed him as "one of that dangerous class from Sierra Leone ... [who] come and settle in out of the way places and with the aid of the 'African Times' endeavour to injure the reputation of everyone in authority. "51 By the 1880s, creoles, once seen as the vanguard of British commerce and evangelization, were increasingly seen as impediments to the spread of the British economic imperium.

Chapter 5

Islanders and Interlopers

The inhabitants of Fernando Po underwent tremendous change in the nineteenth century. Much of this upheaval had to do with the evolving internal dynamics of Bubi society. Other changes were, no doubt, sparked by the impingement of alien trade and, for the first time, permanent alien settlement. Amador Martin del Molino, the foremost collector of island oral tradition, believes that a dramatic shift began as early as the mid-eighteenth century. In his view, extensive contact between the Bubi and outside African palm oil traders disrupted Bubi society and increased warfare:

Villages broke up [and] political unity was carved up, ... many compounds moved to zones under 100 to 200 meters where the oil palms were, while others continued in the heights. With the enrichment of some villages over others, there ensued the fratricidal struggle which lasted until the end. of the last century. 1

Martin del Molino's time frame is too early. In the eighteenth century the Bubi's main contact with outsiders was through the yam trade with passing slave ships. It was only in the opening decades of the nineteenth century that the palm oil trade took off to any extent. However, permanent alien settlement on the northern coast of Fernando Po in 1827 was, doubtlessly, a factor in the disruption of Bubi society. Warfare among the Bubi and

74

Islanders and Interlopers 75

between the Bubi and the newcomers increased in intensity for the next twenty years.

Society and Change

The Bubi subgroups of supposedly common origin did not constitute the political units of nineteenth-century Fernando Po. Around the middle of the century the island was divided into twenty-eight districts and contained more than two hundred inland villages (see Map 5.1).2 In addition, there were about fifty fishing villages. It appears that, once the earliest inhabitants and their later conquerors had coalesced into a new composite people, new sociopolitical institutions developed. Districts, called nse, evolved, comprising several central villages, bese or erfa (plural, biria or erija). 3 These, in tum, were composed of compounds or lova.4

In spite of their fairly simple material culture, the nineteenth-century Bubi had an elaborate system of socioeconomic stratification. Nobles (baita) and commoners (babala) were divided by rules of social segregation. The babala were further divided into various occupational categories. Specialization was indicated by a number of names: balako biao (laborers), baeba or baema (hunters), boobe or boome (fishermen), baeba (vintners), and bisoko (fish sellers). When a babala acquired riches and power, he could ask his chief to raise his status to that of mese. This status, intermediate between noble and nonnoble, could be granted upon the payment of twenty goats.

District chiefs, drawn from the baita; collected fines and tributes. A new title for "lord," botuku in the north or mochuku in the south, had come into use by the 1800s. Succession was passed on among uterine brothers of noble status. On the death of the last of a group of brothers, a new chief was elected by a council composed of all the local nobles and, perhaps, neighboring chiefs. The new chief was usually an unrelated member of the noble class. The person elected had to be rich in goats and shell money. In addition, he had to possess a large amount of palm oil, plant at least four thousand yams in five years, and have at least five wives.

Within chiefdoms there were generational sets: "although the entire male adult population continued to settle together in Houses, a differentiation had occurred in two age-related categories, the older married men and . the younger adult bachelors . . . . "5 Each man belonged from his birth to a buala; membership was not contingent upon any rite of passage. In some villages there were three or four buala.6 At times, these corresponded to the

76 Islanders and Interlopers

Map 5.1. Fernando Po in 1841 SOURCE: Map drawn by Rev. John Clarke, Baptist Missionary. Illustration in A. Manfn del Molino, Los Bubis, ritos y creencias (Malabo, 1989), n.p.

four living generations: great-grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers, and sons. The buala's function was military and ideological; through song and dance it emphasized trans-kinship loyalty. Its power manifested itself in a cult


object or lobedde, which could be a miniature clay canoe or other object :,ymbolic of migrant origins. Only one buala reigned at a time; when most of the members of the oldest group had become infirm, power was passed on to its "son" in a series of ceremonies that took one year.7 The buala, at least those comprising men of noble status, had considerable consultative power before the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1840s John Clarke wrote:

Each town has its head man, and he has a second, who is his friend, and who, on the death of the Chief, usually, in the most quiet manner, enters into his office; a number of councillors are also appointed to assist the chief in every important matter, and these are taken from among the aged and experienced, whose conduct has raised them to the situation ofBotuku, or Gentlemen; they have also a man to lead on the fighting-men to war, and another to guard the rear when they fly or retreat, and are followed by the foe. fu each town there are two Buallas or bands; the one of old men, and the other of young; and each has its principal men to direct in all deliberations for the settling of differences-for a general hunt preparatory to a feast-and for all great matters connected with peace and war. On a sort of Parade, called the Diosa [riosa], they meet for exercise in throwing the barbed lance and contending against a wall of shields .... 8

Over the base of these existing sociopolitical structures, a high-king arose at Riabba in the southern highlands by the 1860s. Previous attempts at a paramountcy, one as early as the late eighteenth century, had been abortive~ Before the Bahitaari, the paramount family, came to power, there had been two other dynasties: the Babuuma and the Bapolo. These three families have their origin in Ureka on the extreme southern coast. This old site may have seen earlier attempts at constructing overarching kingship. At Riabba, where the kings paid ceremonial tribute to Ureka, the Bahitaari kings were Buadjamita (Moadyabita) (c. 1860-c. 1875), Moka (c. 1875-1899), Sas Ebuera (1899-1904), Malabo (1904-1937), Alobari (1937-1943), and Oriche (1943-1952).

Vansina places the rise of Moka, who died in 1899, in the decennium 1835-1845.9 This is probably too early a date. It is doubtful if, given the Bubi fraternal succession system, one brother's reign would have embraced the better part of the nineteenth century. Martin del Molino, relying on oral sources, believes that Buadjamita was probably reigning around 1860 and was succeeded by Moka around 1875. 10 This date is congruent with external


evidence; John Clarke traveled around the island extensively in the 1840s and heard no mention of a paramount, although he did note the presence of the district of Biappa (Riabba). Primitive Methodists, who arrived in the early 1870s, soon heard of Moka's rule and made an unsuccessful attempt to visit him in 1875. 11

Looking at the paramountcy, Vansina has been led to conclude that "a kingdom could emerge out of the whole sociopolitical system when people had come to accept the idea of a supreme title as a desirable outcome to the dynamic drift of their political institutions." Specifically he rejects the idea that war and diminishing population were sufficient factors, in and of themselves, to impel the rise of an overlord: "Yet why success in c. 1840 and not before? Wars had been equally frequent when the earlier attempts were made. No doubt both population density and insecurity played a role in the rise of the kingdom, but they were only background factors among many others." 12

War and general insecurity cannot so easily be pushed into the background. What is significant about the 1835-1845 period is that it corresponds to the time in which competition between Bubi groups and incursions by foreign traders reached major proportions. By the early 1840s the Bubi were not only fighting among themselves, but also facing serious forays by alien palm oil traders and runaway migrant labors equipped with firearms. Parties of raiders descended on the northern districts and demanded oil, food, and women. Such a threat had never existed before. There may have been earlier attempts at paramountcy, for instance at Ureka or Concepcion Bay. However, the conditions of the nineteenth century added a new imperative to whatever ideological substrate might have been present before. A king in the southern highlands would have been better placed than his northern compeers to resist the near-fatal alien military and epidemiological threat. The need for control of trade, protection, and the adjudication of intra-Bubi disputes was evident as never before. Northern Bubi chiefs may have had more trade goods and guns at their disposal, but they faced the Clarence community, which had still more.

Warfare changed Fernando Po, and the nature of warfare changed as well. In general, traditional Bubi warfare fitted into a general pattern found among the western Bantu, for whom there exist two types of war, "restricted" and "destructive." "Restricted" warfare was circumscribed by rigid rules. These acted to limit the severity and length of fighting. A war declaration preceded an agreement to gather on the boundaries of the territories concerned. War ceased when the elders of either contending group decided that they had had enough, usually after the death of two or


three armed men. "Destructive" war usually involved the sacking of the vanquished village. Territory, portable wealth, and people were seized. 13

We possess information in detail on traditional Bubi warfare. Before the momentous changes of the nineteenth century the chief object of many wars was the taking of women. The outcome of military contests reflected the mohuta (collective spiritual force) that each of the contending sides was able to muster. The outcome of battle itself rested on the success or failure of advance scouting parties. When these failed, a religious war leader often ordered hostilities suspended. After battle, warriors purified themselves. In the southern part of the island the soldiers went to a priest who passed all implements of war, which contained mohuta, over the chest and back of the soldiers. This ritual provided an expiation for the crime of shedding blood. In the north, shrines were maintained by the baoleole, a group of men whose special function was purification. After combat the warriors visited the shrines to reconcile themselves with the spirits of the fallen of both sides. 14

By the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, it became clear to European observers that war among the Bubi was increasingly destructive. In 1830 the governmental system was described by Nicolls, a Scot, "as a kind of patriarchal government, and I am sorry to say they are like the people of my own country, all fighting." He observed that near the northern coast "there is one chief called Cut-throat, and there is another called Bosralawalhe; they are always fighting; I stopped them by threatening them . . . . "15 In the 1840s the Baney Bubi were especially known for their fighting propensities. Visitors in 1841 remarked of the islanders that "every one above the age of fifteen is liable to take part in their wars. They are all exercised with a precision which astonished a European [,] forming into sections, and marching in regular order, armed with long wooden spears [and] slings .... "16 At the time some warriors already possessed guns, although these were few. Poisoned-tipped, fire-hardened barbed spears, originally used in hunting, were adapted for use in warfare. 17 Three years later two Spaniards reported that an intense war was going on between the Bubi of the north and the Bubi of the south. 18 In 1848 an English missionary noted that among the Bubi in general "often, wild and savage war prevails ... and after the battle, a fierce spirit of-revenge ... takes possession of the breast of the contending parties. "19 In the early 1870s warfare was so intense that "neither age nor sex" were spared.20 ·

Strife between chiefdoms was initially fed by a fierce competition for iron and, to a lesser degree, tobacco. As early as 1821 a foreign knife could purchase a goat; a piece of iron hoop, a couple of inches long, would buy two or three large fowl. A British sailor remarked that "there was a degree


of jealousy shown by the natives with whom our traffic commenced, towards such of their countrymen who came from the interior to offer their produce . . . . "21 Six years later the English established a base and set up a fenced-in marketplace. A member of the expedition noted: "This establishment of a neutral ground was a measure of great importance and advantage, as we had now discovered that the natives are not only divided into distinct tribes, but that each tribe possesses a distinct portion of territory, and is extremely jealous of admitting others within its boundaries. "22 Over sixty years later a Spaniard spoke of the reluctance of the Bubi to permit travel inland as a "ruse employed by the tribes of the littoral, interested in preventing us from communicating with those of the interior, in order to be the intermediaries between these [interior people] and the whites. "23

By the mid-1870s the paramount Moka was able to create, through suasion and diplomacy, a loose confederacy to mediate intra-ethnic strife. He also attempted to limit the disruptive effects of trade. The king limited his use of European wares to guns and machetes and scorned the use of European cloth, rum, salt, or tobacco. He steadfastly refused to see Europeans, while at the same time he attempted to increase his control over the Bubi. Footpaths led to his residence from all directions, and at times he forced his people to detour and pass by his town. For instance, he blocked the road between Ureka and Bokoko and made its people go through Riabba.

Moka had at his disposal a judicial militia of 150 men called the lojua or lohua. Its members were all volunteers, under a leader (boakirsi) selected from among veterans who belonged to the baita (the nobles). This force had the right to confiscate the property of those found guilty of crimes. At the time of its creation, perhaps before mid-century, it was armed with hardwood lances, javelins, and large shields of hide. Gradually guns increased in use.

Other pan-Bubi institutions of order were also created. In the 1880s a visitor observed that "the most beautiful achievement of Moka's during his . . . long years of government ... is: unity of the Bubi, abolition of war, [and] introduction of the people's court." A central assembly was established to adjudicate disputes and all murder cases were put in its hands. "As soon as a murder had taken place, delegates from all communities immediately unite on the dance square of the village of the presumed murderer. Often up to 2000 men come together . . . . "24

Moka had seventy wives and concubines, who served as symbols of wealth and power. His progeny were numerous and his servants even more numerous. We have at least one eye-witness account of the Bubi king's


court in the 1890s. The visitor passed through a shaded grove of sacred iko trees, before walking under an arch similar to, but larger than, those found in other Bubi villages. The arch opened onto a large, ill-kept courtyard. At one side of the courtyard stood the boencha or boecha, the council house. On the other side stood the royal throne, an elevated platform reached by means of a rustic stairway built with tree trunks. Crossing the courtyard, the visitor approached a fence which enclosed all the edifices of the royal palace (ritaka). A door of movable stakes allowed entrance. Inside this barrier dwelt the servants of the king, along with their families:

There followed a second barrier which separated the family of the mochuku [king], his wives and children. A double stairway constructed with rough trunks, supported and attached to posts ... , gave entrance to the dwellings of the latter. From here continued a narrow alley which led to a small square, in the middle of which was found a somewhat spacious hut which served as a dining room and a reception room . . . in which only persons of the nobility and [those] very intimate with the chief had admittance; the royal bedroom adjoined. From there led off some alleys . . . in which were put, in order of their dignity, the bedrooms and kitchens of the wives and concubines, and their respective children of less than seven years of age-because those over this age slept in separate apartments, one for the youths and another for the girls.25

Among the most distinguished persons at the royal court was the obele, the daughter of the eldest sister of the king. She lived in the palace as the first lady of the realm. She ate with the king and received half of all gifts and debts paid to her uncle. Also, in the late nineteenth century, old and venerated widows of the nobility were of great social importance. They were given an annual gift of yams by all the inhabitants of a district. Some women were rich in goats and cattle in their own right and commanded considerable respect in political deliberations .

The Bubi king's position was reinforced by considerable magico-religious powers and prohibitions. In this he was aided by the Abba Mote, the chief priest of the island who had a significant part in rituals guaranteeing the well-being of the whole people. The office of the high-king was also highly ritualized. In the 1920s Sir James Frazer observed: "As might have been expected, the superstitions of the savage cluster thick about the subject of food . . . . In Fernando Po the king after installation is forbidden to eat cocco (arum acaule), deer, and porcupine, which are the ordinary foods of


the people."26 More broadly, according to Vansina, "one should ... interpret such typical cases of 'sacred kingship' that occur, among others in the Kuba kingdom, on Bioko, and in Loango, as enriched variants of what · was an ideological complex justifying and legitimizing the authority of 'big men.'"27

The Bubi paramount was known as Etako Ote (Great Chief) or as Mocuku m'Oricho (Lord of the World). All of the chiefs claimed kinship with him. The paramount's court set the model for his subchiefs. It had a variety of titleholders. Moka ruled with a council which contained, among others, the Abba Mote and the chief military leader, the takabaala or takamaala. Another official was the botuku oboho, the leader of the baita. A further title was that of koracho, head judge; another was buac or sam, keeper of the treasury. The offices of tchoko o botuku, keeper of the palace, and the looba lo botuku, chief executioner, were also included on the council.

Moka's subchiefs (batuku) bore the titles of the districts over which they ruled (e.g., botuku bo Isupu, mochuku mo Elacha, mochuku mo Motehe; chief of Basupu, of Balacha, of Batete, etc.). Chiefs had a number of subofficials, whose titles were similar to those of the royal court. With the rise of chieftainship, harems proliferated, and the accumulation of women became a conspicuous sign of wealth and power. By the mid-nineteenth century some harems contained as many as two hundred wives.

Centralizing· tendencies among the Bubi were never complete; it seems that only gradually did batuku gain the upper hand in the distribution of power. Supposedly, by the last decade of the nineteenth century, superior · chiefs exercised absolute authority .over their people. 28 Although this may be an exaggeration, it is doubtless that the rapid increase in chiefly authority did create new opportunities for command. The tension between patrimonialism and gerontocracy may have been mediated by ritual as the balance of forces tipped in favor of the former. For instance, on the way back from a botuku 's investiture, mock resistance was made by the chiefs new subjects.

"Trading in Boobe"

In the 1840s a Spaniard thought of the settlers of Clarence as "the lords in the midsts of the rustics," or "the Franks among the Gauls in the fourth century"; "civilization in an enclosure in the midst of the savage state; the fourth phase of humanity in the midst of the first. "29 Outsiders knew relatively little about the complex Bubi society of the interior. The degree


of their ignorance is remarkable. At one point, Beecroft, for instance, suggested sending a Bubi to Europe as an ethnological "curiosity."30

Theories of their origins varied from the fanciful to the almost correct. In the 1820s a British naval officer observed: "The hair of these islanders were [sic] matted into several locks; a mixture of palm oil and red ochre affords a protection against the rain as well as against vermin; the whole body was smeared over with this composition, even to their hands, and gives them the appearance of North American Indians rather than African negroes. "31

Another Englishman, in his Natural History of the Human Species, described the Bubi as being related to the Gaunches of the Canaries. 32

Thomas Hutchinson opined in the 1850s: "The Fernandians [Bubi] ... do not seem to have an affinity with any of the races of the continent." He went on to deduce, on the basis of a similarity between facial scars, that "it is not at all improbable that these Fernandians may be of a mixed race between the Okoos [Yoruba] and the Portuguese, who visited Lagos some hundreds of years ago, and who were the first colonisers of Fernando Po. "33

At least one writer, Wilhelm Bleek, did correctly surmise that the Bubi were related to the Bantu-speaking peoples of the neighboring coasts. 34

Lack of familiarity with the islanders reflected the lack of political dominance on the part of the settlers and the tenuousness of trade links between the entrepot and hinterland. The Bubi continued to avoid outside contact except for trade in necessities. However, although most Bubi avoided permanent residence in the settlement, the settlement, by its very existence provided an alternative to traditional Bubi society. A number of Bubi women sought refuge there. Such women were often those accused of some misdemeanor. The first arrived in 1827: "A female, about twentyfive years of age, who resided at a village in the neighbourhood of our settlement, had been guilty of an offense, probably infidelity to her husband . . . . " The woman, accompanied by a small child, fled to the British settlement. In the case of this first refugee, "the husband soon after came again and induced her to permit him to stay the night with her, and to take away the child . . . under the promise of bringing it back, which rendered the lady . . . indignant . . . . "35

The interest of Bubi fathers in retaining their children was, no doubt, reinforced by beliefs in the spiritual tie between father and offspring. All newborn infants had a specific lifelong male guardian spirit (mmo or morimo) who had bought the baby's soul from the spiritwho created embryos. The spirit came from the family of the husband. Each individual belonged to the loka, or spiritual lineage, of his father. Membership in the loka implied a common spiritual connection between the spirit of the place (i.e., the


boteribo of the land) and the inhabitants. This force was first possessed by the "founder" and transmitted to his successors in the paternal line. The connection is an expression of the wider sacred force, mohula.36

The flight of women reflected their position in Bubi society. Increasing competition for women was the outcome of the increasing importance of harems as a male status symbol. Adultery was harshly punished-sometimes by crucifixion. A widow could become a concubine, with the understanding that new offspring belonged to the dead husband. A dead man could be the "begettor" of his wife's first subsequent child and, in some cases, of the first three children born to her and a later spouse.

From the 1840s onward, missionaries, first English Protestants and, later, Spanish Catholics, did some proselytization among the Bubi beyond Clarence. John Clarke, thought that these "quiet, inoffensive and unassuming" people would be good candidates for future evangelization. In the 1840s he wrote that many were "acquiring a knowledge of English, and ... we might soon see the Fernandian [Bubi] people enlightened, and among the most interesting to be found on the coast of Africa. "37 In an effort to forward his mission, Clarke studied the Bubi language, or Adeeya, as he called it. However, in the long term, little of significance was achieved. In 1848, for instance, the Baptist Mission had eighty members. Four were Bubi. 38 The islanders remained highly resistant to outside cultural blandishments.

What contact there was came through the palm oil trade. Although the Biafran coast produced far more than did Fernando Po, an oil trade grew up on the island itself. Bubi groups close to Clarence/Santa Isabel resold goods to southern Bubi at a good profit. The inhabitants of more isolated zones were increasingly eager for direct trade. By the early 1840s commerce around North-West Bay (San Carlos Bay) burgeoned as settler traders expanded into the interior.

Palm oil collection was old among the Bubi. The villages of Bepepe, Eori, Ariha, Etoddo, and Moobe were almost completely dedicated to the cultivation of the palm. In each town, besides the principal chief, there was a "palm chief" called the muema, in whose house offerings were made to the ancestors, and who was in charge of providing palm wine (tope) to the political chief. 39

Bubi markets were called bitobam in the north, and bochimba or selano in the south. These consisted of small squares situated near paths between villages. Usually trade centers were spaced at distances of a few miles from one another. Trade goods were generally carried on the heads of women or by older children of both sexes. Oil was sold in wicker pots called bectapas,


which held from one to ten gallons. The Bubi extracted oil at a fairly steady pace, but largely left the business of trading to settlers. In the 1820s trade was conducted only by means of barter. Later it was carried out by means of Bubi money (chibo) which consisted of strings of Achitina shells. In the 1870s an English missionary observed that Bubi women wore large necklaces of shell money: "One large necklace of them is equal to a twelve-gallon tub of palm oil, the native value of which is six dollars, being two shillings and a penny per gallon. "40 Later an exchange rate between Bubi currency and Spanish pesetas was fixed. 41 Strings of four and a half inches were worth twenty-five centimos, but generally they were counted by ronchila, which was a packet of twenty strings. The ronchila was valued at twenty-five pesetas. Also, guns served as a unit of value; for instance, a goat was worth two guns.

In the 1840s the main trader "in Boobe" was Beecroft, who had managed to make the right trade connections during his twenty-five years on Fernando Po. After Richard Dillon and Company went bankrupt, he had worked briefly for the West African Company. However, he opposed the firm's attempt at monopoly and sought out new commercial connections. The merchant-administrator's special relationship with Robert Jamieson of Liverpool no doubt proved an advantage. Beecroft supplied palm oil from New Town, his own trading post on the western side of the island. He also had use of Jamieson's small steamer, the Ethiope. After 1843 his exports left the island duty free, and he also enjoyed influence as the governor. Import and export duties were set at two percent, and fixed anchorage fees were demanded of all the shipping in the harbors. Fixed fees were also charged for supplying ships with casks of water. In 1848 Beecroft set the import duties at five percent and export duties at two and a half percent ad valorem.42

By the 1840s Beecroft and his confreres had established shops which supplied petty traders with European manufactures. Some petty traders worked directly for Beecroft and were allowed use of his trade goods and his trading post. Others had more informal ties to him, such as occasionally working on his trading vessel. Among the significant traders was John Showers from the Gold Coast, a man who owned a wharf at Melville (Concepcion Bay), as well as a house at Bepoh in the southeast. Another prominent trader was Samuel Cooper, "an old Nuffie man" who had once worked on the Ethiope. He had a wharf at Basualla on the east coast, but also traded in the interior. 43 Henry Bull based himself at Bolokko on the west coast and at Aooh. A very prominent Igbo trader, with extensive trade contacts in the interior, was Peter Nicholls, who had landings at Bililipa in

86 ' Islanders and Interlopers

the east and also at ltokopwa. Other traders of importance were George . Richardson, Peter Collins, and Jacob Collyer. In addition to the major . traders, there were small-scale itinerant traders who went from bese to bese buying small amounts of oil. An example is John Marklin, a Hausa sawyer who traded with passing ships on the western side of the island. Marklin owned a house, and was helped by his wife who bought yams and palm oil for him. His list of trade goods included textiles, muskets, soap, and beads.44

After the late 1840s North-West Bay (San Carlos Bay) was a main center of trade for numerous small-scale traders. Smaller centers on the same coast were at Basupu and between North-West Bay and Basupu among the Bolokko group. Basualla on the east coast was also important. The largest east coast area was near Melville Bay (Concepcion Bay). The environs contained at least seven markets, and in 1845 approximately two hundred people were reported trading there. 45

From its start, the trade on Fernando Po between settlers and the Bubi was often marked by violence. During the British occupation, when Nicolls left the island for a short period, he instructed Beecroft that "the Liberated Africans, having behaved so ill in robbing the yam stores of the inhabitants, are not to be trusted. "46 Tension was exacerbated by the trading propensities of the freed Africans. Charges of extortion and abuse were frequent. In 1832 Richard and John Lander said that "the natives pay frequent visits to the colony, and however they may deal out justice among themselves, are by no means backward in seeing it administered among the free negroes and Kroomen of Clarence." It often happened "that, in the scarcity of live stock, some of the former, unable to restrain their desire for more substantial food, and tired of their Indian com, venture to help themselves to what the natives will bring them." Townsfolk were accused of taking yams, goats, and whatever else they could seize. In the interests of tranquility, the British authorities sought to act as a buffer between the two groups: "The punishment is great [for stealing from the Bubi]; but with a certainty of receiving it if discovered, the negro will run the risk of incurring it by what may be termed a breach of the first law ·of civilized society [i.e., property]. "47

We have a fairly detailed picture of the situation in the 1840s; both 'settler traders and Kru laborers left Clarence in some numbers. There were several hundred Kru on the island, and Bubi/Kru relations were often perturbed. The Kru were frequently accused of kidnapping Bubi women and of stealing supplies. For instance, in December of 1841, their behavior provoked a clash in which eleven Bubi and seven Kru died. In addition, they defied

· IBlanders and Interlopers 87

their ex-employers. By 1841 Kru who had escaped to North-West Bay had established their own political organization under a leader nicknamed "Baffter." An attempt to dislodge him in the preceding decade had failed. "Baffter" and his followers were accused of forcing the local fishing Bubi to supply them with fish and women. In 1841 the West African Company took action against the Kru after a previous attempt had failed. "Baffter" was captured and transported to Sierra Leone. Those Kru charged with stealing from Clarence people were imprisoned, and a new headman was appointed. Later Beecroft went to the western side of the island and threatened recalcitrant Kru with destruction. 48

Three years later, in 1844, a Btibi chief informed a group of black settlers that he would trade with them, but complained bitterly about the depredations of runaway Kru.49 By the mid-1840s fragmentation and conflict of mutually antagonistic groups produced a period of intense strife. In late 1845, violence broke out even among the Kru themselves. By the end of 1846 black traders had successfully intervened and removed most of the independent Kru from the interior.

Their departure brought little relief to the Bubi. Many Clarence creoles harassed the Bubi with similar demands: fish and women.50 Also, as elsewhere in West Africa, the "trust" system produced disputes. For instance, in 1846 a Bubi of the Banni (Baney) district bought a cow from a settler and promised to pay for it with small quantities of palm oil. When the islander failed to deliver the oil, an armed party from Clarence went to collect it. In another case, in May of 1848 over sixty people from Clarence set out to capture Beti-Beti, a recalcitrant chief. Combined "friendly" Bubi and Santa Isabel forces finally came upon his village. The chief fled, and the village was destroyed.51

In the 1840s the Baptist mission tried to forbid trade because the trust system was morally subversive. In April of 1845, for example, "Sisters John, Duroo and Derry [were] reproved for absenting themselves from the table of the Lord . . . . " Pastor exhorted them to the exercise of love and unity and pointed out to them the evil effects of Bobe [sic] trading. "52 The missionaries feared that, "unless some improved methods of trading are adopted, mutual hatred and jealousies will be indulged and the palm oil trade (which may be greatly increased) will become less, as it is now the common practice for traders to sell a cow, a goat, or a gun to the natives, depend\ng for payment simply upon their promise. "53 In the 1840s the profits of the trade reportedly ran from 150 to 300 percent, and it was difficult, if not impossible, to suppress the settler's commercial urge.


Fernando Po retained importance into the 1850s as a transshipment point, especially for some firms like J. Horsfall. However, the amount of oil produced on the island itself was paltry when compared with that of the societies of the Biafran littoral. The island supposedly exported 300 tons of oil per annum in the 1850s and 400 tons per annum in the next decade. In 1855 it produced 360 tons of palm oil as against 16,124 tons produced in New Calabar and Bonny, 2,280 tons produced in Brass, 4,090 tons produced in Old Calabar, and 2,110 tons produced in Cameroon.54 By 1879 only about 500 puncheons of oil (at an average of 150 gallons each) were shipped per annum. The value of this export was estimated to be $30,000. 55

The trust system persisted. In the late 1860s John Holt spoke of nonpayment and the "continual complaints that oil is stolen in Boobe. "56 In 1872 an associate, W. J. Jones, attacked trust as "the wretched credit system, which may be stigmatized as the 'bane' of the trade. "57 Commerce was almost as turbulent as it had been twenty years before. The year 1874 is illustrative. In August palm oil was coming in fairly well, but a new merchant had entered the trade and paid such high prices that the other merchants could not compete. By November commerce was in a state of uproar: "He [the new trader] has ruined the boobie trade on the East side as far as Basualla-the boobies are selling all of their oil for cash-saying we cannot get a spoon full to put in their casks. "58 Holt's firm threatened the Bubi and told them that if they did not pay the black middleman on contract to it, it would take violent action against them. The Santa Isabel traders threatened to suspend trade if the price of goods was not lowered and inveighed against the outflow of money from the town.

In the next decade the palm oil trade continued, while the nationalities of the traders became more varied: "The coast of the island [was] occupied by small factories out of which the Poto people [i.e., Santa Isabel people], Bassa men [former contract laborers from Liberia], a few Cubans and other blacks . . . traded with the Bubi." The factories of these petty traders were, "for the most, part very poor board huts with a small garden, often vacant for months." Inland, no one area was able to monopolize the trade. A visitor in the 1880s said that "earlier the inland villages (except Riabba) were forbidden to trade directly with the coast. Today this trade barrier is quite broken .... "59

Fernando Po had been a marginal producer even in the heyday of the trade. The Bubi did not appear likely to increase production. In 1862, Gustav Mann, botanist on the Baikie Niger Expedition, said that "the island would yield ten times as much palm-oil, if the Boobees would make use of all [the palm oil] that is growing; but these people have so few necessities


of life that they are not to be depended on. "60 Over twenty years later another visitor wrote:

It is understandable that the fall in oil prices, as is currently the case on European markets, must be positively fatal for the business people of Fernando Po. In other places like Cameroon, Calabar, etc., European products have already become so much of a necessity to the blacks that they, for good or ill, must adapt to the new conditions of the business people. They usually, I suppose, block the trade for a while, yet soon they appear ready for concessions. The Bubi, however, who can easily cover their minimal need for European articles through the sale of food, hold on to the old price for palm oil with their own persistence, and do not at all think of going away from that price. As long as the palm oil price is not raised, trade in Fernando Po will remain closed down.61

Fernando Po doubtlessly suffered from the general decline in oil prices after mid-century. The boom in the commodity came to an end in 1861.62

Prices declined from £37 per ton, from 1861 to 1865, to £20 a ton, from 1886 to 1890. In a twenty-five year period prices fell by half, and expansion levelled off in the late 1870s and in the 1880s. In major centers, like Opobo, exports declined. By the 1880s the Santa Isabel community was turning away from palm oil trading. Settlers began to secure land from the Bubi and invest in cocoa farming on the island.

II ,,II

"

Chapter 6

The Cocoa Economy

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Fernandinos, along with some Sierra Leonean settlers, had begun to move from palm oil trading into cocoa growing. The 1880-1914 period can rightly be seen as the period of creole cash crop dominance on Fernando Po. During this period, most land grants went to black settlers. After 1880, "the model of colonial agricultural exploitation was represented by an intermediate type of }inca-plantation which fell between the small indigenous }inca of less than 20 hectares and the business of the large companies like the Colonial Africana, the old Transatlantica, whose properties on Fernando Po were more than 2,000 hectares in 1930. "1 This intermediate position was occupied by the more prosperous black planters, who were some of the richest agriculturalists in West Africa.

Creole agriculture on Fernando Po presents something of a West African anomaly. Elsewhere, European merchants and officials increasingly criticized the failure of African societies to accept the "Bible and the Plow." Ominous, from the colonialist point of view, was the fact that most heavily missionized groups of uprooted Africans did not take to agriculture. Christopher Fyfe notes of Sierra Leone: "During the nineteenth century, when the commerce and industry of Europe expanded unprecedentedly, there were nevertheless many [Europeans] ready to assert the moral superiority of agricultural life." Furthermore, outsiders criticized "the inhabitants as immoral and lazy because they did not farm, and declare[ d] their preferring

90

The Cocoa Economy 91

trade an excuse for idleness "2 Looking at West Africa generally, J. D. Hargreaves has said that none of the coastal creole groups succeeded in agriculture. 3

Fernando Po, against all expectations and stereotypes showed that, in the words of Fyfe, "given suitable conditions, Creoles could prosper in agriculture. "4 By the 1880s local cocoa cultivation had "taken off." In addition, the island was a magnet for persons seeking an outlet for their capital or enterprise, or both. Many succeeded in activities they found difficult or closed in places like Sierra Leone. There, as late as the end of the 1860s, no creole farm was larger than ten acres. Only about ten percent of a total acreage of 100,000 cultivated acres was planted with export crops in 1886.5 In 1903 a Britisher observed of Sierra Leone that "agriculture is very primitive still, in fact [it] has little improved in method since Colonel Denham's days [1828-1837]. The same source said, "It is most important that a portion of the people should become agriculturalists and develop the capabilities of the soil, abandoning the too common practice of becoming small traders to the detriment of that branch of employment. "6 Many Sierra Leoneans felt that, in spite of such urgings, European colonialism did not favor export agriculture. In the early twentieth century Abayomi Cole, Sierra Leonean nationalist and entrepreneur, moved to black-ruled Liberia because he felt that the British colonial administration stifled large-scale African farming.

If Sierra Leone failed expectations as an area of Creole agriculture, Fernando Po succeeded only too well. With an area larger than the nineteenth-century British colony of Sierra Leone, the big Biafran island became the chief arena for creole agriculture. In the 1840s Fernando Po was described as a place "where a lazy population of liberated Africans from Sierra Leone neglected the advantages of one of the richest soils in the world. "7 Forty years later a Spanish missionary remarked: "The island of Fernando Po . . . has been captured by the English blacks of Sierra Leone . . . . They have herded the Bubi into the interior of the island, the worst part of all, where the means of subsistence are hardly found and those foreign English blacks have, for the most part, the better coastal soil. "8

Rather than fleeing from export farming, many creoles ran to it on Fernando Po. Some even wanted to continue their success in Sierra Leone. For example, in 1894 James MacFoy wrote the Freetown administration that he was "desirous of turning ... attention to . . . [agricultural] pursuits within the Colony ... for my purposes, which is [sic] the cultivation of Cocoa and Coffee. "9 He had already achieved considerable success with these crops on Fernando Po. His request was denied. In another case, a

1':

II

92 The Cocoa Economy

tailor, H. H. Lardner, returned from Fernando Po and attempted to open a nursery garden in Sierra Leone. He was granted land, but because of mismanagement and a lack of capital, he went broke.

The Black Planters

An official report to the Spanish government in 1860 said cash farming on any large scale on Fernando Po was still unknown. 10 The United States Civil War and the attendant "Cotton Famine" in England created false hopes for cotton cultivation on the island. However, cocoa had already been introduced, and it did take root. The cultigen was brought to Sao Tome from Brazil in 1822. Sao Tome seeds were first taken to Fernando Po in 1854. In the 1860s a Spanish colonial functionary who was given a concession of 260 hectares made a trip to the Portuguese island to obtain cocoa pods.U In 1879 the amount of cocoa exported was approximately 100,000 pounds, valued at about $20,000. 12 In the same year cocoa supposedly spread from Fernando Po to the Gold Coast through the purported agency of a migrant worker, Tetteh Quashie. 13 It also diffused elsewhere. In the 1880s Holt's agents gave out cocoa plants to chiefs in Qua Igbo. In Old Calabar Joseph Henshaw, an Efik trader who had witnessed the growth of the cocoa crop on Fernando Po in the late 1870s, pushed for cocoa farming. He worked with George Watts, political advisor to the leaders of Henshaw Town. In Cameroon prominent Duala began cocoa plantations around 1900, using both hired and slave labor.

On Fernando Po, the future lay with cocoa and coffee, the latter crop also introduced from Sao Tome. In 1879 an American naval visitor observed that "the principal coffee and cocoa plantation is owned by the Spanish Government and was once an extensive affair, but it has been suffered to fall into decay through want of attention . . . . "14

The first major cocoa producer was Francisco Romera, a naval officer with Cuban experience. He commenced cultivation on 300 hectares at Bokoko in the southwest part of the island. Eventually he went bankrup and returned to Spain. Romera's holding is generally thought to have been used to establish Amelonado cocoa farming in other parts of the island, especially between San Carlos and Bokoko. The most successful nineteenth-century planter was William Allen Vivour, a Sierra Leonean immigrant. In 1871 John Holt sold him a schooner for use in the yam and palm oil trade. The following year Holt's assistant wrote that the black merchant was thriving: "Vivour has come back, he looks first rate, and is going to ship his oil direct


if he can. . . . I am sorry he has come back as he will not do the trade any good. "15 By 1887, when he accompanied Catholic missionaries on their first trip to the western side of the island, Vivour had acquired several cocoa plantations.

At the end of the 1880s a few agriculturalists were trading directly with Manchester trading houses, among them Vivour. By the mid-1880s he was the largest landowner on the island and employed more than a hundred workers. In the 1890s, after Vivour's death, a visiting African-American noted that the opulence of his tomb bore testimony to his business success: "In the cemetery ... [is] a monument erected to the memory of Mr. William Vivour, formerly a native planter. This monument is forty feet high and was brought from Liverpool at a cost of $600. "16 His widow, Amelia Barleycorn Vivour, owned the largest cocoa plantation on the island-four hundred hectares in San Carlos.

Cocoa farmers, many of whom were palm oil traders, occupied unused land or bought plots from the Bubi, some of whom went into cocoa cultivation themselves. In the mid-1880s notable plantations were owned by Laureano Diaz da Cunha, an Afro-Portuguese from Sao Tome, a Mrs. Gardner (Mammy Gardner), MontesdeOca (sometime governor), Romera, S. Rogozinski, Vicente Lopez, Louis Lolin, Antonio Borghes, and the Catholic Mission. The John Holt Company also had a plantation on the western side of the island. In addition to these holdings, there were smaller holdings owned by Cubans, Sierra Leoneans, and discharged Kru laborers. In 1892 a Spaniard noted that "the major part [of the fincas] are of less than 20 hectares, there are only some of 50, one of 100, two of 200, one of 400, another of 500 and another of 600. "17 In the mid-1890s, Vivour, Romera, Cipriano Gainza, and the Barcelona trading house of La Vigatana had the largest plantations. John Barleycorn, Nacimiento Brusaca, Lopez, Rogozinski, Lolin, and the Catholic mission (near Santa Isabel) were also important.

Vivour's eminence was followed by that of several other Africans (Maximiliano Jones, Joseph Dougan, Samuel Kinson, J. W. Knox). Jones was to be the dominant black planter of the twentieth century, but in the 1890s he was but one of a constellation of young men drawn to Fernando Po by the prospects for cocoa farming. Some of the newcomers were well connected. For instance, a friend of Jones, William Fergusson Nicol (1867-1927) emigrated from Sierra Leone and remained on the island for the rest of his life. In 1896 he was placed in charge of the Bottler Point Primitive Methodist mission. Nicol was caught up in the cocoa "boom,"


and, after quitting the ministry, purchased a farm of forty hectares in San Carlos.

Before the 1880s comparatively few concessions were granted. Between 1862 and 1869, 1,642 hectares were conceded, and in the 1870s only 87 hectares were conceded (see appendix). In 1880 a metropolitan decree ended the free grant of lands. Concessions were limited to fifty hectares, a move, in part, aimed at preventing the island from falling into the hands of non-Spanish capitalists. The decree provided two means of obtaining of lands. One was concession for ground rent, through the payment of an annual tax of five centavos de peso per hectare. The other was purchase; title was granted once the payment of one peso per hectare was verified.

In the 1880s the pace of concessions quickened somewhat. Between 1880 and 1893 more than 3,000 hectares were conceded. In 1899 concessions exceeded 8,695 hectares. 18 Grants were further regulated by a royal decree of 1891, which established the price of one peso for each hectare conceded, with tax exemption for a period of three years. A royal order of 1897 limited concessions to fifty hectares for nationals and ten for foreigners. The holder of the concession was obliged to cultivate his or her new land within the space of one year; in order to receive a new grant, land already conceded had to be cultivated.

A 1904 land law gave the Spanish governor-general the right to confer deeds to plots of undeveloped land not permanently claimed by the state. The governor-general's right to confer such grants was confined to areas not exceeding one hundred hectares (or one square kilometer). The president of the Council of Ministers in Spain could grant from one hundred to one thousand hectares. The approval of the government as a whole was necessary for a grant of over one thousand hectares. Land transferred from state control to private or corporate ownership constituted a contract of beneficence (that is, the owner did not pay for it immediately and usually was not taxed for a certain period). Petitions for concessions needed precise documentation and a deposit of ten percent of the value of the land solicited. The law denied new concessions to those landowners who did not have in cultivation two-thirds of the lands already conceded. It also threatened cancellation of the grant if, in the space of five years, half of the grant was not put into cultivation.

Between 1899 and 1909 land concessions rose from 8,695 to 13,233 hectares, and lands under cultivation increased from 2,166 to 11,320 hectares. Uncleared, but cultivable, land was reduced from 6,530 hectares in 1899 to 1,913 hectares in 1909. Besides, while in 1899 the 2,166 hectares were planted almost completely with cocoa, in 1909 the cultivation


of cocoa occupied some 9,020 hectares; some 2,300 hectares were dedicated to other crops. 19 Perhaps because of the erratic pace at which the island was cleared, land was cheap. Early in this century uncleared land could be purchased from the government for about forty pesetas per hectare (twelve English shillings an acre), including fees. An annual tax of ten pesetas was paid to the government; collection began five years after initial concession.

Soil conditions restricted the locations in which cocoa could be grown. Although in some areas cocoa is cultivated with success up to an altitude of one thousand meters, in general the cocoa tree does not develop well higher than six hundred meters. The most favorable zone is in protected locations near the sea, at a range from fifty to one hundred meters above sea level. The crop needs a hot, humid climate, no prolonged dry seasons, and well-drained clay soils.

Compared with that of Sao Tome and Principe, the expansion of cocoa production on Fernando Po was slow. A factor operating against expansion was the nature of cocoa itself. Amelonado cocoa does best when cultivated on virgin soil. The trees take several years to mature. Farmers clear lands and then wait seven years for the first trees to produce. In the first two years some benefit can be derived from planting food crops among the young cocoa trees. Later the canopy of cocoa leaf makes the farm too shady for food cultivation. Cocoa planters on Fernando Po, therefore, faced the difficult task of supporting themselves for several years before receiving any return from their investment. In addition, cocoa farms deteriorated rapidly when neglected. Many farmers considered a holding untouched for five or six years less worth having than a virgin plot.

" It was unprofitable to clear land and begin a new farm unless it was fairly definite that labor was available, more or less continuously, for a period of years. For this reason many small farms on Fernando Po were abandoned; their owners could not obtain labor, and their property decayed. Also, perhaps in an attempt to maximize production, many farmers cleared away shade trees. This exposed the cocoa plants to thrips and other insects; by the third decade of the twentieth century such practices were taking a heavy toll on production. Around the same time, a new type of cocoa was introduced. It was produced by hybridization with a Venezuelan variety and was designated Drumen criollo or Cacao hybrido.

Beyond these problems, the black planters also faced increased competition, especially after the First World War.20 After "opening" Fernando Po to cocoa production, the black planters gradually lost out to others. Financially weaker members of the community were buffetted by new economic winds, even as some individuals continued to increase their wealth.

J ~


The issue was not that racism, per se, operated as the official ideology of the colony. It did not. The creole community was too entrenched and the Spanish presence too weak to quickly undermine the black planters. At the same time, it would be naive to argue that the Spaniards were immune to the ideological currents of European racism or that they had little desire to hispanicize the island, culturally and economically. Although members of the Fernandino community were legally Spanish, their English affinities created problems. For instance, in 1900 Henry Gardner complained to British officials that his property had unjustly fallen into the hands of one Antonio Perez to whom he owed money and who was living in his house. 21

In December of 1903, popular feeling among the black planters was running high against the secretary of the colonial government who had bought a farm at a greatly devalued price. 22 Eight years later Elizabeth White, James MacFoy's widow, wrote to the governor-general complaining that she and her late husband had been defrauded by one Antonio Maria del Valle. 23

The Spanish administration increasingly questioned the wisdom of allowing black settlers to establish farms. A Spanish official averred that their life-style led them into debt and "that money which should have been paid to the merchants has been squandered by these debtors in trips to Sierra Leone and Europe and the buying of luxuries such as horses, bicycles, musical boxes, etc.; to such an extent has this taken place that merchants are now in many cases not willing to advance money for development and the Island suffers in consequence. "24 A member of the Protestant mission later commented on "their [the Fernandinos] utter inability to forecast the future [in regards to] income and expenditure; their frequent failure tq meet their repayments to the merchants who are their creditors and the badgering which often results . . . . "25

The Fernandinos were at yet another disadvantage. For some, lack of facility in Spanish made the winning of land disputes in the courts extremely difficult. Numerous instances show that the Spanish also made alienation of land to foreigners more difficult-but not impossible. In one case in 1915, Thomas Albert MacCarthy, a widower from Sierra Leone, was granted six hectares in Belelipa only after "renouncing all foreign privileges and the protection of my country, submitting myself to Spanish laws, tribunals and authorities. "26 Poor European Spaniards also lost properties; what is significant is that by 1930 Spanish and Portuguese agriculturalists were replacing members of the Fernandino community who were emigrating to more promising areas elsewhere.

If the creoles, Fernandino and Sierra Leonean, were not legally discriminated against, they certainly perceived of themselves as the victims of


invidious treatment. In the case of the Sierra Leoneans, their foreignness was the stated cause of friction. In November of 1905, the British government took note "of assaults on the persons and property of British subjects, largely natives of Sierra Leone, in the Spanish Colonies on the W. Coast of Africa. "27 Around the same time the British government recommended that periodic visits be made by a British man-of-war. In June of the following year, an island resident asked that Fernando Po be removed from the consular jurisdiction of Loanda and placed under that of Calabar. There were, at the time, twenty British subjects and around one hundred "native British subjects" who owned property on the island. "As Spanish justice has a tendency to become somewhat erratic at times," it was pleaded, "the need of some assistance from our own government is increasingly felt. "28 A consular agent for Fernando Po existed, but complaints from African British subjects continued to be heard. A naval officer had previously concluded that "judging by the number of petitions which a manof-war always receives when visiting Fernando Po, the British subjects resident there do not receive the treatment they have a right to expect[;] this I consider is a mild way of expressing the case. "29 Here, for example, is the appeal by Joseph Emmanuel Taylor, a cocoa farmer, to the British consul in Loanda in the autumn of 1907:

Permit me approaching you with this my humble cry. I am a native of New Calabar, Southern Nigeria. I came to this Island in the year 1880, and I have several children here, who are all educated under the British Flag. And I have properties here which are taking [sic] from me by force by the Judge of Fernando Poo, and give [sic] to his countryman for which reason I cannot tell.

And the Judge stated to me that I being an English Subject I am not worthy of having such properties, and fortunately before appealing for help and assistance under the British Flag, I learnt that the "Dwarf' is here. So I am begging your Majesty's help and assistance to assist me in a strange land being an English subject.30

The case was not atypical. Taylor owned two farms, one of twenty acres in Santa Teresa, and one of fifty-seven acres in San Carlos. In 1904 he .had secured a mortgage of 16,000 pesetas from the Ambas Bay Trading Company. The terms of the mortgage gave an unlimited time to repay. The company had the right to foreclose after six months' notice; the mortgage contained no clause as to the interest to be paid. Taylor maintained that he


had paid 37,343 pesetas in settlement of the mortgage, partially at the prodding of the courts. The company sold Taylor's supposed debt to one Desedorio Marcos, who, after consulting the judge of Fernando Po, seized Taylor's lands, several thousand pesetas, and a quantity of goods. The African then appealed to the judge, pleading that he had been trying to get a proper accounting of where his debt stood.

All farmers, African and European, were confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable monoculture. In September of 1903, "the cocoa market, upon which everybody is dependent," was "steadily deteriorating and appears likely to continue so, hence the material position of most of our people is far less rosy than it was. "31 In February of the next year, the people had "been affected by 2 bad cocoa seasons and a fall in the cocoa market. It is probably not too much to say that the financial condition of the town has had no parallel in recent years. "32 Complaints were heard: "All the Stations are feeling the effects of the cocoa crisis, altho the more disastrous results will come later." A month later Fernando Po's traders were "a bit desperate owing to a falling market and to make it up are using every endeavor to push their business . . . . "33 Many planters moved to their farms in an effort to save expenses.

The island had suffered neglect in the nineteenth century. Such neglect had benefited the black trading intermediaries. However, it also bequeathed the island a paucity of infrastructure needed for continued and expanding exploitation. Fernando Po contrasted strongly with Sao Tome where many of the plantations had their own small railways and where, early in this century, there were 250 kilometers of track. On the other hand, the Fernando Po government made little headway in linking the port to the rest of the island. The agriculturalists of San Carlos, for instance, had to send their produce to Santa Isabel by sea because there was no road spanning the thirty miles between the two settlements. As early as 1893 there was a proposal to construct a tramway in the capital. A complete system was not constructed, but a Decauville railway was built ascending to Basile. A fourteen-kilometer standard-gauge line was laid in 1913 to join Santa Isabel and Basupu del Oeste via Banapa. In 1929 Moroccan workers extended the line to the shore near Basupu. Although the planters undertook to finance ·it, it brought little profit and was abandoned.

Fernando Po was constantly compared and contrasted with richer, but smaller Sao Tome and Principe. They had far greater capital inputs and longer experience with cocoa growing. Fernando Po trailed far behind. The island exported 1,123,830 kilograms of cocoa in 1901; Sao Tome had exported more than twelve million kilograms in the previous year. 34 Around


1912 only 20,000 hectares had been conceded on Fernando Po and, of those, only 15,000 were in production. In 1915 about 40,000 acres paid taxes, and around 30,000 acres, distributed among 1,350 plantations, large and small, were producing cocoa. 35 A far greater portion of Sao Tome was cultivated. Already, at the end of the nineteenth century, 52,407 hectares were in production there, along with an additional 10,000 hectares on Principe.36

The neighboring islands had not always be so different. At mid-century, Sao Tome and Principe were, like their larger Spanish neighbor, "underexploited": "The only asset that existed in abundance was unused land. Most of the old sugar estates had been abandoned and even the ownership of them was only vaguely known. "37 Divergence began in the 1850s when Sao Tomense coffee production began to take off, trailed by cocoa. The latter crop became very important from the 1880s onward. 38 In the decade following 1891, cocoa production increased fourfold. 39

Many of the first cocoa farmers on Sao Tome and Principe were the longestablished Afro-Portuguese population. They brought formerly cultivated lands back into production and opened new farms, in a move in many ways similar to that of the Fernandinos. In 1872, 96 out of the 153 Sao Tomense landowners were non-Europeans.40 As late as 1882, three fifths of the cocoa and half of the coffee was reportedly produced on small African farms. 41

The viability of such holdings changed rapidly in the closing years of the century. The was partially due to the entrance of substantial metropolitan capital. By the 1870s the Banco Nacional Ultramarino (BNU) had entered the colonial arena. Credit was extended to farmers, who, in the end, fell victim to foreclosures. The activities of metropolitan plantation owners and agricultural companies were backed by metropolitan banks, especially the BNU and the Burnay Bank.

Two tendencies were evident: increasing cocoa production and marginalization of African farmers. 42 Between 1900 and 1919, yearly cocoa production was 31,000 tons. The island produced about fifteen percent of the world's cocoa and seemed to be a triumph of European-managed plantation agriculture. Importantly, in 1909, in the midst of the boom, African smallholders accounted for only six percent of cocoa production. 43

This adumbrated developments on Fernando Po, but Sao Tome was a least a generation ahead. On Fernando Po, only well after 1914, were African jinqueros eliminated as the major players in the island's economy. 44

Spanish protection of Fernando Po's export economy varied over time. In 1891-1892 duties on imports into Spain were abolished. In 1894 differential export duties were introduced to encourage the shipping of produce to the metropole in Spanish vessels. Free export of cocoa to Spain


contrasted with an eight percent ad valorem export duty on produce bound for other destinations. In the metropole, direct imports of Fernando Po cocoa carried by Spanish vessels were exempt from duty, while heavy imposts were placed on competing cocoa from Latin America. Given this impetus, exports to Barcelona rose rapidly. National steamers received subsidies to call at minor ports, limiting the risks and costs of storing and transporting cocoa. The price paid by Spanish consumers was well above that in Britain, to the advantage of Fernando Po. 45

In 1898 after the Spanish-American War, Madrid imposed a stiff import duty on Fernando Po cocoa. The price earned for the island's cocoa was approximately cut in half between 1902 and 1912, although this phenomenon was partially illusory, reflecting the peseta's rise in value after a period of rapid depreciation in the late 1890s.46 In 1904 a Catalan firm, pressing for preferential duties, noted that Spain imported more cocoa from other sources, such as Sao Tome, than from Fernando Po: 4,636,483 kilograms versus 1,490,162.47 In the wake of the Spanish-American War, Fernando Po cocoa had been hit with a import duty of ninety pesetas per kilo. Governmental regulation also greatly increased. 48 In 1901 thefinqueros petitioned for a reduction in duties on cocoa. They noted that before the Spanish-American War duty had been forty-five pesetas per one hundred kilos; after 1900 it was upped to ninety pesetas per one hundred kilos. Their protest, which took the form of a slowdown, had some effect. The threat of trade interruption caused the government to modify its position. In June of 1901 it suspended some of the shipping requirements for cocoa and coffee. These changes and the lowering of customs duties, from ninety to fifty pesetas per one hundred kilos, achieved some price recuperation. However, foreign cocoa continued to be cheaper.

In an effort to provide some form of coordination, planters and trading interests formed an agricultural chamber of commerce, the Camara Agricola, in 1906. At the same time, metropolitan efforts to aid agriculture were halfhearted. The Spanish minister of state, in a 1910 memorial to the Cortes, acknowledged the government's responsibility for the retarded state of agriculture, but also cited the avarice and inefficiency of the planters. 49

In order to salvage the situation, the establishment of an agricultural bank was proposed. The state allocated funds, but the projected bank did not materialize.

A 1907 study of a plantation over a period of thirteen years concluded that the costs, and, in particular, customs duties had reduced the profit from the sale of cocoa by 39.9 percent. "Definitely, the economic calculus of a plantation of 50 hectares on Fernando Po shows that . . . cocoa production


. . . was excessively expensive because of the system of customs duties and because of the elevated cost of labor which . . . converted the cocoa plantation ... into a unstable and unprofitable business .... "50 Partially as a reaction to the risks, an importer's cocoa "trust" was formed in Barcelona. Members had difficulty cooperating, and the attempt failed within a year. For one thing, in 1908 Ambas Bay Company, which was not part of the group, sold its cocoa at a relatively lower price, and the "trust" was forced to lower its prices.

The Spanish Presence

Economic change, like cultural change, was gradual on Fernando Po, but important differences became clearly evident in the wake of World War I. Neutral Spain emerged with good foreign reserves, coupled with a desire to expand markets. In the 1920s the island took on the look of a Europeancontrolled plantation colony. Individual Fernandinos remained important, but as a group they were overshadowed, by 1930, by a rapidly increasing European population.

Spain's participation in the rush of late-nineteenth-century imperialism in Africa was sporadic and undercapitalized. In the midst of chronic instability, Antonio Canovas del Castillo, the most prominent politician in the later decades of the century, was cool toward imperialism. Manual Iradier y Bulfy (1854-1911), the country's foremost African traveller, visited Rio Muni in 1875, but had trouble collecting enough financial backing. Imperialists like Francisco Coello and Joaquin Costa tried to keep the idea of sub-Saharan colonization alive. In 1876 Coello was the moving force behind the organization of the Sociedad Geografica de Madrid. A year later he played a similar role in the foundation of the Associaci6n Espanola para Ia Exploraci6n del Africa. In 1877 Iradier, who was deeply inspired by the exploits of Henry M. Stanley, presented the Associaci6n with an ambitious plan for the exploration of Central Africa, including the interlacustrine region. Funding for such a mission was not immediately available. In 1883 the Congreso de Geografia Colonial y Mercantil met in Madrid and adopted a number of resolutions intended to further the goals of the various metropolitan economic groups. Fernando Po was to be developed through the stimulation of trade, immigration, and agriculture. The congress asked for a government-subsidized West African steamship line.51 Most importantly, the body urged the Ministry of Overseas Territories to support Iradier's exploration. When it did take place in 1884, Iradier's expedition


was a modest affair. The German annexation of Cameroon effectively closed off part of the coast and frustrated the aims of lradier and his colleague, Amadeo Ossorio Zabala.

In 1884 lradier's colonialist hero, the Anglo-American explorer Henry M. Stanley, suggested that a railroad be built to the Fernando Po uplands to encourage the emigration of Spaniards. Eight years later, ten Spanish families were settled at Basile, 450 meters above sea level. The colonos were given a free passage, tools, African contract labor, and two hectares of land per family. Even with state aid, the arrangements proved inadequate. Although the upland climate proved healthy, the paucity of assistance and difficulty in clearing the land were discouraging. By 1911 only four or five of the original families remained; most had drifted down to the broader opportunities afforded in the colonial capital.

In spite of this relative failure, some Spanish interests did successfully put down roots on Fernando Po. In the late nineteenth century Catalan and, to a certain degree, Canarian firms began to benefit from the largely neglected colony. 52 In 1899 there were sixty business houses in the colony, two English, one or two Portuguese, and the rest African or Spanish. 53 The Barcelona cocoa broker, Casa Huelfn, joined with a Basque financier and established the Compafiia Colonial de Fernando P6o in the 1890s. Another Barcelona concern, the Rius y Torres Shipping Company, bought some three hundred hectares by the end of the decade. In 1900, a two hundred hectare estate, La Vigatana de Fernando P6o, was owned by yet another Catalan company.

The Compafiia Trasathintica (or Transathintica), which began its operations on Fernando Po in 1887, was the most prominent Spanish · concern. The company clearly demonstrated the expansion of Spanish interests from the Antilles to West Africa. Its founder was Antonio LOpez y LOpez, a Cuban slaver. Originally, in the 1850s, the firm owned steamers plying the route to the Caribbean. In 1876 LOpez started the Banco Hispano-Colonial; five years later he obtained a major interest in Philippines tobacco. LOpez died the first Marquis of Comillas and was succeeded by his son, Claudio LOpez y Bru. The younger LOpez directed his energies to railway, fishing, and mining interests in North Africa and to the encouragement of expansion in tropical Africa. 54 It was the younger LOpez's agent, Lieutenant-Colonel Emilio Bonelli, who explored the Rio Muni coast in the 1880s and attempted to secure territory for Spain and the Trasathintica.

Governor Jose Montes de Oca (1885-1887) and Ossorio Zabala, a founding member of the Sociedad de Africanistas y Colonistas, favored the new enterprise. In 1898, the year of Spain's colonial Desastre, the


Trasathintica's operations on Fernando Po were taken over by Pedro Bengoa Arriola. As chairman of the Camara Agricola, he energetically pushed the export economy, until his suicide in 1925. At the end of the 1890s the firm's properties were considerable-for Fernando Po. It owned three fincas. One was on the east coast and covered 113 hectares. It fronted the beach and was four hours by boat from Santa Isabel. The second holding (forty hectares) was at Concepcion, also on the eastern side of the island. The third plantation was three kilometers from Santa Isabel and was traversed by the road that went to Basile. It covered 112 hectares, 70 of which were in production. 55

The entrance of metropolitan capital and Spain's relative economic weakness could have encouraged the creation of a colonial empire surrounded by tariff barriers. "As late industrializing countries, Portugal and Spain were extremely vulnerable to the 'Great Depression,' which affected the capitalist world from the early 1870s to the mid-1890s . . . . The Iberian participation in the scramble for Africa would seem to illustrate a paradoxical 'law' of imperialism ... the poorer a colonial power, the greater the economic motivations for imperial expansion. "56 In the case of Spain, unlike Portugal, this scenario did not play itself out. According to a modern Spanish scholar, free trade, rather than protectionism, was the battle cry of many who encouraged investment in Equatorial Africa. Supposedly, after an economic crisis in 1890-1892, metropolitan commercial groups were opposed to proposals for colonial expansion. There were several reasons: the free trade arguments adopted by some Africanistas were opposed by the interests of wide sectors of the Spanish bourgeoisie; the profits of some firms, like the Trasathintica, had been disappointing; government support for initiatives of colonial expansion was meager. 57

One thing is certain. By 1900 very little had been invested in Spanish Guinea (Rio Muni and Fernando Po). While arguing for the imperialism of the weak, Clarence-Smith recognizes that "from 1898 to the aftermath of the First World War, the overseas territories were of negligible commercial or foreign exchange significance and were the source of small but persistent fiscal deficits for the metropolitan treasury. "58 In 1897, Fernando Po and its dependencies spent 226,000 duros per annum, of which the metropolitan

·government paid 130,000, the Philippines 70,822, and the colony itself, the remainder. 59 Tentative plans for selling the colony came to naught; there was little foreign interest. British economic concerns were paramount on the island, but the carving out of an empire in Nigeria consumed far more capital and interest than did the former "gateway to the Niger. "


In the wake of the Spanish-American War, Belgian capitalists were rumored to be interested in island concessions. Supposedly, financiers with Belgian Congo connections wanted to secure a lease of all unoccupied land. More threatening to the British was the fear that the Germans wanted to round off their Cameroon colony through the acquisition of Rio Muni and, perhaps, Fernando Po. Because of such fears, some Britishers urged that their country preempt others by buying the territory. However, after considering the options, the British government concluded that it was better to leave the island in the hands of a weak power like Spain. The Foreign Office did not want to antagonize Germany during a period when relations were already strained due to the South African War. Also, the example of Zanzibar intruded. Fernando Po and its dependencies were closer to Cameroon than to Nigeria, and it was doubtful that "the German government would be pleased to see a repetition . . . of the Zanzibar and Pemba

0 116() gnevance .... Spain kept its island, but its military weakness was pathetically evident.

In 190 1 the Deputy Antonio Castro y Casaleiz proposed that the American indemnity for the cession of certain Pacific islands be used to establish a telegraph between Spanish Guinea and the Canaries, as recent events had shown how easily imperial communications could be severed. A year later, in the midst of speculation over how it would manage its territories, the Spanish government was empowered to devolve its administration upon a private company.61 In 1903 a plan was put forth for the formation of a Sociedad de Explotaci6n Agricola, Industrial y Minera (Society for Agricultural, Industrial, and Mineral Development). It requested 25,000 hectares on Fernando Po and 50,000 in Rio Muni. The Society asked not to be taxed for thirty years, to establish a bank, and to have its own maritime communications. 62 The plan did not come to fruition.

In 1907 another group, the Sociedad Fundadora de Ia Compafiia Espanola de Colonizaci6n, asked for full exploitation rights. Symbolic of the shift in Spanish interests since the debacle of 1898, the Sociedad included among its leading members Valeriano Weyler, leader of the Spanish forces in Cuba in the 1890s and sometime minister of war. The group· proposed that the remnants of the empire be developed and optimistically argued that what remained was the richest part of Africa. "Our Guinea colonies," said the Sociedad, "by their maritime position, have a great advantage over other African possessions, such as the Belgian Congo or the Sudan where the prices of merchandise suffer great surcharges because of the long distances that they have to cover. "63 A royal decree of 1907 authorized the subvention of La Sociedad General Hispano-Africana, a body headed by Weyler.


Unfortunately for Spanish imperialism in tropical Africa, the group's attention turned to Morocco, and any plans it might have had for West Africa were stillborn. Development of the colony was not given to a concessionaire, although the proposal was made in the annual budgets until 1914. Africanist congresses, which met in Madrid in 1907 and 1910, in Saragossa in 1908 and in Valencia in 1910, attempted to keep the colonial flame alive. The hope that something might be done in sub-Saharan Africa was maintained by Emilio Bonelli, J. Sanchez Toea, R. Labra, and others. Their efforts bore partial fruit in the creation of the Liga Africanista in 1912-1913.

By 1912 Fernando Po and Rio Muni had thirty-five Spanish firms. Some, like Pedro Amilivia, Perez y Mora, and the Trasathintica, were, or went on to become, major trading concerns. Eleven "commercial firms" (which were often only humble stores on fincas) were listed as belonging to Sierra Leoneans. The large planter Maximiliano Jones was among them. There was an almost equal number belonging to Africans born in Spanish Guinea. There were eight commercial firms listed as "Syrian" and five Portuguese ones. E. H. Moritz Company was German, and the Ambas Bay Company Ltd., John Holt and C9mpany, and Francis Wilson were British. 64

Many impecunious Spaniards entered the cocoa economy after accumulating capital by engaging in trade with the Bubi. They established trading posts similar to those that the creoles had pioneered. General merchandise was sold in return for cocoa and other native produce. The returns from such trade allowed them to enter land ownership. Gradually, the Spanish presence increased. In 1907 a medical report opined that Europeans were capable of all fonns of agricultural labor at the higher elevations, if properly regulated. The report said that there were three eight-hundred hectare sites for possible white colonization on Fernando Po. Sixteen years later there were 655 Europeans on the island, the majority of them in the capital. Of these, 426 were Spaniards and 117 Portuguese.65 By the early 1930s Santa Isabel had grown to some nine thousand inhabitants. Much of this growth was attributable to the influx of Europeans and African contract labor.

Efforts were made to encourage the export of a number of products, including cocoa, coffee, coconuts, copra, palm kernels, plantains, ivory, in addition to lumber. Juan Bravo Carbonell, the secretary general of the Camara, was particularly concerned with economic diversification. In 1926 he recommended banana growing, a proposal strenuously opposed by Canarian interests. The Compafiia Trasatlantica had success with cattle ranching. In 1905 Bengoa Arriola had visited Moka (formerly Riabba) to survey the possibility of establishing a ranch. Two years later the govern-


ment granted the company 150 hectares, and by 1910 there were already 150 head of cattle. The number had grown to 1,067 by 1922.66

Spanish colonialists were able to argue that, at last, the colony was of use to the metropole. In the years after the First World War, Governor General Angel Barrera, who served his longest term from 1910 to 1924, using all the means at his disposal, seemed to be developing Madrid's last tropical outpost. In 1921 he succinctly outlined his problems and successes:

Thus it is seen, that, at the end of 1911, 13,233 hectares of land had been conceded, of which only about 7,000 were planted; [by] December 31 of 1917 the concessions amounted to 24,205 hectares, and, at the end of the year 1919, these concessions reached 26,000 hectares, of which around 16,000 hectares were in production, and a great part of the rest opened [for future cultivation] ... production has tripled, and this increase will go on accentuating itself annually, since now the lands conceded at the beginning of the year 1915 will begin to enter into production, unless agriculture is newly held back for lack of protection, with grave prejudice for the economy of the country; ... it needs [protection] urgently today in order to save itself from . : .

• • • 67 economtc cnsts . . . .

Partially as a result of colonial nurturance, agricultural output increased. Colonial cocoa received preferential treatment in the metropolitan market after 1910. The government fixed a special rate of 50 pesetas per 100 kilos for the first 2,000 tons imported and applied a duty of 120 pesetas per 100 kilos to the rest. Non-Spanish cocoa paid the higher duty. Also, there was an export duty on cocoa not shipped to the metropole, a policy which encouraged export to Spain. The difference between the price of colonial and noncolonial produce made Spain a sheltered market. Over time, the colonial cocoa quota moved upwards: 2000 tons in 1910, 2,750 in 1912, 4,000 in 1914, and 5,000 in 1920. The rise probably reflected increasing consumption in the metropole. While colonial production and the quota ascended at the same rate, Fernando Po cocoa's price could stay at about the same level.

By 1925 cocoa production had increased 143 percent over that in 1910 (see Figure 6.1).68 In the late twenties over ninety percent of the arable land was devoted to cocoa. Fifty-eight percent of Spain's cocoa came from Spanish Guinea in 1925. Five years later this proportion had risen to eighty percent; it reached 100 percent in 1935.69 By 1930 most of the. major plantations were European: La Barcelonesa, Vigatana, Montserrat,


Montseny (Catalan), La Macarena (Andalusian), La Valderense (Castillian), Boa Esperanc;a (Portuguese).

The exports of Spanish Guinea were, almost exclusively, cocoa and wood from Rio Muni. 70 Ten thousand tons of wood were sent from the colony (mostly to Hamburg because of the paucity of Spanish shipping). Spain earned foreign exchange from the shipment of goods, principally okume wood, through Barcelona and other metropolitan ports. In the late 1920s exchange control was imposed, and it became easier to allow direct exports from the overseas territories to foreign ports. Spain asked that a fixed

Cocoa Production and Exports Metric Tons (OOOs)

Year

Figure 6.1. Recorded Cocoa Production and Exports, 1899-1930 SOURCE: Max Liniger-Goumaz, Statistics of Nguemist Equatorial Guinea (Geneva, 1986), p. 37, table 6.6.


proportion of foreign exchange earnings be converted into pesetas and refused to allocate foreign exchange for imports which could be gotten in the Peninsula. The policy gave Madrid the additional advantage of artificially increasing Spanish exports to its colonies.

The colony's intake of metropolitan goods and services also increased. In 1925 the flow of money from Spanish Guinea in personal drafts was some 2,000,000 pesetas per year. The colony's imports were 20,000,000 pesetas per year and exports 32,000,000.71 Before 1914 the export of cotton goods to Spanish Guinea and other overseas territories had been below ten percent of Spanish exports. It accounted for twenty-six percent in 1925 and thirtyfour percent five years later.72 Between 1911 and 1932 the volume of merchandise imported to Fernando Po passed from a little more than six million to almost eleven million kilograms. The value of imports, estimated at 12,340,340 pesetas in 1932, was monopolized and traded by the great commercial companies, such as Trasatlantica, Woermann, John Holt, La Vigatana, Ambas Bay, J. Mallo, Perez and Company, W. A. Moritz, and Friedrich. 73

In the years before World War I, two thirds of Spanish Guinea's expenditure came from the metropolitan treasury. The amount was not significant, however; the colony's total annual expenditure in the early 1900s was only about two million pesetas. 74 The metropole's own was over a billion. Colonial supporters argued that Spanish Guinea produced more than it received from Spain. For instance, between 1921 and 1920 it received 18,236,889 pesetas from Madrid and contributed 19,658,129 in customs revenues. 75 According to colonial boosters, the amount received was undervalued since it was paid in gold. A call for protection for colonial cocoa was based, in part, on this fact. Colonialist propagandists argued that colonial produce was cheap and that complaints against the price of Fernando Po cocoa were the result of the inflated prices charged by Peninsular chocolate manufacturers.

In 1918 Fernando Po ranked third in terms of tropical imports after the Philippines and the Canaries; imports from the Bight of Biafra were far higher than those from Rio de Oro or the Spanish zones in Morocco. Between 1911 and 1933, exports from Fernando Po, measured in kilograms, multiplied 345 times, while their value in pesetas multiplied 812 times. In 1911, exports to Spain were 94.4 percent in kilograms and 95.8 percent in pesetas of total exports; in 1932, the same tendency maintained itself, and exports to the metropole represented 82.2 percent in kilograms and 88.8 percent in pesetas of all exports. 76


By the 1920s more consistent attempts were made to lobby for colonial preferences. Early in the decade production increased more rapidly than did either Peninsular consumption or the colonial cocoa quota. Planters could still export to Spain, but production which exceeded the quota ("overproduction") was taxed at the same rate as foreign cocoa. Growers tried to export to other markets, but were hardly competitive. Also, with the end of the First World War, transport and production costs increased and foreign competition became sharper. A planters' consortium was formed in 1920 to deal with the problem of overproduction, but it failed. Three years later the Union de Agricultores de Ia Guinea Espanola was organized, with aims somewhat more precise than those of the Camara. Their goals were to seek the introduction of new products, stimulate consumption of colonial produce, harmonize the interests of different segments of the cocoa industry, and provide agricultural credit to members. By the mid-1920s the Union had consolidated its hold over the market and controlled more than seventy percent of the cocoa imported into Spain. By 1929 it formed part of a mixed commission made up of representatives from the Agricultural Services, the Camara Agricola, and the Treasury Department. In 1928, another group, the Sindicato Agricola de los Territorios Espafioles del Guinea was formed. In spite of (or, perhaps, because ot) the creation of these various bodies, agricultural interests continued to jostle one another. For example, in 1930 the Union and the Camara were in grave disagreement over cocoa quotas.

In spite of differences, and although the problem of overproduction was not solved, cooperation among producers did achieve some successes. The case of the Union de Agricultores is illustrative. In the agricultural year 1924-1925 the Union achieved a price of 3.86 pesetas per kilo, 19 centimos· more than in the 1923-1924 season. The price continued to rise; in the 1926-1927, season it was 4.02 pesetas per kilo. In the 1927-1928 season there was a price decline; cocoa received 62 centimos per kilogram less than in the previous season. The cause of the fluctuation was probably overproduction and a glut on the metropolitan market. The colonial cocoa quota had been raised to 7,000 tons per annum, and production had widely exceeded the fixed quota. The Union resolved not to supply the metropole with any cocoa beyond the colonial quota; members would be free send their surplus to other markets. In 1930 the colonial quota was raised again, this time to 8,000 tons per annum. Many cocoa producers resolved to sell. as much cocoa in Spain as possible, a move which depressed prices.

Colonial interests agitated throughout the 1920s for a reduction in duties. In 1928, after several years of deliberation, Madrid liberalized its import policy. Some products were exempted altogether. Duties on coffee, coconut


palms, and wood planks were reduced. The export of rubber to the metropole was taxed only to a minimal degree, and imposts on kola and oily almonds were considerably reduced. The duty on cocoa entering Spain was not reduced, but that leveled on cocoa exported elsewhere was cut. In December of 1930, .the previous duty of 10 pesetas per 100 kilos of cocoa was raised to 20 pesetas. For various reasons, some having little to do with Madrid's policy, the price paid for cocoa rose. In the agricultural year 1930-1931 the price was 3.78 pesetas per kilo, 0.05 pesetas per kilogram more than the previous season. 77

In the midst of the expanding cocoa economy, capital remained a problem. In the 1890s Spanish cocoa brokers began making loans to producers and taking payment in produce in Barcelona. In 1900, Casa Huelin was the major broker in Santa Isabel and advanced loans to Fernandino and Spanish planters. This did not obviate the need for a colonial bank. The Bank of British West Africa was the chief bank and governor-generals frequently talked of the need to deposit revenues in a Spanish bank. In 1916 a Banco Colonial Espanol del Golfo de Guinea was formed with the blessing of the government, but encountered opposition in the Spanish Parliament. The project collapsed and was not revived until after 1923. Seven years later an agreement with the Banco Exterior de Espana gave that bank the deposits of the· colonial treasury. Unfortunately, this move came at a time of worldwide economic distress. The bank did not begin its functions and, in 1932, the project was abandoned.

The pace of Spanish investment increased, nonetheless. In 1926 the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera made a special credit of twenty-three million pesetas available for public works over a period of ten years. 78 In the same year, the Compaiiia Nacional de Colonizaci6n Africana (ALENA), which came to rely heavily on the Banco Exterior de Espana, acquired most of the island uplands held by the Trasathintica. 79 Two years later General Luis Valdes Cavanilles, formerly the head of military affairs in the Direcci6n General de Marruecos y Colonias (General Bureau of Morocco and Colonies), visited Spanish Guinea to explore investment opportunities. The following year the General proposed the concession of 3,750 hectares in the Rio Benito region of Rio Muni and 2,000 hectares on Fernando Po. With the aid of the Spanish monarch, the general and his backers (among them the Banco Urquijo and the Banco Hispano Americano) were able to launch the Compaiiia Espanola del Golfo de Guinea in 1929. On the eve of the Great Depression the government-protected enterprise paid a dividend of ten percent. 80 The linkage of military, governmental, and financial interests adumbrated the practices of the Franco period.


Fernandinos: Continuity and Change

At the beginning of the 1920s, a ball at the governor-general's mansion was described as an event at which "the select of both colours will be present, and when the band strikes up the waltz, black and white whirl off together." It was "a galaxy of colour, a brilliant display of jewellery and silk, of black and white, yellow and red, all lit up by electricity. "81 This picture of the Fernandinos' prosperity and life-style was deceptive; several years later it was observed that "thirty to forty years their fathers worked hard, lived simply and amassed wealth. The present generation, for the most part have not the same hard discipline, have formed expensive habits of life, and during the last few years, have been subjected to a keenness of competition their fathers never knew. "82

Addressing Governor-General Angel Barrera in 1921, the Fernandino president of Santa Isabel's Consejo de Vecinos noted that the majority of the planters could "recall the anguished situation that held back agriculture on your arrival in 1910, and [how] by your initiative, with your insistence, you secured the immigration of laborers from the Continent [that is, Rio Muni] first, from Liberia afterwards, the results being evident . . . . "83 In spite of such praise, agricultural expansion and new sources of labor did not benefit the black planters as a class. Most Femandinos, as assimilated Africans, had seats reserved for them in the Camara Agricola, but they did not dominate the body, nor did they have great influence in the Barcelona- or Madridbased producers' associations. As in the past, their financial situation made it impossible for them to live up to the terms of their contracts. They also experienced difficulty in putting the lands they held into cultivation.

Before the First World War there was little or no information on native property; of the 509 landowners cited in 1899 and the 500 fincas listed in 1909, only registered colonial farms were referred to. In 1913 the number of farms owned by Liberians (mostly Kru ex-laborers) was 129. The· holdings occupied some 830 hectares; most were not freehold. Only some forty-three titleholders had definite possession, and the eight-six others were in the process of gaining possession or were landholders with titles held up because of lack of payment. Liberianfincas were small; of the 129


ampman Mary Bube Transatlantica

A. Bibiano

Map 6.1. Fernando Po Plantation Locations, c. 1913 SOURCE: Encyclopedia Universal Ilustrada Europeo-Americana (Madrid, 192-), 23, p. 835.

recorded, only three were more than 20 hectares, and the average was 6.6 hectares. 84

W. G. Clarence-Smith has noted that "the ethnic composition of the planter class changed relatively little between 1885 and 1910. "85 In 1891 some 500 hectares (around fifteen percent of the total ceded area) were


owned by Fernandinos. Around 1913 there were roughly the same numbers of Spanish and Fernandino planters, if surnames are any indication (see Map 6.1). 86 However, by this period, the eve of World War I, change was clearly on the horizon. Clarence-Smith maintains that this has little to do with colonial discrimination against Africans, as small-scale European planters suffered too. What is significant is that discrimination took the form of "color-blind" land and labor legislation, which made it hard for smaller planters in general. By the late 1920s, many Fernandinos had come to the conclusion that the economic and cultural tide was running against them and that economic opportunities on the island were narrowing. 87

By World War I certain trends were obvious. In late 1915 Theophilus (Teofilo) Thompson, Henry (Enrique) Allen, Catherine (Catalina) Willis, Jeremiah (Jeremias) Barleycorn, Manuel Balboa, Daniel Niger, and Amelia Vivour, all prominent Fernandinos, lost land through failure to develop it. The situation was even more acute for the myriad of small-scale African farmers, for government had little interest in small-scale native agriculture. The accounts of fifty percent of the workers' wages deposited in the Curadoria (Labor Office) between 1915 and 1920 reveal the most important employers to have been Europeans. 88 Admittedly, many of the white employers were shippers who provided laborers to African planters. However, the figures do emphasize who controlled labor influx and its distribution. The situation had shifted greatly since the 1880s, when Africans like Vivour had contracted their own labor on the African coast. Also, the plantations and larger planters did their own exporting, but the smaller planters had to come to terms with either an exporter or a large planter to get their cocoa shipped.

In 1923 the majority of the land, 76.1 percent, was registered as freehold. Land in public and private lease was 14.93 percent and 8.39 percent, respectively. Land in trust was 0.65 percent.89 The process of land engrossment and tightening land ordinances was well on its way. In 1926 the administration reiterated a rule which confined much landholding to nationals and gave a deadline of six months for compliance. By the late 1920s the colonial regime was dedicated to the idea of plantation agriculture and the diminution of small-scale African farming. In 1927 a local commentator pleaded that "the large uncultivated terrains should be divided into plots of greater or smaller dimensions, thus converting the laborious and proportionally intelligent [African] labourer into an owner .... " It was obvious that peasant production had worked wonders elsewhere: "We plead on behalf of the small estate owners and in them we see a salvation for agriculture . . . . This is the orientation taken by all peoples when there is


a lack of manpower; it is natural. "90 The regime did not favor the large-scale transformation of laborers into landholders. Simultaneously, many of the laborers' employers were struggling to make ends meet. Some continued to do very well, however.91

One, gauging the winds of change, assiduously cultivated the goodwill of the colonial regime. Maximiliano Jones was the Fernandino survivor par excellence. Early in his career he had made himself useful to Emilio Bonelli of the Compafiia Trasathintica. In 1902 he solicited a small grant of land at a place called Moba in the San Carlos district. Two years later Jones obtained plantations in San Carlos originally owned by Francisco Romera. The following year he asked the Spanish administration for ten hectares in Balombe. By 1907 the Fernandino was in a commanding position in San Carlos; this position enabled him to ingratiate himself with the administration by freely granting lands to the town for its expansion. Jones practically owned the place because the inhabitants were dependent on him for building supplies. In 1928 Jones held 275 hectares in San Carlos and title to another forty. Of his holdings, only thirty-three hectares were uncultivated.92

There were other Fernandinos who continued to prosper. One smaller planter was Wilwardo Jones, a son of Maximiliano. He, through purchase or rental agreement, controlled over 152 hectares; 86 hectares of his land were rented from the Grange family. Edward Emilio Barleycorn (1891-1978), a scion of one of the island's longest established families, farmed his father's lands at Achepepe, Bantabare, and elsewhere. In the 1920s he was also employed by his godmother and aunt, Amelia Vivour. In 1924 he started his own plantations and by 1928 was prominent enough to be entrusted by the island's planters with negotiations for foreign workers. In 1928 Manuel Balboa, another Fernandino, held or leased a total of 334 hectares and had a labor force of 137 men working on all thejincas.93 He had 27 hectares in production in Laka and also owned 120 hectares in Basuala, of which 67 were in production. In Concepcion he owed 89 hectares of which only 20 were in production. In the same locale he used 87 hectares which were the legal property of Ysabel Arkins de Balboa. In Loboha he had land in a lease arrangement with two women, one of whom was Gertrude Johnson Barleycorn.

Joseph Walter Dougan, who gained control of most of the Vivour estate, was one of the most important planters of the 1920s. In 1928 Dougan possessed outright 162 hectares in cultivation in Belaboo, Batete, Boimoriba, and Musola de San Carlos. In addition he had 125 hectares leased to tenants, of which 61 hectares were in Batete. Fifty of these were in production, and 11 were uncultivated. Thirty-eight hectares were in Musola,


of which 28 hectares were under cultivation and 10 were forested. The 25 hectares in Belaboo were all cultivated. Altogether Dougan had 265 hectares planted and 21 uncultivated. According to his reckoning, he retained approximately 225 of the 365 hectares he had purchased in September of 1927 from the heirs of the Vivour estate. One hundred and forty planted hectares had been turned over to the Spanish firm of Mallo Brothers.94

The Problematic of Black Enterprise

The history of the Fernandinos is one example of the general unrolling of "black capitalism." Throughout Africa many groups exposed to the capitalist West developed entrepreneurship or cash farming, or both in the 1850-1910 period. They were often on the leading edge of capital's penetration, but, by the second decade of the twentieth century, they had been swept away by competition. That the prosperity of the Fernandinos endured longer than elsewhere is testimony to the weakness of their competitors and ultimate successors.

In economic struggles with Europeans, many other Western-educated African comme,rcial and agricultural groups were squeezed into a marginal position. Their former functions were often abandoned for clerical roles in colonial bureaucracies. If groups remained active, it was often under the dominance of European capital. Speaking of Africa in general, Austen notes that creole groups "constituted one element in the larger population of small merchant firms which found it difficult to survive under the dual pressure of fluctuating price conditions and competition from giant conglomerates." To meet the situation, "some African entrepreneurs attempted to capture a major place in the export-import trade through ambitious oligopolistic schemes of their own, but these foundered on both the hostility of European governments and the unrealistic economic perceptions of their founders. " Many moved into real estate and salaried employment within the colonial government or private European firms. 95 In addition to what Austen has perceived as "unrealistic economic perceptions" there is, in the case of Fernando Po, the obstacle of environment. Ecology allowed the creole group to establish a foothold for itself; it also placed limits on the foothold's expansion.

Fernandino decline is, in some ways, parallel to the decline of the jiliws da terra (Afro-Portuguese creoles) on nearby Sao Tome. By 1900 this group had been swamped by a flood of European capital. European banks, funneling their money through Lisbon, helped create a whole new plantation


system which gradually plowed under a class of smallholders. As on Fernando Po, their decline was attributed to "an extravagant life-style and uncontrolled indebtedness. "96

Even closer at hand is the example of the Duala in Cameroon, who benefited from their middleman position on the coast. Around 1900 some leaders took advantage of the situation to engage in fairly large-scale cocoa farming using slave and hired labor. This was particularly true of lands along the Mungo River belonging to the Bell clan. As on Fernando Po, cocoa production increased until around 1930. Simultaneously, the area attracted migrants from the interior, and the Duala came to be regarded by colonial administrators as a colonial elite. Unfortunately, the "period during which the Duala flourished as pioneer indigenous cocoa planters proved to be an Indian summer, both for their control of slaves and their general preeminence in the development of Cameroon. "97 In 1923 two Duala: a merchant and a plantation owner, sat in the European-controlled Consultative Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture. The group .was hard hit by the Depression and never completely recovered. By 1936 non-Duala immigrants made up forty-three percent of what had been, in 1884, an almost exclusive

ly Duala area.98

The trajectory can be observed in the Bight of Benin area. In Dahomey, black Brazilian immigrants, Yoruba and, above all, Westernized representatives of traditional landholding groups, attempted to expand their economic horizons in the late nineteenth century. The commercial group was in and around Ouidah; the group most concerned with land acquisition centered on Porto Novo. Developing African capitalists were found scattered throughout the area: Brazilian immigrants in Agoue, traders and proprietors such as Pierre Johnson in the Mono Valley, Yoruba moneylenders and proprietors in the environs of Porto Novo. More important than isolated entrepreneurs were groups with economic power and status from the pre-colonial era .. ~or instance, in 1896 Joseph Tovalou Quenum gained French legal recogmtwn of his trusteeship of the collective property of the Quenum. The most consistent effort to become a "modem" landowning group came from the Adjovi family which had held palm oil plantations under the Kingdom of Dahomey. Led by Jean Adjovi and others, the African landholding class attempted to agitate for an important place within the colonial economy. It was, in the end, unsuccessful. The would-be class of African planters lacked an ideology which could successfully confront the racism and nationalism of the colonial state, which countered with the argument that it stood for the protection of the rights of the peasantry. By the 1930s Adjovi ambitions


were stymied by the opposition of the French colonial administration and foundered under the weight of restrictive legislation and court cases. 99

To the east, in Lagos, Western-educated merchants flourished after mid-century. Some individuals also tried their hand at cash-crop production. In the 1880s the colonial governor, Alfred Moloney, proposed encouraging Sierra Leoneans and Yoruba returnees from Brazil to start cash-crop farming. 100 1\venty years later at least one Lagosian, J. K. Coker, employed two hundred migrant workers in plantation agriculture. 101 However, contrary trends were already in the wind. Traders and agriculturalists faced increasing competition as the colonial order imposed itself. Africans hoping to accumulate capital for trade or for the purchase of land were at a disadvantage because "expatriate concerns ... lost no time in adopting new forms of business organization, such as the limited liability company. "102

Also, the African elite was affected by an economic depression which started in the 1880s and ended in the first decade of the twentieth century. Palm oil prices reached their nadir around 1885; it was only competition for scarce shipments coming down from Yorubaland that kept the price relatively high. The majority of African traders had either switched to the import trade or gone out of business altogether by the last decade of the century. 103

Agriculture grew apace, but not under the auspices of large-scale African landowners. A similar trend could be seen in the Gold Coast. 104

One of the first non-European West African groups to enter large-scale agriculture, the Americo-Liberians, also experienced difficulties. After some success with coffee growing and export in the middle of the nineteenth century, Liberian agriculture and commerce faltered. Between 1885 and 1900 competition from areas like Brazil halved coffee exports. ·Sugar exports were driven down by a rise in European beet sugar cultivation. Liberian sailing craft could not compete with European-owned steamships. In the early twentieth century, those Americo-Liberians who remained in commerce were employed as agents or employees of European companies. 105

An indication of the trough into which the group had fallen is the fact that in the mid-1920s Gabriel Johnson, sometime mayor of Monrovia and Supreme Potentate of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, found the position of Liberian consul on Fernando Po and controller of coerced labor traffic far more lucrative than any post in his homeland.

Much farther afield, the same rise and fall of incipient black agricultural capitalism can be seen. As a result of the pull of trade and the "Bible and the Plow" urgings of Christian missionaries, a class of black "capitalist farmers" emerged in nineteenth-century South Africa. The ideology of the


missionaries freed some individuals from the constraints of traditional society. At the same time, the expanding demands of the economy created new opportunities. The process began in the 1830s and reached its peak with the Mineral Revolution of the 1870s and 1880s. In 1882 some African farmers in Thembuland possessed over 3000 acres and 200 cattle. By 1890 there were between 1000 and 2000 African landholders in Cape Province; smaller numbers could be found in Natal and the Boer Republics. 106 This development did not long survive the tum of the nineteenth century: "From the 1890s, and perhaps even earlier, white competition for land and markets and labour, backed by legislation imposed by growing white political power, destroyed South Africa's first black capitalism. "107 In South Africa, "like Kansas farmers [,] or, for that matter, like the white settlers of Natal, African Christians acquired a boom mentality. " As in the Bight of Biafra, "they did not at first realise that they had traded.a life made insecure by the caprices of nature for a life dominated by the vagaries of the free market. [Christian Africans] in remote areas planted extensively, without considering that the absence of good roads and ready markets would prevent them from emulating the successes of their more fortunately situated fellows. "108 In such a situation "the first generation of ill-educated, socially disoriented African Christians (kholwa) stood a far greater chance of growing wealthy than did their literate, skilled and politically sophisticated children and grandchildren. "109

Each of these examples illustrates general socio-economic processes. Models of African economic development had shifted considerably by the First World War. A showcase colony was the Gold Coast, by 1914 the world's largest cocoa producer. Its economy, built upon small-scale African peasant cultivation and initiative, was dominated by European oligopolies. In Cameroon, around the same time, cocoa production moved from the plantations run by members of Westernized Duala elite to small-scale farms employing little outside labor. Increasingly, "German and particularly French administrators could dismiss [the Duala elite] as a selfish, corrupt, and parasitic minority, trying . . . to impose themselves upon the loyal, unspoiled, and hard-working majority groups of the interior .... "110 Many colonial administrators, especially in West Africa, touted peasant farming as most beneficial to colonialist and colonized alike. Significantly, it was also an arrangement in which Western-educated African merchants and planters became, in the calculus of colonialism, redundant.

Chapter 7

The Search for Labor

When Richard Burton advocated forced labor as the only means of "developing" Fernando Po, he was no lone voice crying in the wildemess. 1

David Eltis points out that "eventually ... the basic tenets of Palmerstonian [abolitionist] liberalism itself were called into question . . . . Burton's comment, 'I see no objection to render liberated labour forcible ... ' suggests that the full circle had been completed by 1864. "2 At the peak of European imperialism such views were part of colonialist orthodoxy. In the 1920s the British colonial secretary observed that the aim of policy was to steer "a middle course between allowing the natives to live in idleness and vice and using improper means to get them to work. "3 The pull of wages alone would not be enough to insure colonial development.

Slavery and Neoslavery

Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts have recently pointed out that the issue of the end of slavery in Africa is highly complex and caution "that we need to . . . resist the temptation to generalize from the few examples we now have. "4 Indeed, caution is warranted. Studies of nineteenth-century slavery have, generally, seen it as an anachronism. Eric Hobsbawm, writing on. the period from 1848 to 1875, says that "for practical purposes, by the end of our period, chattel slavery had retreated to the more backward parts of the

119

120 The Search for Labor

Middle East and Asia, where it no longer played a significant agricultural role. "5 There is a similar tendency to see the withering away of slavery in the colonial areas of Africa. According to A. G. Hopkins, "the colonial powers regarded slavery as obstructing their long-term economic interests. "6

Jean Suret-Canale says of French Africa that "the [African] master, who by definition did not furnish any surplus labour himself, unproductively consumed the products of the slave's surplus labour . . . . In the eyes of the colonisers it was a 'barbaric' system, because it presented an obstacle to the progress of their interests and the growth of their profits. "7 Paul Lovejoy believes that:

Once the forces of abolition began to sever the link in this intercontinental system, slavery was confined to an African context. The separation continued, with slaves taken to Sao Thome and Principe, scattered places along the Angolan coast, and the Arab-Swahili plantations of Zanzibar, Pemba, and the east coast. This transformation presaged the collapse of the system, for the emancipation of slaves in these locations eliminated the need for continued enslavement. 8

European colonialism, whatever its drawbacks in terms of labor abuse, is usually depicted as the death of slavery as an articulated system: "The imposition of colonialism terminated slavery as a mode of production and marked the fuller integration of Africa into the orbit of capitalism. "9

The Guinea Islands destroy any such generalization. There "slavery" and "forced labor" often interdigitated. In 1900 cocoa was produced in greatest quantity on Sao Tome by a coerced and largely lifelong work force. Plantation agriculture on the island was underwritten by English, Belgian, and other capital.

By the end of the 1880s slavery was illegal in all of the Guinea Islands. However, charges of labor abuse and "slavery" scandals have persisted into the 1990s. Contract labor has often drifted towards conditions analogous to slavery, a fact which raises the question, What is a slave? Lovejoy has very clearly pointed out, "Other forms of labour ... existed alongside slavery in the nineteenth century . . . . The erosion of slavery as a mode of production freed these alternative forms of labour, which in one way or another marked the transition to a more complete articulation with capitalism. "10 We need to distinguish carefully between what Lovejoy calls the slave "mode of production" and the existence of slaves. The mode "existed when the social and economic structure of a particular society included an integrated system of enslavement, slave trade, and the domestic use of slaves. Slaves had to

The Search for Labor 121

be emplo!ed in production .... "11 Even after noting this distinction, we must avmd the tendency to create linear conceptualizations of slavery. The withering away of slavery was not inevitable and was not necessarily a sign of economic advance. The premier place occupied by "an integrated system of enslavement, slave trade, and the domestic use of slaves" in the "postabolition" Biafran region is evidence of this fact.

In the 1920s colonial reformers correctly found categories of subordinates hard to disentangle: "you cannot for long separate, at least in the minds of the natives, the imposition of forced labour from certain forms of slavery ... the only way to prevent forced labour from developing into 'conditions analogous to slavery' was to abolish it altogether. "12 Indeed, a coerced contract laborer who never returned home probably viewed himself or herself as a slave, and the distinction between slave and nonslave was, undoubtedly, lost on the unhappy worker.

In reality, slavery, as we shall see, has its periods of intensification and waning. These were often dependent on internal political consolidation or on expansion of the demands of the world economy, or both. As Francisco Scarano has observed concerning slavery in Latin America: "the practice of slavery in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies varied from one historical epoch to another in accordance with the type and intensity of agricultural commodity production. . . . [I]n Puerto Rico, as in Cuba and elsewhere in Spanish America, it flourished under the unique conditions of scant external market connections and diminished slave imports-conditions which held true in the 1600s and early 1700s, but no longer obtained at a later date." Later, "the sugar revolution of the nineteenth century led slaveowners to exercise stricter controls over their chattel, to limit opportunities for manumission, and to import such massive numbers of Africans as to [change] completely the cultural configuration of the subject class. "13

In West Africa there is ample evidence that customary statuses were shifted to benefit from changed economic conditions. Given new demand, for example, pawns might increasingly be unredeemed and even sold overseas. Within the status of "slave" itself, changes and shifts might occur which modified the whole nature of those within the status. Thus, the contract worker on Sao Tome in 1900 probably approximated various definitions of "slave" more than did those persons in 1800 who, while legally slaves, were left to devote most of their time to the cultivation of small subsistence plots. This is because plantations flourished on Sao Tome and Principe in the period from 1500 to 1550 and again in the period from 1880 to 1910.


Recruitment: Rio Muni

Could Rio Muni, which Spain claimed, have served Fernando Po as Angola served Sao Tome? Unfortunately for the Spanish, the answer was no. The 10,000 square miles of Rio Muni could not serve as the 481,351 square miles of Angola did. Internal supplies of colonial labor could be tapped, but they were limited. Penetration of the Spanish-claimed area between the Rio Campo and the Muni Estuary was slow, hampered as it was by the presence of powerful African peoples and competition froni German, English, and other traders. In addition, the terrain did not facilitate European conquest. The area was heavily forested; a narrow coastal plain rises gradually to a range of hills from 1,000 to 1,200 meters in the east.

In Rio Muni the Fang, in particular, resisted. Their origins lie in the expansion of the Sanaga-Ntem Bantu-speakers in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. The expansion of the Fang toward the coast probably began only in the nineteenth century. Movement was motivated, in part, by a desire to eliminate middlemen in the trade with Europeans. Warfare with interior groups and mythico-religious beliefs also played a part. In the late 1850s Mpongwe merchants in northern Gabon sought marriage alliances with migrant groups and invited individual Fang to the coast for visits. By the early 1870s some clans were south of the estuary of the Ogowe River. Around 1890 the Fang reached their southernmost point, deep in Gabon. Groups in their path were often conquered and absorbed.

As the Fang moved in and threatened the position of coastal traders like the Benga, the Spanish attempted to expand their claim to Rio Muni. The colonialist and traveler Manuel Iradier made two largely ignored trips to the area. In the spring of 1875 he visited Rio Muni in hopes of awakening interest in African exploration. Iradier's penetration of the area was hardly monumental. He was never more than one hundred miles from the coast. Nine years later, he, along with a colleague, Amadeo Ossorio, visited again to conclude treaties with local leaders. On the basis of these and other treaties, Spain claimed 180,000 square kilometers at the Berlin Conference. Part of this was already held by Britain and became Eastern Nigeria. The 1884 German annexation of Cameroon effectively frustrated plans for acquiring the coast nearest Fernando Po. To the south, Spanish and French interests conflicted. In 1892 Denmark was asked to mediate the boundary, but little was accomplished. In 1900, in the wake of the Spanish-American War, Madrid was left with a tiny enclave almost surrounded by French Gabon.


Catholic missionaries introduced Fang labor to Fernando Po in 1894 when they brought over forty Fang workers from Elobey. Lack of control over the mainland precluded the steady recruitment of labor. For instance, in 1897 several Fernando Po planters went to Bata. They recruited no more than seven men because of the opposition of the French. 14 1\venty-three years later there were 1,384 men and 147 women from Rio Muni out of a total African population in Santa Isabel of 2,148. 15 In the late twenties, due to the difficulty of obtaining workers elsewhere, the percentage of Fang workers increased. In 1925, 3,200 Fang laborers were divided among 59 employers. Seven commercial houses in Santa Isabel kept 2,500 laborers. The remainder was parceled out among 52 agriculturalists. In addition, some 1,200 to 1,800 Liberian laborers were recruited annually, and smaller numbers came from Cameroon and elsewhere. 16

As in other situations, recruitment depended on gerontocratic manipulation of the supply of women. A Spaniard in Rio Muni observed:

The recruiter looks for Fang paths, in the virgin forest towns ignored by the state. And in a language half Fang, half broken-English, he makes himself known to the kukuman who is the mayor of the village, the chief of the tribe, the owner of all. Do you have men who may go to work on Fernando Po? No, the kukuman answers categorically. Another would say, ambolo (goodbye), and would continue on his way. The recruiter knows what must work with the kukuman. Some little necklaces, some trinkets, a handful of salt and many, many of the things from my factory: clothes, pails, lamps, hats, etc. The struggle was joined. The kukuman stopped by conceding. He had the money. The kukuman called all of the youths who wanted a mininga manf [wife]. Some were produced. To them 300 pesetas was given, more or less half of the payment for a woman, which does not buy her, but is something like a pledge in the indigenous marriages. These 300 [pesetas] are discounted, naturally, from the salary earned on thefinca where the [worker] would work for two years for a wage of 70 pesetas per month, plus food .... "17

Labor recruitment was hindered by conditions in the enclave. Low population made one proposal for the forcible two-year recruitment of all African males unattractive. 18 Missionary paternalism sought to conserve the indigenous population. Spanish colonialism itself wanted to avoid charges of labor abuse. The beginning of coffee production in Rio Muni in 1926 was a further disincentive to labor outflow. Returned Fang migrants from


Fernando Po, along with others, developed the crop. In addition, by 1930 cocoa plantations had been established along the Bata-Ebeyiyin road. Large palm oil plantations were also established using Asian oil plants and mechanical presses. In spite of this development, in 1929 only 0.026 percent of Rio Muni's cultivatable area was under cash crop cultivation. 19 Much of the colony's labor continued to be imported from Cameroon or Liberia.

While some Fang were drawn to lumbering camps in Rio Muni, others fled them. Interestingly, lax Spanish control of Rio Muni, in comparison with French control in neighboring Gabon, caused some migration into the Spanish territory to escape the corvee. In the 1920s and 1930s the construction of the Congo-Ocean Railway in the French Congo drained a large area of Gabon of its available manpower. The Fang referred to such recruitment as "The Terror" and used any means to escape. In 1922 a French report lamented the fact that the Fang's most "ardent desire is to avoid any kind of authority, whether native or foreign." Spanish Guinea was viewed as a magnet for the border population because it was a place "where censuses, native taxation, levies and native justice are unknown. "20 The Spaniards took note of the permeability of colonial boundaries and, in 1926, the Camara Agricola noted that "many of the [labor] recruits, upon returning to their country and not considering themselves secure in our territory, passed over the frontier and went to Gabon or Cameroon. "21 The next year the Camara authorized the establishment of recruiting agencies in Bata, Benito, and Elobey and prohibited recruitment by agents not authorized by itself.

Although Rio Muni was sending several thousand laborers per annum to Fernando Po by the late 1920s, the enclave could not provide the bulk of the island's labor. Spanish colonialism continued to look further afield. This set it on a collision course with other colonialisms intent upon conserving their own supplies of labor and imbued with a strong ideological commitment to "free labor."

Recruitment: Cameroon

Neither Fernando Po itself nor Rio Muni provided sufficient labor for colonial development schemes. The Cameroon coast seemed a convenient source from a geographical point of view. As early as the 1840s the island obtained labor from the various Cameroonian polities. The Duala population under the Bell and Akwa dynasties were divided into free and slave groups, most generally designated as wonja and mukom. Most of the latter were


Bamileke from the Cameroon Grassfields area. Some laborers were slaves freed by their masters. Others were legally free people who paid their sovereigns a portion of their earnings. In 1841 John Clarke observed: "King Bell does not exact [money] ... from his people, the people settle with King Acqua themselves on their return home, but with King William it is settled in regular slavery fashion . . . . "22

After the Scramble for Africa, labor recruitment from Cameroon became much more difficult. After 1884 the Germans pushed plantation agriculture and labor recruitment. In 1891 there were seven European planters; by 1903 there were a hundred. 23 The Germans gained control of the interior by 1900, a move that facilitated recruitment within the colony itself. Increasingly railways and roads linked the littoral to the hinterland. As elsewhere, contract labor and preexisting slaving systems interdigitated. Laborers were recruited by private licensed agents employed by plantation companies or obtained from defeated groups in the interior. In 1899 the governor proposed that "slaves of conquered tribes should be sent with their families to the coast, where they could obtain work as labourers. "24 Internal labor migration from upland areas to the coast resulted in a high death rate and complaints from traders who used Africans as porters. In 1900, because of high mortality, each plantation was required to have its own cemetery. In 1912 the military administrator for Bamenda said that, of three hundred Bali people sent to the coast in that year, ninety-four died.25 In the 1920s in contrast to Eastern Nigeria's population density of one thousand per square mile in the central Igbo region, densities of only fifteen to twenty per square mile were reported in the Kumba area of Cameroon. 26

The German administration attempted to prevent the outflow of the scarce labor resource. For instance, it prosecuted several Duala charged with supplying illegal labor to Fernando Po. 27 Ironically, the collapse of the Germans in World War I provided a unexpected benefit to the labor-starved planters of Spanish Guinea. During the war the island was blockaded by the Allies, and plantation agriculture survived only through the fortuitous arrival of refugees from Cameroon. In 1915 Governor Ebermaier and all colonial officials fled from Yaounde toward the border of Rio Muni, 125 miles away. The retreating Germans fought a fierce battle with Allied troops on the banks of the Nyong River in early 1916 and then crossed over into neutral territory. The refugees totaled twenty-four thousand persons, including European officials, African troops, and their family members. 28 Sixteen thousand Cameroonians were taken to Fernando Po. About five to six thousand of these were African troops who temporarily helped alleviate the labor shortage.29 In 1919, 834 Germans were evacuated via Spain.30 In


1920 Chief Atangana of Yaounde and 150 followers were repatriated to Cameroon via Douala.

Recruitment: The Kru

Limited labor flow from Cameroon continued until the mid-1930s, when the French administration, unhappy over the treatment of laborers, stopped it. Fernando Po planters had to look further afield, as they traditionally had. As early as the 1880s William Vivour employed an ethnically mixed force drawn from well beyond the Biafran region. The majority were from the Lower Guinea coast; most were Loango men. In addition, he employed some thirty workers from Accra, who performed basically artisanal jobs (for example, coopers, carpenters, and smiths), a few Cape Palmas "Kruboys" (Grebo), several Bassa, and four Bubi. Vivour's contemporary, Laureano Da Cunha, used his coastal boats to obtain laborers from Batanga or Bimbia. The majority of his laborers were from the Loango Coast, Cape Palmas, or were Beribe "Kruboys."31 From 1892 to 1893 over three thousand African workers supposedly went to Fernando Po, and, of these, one thousand were reengagedY

"Kruboys," migrant laborers from the Windward Coast, were brought to the island by Vivour and others in increasing numbers. They were already the mainstay of Fernando Po's alien labor force. The island was one of the

·, few places where such migrants accepted other than maritime employment; 1 they cut timber, cleared land, and farmed. Laborers leaving vessels could usually find employment or stay with countrymen while awaiting return to

,· the Windward Coast. In 1841 there were 192 Kru laborers resident in Santa Isabel, with another 400 outside itY In the 1840s Fernando Po was, with the possible exception of Sierra Leone, the chief place of overseas Kru employment. In 1856, out of a total population of982 in Santa Isabel, there were 380 transient workers, the majority of whom must have been Kru. 34

Two years later Kru laborers alone numbered 209.35

The workers from the Windward Coast, along with the Bassa and Grebo, were part of the largest linguistic group in Liberia. The coastal area between River Cess and Grand Cess is the present home of the Kru, although it is thought that they arrived from the interior two to four hundred years ago. In the past they organized themselves into a large number of towns, each with its own independent head. Towns frequently split off from others. This gave rise to satellite villages. Tensions between towns were frequent and political alliances ephemeral. Cultural, rather than political,


unity was what identified the group. Towns formed dako or what some have called "sub-tribes." The majority of laborers came from coastal dako.

Since the late eighteenth century, the area had supplied seamen and stevedores for European vessels. The "Kru" were probably the amalgamation of related but distinct peoples: shore-living "Fishmen" and inland agriculturalists or "Bushmen." It may have been that "the furtherance of mutually sustaining social ties between neighboring Fishmen and Bushmen lineages over a number of generations would explain the linguistic, social, and cultural amalgam characteristic of the Kru Coast, one distinctive feature being the language (Krawin) spoken by inhabitants of the 'Five Towns' (Krao) and satellite communities."36 By the late nineteenth century the term "Kru" was applied to a series of interrelated peoples. In addition to the Kru, their Grebo neighbors were often included under the same rubric.

The Kru were often pictured as model wage workers-or as near to this ideal as it was possible to find on the African continent. In the 1860s Burton accepted the widespread contemporary view of them as docile and contented laborers. He added, "nothing will prevent them calling themselves my ... slaves . . . . "37 At the tum of the century a Spanish official noted that "up to the present the labourers have been Krooboys . . . . Physically considered, these negroes are extremely strong and robust, and capable of working as none others could, and fond of the salt waters; they are, besides fairly intelligent and obedient to their masters. "38 More recently it has been said that "it is surprising that no commentator on the Kru has ever called attention to the almost total absence of any mention of a Kru striking, or threatening violence to a white man while in his employ. "39 The Fernando Po experience argues to the contrary. From the 1840s onward, workers' resistance to coercion was manifest both on the island and in the areas from which they were recruited.

Although Kru migration is usually depicted as voluntary, there is reason to doubt that it was so throughout the nineteenth century. It is certain that the shipment of workers involved some coercion. . In 1843 John Clarke described labor procurement as coercive and involving payment to someone other than the workers themselves. 40 To some colonial reformers, the fact such coercion came from within African society made it fundamentally different from forced labor under European auspices. We know little of what the workers thought of this distinction, although they may have had some difficulty in sifting through the legalisms involved. Henry Nevinson, a critic of labor abuse, drew a firm distinction between "domestic" and "foreign" slavery, a distinction which continues to bedevil discussions of slavery in Africa. Describing Kru labor migration, he said: "When they

\

\ '

\ 128 The Search for Labor

return, they give the chief a share of their earnings as a tribute . . . . This is a kind of feudalism, but it has nothing to do with slavery, especially as there is a keen competition among the boys to serve. "41

Early in the nineteenth century, enslaved persons may have been sent overseas. Later it appears that migration was a means by which younger men satisfied gerontocratic economic demands. The Kru seem to fit a pattern observed elsewhere. The evolution of slavery in subsistence economies has been discussed by Claude Meillassoux as the competition between elders and their juniors. 42 More recently this opposition has been seen in terms of classes. Pierre-Philippe Rey, looking at Equatorial Africa, perceives the genesis of slavery in the pawning of younger males. This exchange was an element in the gerontocracy's power. It reinforced their control over the reproducers in society-women. According to Rey, this brokering of individuals aided the elders by expanding lineage groups through dependents and by removing potentially troublesome young men. In Rey's view, gerontocratic dominance provided the base from which certain societies launched themselves into the Atlantic slave trade. 43

Even if all the elements of Rey's analysis are not accepted, its lineaments are seen in Kru migration. Early in the nineteenth century, a European noted the circulation and control of earned goods:

A certain portion is given to the head of the town; all his relations and friends partake of his bounty, if there be but a leaf of tobacco for each; his mother, if living, has a handsome present. All this is done in order "to get him good name": what remains is delivered to his father "to buy him a wife." One so liberal does not long want a partner; the father obtains a wife for him; and after a few months of ease and indulgence, he sets off afresh for Sierra Leone, or some of the factories on the coast, to get more money. By this time he is proud of being acquainted with "white man's fashion"; and takes with him some raw, inexperienced youngster, whom he initiates into his own profession, taking no small portion of the wages of the eleve for his trouble. In due time his coffers are replenished; he returns home; confirms his former character for liberality; and gives the residue of his wealth to his father to "get him another wife." In this way he proceeds perhaps for ten or twelve years, or more, increasing the number of his wives, and establishing a great character among his countrymen.44


Migration from the Windward Coast does not represent an inevitable shift from the dynamics of African slaving to wage labor imposed by European imperialism. As Monica Schuler notes of Kru migration to Guyana in the 1840s: "European employers did not really desire a free and independent labor force after emancipation, merely one that they could control without the stigma of slavery." Ideology demanded "free" labor, while, at the same time other ideological currents insisted that labor management in the tropics required some form of coercion. Thus, "even as they claimed to be searching for free labor market conditions in Africa, they devised indentured labor systems to prevent the development of free labor markets in the plantation colonies." At the recruitment points "what employers sought in theory, at least, was some sovereign people willing and able to devise a system by which disciplined hardworking young men could be detached without force from land and lineage to rotate in and out of European overseas export enclaves under a system with low, fixed wages." Even on the Windward Coast, "it was difficult to find African societies which would participate in labor traffic on such terms, especially when they discovered how erratic repatriation could be. "45

In the early twentieth century, internal pressure to emigrate from the Kru Coast was increasingly substituted by the coercive machinery of the Liberian state. As the options for the workers narrowed, Kru migrants attempted to avoid plantation labor on Fernando Po. In 1903 a British official said that workers from the Kru, Bassa, and Grebo peoples of Grand Bassa, River Cess, Sinoe, Cape Palmas, and Cavally (Cavalla) usually did not go to Fernando Po because they preferred to be paid in British specie. 46

Most of the laborers leaving Liberia were from the Vai, Mandinka, and Kpelle peoples. The Vai, who inhabit the Gallinas territory of southern Sierra Leone and northern Liberia, probably did not provide their own people for "contract" labor, but, instead, relied on interior groups to provide export manpower. Vai society was already divided into free-born persons (manju dennu: literally chiefs children) and jonnu, persons without full kinship status and rights. The jonnu included pawns and men working as punishment for adultery. Most jonnu were individuals who had fallen under an economic obligation and who, in certain instances, retained certain kinship rights. Individuals captured or traded from the interior constituted another group of jonnu-export slaves. 47

·

The area inhabited by the Vai was fairly unimportant in the Atlantic trade until after 1807. Thereafter, slaving became the dominant trade, andjonnu of all categories probably constituted the majority of the population. The increasing population was supported in part by increased produce trading


with the interior in return for European trade goods. At mid-century, in the aftermath of the destruction of the factories of Pedro Blanco, slaving was terminated by the combined actions of the American and British squadrons and the Liberian government. The network of labor supply continued, however. In 1853 a British firm contracted to supply "free" labor to the Caribbean and Guyana. Vai chiefs were paid to produce workers for twoyear contracts, and the political leaders responded with alacrity. Four years later the French obtained labor for Reunion using the same methods. Such trafficking was discouraged by the sixties, and the number of jonnu taken in and exported probably declined.

When, in the 1890s, the Liberian government permitted the shipment of contract labor to Spanish Guinea and French and Belgian Equatorial Africa, the free Vai (manja dennu) responded again. Initially the persons sent abroad were their domestic servants, individuals of low status and pawns. As the century continued, the system underwent modifications. Increasingly "pawns" from peoples such as the Kpelle were produced as contract laborers.

Until the 1890s, some Fernando Po finqueros sent recruiters to Liberia, gave them money, and promised them a large bonus for every laborer. Labor procurers were equipped with passage orders to present to the captains. of outbound steamers. The recruiters proceeded inland and arranged for labor contingents, brought them to Monrovia, and, when a steamer arrived, smuggled them aboard. Such recruitment was curtailed in the nineties; in 1891 the Liberian legislature established a Native African Shipping Bureau. A Liberian act demanded a $150 bond for the laborer's return and imposed a fine of $100 for each laborer who might die overseas. Monrovia had turned over recruitment to German shipping firms, first August Humplmyr, and, then, Wiechers and Helm. This move created murmurs of protest in British West Africa, where Kru labor was in great demand. The two British companies operating on Fernando Po, John Holt and Ambas Bay Company, were particularly concerned, since labor recruiters preferred to deliver labor to Spaniards because they allowed workers to draw more wages in advance.

Labor Abuse and the British

·Labor abuse was a major problem on late nineteenth, and early twentiethcentury Fernando Po. It raised British concern and, finally, that of the League of Nations. British interest in labor conditions was sincere, if myopic. Like complaints against labor abuse elsewhere, it arose out of an


ideological commitment to the superiority of "free" labor. As Cooper has observed in the East African case:

Antislavery circles had, in the aftermath of abolition, kept a vigilant lookout for Government policies that were "slavery by another name." Then a crisis over forced labor erupted in 1919, provoked by the order of the Government of Kenya for official "encouragement" of African labor for settler farms. All concerned knew quite well that "encouragement" was a euphemism for coercion, pressure brought to bear by District Officers and African headmen . . . .

In labelling as slavery-and hence archaic and un-British-the policy of "encouragement," the Christian critics were making the underlying structure of settler economy appear all the more British and moral. The encouragement issue was easily papered over by better-phrased memoranda. As the crisis passed more and more Kenyans were going to work.48

In addition to their ideological commitment, the British made a concerted effort to confine a resource, "British" African labor, within their colonies. Specifically, there was little reason to encourage the rise of foreign cocoa production at a time when the Gold Coast and areas in Nigeria were rushing to produce the same crop.

Significantly, British colonialists were more concerned about labor conditions on Sao Tome and Principe than on Fernando Po. As early as 190 1 rumors of labor abuse-" neoslavery "-on the Portuguese islands caused grave concern. The chocolate manufacturer William Cadbury visited Lisbon and was assured that new labor legislation would do away with abuse. At the end of 1903 Cadbury visited again and received further assurances. An investigation followed; this continued to be an important bone of contention until the First World War.

Fernando Po was not the cynosure of British attention in the era preceding the First World War. However, if only because of the proximity of the Guinea Islands, the British were drawn into an investigation of conditions in the decade before the War. Labor abuse was a growing, rather than a r diminishing, problem. Worsening labor conditions were partially by-products of the small cocoa farmers' struggle for survival. Lacking capital, they were delinquent in paying their workers; lacking workers, they were less than scrupulous about honoring the lengths of contracts. A British investigator, somewhat incorrectly, observed: "The small cocoa farmers ... who are mostly half-bred mulattos [sic] are probably the chief offenders


in ill-treating the 'boys.' "49 When the British investigated labor conditions before the First World War, the naval officer making the inquiry cautioned the Ad~ralty "that it must be remembered that visits were only paid to some of the nchest and most successful plantations, and the conditions on the smaller ones. in the interior and on the other side of the island, owned by educated natives, are probably infinitely worse . . . . On some of the small farms it is quite probably that they [the workers] get no pay at all. "5o

The British justified their concern with labor conditions in a Spanish colony as concern with British subjects. Much of the labor on Fernando Po was ~rom British West Africa, especially Sierra Leone. This was already true m the last decade of the nineteenth century. The Creole businessman A. T. Porter was one of the most important labor contractors in Freetown. In May of 1895, in one instance, he sent over sixty men to Francisco Romera. They were engaged for three years at twenty pesetas or one pound sterling per month and obliged to work from 6 A.M. to 12 noon and again from 2 P.M. to 6 P.M.51 In 1894 the planter Da Cunha Lisboa visited Freeto~n and personally took workers back to his estates. Subsequently, he sent h1s agent, Thomas Graham, for more. In 1895 at least thirty-three

1' workers were dispatched to work for Cunha Lisboa. Another recruiter,

\

~· B. Edwards, took thirty-one Sierra Leonean workers to various planters m 1895. Three years later there were so many Mende workers on the island that planters feared that they might rise against Europeans on hearing of the Hut Tax War in their homeland.

\

Tales of labor abuse were numerous. In 1886 William Vivour's repu~tion among laborers was so bad that it was very difficult for him to obta~n workers. On the planter's San Carlos estate, Loango workers received "a very small wage in kind ... only bananas and some yams, as well as fish . . . [and were] often held for months over their service

1152 c d". year . . . . on 1t1ons were better on the Da Cunha plantation, but even there payment was "extremely" irregular. In 1888 Charles Cole a laborer recruited in Freetown, complained that he had not been paid at ~he end of one year and that he was told that payment would not be forthcoming for at least three years. Reportedly "Cole was locked up with a chain round his neck, and [the] overseer ordered to set the others to work and shoot anyone refusing to work. "53 A complaint was made to Amelia Vivour, an employer of the laborers, and she replied that it was her understanding that the workers were slaves.

In the 1890s reports of labor abuse multiplied. In 1892 the British consulate in Calabar reported that British West African subjects had escaped by canoe from Fernando Po. The men had been duped and, instead of being


employed in Nigeria, had been sent to the Spanish island. Other workers also escaped, some of whom had been employed by Bernardo Jose de Barros, the surveyor of works, and by the widow Vivour. 54 In 1895 and in 1897 trouble again rose over breaches of workers' contracts. Large numbers of laborers engaged in Cape Coast complained of not being paid in accordance with their contracts and had to recover the balance due them through the Gold Coast courts. Against this background Carlos Abellos, the colonial treasurer, visited Sierra Leone in 1898 and requested fifty men. Pennission was refused. The following year a British consul-general visited Fernando Po and exacted a promise that foreign labor contracts would not be altered once workers reached the island.

In the summer of 1899 the consular agent for the island was told that, although foreign contracts would be honored, payment would be in Spanish money. The agent noted that the "truck system" prevailed and that laborers were charged 25-30 percent more by their employers than by stores. The British consul-general suggested the British West Africa colonies prohibit engagement of laborers for Spanish Guinea. 55 The Government of the Gold Coast issued a warning to workers, making it clear that wages were paid in Spanish currency and that workers should be careful to ask for payment of equivalent value to British currency. The other British West African colonies took similar steps.

Manipulation of labor contracts continued. So did physical abuse of workers. In 1899 "on or about the 3rd of December ... the Cabo [overseer] at San Carlos Bay accused one of his labourers of stealing, the boy denied the charge, the Cabo tied him up and flogged him to death .... " Reportedly, when the overseer "saw the boy was dead, he took a knife, cut open the boy's belly, poured kerosine oil over all, then took a rope, tied it round the boy's neck, hoisted him up to a beam and then set fire to the dead body . . . . "56 In late January of 1900 between 350 and 450 agricultural workers from Western Nigeria and the Gold Coast went on strike. Some Europeans feared a general colonial insurrection. The Africans assembled in the capital and demonstrated in front of the governor's house. Complaints centered on mistreatment, lack of food, and failure to observe the terms of contracts. The Spanish sent military reinforcements, and the incident brought forth the British Parliament's denunciations of the Spanish colonial regime. The workers from Western Nigeria and Gold Coast were repatriated en masse at the expense of the Fernando Po government. 57

The strike of 1900 expressed the willingness of the workers to mobilize on an inter-ethnic basis for the protection of their common interests. It also

J.

I

I:


gave impetus to calls for a labor embargo from Bri~ish W~st Africa, .an action which only served to increase dependence on mcreasmgly coerctve labor recruitment elsewhere. Unfortunately, the workers' ability to organize ongoing and consistent labor resistance was partially impeded by their position as overseas workers (i.e., the largely male work force was dependent 01_1 Europeans for their repatriation to their famili~s). . .

The year of the strike, and partially in response to tt, the Bnush embargoed labor migration to Fernando Po. This action, which should h~ve been the end of the question, was only the beginning of a long inter-colomal struggle to secure British West African labor for Spanish Guin~a. Three years later a British official in Sierra Leone reported that Afncans were being enticed over the border into Liberia and sent on to other European colonies in what was "nothing more or less than a gigantic and abominable traffic in human flesh. "58 A decade later, the British consul-general in Monrovia complained: "Reports continue to be received relative to ~he shipment from the western portion of the Liberian Republic of Br~tish nattve subjects from Sierra Leone to the Spanish and Portuguese Islands m the Gulf

of Guinea . . . . "59

In an effort to ameliorate conditions, in 1906 a Native Labor Code (Reglamento del Trabajo Indigena) was put into effect. It provided for a minimum wage, one-year contracts; and the deposit of half of the workers' wages with a labor officer (curador). Children under ten and nursing mothers were not to do heavy manual labor. Males were required to work ten hours a day; females were to work eight. The role of the plantation as an instrument of social control was recognized; workers could not change their employers or even leave the plantations without writ.t~n pennission ..

In spite of official discouragement, labor from Bnttsh West Afnca continued to find its way to Fernando Po. In late 1905 a member of the Lagos Native Council complained that three men of his household were induced to go there, where they were ill treated and not paid.60 Later, the consul at Boma reported that all migrant Africans were being made to work on roads. 61 In spite of attempts at amelioration, evidence of continued

illegalities accumulated:

What is suspected to take place at times is that gangs of natives drawn from the Benin and Warri districts are shipped as ordinary passengers and consigned ostensibly to one of the large firms in the Calabar district. They are then conveyed by land or water to German territory, from whence there appears to be no difficulty in shipping them to one of the islands of the Fernando Po group, where labour is very scarce and in great demand.62

The Search for Lahor 135

The governor-general of Spanish Guinea corresponded with the British consul in Calabar, stating that he would do everything in his power to put down illegal migration if the government of Southern Nigeria would remove its embargo. The British consul, who favored British investment, was sympathetic and felt "the present prohibition taken together with the illicit traffic going on in labour represents a worse case of things than the withdrawal of the prohibition, with an arrangement made as between the Spanish Government and the Government of Nigeria, would entail. "63 As to cases of mistreatment: "In no single instance was the boy complaining found to be in the right." Besides this, he said, the majority of workers were from Sierra Leone and Monrovia; very few were from central or eastern Nigeria; only fifty or sixty from those two regions were registered as laborers with the Curadoria (Labor Office). Governor-General Barrera defended conditions on the islands and alleged that "there was at bottom of it a commercial reason on the part of the English chocolate manufacturers ... and this campaign [against alleged labor abuse] coincided with the offer made by a company with English capital to buy in this island 10,000 hectareas [sic] planted with cacao-trees in full production .... "64

In spite of Spanish protestations about outside interference, British officials visited the island frequently in the five years preceding the First World War. Depositions taken from workers indicated that they were often deceived as to their destinations at the time of contract. In 1912 a laborer from the Gold Coast said:

I am a native of Amanfru, in Secondee. About 9 months ago, Benjamin, came to Amanfru and asked one, Kwakun, to get him some men to take to Calabar . . . . Benjamin asked us to accompany him to Elmina. We did so. After a week at Elmina [the] steam-ship 'Bakana' arrived and Benjamin gave us in charge of a Lagos man . . . . After 9 days we arrived at Fernando Po. The Lagos man took us ashore and handed us to one Bikitana [Vigatana?], a Spaniard. Bikitana took us to his cocoa farm and gave us matchets and set us to work at the farm. He gave us two cups of rice weekly, and some salted fish. We worked for four months, but no pay was given us. He used to flog us every day.65

By 1912 Vice-Consul Robert Smallbones, an investigator of the labor traffic to Sao Tonie, was deeply involved with conditions on Fernando Po. In late 1912 a serious incident occurred when a Sierra Leonean escaped to the British boat Dwarf and complained of ill-treatment by Joseph Dougan.


Barrera reprimanded the British consular agent who protested, and the matter was taken up in Madrid. The Spanish were informed that a British subject had been induced to Fernando Po under false pretenses, detained for two years under a compulsory contract, and finally sent to Elobey island to serve as a soldier. Later Barrera had to defend his administration in the case of two workers from Elmina. He stoutly maintained that under "existing laws of the colonies no corporal punishment can be inflicted without judgement." As far as illegal labor recruitment was concerned, Madrid said it had received no communication on the question. All it could do was warn against the use of illegally procured labor. 66

The British remained unappeased. In August, 1912, conditions were directly investigated by Commander F. E. K. Strong and the British consul in Calabar. The naval officer found: "The natives are badly housed and clothed, receive insufficient food, and do not always obtain the small amount of pay which they have earned; they are also flogged by the native overseers and their employers . . . . There were at the time of my visit, besides natives of Liberia and French colonies, over 300 labourers, British subjects who had been brought against their will and were anxious to return to their countries. "67 The naval officer visited La Vigatana plantation, Ambas Bay plantation, and the plantation of the widow Cunha Lis boa. In San Carlos he visited the Jones, Roig, Vivour, and Ruiz y Torres plantations, finding "the conditions under which the 'boys' work vary considerably in the different farms-some looked cowed, frightened, and miserable, while others appeared to be comparatively happy." However, visits were paid only to some of the richest and most important plantations. Conditions on the smaller holdings were probably worse. Strong reported:

The "receivers" at Fernando Po will pay £5 for each "boy" landed. They are mostly cocoa shippers, and their method appears to be to make an agreement with the small cocoa farmers to receive all their produce in return for which they supply them with the "boys" they require. This 5£, plus 16s.8d. headmoney, plus 1£ 7s.6d. their passage by steamer, plus the cost of their food on transit is all deducted from the "boys" [sic] pay. I understand they are paid 4d. a-day, and surmise that this is the balance of the full wages, which is probably one peseta a-day, so that it can be calculated how long it will take to pay off this debt which each "boy" starts with .... Note:-They [the workers] think a peseta is a shilling, and if they change it in their own country, they can only get 6d. for a peseta . . . . At Grand Cess [on the Kru Coast] numbers of "boys" were seen to jump

The Search for Labor

overboard from a steamer on a rumour getting round that they were going to Fernando Po. 68

137

As a result of Strong's inquiry, new foreign enlistment ordinances were issued by Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Southern Nigeria. The Spanish and Portuguese governments promised to cooperate against illicit labor traffic. The Southern Nigerian government instituted a patrol of the mouth of the Calabar and Little Akwayafe Rivers, plus one on the Cameroonian boundary up to the Cross River. The Sierra Leonean government put two policemen on all steamers bound southward from Freetown. A resident vice-consul was placed on Fernando Po, and German cooperation was asked. All of these measures were supported by continuing evidence of illegalities. In September of 1912 there were approximately 490 natives of British West Africa on Fernando Po: 200-250 from Sierra Leone; 150 from the Gold Coast; 60 from Southern Nigeria; 30 from Northern Nigeria. In late 1913 there were supposedly 735 "British" Africans working on the Spanish island; 141 of these had finished their contracts and been paid off. 69

In 1913 Governor-General Barrera complained that, because of British agitation, "the labourers have abandoned work and have come to the town, many not having returned to their lodgings and others having compelled the police to catch them and bring them back to the plantations." He accused the British vice-consul of encouraging Africans to strike, a prospect which the colonial regime viewed as disruptive of the very core of the colonial economy. As for the charge that there were large numbers of illegally recruited laborers, the Spanish governor-general replied: "The uncivilized natives had no idea of what is their mother country, they change it often, and they say as easily that they came from Nigeria as that they are from Liberia or any other place . . . . " Besides, Barrera argued, the workers simply needed women. He was "certain that if there were sufficient women they would never think of being repatriated, as those never do who have procured one, and who, when they have finished their contract, attempt to stay in the island, becoming the proprietors of small plantations . . . . "70

Labor Abuse and the African Farmers

African agriculturalists, the majority of them Fernandino, were frequently cited as the worst abusers of labor. Many black farmers could not retain what they already possessed; the attempt to maximize the output of an inadequate labor force resulted in labor abuse. For instance, in 1909 a


number of complaints were heard against Manuel Balboa. In March he was fined one hundred pesetas and also charged with the death of a worker. On May 6 he was charged with the nonpayment of a contract. Twenty days later he was accused of the nonpayment of a fine in the death of a laborer. On April 13 improper conditions were discovered on his farm; on July 24 a further fine of one hundred pesetas was levied. The colonial section of the Ministry of State in Madrid, doubtless aware of British criticism, opined that Balboa should "be warned that, if he persists in his attitude of hostility and rebellion in the completion of legal obligations, the most severe judgements against him would be adopted. "71 The black planter did not appear to heed this warning. Further complaints were lodged against him in 1911.

There were other cases. For instance, in 1913 Vice-Consul Smallbones lodged a complaint regarding one of Samuel Kinson's workers. As in most cases, the laborer charged that he was detained by his employer after the expiration of his contract. At the same time Momobut, a Sierra Leonean laborer, complained that he had been employed by the widow of James MacFoy for four years and not paid. Also "Josiah, a native of Sierra Leone . . . complained . . . that he had been forced to make a contract for four years [with a Mrs. Wright], though he only wanted to stay 6 mons. "72 Another laborer, Joe Mendi, complained of not being paid at all. A native of Accra, James Cobler, complained that he had made a two-year 1

contract with a Fernandino named Edgerley and was physically abused and underfed. He and two others showed their weekly ration: ·one and one-half kilograms of salted fish and six kilograms of rice-350 grams per day for seven days. For the three the minimum ration should have been 7.350 kilograms.

In 1914 the British vice-consul reported the rather sensational case of Amara, another Sierra Leonean, who, along with some others, stole a boat and managed to reach Victoria. He and his fellows were returned to Fernando Po by the Germans and imprisoned. In still another case, early in 1914, the vice-consul reported that "a farmer named Nicoll [i.e., probably William Fergusson Nicoll], who ten or eleven months ago flogged or caused to be flogged, a boy whose arms subsequently became partly paralysed, has been fined 1 ,500 pesetas, and had had a serious case brought against him which is now going before the High Court at Grand Canary for trial. "73

For the majority of the island's Fernandino agriculturalists, the twentieth century offered increasingly adverse conditions. In August of 1913 the government surveyed the situation, noting "a not inconsiderable number of small planters who, without cash to pay at once the wages of their workers, cannot pay them off until they receive the proceeds of their harvest, and who


beg to be allowed to wait until that time to pay the wages, which not only causes exceptional work to the curadoria . . . it is the cause, as the procedure is complicated, why in some cases the return of the labourer to his country is retarded, which cannot be permitted . . . . "74

Small- and medium-scale cocoa farmers were under increasing pressure from both the British and the Spanish. A new labor ordinance was promulgated in 1913, and its conditions were onerous for the small planters. It provided that if an employer failed to pay a laborer for three consecutive months, the laborer was to be removed and assigned to· another for the remainder of his contract. Rations were to be given daily instead of weekly; the amount increased to 500 grams of rice and 400 grams of dried fish. Money due to laborers was to be paid to the curadoria on a monthly basis. No contract could be for longer than two years. Employers could be fined for flogging workers, but laborers could be punished for a series of misdemeanors: refusing, without justification, to work; leaving the plantation without permission; stubborn disobedience; insubordination accompanied by violence to persons or property; groundless complaints; inciting other workers to abandon work.

The Camara Agricola opposed the new regulation; the governor-general was petitioned to omit altogether the clauses referring to monthly payment. He was also urged to have the curador make a list of those employers whose financial position did not, in his opinion, offer sufficient guarantee of ability to pay. The curador should be empowered to have all such employers find some person or firm of unquestioned financial stability to guarantee them. If this was lacking, the employer's labor contracts should be cancelled and the laborers removed from the plantation. The Camara further asked that, fifteen days before the expiration of a contract, the amount due to the laborers should be deposited with the curador. The body protested the provision that the maintenance of jailed workers would be at the employer's expense. The provision that a worker be informed of fines imposed on employers was also criticized. 75 The finqueros asked that the proposed ordinance not be enforced before January 1, 1914.

The economic blow to the small planters was severe. The British vice-consul observed that "if it [the labor code] is enforced it will certainly have the effect of driving the small planter out of business, as many of them . . . can only pay wages at the end of the cocoa season; but it is obvious that this is precisely one of the ends the Governor had in view when he framed the law." The vice-consul hoped that some good might emerge out of what he viewed as reform: "The planters will find one advantage in the monthly payment, namely that it is easier for those who dispose of but little capital

\


to pay monthly small sums than to pay a large sum at the termination of the contracts; besides this, another and not smaller one will accrue to many employers because, finding themselves obliged to economise to pay monthly the wages of the labourers they will become used to saving instead of wasting the products of their harvest. "76

The Spanish administration had little interest in preserving medium- and small-scale cocoa farming. In 1913 the governor-general told the Camara that he looked forward to a time when there would be no more small farms of from one to one hundred hectares. He envisioned an agricultural future in which holdings would run from at least four hundred to one thousand hectares. The British were aware of the effect of labor regulation on small-scale landowning, most of it African. "The extinction of the small planters, if it really happens," said the British Foreign Office, "will be an unexpected result of our efforts and, in some respects, an unfortunate one. If, however, these men can only keep their farms going by giving their labourers less than is now thought necessary . . . there is nothing for it but that they must go under. "77

The new labor regulations were, thus, in part provoked by the crisis of undercapitalized farmers. Their situation also worsened because of their increasing dependence on large firms and big planters for labor. In addition to other problems, labor procurement was increasingly risky. For instance, in 1913 Manuel Balboa went to Sinoe in Liberia and brought back twelve workers. They had their contracts registered before the curador, but the period of the contracts was too long. The laborers were recontracted to another finquero. 18 By the late 1920s such an individual operation would have been almost unthinkable.

Because the rulers of the labor catchment areas were English-speaking, certain members of the Fernandina c~mmunity found a niche for themselves as useful, if subordinate, colonial interlocators. In 1914 Balboa was active in pushing a Hispano-Liberian labor agreement. He and the Spaniard Francisco LOpez lent their support to the accord and, at the same time, signed a labor agreement with the firm of Dennis Brothers. This intermediary role for the Fernandinos increased in the 1920s and ultimately involved them in a "slavery" scandal.

Labor Agreements, 1914-1930

It has been said of West Africa that, "unlike the situation in southern Africa, there are no labour contracting firms, no specially laid on advantages of


moving. "78 In this context, labor traffic to Spanish Guinea is a West African anomaly. In 1914 Liberia and Spain signed a labor convention which remained in force until 1927. In some ways it resembled a similar accord between Portuguese Mozambique and South Africa. Unlike the South African agreement, it was short-lived.

The 1914 agreement had had a long genesis. For some years labor procurement had been complicated by the desire of the Monrovia government to profit by it. The Liberian legislature forbade recruiting in 1903 unless the recruiter bought a license costing $250 and made a deposit of $150 guaranteeing each worker's return. No "boy" under twenty-one could be sent, and a fee of five dollars per man was charged. In 1905 Spain agreed to stop paying 150 pesos to each contract laborer and, instead, pay in gold to the Liberian treasury. In 1908 a Liberian act forbade labor traffic from Grand Bassa and Montserrado counties. Early the next year, two Spanish officials visited Monrovia to persuade the government to adopt a more favorable position. In 1913 the British consul-general in Monrovia complained that Liberians were being enslaved and sent to Fernando Po. The Liberian secretary of state was sent to inspect conditions. In spite of British hopes, he later announced that no further restriction on labor shipment was contemplated.

The 1914 labor agreement provided for a Liberian consul on Fernando Po. It authorized labor recruitment in selected Liberian ports by agents under the supervision of the Spanish consul. Copies of contracts were given to the Liberian secretary of state, the Liberian customs, and the Liberian consul on Fernando Po. Each statement contained the worker's name, country, town, district, tribe, chief, and period of contracted labor. Contracts were for a maximum period of two years and a minimum of one year. Labor was refused to employers not approved by the governor-general and the Liberian authorities. Contracts were not subject to extension, and wages were paid in English money, half in Spanish Guinea and half through the Spanish consul in Monrovia on the worker's return. The agreement itself was subject to termination by either party on six months' notice. In 1914 the British consul-general in Monrovia thought the usual wage for laborers shipped was £1.5.0. per month.79 In 1915 the Fernando Po Primitive Methodist Mission reported that "boys from Liberia cost more than boys from Bata [Rio Muni]. There is much more passage money to pay and they require a higher standard of wages. "80 Workers from Liberia cost £6 to £8 per month, while workers from Rio Muni were paid about £2 to £3, or less.

The shipment of labor was difficult in the years immediately after 1914. As a wartime measure, a 1918 decree authorized the reengagement for an

I


additional two years of workers who had completed their contracts. In early 1919 the Liberians reportedly intended to terminate the agreement because of labor abuse and because Spanish ships landed workers only at Monrovia. The labor agreement remained in force, however. Between 1919 and 1926, 4,268 laborers were recruited and employed.81

The labor agreement was not without its problems. An act of the Liberian legislature in 1921 directed the Liberian president to give six months' notice that shipment of laborers from Montserrado County and the territories of Grand Cape Mount and Marshall was prohibited. However, the following year full-scale labor traffic resumed. This vacillation reflected divisions within the Liberian ruling group. For some politicians labor trafficking represented an easily tapped source of income. For instance, in 1924 Gabriel Johnson, onetime Supreme Potentate of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and former mayor of Monrovia, acquired the lucrative post of consul on Fernando Po. For some others in the Liberian ruling group, labor migration was a drain on an essential resource. In 1924, due to internal and external pressures, the Liberian legislature prohibited migration from the county of Grand Bassa. The next year, it appeared as if the labor traffic might be unexpectedly canceled altogether after a diplomatic imbroglio involving the Liberian consulate. No Liberian laborers were sent in 1925, and only forty were sent in the first six months of 1926.

Complaints about the labor traffic appeared in the Liberian press in February of 1925. The Agricultural WJrld, commenting on the visit to Liberia of the governor-general of Spanish Guinea, said: "We would drop this hint just here . . . that unless we see more of our boys returning home when the time for which they shipped to Fernando Po is out . . . certain steps will be taken to put an end to the labor shipping contract, if this part of the Agreement is not satisfied . . . . " A year later the Liberian News both assured and threatened by saying that the labor demands of the American Firestone Company would have no effect on the shipment of workers if "our boys are treated more humanly [sic] than heretofore by the authorities at Fernando Po. "82

In March of 1925, President C. D. B. King visited Fernando Po. He explained that Liberia was about to embark on a vast program of internal development (involving the investment of American capital by the Firestone Rubber Company), which would interfere with the overseas shipment of labor. Nevertheless, while on Fernando Po, King held out the promise of business as usual. Taking a different tack in an address to the Liberian legislature, he subsequently emphasized the conservation of labor.


Friction continued. In August of 1927 the branch of the Camara Agricola charged with apportioning laborers, La Junta Prorrateadora, attacked the noncooperative attitude of the Liberian government. For his part, the Liberian consul, George Johns, protested that deductions from some workers' pay amounted to almost six months' salary. In October of 1927 he wrote disapprovingly of the landing of approximately two hundred laborers who had been shipped from Sinoe, Liberia, under the mistaken impression that they were going to Monrovia. 83

In 1927 Liberia cancelled the 1914 agreement. The Fernando Po's economy appeared to be on the verge of collapse. Only eighty thousand hectares were under cultivation, and it was estimated that forty thousand Fang workers from mainland Spanish Guinea would be needed to put the maximum amount of land into cocoa production. 84 The following year the majority of labor on Fernando Po was from Rio Muni. 85 However, their numbers were insufficient to maintain the colonial economy. This forced the planters and government to go much farther afield. In 1927 the idea of colonizing the island with Asian workers was proposed, and early in 1928 the governor-general suggested that workers could be found in China or Malaya.

Although Asian labor was discussed, help was closer at hand. Allen Yancy and Samuel Ross, the superintendents of Maryland and Sinoe Counties in Liberia, stepped into the breach with private labor agreements. In early 1928 a private agreement was concluded between the Sindicato Agricola de Guinea and a group of Liberian citizens headed by Ross. Edward Barleycorn was one of the negotiators on the Spanish side. The thirty-nine-year-old Fernandino had been educated in Sierra Leone, where he had known President King at school. The Sindicato promised to pay the Liberian recruiting agents for 3,000 laborers at £9 each. It also promised to provide transportation and a bonus of £1,000 for each 1,500 laborers shipped. Ross paid $2.50 per head into the Liberian treasury, which gave the national government an interest in the labor operation.

Yancy also concluded a private labor agreement with overseas users of Liberian labor. He and Ross, along with associates and subordinates, managed to ship over 2,000 workers to Fernando Po. Between the autumn of 1928 and December 31, 1929, 2,431 workers were sent to the island: 1,005 from Cape Palmas and 1,426 from Sinoe.86 In 1930 when the tr!J.ffic was under international investigation, shipments from Maryland County were still in progress.

· In June of 1929 investigation of this traffic came from an unexpected source. The American government announced that there had come to its


attention evidence of a "slave trade" from Liberia.87 Liberia was bluntly told by the United States to effect "material alteration or radical change in interpretation of the present agreement with Spain." In September of 1929 Liberia dutifully asked the League of Nations for a commission of inquiry. A report was finished in September of 1930. It concluded that Ross, Yancy, and other officials had connived at the forcible export of labor, although "slavery" (meaning organized slave markets) did not exist.

The League of Nations condemned internal pawning and forced porterage in Liberia. Curiously, it did not address the issue of forced labor on Fernando Po. This is especially strange since, in the period after the First World War, reports 9f labor abuse . had been rife. 88 Also, in 1930 Chief Hoto of Manohlu in Liberia directly informed the League investigators that, after visiting the island, he was very disturbed by what he saw: "I did not like the idea of my boys going to Fernando Po because they were not being treated at all good down there . . . . I was not satisfied and I still am not satisfied with the whole Fernando Po business. "89 The League itself said many workers complained that they received insufficient payment or none at all. They were usually illiterate and rarely retained payment slips. Only in the case of one worker was the commission able to see such a document. The laborer had been on Fernando Po for fourteen months and carried a slip calling for the paltry sum of £1.12.13. When workers changed employers, they were paid only by the last employer and only for the time they were employed by him or her.

In 1931 the African-American journalist George Schuyler visited Fernando Po and reported that conditions were still deplorable: "In addition to the weekly rice-and-fish ration, they [the laborers] received also a kilo of coffee and a cup of palm oil. They revealed that on Fernando Po they were put to work at 6 A.M., worked until 11 A.M., went to work again at 1 P.M.

and quit at 6." Living conditions were a greater hardship than the hours of work. Laborers "lived in warehouses, fifty 'boys' being packed close together on beds of cocoa staves and banana leaves . . . . If the 'boys' contracted sleeping sickness, venereal disease or any of the other numerous maladies to be caught there, the Spanish sent them to the hospital, but they received no pay. "90 The following year the Nigerian nationalist Nnamdi Azikiwe asserted that "observers have reported that instead of 'punctual repatriation' Spain devised a subterfuge to prefer a criminal charge against laborers whose contracts are nearing termination, and by imprisoning them, it derives an unjust benefit from free convict labor. "91

Many observers asked how Spanish Guinea and French Gabon, where some the laborers had been sent, could escape blame. Azikiwe thought it


odd that the "so-called commentators on Liberian affairs have failed to drag Spain, in unequivocal terms without mincing their words into this international debacle. "92 One American journal observed that "the Liberians do not export slaves without inducement, and in this case the inducement apparently comes from Spaniards at Fernando Po. "93 The Associated Negro Press questioned the absence of much concern over the European role and noted that "when the League delegates learned that France and Spain were the nations to be censured, the matter was dropped-there was not even a suggestion that Paris and Madrid be asked to explain. "94 The Crisis, the organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that Spain and France deserved "quite as much censure as the Liberian Government." The journal felt that the Spaniards and their neighbors had "demanded the enslaved labor which was supplied. "95

The United States went out of its way not to involve Spain in its accusations. Madrid, for its part, denied culpability, but an internal governmental report acknowledged infractions in the work code and coercion in the reengagement of workers. 96 In spite of this, abuse continued well past 1930. Spain adhered to the Forced Labor Convention of 1930, but forced labor (prestacion personal) was not abolished until the late thirties. In 1932 a Transmediteminea Company ship ran aground near Fernando Po with eight hundred passengers, of which six hundred were illegal African laborers. A French journal took the issue up and gave it wide publicity. Madrid denied wrong doing, but, sensitive to the slavery scandal, the Direcci6n General de Marruecos y Colonias initiated an investigation. 97 Six years after the League investigation, the British Foreign Office ordered an on-the-spot report. It was discovered that Nigerian laborers continued to be smuggled. As in the past, many workers complained of insufficient payment. Conditions of labor were hard, especially at the higher elevations. 98 In the same year, two writers reported that illegal labor shipments continued from Liberia. 99

In retrospect, the official cessation in 1931 of what was perceived by many as a "slave trade" represented the victory of American capital over a less powerful Iberian capitalism in West Africa. Forced labor within "reformed" Liberia continued into the 1960s, when it was condemned by the United Nations. The Liberian ruling group's economic collaboration with the planters of Spanish Guinea was replaced by a new economic symbiosis, one which endured into the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Chapter 8

Creole Culture and Change

In the Franco era (1936-1968) the colonial government boasted of hispanicization as the fruition of the mision civilizadora which had begun with Argelejos and Primo de Rivera. After independence in 1968 Equatorial Guinean politicians decried Spanish religion and education as a damnosa heritas of two centuries of Iberian imperialism. Yet, the Francoist view and the post-independ!!nce view were both incorrect. The triumph of the weighty hand of Spanish cultural imperialism was a fairly recent phenomenon. It went hand in hand with the economic triumph of Spanish imperialism, a triumph only fully achieved after World War I.

The Protestant Paradigm

For most of the years between 1827 and 1930 the Fernandinos were economically and culturally turned toward British West Africa, and many remained attached to an Anglo-Saxon cultural paradigm. Rene Pelissier has commented, "One is able to start from the hypothesis that the Fernandinos, concentrated in Santa Isabel or San Carlos, traditionally imbued with an inaccessible Anglo-Saxon superiority, underestimated these generations of miserable [Spanish] functionaries, of Cuban deportees and merchant-colonists whom they saw march past from 1858 until the Great War. "1 The failure of Spanish colonialism in the 1860s had been a cultural and political reprieve

146

Creole Culture and Change 147

for the Santa Isabel community. Significantly, "pidgin" English became the lingua franca, even among the Bubi, and remained so well into the twentieth century.2

Just as the intermediary economic role of the Fernandinos had parallels elsewhere on the West African coast, so too their culture was part of a larger West African cultural ecumene. "Creolization" is a facet of the more general process of westernization and occurs with the juxtaposition of an uprooted black population and European cultural and economic dominance. In such a society, given the opportunity to accumulate wealth or status, or both, the upwardly mobile will exhibit many of the facets of the worldview and life-style identified as "creole."

The material aspects of the "creole" life-style have been described by others. 3 In Sierra Leone, "in order to distinguish themselves from the indigenous peoples, the creoles tended to identify themselves closely with the European communities and their values. "4 In late nineteenth-century Lagos, "the elite's distinctive life-style defined the group, set it apart from the rest of the population, and gave content and meaning to elite status. "5 The process was not peculiar to West Africa. In South Africa, thousands . of miles away, economic change, including the creation of individual landholdings, brought with it many .of the traits seen on the Guinea Coast. There, in the nineteenth century, "small-scale commercial [African] farmers built square houses, and stocked them with furniture, crockery, cutlery, statione~, ~d the like; they bought the bulk of the food that they consumed, sent their children to boarding-schools, and were a mainstay of agricultural societies or associations. "6 .

Superficially, the Fernandino community resembled many of the "elite" communities which sprang up in the aftermath of British abolition and mi~si~nary activities. Recently, in studying the westernized group in Lagos, Kristm Mann has chosen to study it "as an elite rather than a social class. " An elite is a group marked off from others by prestige or wealth, or both. She notes: "In simpler or smaller-scale societies a single elite may perform a. number of different roles, or, as in Lagos, the few persons who perform different roles may form a single elite." Elites "share common interests and a common culture. This common culture finds e~pression in a distinctive style of life learned through formal and informal training . . . . ,7

Although the African settlers on Fernando Po maintained contacts with the· groups in Lagos and elsewhere and although their life-style came to resemble that of their compeers on the coast, they should not be analyzed as an "elite." The settlers did not constitute simply one strata within a colonial society. Rather, the creole settlement constituted an arrested colonial

148 Creole Culture and Change

nucleus, rather loosely connected to the rest of the island's populatio~. ~ elite, to be an elite, must be accorded a degree of status by those outside It. It is significant that the Bubi viewed the newcomers as "Poto," a term first used for the small poor maroon settlements of refugees from Sao Tome and Principe. The Fernandinos belong somewhere on a .continuum that would run: from semi-autonomous groups like the Ambakistas of Angola. to the colonial creoles of Sierra Leone. Only in the twentieth century did the_Y become part of an articulated system of classes, as Europeans and their capital created a new colonial hierarchy. . .

To outsiders the community presented a defensive and acculturative face. It emerges from European documents through the prism of Fern~dino and European hopes and expectations. The testimony of present-day mform~ts is also colored by years of cultural indoctrination. The cultural paradigm presented as desirable in nineteenth-century Santa Isabel was undoubt:dly European. Yet, it was obvious that the core of lgbo and other recaptt;es was not completely deracine. In spite of disclaimers, the . Fern~~mo community was an African one constantly in touch with an Afncan mtheu. For instance, missionary doctrine had little impact on general patterns of marriage and kinship. .

After 1858, in spite of its reluctance to abandon Its home ~d follow_ the Baptists to Cameroon, the Clarence/Santa Isabel . c~mm~mty remmned Protestant in its sympathies. Even after the I_IUSSionaries .left,. many Fernando Po children continued to be educated m near~ VIcton~. . In Santa Isabel itself, many African Protestants conducted their own rehgious services and literacy classes. 8

• •

In spite of what seemed to be a gloomy prognosis for Prot~stant mtss~on work, it was resumed in 1870 under new auspices. The Spanish Revol~t~on of 1868 had proclaimed freedom of religion. In August of 1869 a Bnttsh ship's captain and a member of his crew visited Fernando Po and be~~ to proselytize for the Primitive Methodists. The path of the new miSSion proved no smoother than that of the Baptists. In the 1870s and 1880s ~e reduced Spanish administration made unsuccessful efforts to contr_ol alien cultural influence. The dominance of the English language (or Its West African variant) was an embarrassment. Minor disputes continued and we~e eventually reported to the metropolitan authorities, who were forced to admtt that the mission was too valuable to European colonialism to be ~bandoned.

Women were especially important in Protestant church affmrs. In the early 1880s, one Spanish missionary. commen~ed: "It is certain that Santa Isabel will remain Protestant while there IS no one to educate the women in the Catholic faith; I am sure that the Protestants will flee as soon


as the [Catholic] Sisters present themselves, because they [the sisters] will work with the women much more we do . . . it is the women who sustain the .Protestant mission. "9 Several elderly women were an important force for religious conservatism and the rock upon which the first wave of Catholic proselytizing broke. 10

The community also contained several prominent male traders and farmers who participated in the affairs of the Protestant mission. Most notable among them were Joseph Palmer, Jacob Scholar, Nathaniel Cooke, Thomas Davies, and Fred Brown. Others prominent in the Primitive Methodist Mission were Joseph Wilson, who had been a member of the old Baptist mission, and Abraham Savage. Foremost among the island-born creoles was William Napoleon Barleycorn (1848-1925), whose life spanned the period which saw the rise of his community. Barleycorn, of Igbo descent, was born in Santa Isabel and educated in Victoria, Cameroon. In the early 1870s the young man was a Sunday school teacher and a member of the Native Missionary Class, where he was assistant society class leader. He also preached in Bubi in the village of Basupu. In 1871 he gave up a small trading store and became the assistant of a European missionary working at San Carlos (North-West Bay). At the beginning of 1873 he went to San Carlos as the head of the Primitive Methodist day school.

Barleycorn's skills were manifold: he served as Spanish and Bubi interpreter, schoolmaster, native assistant minister, and, finally, ordained missionary. He went to England several times and in 1881 was received by a conference in Hull as a probationer. Three years later he was placed on the list of regular ministers. He also obtained a Spanish teaching certificate after studying for two years in Barcelona. By the 1890s Barleycorn appeared to be the tacit head of Santa Isabel's creole community. At the time of his death in the 1920s, he was a patriarchal renmant of the period of Anglophone and Protestant dominance.

Life-Style

Not all the components of the "creole" life-style were present in all creole communities, nor did all members of such communities participate in the life-style to the same extent. 11 Among those who had the means, salient characteristics were conspicuous consumption and strict maintenance of social distance vis-a-vis subordinate groups. The social function of the former is well known. According to Robert Merton, paraphrasing Thorstein Veblen, "the conspicuous consumption of relatively expensive commodities


'means' [symbolizes] the possession of sufficient wealth to 'afford' such expenditures. Wealth . . . is honorific." Furthermore, "persons engaging in conspicuous consumption not only derive gratification from . . . direct consumption but also from the heightened status reflected in the attitudes and opinions of others who observe their consumption. "12 Among West African creole groups, conspicuous consumption was further abetted by the need to distance themselves from phenotypically similar non-elite African populations. The life-style of these groups has been seen as the result of "transfrontal cultural learning," in which the cultural paradigm was derived from the narrow segment of European society represented by missionaries and colonial functionaries. 13 We must be careful. Life-style was, no doubt, greatly influenced by the ideas and concepts of missionaries, yet the emphasis on conspicuous consumption in such communities should not be seen as a direct implantation of the nineteenth-century consumption patterns of the average middle-class Briton. Indeed, as evidenced on Fernando Po, British visitors were usually critical of extravagance.

Conspicuous consumption can better be seen as arising from the ambiguities inherent in being an "educated African." Dress has long been recognized as an index of status in most cultures; the Westernized African's dress affirmed adhesion to European culture, to which the highest value was attached. In late nineteenth-century Lagos a newspaper noted that "unless his opposite sex ... [wears] a guinea gown, embroidered gown, lace gown, velvet gown, a splendid silk shawl, and other up-to-date garments that fall to the lot of well-to-do Westerners, she is not worth call[ing] civilized not withstanding her high education. "14

The citizens of Santa Isabel were aware of the criticisms leveled against their consumption patterns. In the 1890s James MacFoy, a Sierra Leonean immigrant, strongly responded to a missionary's attacks on the community's life-style. He answered criticism of a marriage ceremony by saying "Mr. P. [Pickering] said he never saw a grand marriage as he has seen in Fernandopo [sic] [, but] I doubt it . . . . " MacFoy also replied to other criticisms, notably conspicuous consumption in dress. He wrote: "Mr. P. did . . . tell the people in England that we are very imitative. . . . I believe the people in England and in other countries make clothes and send them out for us to wear[.] if they did not want us to put them on they ought not to sent [sic] them out for sale . . . . "15

MacFoy and others were also extremely defensive on the question of African religion. For instance, in the 1890s he vigorously defended the community against charges that it was rife with African "fetishism." MacFoy asked a missionary to explain charges that MacFoy and others had


fet_is~es in their houses. 16 Few Africans were above European suspicion. Wllh:UU Barleycorn himself was suspected of tolerating African religious practices. · In the autumn of 1907 an English missionary accused several members of the Primitive Methodist church, including Barleycorn and members of his family, of "dabbling with juju. "'7

Indigenous religious practices did, indeed, persist. In the 1880s Barleycorn wrote to England "to ask ... for English games for my school boys to prevent them from joining those wild semi-heathenish plays which abound here especially at Christmas time. "18 One such "heathenish" practice was. the Nankue ceremony. At the sound of a drum at twelve midnight on Chnstmas Eve, celebrants would begin gathering and singing a slow chant. They moved toward the cemetery, calculating their arrival to coincide with the dawn. Early in the 1930s, fifty years after Barleycorn's complaint Nankue was still observed. 19 '

Perhaps more trouble to would-be cultural arbiters than the persistence of traditional African religious beliefs was the community's sexual morality. Many men had more than one spouse, a fact which often drew outside criticism. As Curtin notes, to non-Africans, "polygyny stood out as a special evil, epitomizing the low condition of women . . . . It also ~sup~os~dly] caused a low birth rate, slow population growth, and, by Imph~ation, slow progress toward civilization. "20 After the beginning of the twentieth c~ntury, the debate on sexual morality, including polygyny, grew more abrasive. Many Fernandinos left the Primitive Methodist Church. In 1905 a member of the Protestant mission criticized the use of mission premises "for the most elaborate and shameless display on the occasion of baptizing illegitimate children . . . . "21 The English missionary added that "rather than have the ceremony quietly performed at home they will go to the Roman Catholic Church, where, of course, they are welcomed. " The :ommunity's general lack of a feeling of sexual guilt was deeply troubling: Women have sold themselves to immorality . . . . When 1 told them of it

and pointed out to them the wickedness of it all, I was calmly told by different individuals that I must find them a husband . . . . " The male congregants were equally recalcitrant: "When approached on the subject they tear and rave and shout like madmen and want to know what business it is of mine, it is a matter between God and themselves. ,zz

~urope~s failed to ap?reciate the nature and function of polygyny. The ~Jor f~hes of the capital usually condoned polygyny and the incorporatiOn of children from various wives. Multiple and durable unions existed· polygyny provided the family with the new wives' income from trade 0 ;


agriculture. At the same time, the richer Fernandinos used marriage as a way to consolidate property and links with the world beyond Fernando Po.

The creoles of Fernando Po were related to each other and to members of the community in Freetown, Cape Coast, and Lagos. Officially, they appeared highly endogamous. Misalliances, which would lead to devolution of property, were avoided. This did not mean that "bush marriages" with persons outside the community were not made. However, although socially recognized, many Fernandino men would have objected to having these marriages solemnized in church or tied to claims of inheritance. In 1899 a spectacular case emphasized how culturally insular some Fernandinos could be. Henry Hugh Gardner, a Fernandino and the son of a Scottish father, was beaten by the Spanish authorities after the murder of his common-law wife, Victoria Castellanos, an African Catholic originally from Cameroon. Gardner had, at his mother's insistence, refused to marry the immigrant, and Castellanos had enraged him by taking up with a missionized Catholic. 23

At the end of the nineteenth century, the capital of Fernando Po still seemed to be a cultural appendage of British West Africa. The Anglophone and Protestant orientation of the creole community appeared to be intact. However, in the new century this would change as the Fernandinos were subject to the cultural, as well as economic, pull of the island's European masters.

Hispanicization

In the twentieth century changes in creole culture more and more reflected economic reality. The behavior of some Fernandinos was consciously designed to allay the traditional suspicions of the colonial regime and the official clergy. Achieving a modus vivendi with these two institutions was essential to economic survival. New colonial conditions presented the Anglophone and Protestant community with a severe challenge, insofar as traditional badges of group membership became financial and political liabilities.

Given the economic dominance of the British and the intermittent nature of Madrid's imperialism, it was perhaps natural that the Santa Isabel community was unimpressed with Spanish culture. The first Spanish missionaries, Jeronimo Usera and Juan del Cerro, had arrived in 1845. They soon became ill and left. In 1856 Padre Miguel Martinez y Sanz arrived, bringing with him thirty-one religious and lay workers. He faced a hostile or indifferent population, and was further handicapped by the fact


that none of the Spanish mission could speak the language of the colony. The Martinez mission, like its predecessor, was short-lived. Most of its members fell ill, and Padre Miguel was soon recalled to Madrid to serve as royal chaplain.

In 1858 the Baptists left Fernando Po, and the Jesuits arrived to take their place. The government gave the new mission six thousand duros per year and made its head an ex officio member of the governor's council. Even with financial support, the new group found its task difficult. Their educational activities met with faint enthusiasm, and the Jesuits had to content themselves with educating marginal members of the community or transients. The order failed to make any significant inroads among the creole population and struggled on until 1872. During its fourteen-year presence, it employed thirty-six missionaries (nineteen priests and seventeen coadjutors), thirteen of whom died in Africa.

In 1883 a new order, Los Hijos del Inmaculado Corazon de Maria (Claretians), entered the field with government support and an acculturative aim. The following year the Claretians' sister order, Las Religiosas Misioneras de la Inmaculada Concepcion, received permission to serve with government protection. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s these two groups 'labored to wean the creole population away from the English mission. The colonial administration was frequently caught between the conflicting demands of the colonial Santa Isabel population and shifting directives handed down from Madrid. From the 1880s onwards, attempts to enforce hispanicization created an increasingly abrasive cultural conflict.

Relations between the Primitive Methodists and the government grew more acrimonious as the latter strove to implement the policy urged by Madrid and the Claretians. In order to further hispanicization, the order was subsidized. In 1901 the metropole gave them 100,000 pesetas: 40,000 for education, 26,000 for staff costs, and the remainder for general purposes. Increased allocations were made the following year. Nevertheless, the order ~as forced to admit that, after nearly twenty years of active proselytizing, 1t had been largely unsuccessful. The Claretians had also failed to inculcate a love of the Spanish language: "In Santa Isabel, where almost all inhabitants have imbibed English with their [mothers'] milk; even if the majority of them understand Spanish, they nevertheless retain such an inclination for the former, that the English preaching of the pastor is much more agreeable to them than the Spanish of the missionary. "24 In November of 1903 the Spanish Ministry of State gave its appraisal of the situation: "To the general amazement and great disgust of the authorities existing there and very especially to those at this Center, it is known that the majority of the


nonwhite proprietors and wealthy people of their class speak only English, and that their tastes, their affections, their customs, are all English. "25 The Ministry viewed the manual- training of the Catholic mission as all well and good, but felt the standards of their teaching were too low to attract the more sophisticated and important segments of the colonial population. If the Claretians could not elevate the level of their teaching so as to reach these people, the government threatened to replace them with a more effectual order. Stung by criticism of their effectiveness, the missionaries argued back that the prevalence of English had been much exaggerated.

Cognizant of the tenuousness of its cultural and political hold on the colony, Spain sought to make the administration more rational and visible. The old Ministerio de Ultramar (Ministry of Overseas Territories) was ~,tbolished in 1899, and the colony was placed under the authority of the Ministry of State. In 1902 a Consultative Council for the Spanish Possessions in West Africa was created under its authority. In 1925 the increasing complexity of administration was recognized, and the colony was transferred to the Bureau of Morocco and Colonies (Direcci6n de Marruecos y Colonias), a department of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

In the colony itself an order of 1907 recognized the city council (Consejo de Vecinos) and charged it with overseeing municipal concerns. In 1929 this order was superseded by one which defined the council as the legal representative of the town population. The body was headed by a president, and, in addition, included the head of the Catholic mission, the sanitary inspector, the educational inspector, and a financial officer as ex officio members. It also included four citizens (two of whom were to be Africans) selected for three-year terms by the head of the colony. Three members · were elected by Spaniards and educated Africans.

Santa Isabel gradually became a superficially hispanicized colonial town where the European community, largely Spanish and Portuguese, was larger than the Fernandino one. An influx of European males increased concubinage and, at the same time, exacerbated concerns about mestizaje. Overt discrimination by the European population was masked through the proclamation of an official policy of assimilation. The town "belonged" to Europeans and not to the static Fernandino population.

Population statistics for the period are scanty and inconsistent. Around the turn of the century, the population of Santa Isabel was between 1,000 and 1,500. There were 200 whites, 1;000 blacks, and a few persons of mixed race.26 In 1907 Spanish Guinea held 404 Europeans, the majority of them on Fernando Po. Three years later the colonial capital counted 2,021 inhabitants, 1,815 of them black. Of the latter, 556 were FernandinosY By


1920 Santa Isabel had a total population of 3,530.28 The white population rose to 655 in 1923.29 By the 1930s the town population had risen to almost 9,000 inhabitants. By the time credible statistics are available in the 1936, a numerical shift is clearly obvious. The European population had increased fivefold over the number given thirteen years earlier. There were 3,319 whites, as compared with only 623 Fernandinos.30 Sierra Leonean immigrants were still present, but their numbers were scant. The 1936 census lists 155, of whom 83, more than half, resided in Santaisabel.31

Residential segregation continued to be based on socio-economic criteria, rather than purely racial ones. The European and Fernandino communities occupied the old town center, while subsidiary centers housed the working population. Beneath the Fernandinos in the colonial hierarchy were those Africans who had received primary education and some elementary technical knowledge: clerks in government and private enterprise, renters, and small agriculturalists, craftsmen, and work overseers. The next lowest order were workers who had managed to distinguish themselves through rudimentary education or by acquiring special skills. Beneath them were illiterate workers. At the base was a substratum of unemployed illiterates.

In the face of growing Spanish economic and cultural impingement, the creole community demonstrated a growing independence in its dealings with the English mission. Fernandino traders and planters were sensitive to shifts in the political climate and were increasingly unwilling to let their cultural attachments jeopardize their position vis-a-vis the colonial regime actually in power. As early as 1895 James MacFoy attacked a Methodist missionary writer for depicting the Fernandinos as smarting under Spanish oppression. 32

Eight years later Rev. James Johnson of Nigeria noted the interconnection between culture and economics: "A good many Natives who profess themselves Roman Catholics are really Protestants at heart and . . . hold a merely formal connection with the Roman Catholic Church only for the sake of saving themselves from persecution . . . . "33

English missionaries increasingly noted the weakening of the influence of their church. After the turn of the century, a note of pessimism began to be heard in their reports. A pastor noted economic instability was having a serious effect on the constancy of church attendance: "The strain on our Santa Isabel people to get every pound of cocoa . . . has compelled them to be away in their farms for months past. . . . The labor question is acute and a desperate struggle for existence is upon us. Meanwhile, the padres have strengthened their entrenchments, and our whole position is one of imminent peril. "34 Insofar as the Anglophone mission lacked influence with the colonial regime, it lost ground. The relationship between minimal bilin-


gualism and economic viability was obvious. Those who failed to master the official language were at the mercy of interpreters in legal matters regarding land titles and the extent of holdings. Also, in 1911 and 1912 Amelia Vivour, the inheritor of the richest nineteenth-century landholding, asked the Ministry of State to recognize her 1882 Protestant marriage. As the colonizers did not acknowledge such marriages, she was well aware that the Primitive Methodists would be of little help in her property case.35

In 1919 the English mission painted a sad portrait of its educational situation: "A very few [of the African Protestants] can read the Bible in English with ease and intelligence, but the great majority read stumblingly and often with little comprehension. We have not been allowed to teach English properly, we have not been able to teach Spanish." Furthermore, "those of our children who do not attend school spend the greater part of their time without discipline and without guiding and restraining influences. 1136 In 1919 there were four European Protestant missionaries on the island. The total number of people reached by the mission was probably not more than 1 ,000, and there was no possibility of extension.

Unlike their Protestant counterparts, the Claretians enjoyed a government subsidy and great visibility. The hospitals in Concepcion and Santa Isabel had been administered by the Conceptionist sisters from early in the century. In 1916 a cathedral was inaugurated in the capital as the seat of Bishop Armengol Coll. The state and the Marques de Comillas, head of the Compaiiia Trasathmtica, provided the money for the project. Considering the small size of the colonial territory, the Roman Catholic Church was quite well represented. In 1917 the Claretians had eighty-six missionaries in Spanish Guinea, eighty Spanish and six French. There were thirty Conceptionist sisters, five of them French.

The number of priests and nuns caused alarm among their Protestant coreligionists. The quarterly meeting of the Primitive Methodist mission reported in 1925 "that the Roman Catholic priests are most energetic in attempting to undermine our work. . . . In Santa Isabel there are now two priests and a number of nuns whose only work is to visit the people. "37

Three years later Catholic missions received the right to free and untaxed land grants in each locality in which they established missions.

In 1922 a Protestant missionary analyzed the growing estrangement between the English mission and the Femandino population:

Mission work on the island is not what it was twenty, or even ten years ago. Most of the natives have quite a different temper and attitude toward us. This change does not easily lend itself to

Creole Culture and Change

accurate psychological analysis, for many facts are operating to produce it. The traditional social order has passed away and nothing effective has arisen to take its place. There is an increasing influx of natives from other parts of the coast who introduce ideas and customs which encourage moral laxity. The new generation of Africans feels little of that obligation to, and dependence on, the mission which many of their forefathers felt. Contact with Europeans, chiefly Spaniards, is much more extensive, and the "atmosphere" in which they live and move is not that in which humility and piety flourish. The activities of the Roman Catholic Church have produced around us a baptised heathenism which is ignorant, self-satisfied and unapproachable. Added to these is the fact, that, while we have been unable to do educational work our people have gradually come to feel their need of education. Both boys and girls are leaving us to go to Roman Catholic schools. A few of those who realise the need are too loyal to our Church to send their children that way, but such a position could not long be maintained.38

157

In an effort to preserve their cultural and economic ties with British West Africa, some Femandinos sent their children to be educated in Sierra Leone, Lagos, or Calabar. This practice was frowned upon by the Protestant mission because it gave rise to "jealousy in the Spanish Authorities . . . [and] it is an expensive method for the parents; it takes the children from their homes for several years and makes family life impossible, already a weak point with the African; it constantly drains the best children from our

· Sunday Schools . . . . 1139 The Primitive Methodists, against the odds, attempted to reopen a school. In August of 1923, they were again granted limited permission to run a school. Once the construction of a schoolhouse was begun, political difficulties arose. After an impasse of several years, the government again relented, and school construction resumed in 1926. A Spanish Protestant teacher arrived in the summer of 1927. He resigned in the autumn of 1929 and was not replaced by another Spaniard until the spring of 1930.

Gradually, those creoles who could drifted off to British West Africa. 40

For those Femandinos who did not emigrate, such as the Joneses, the Barleycoms, and the Dougans, bilingualism became a sine qua non. The 1928 elaboration of emancipatio status, which originally had been mentioned in 1904, made the matter essential. It gave an African European rights, provided that a number of conditions were met. It was available from the Patronato de Indigenas (Native Trusteeship) to Africans who possessed


academic degrees from a metropolitan institution and to those who earned an annual salary of more than five thousand pesetas. The status provided a niche for the Fernandinos within the colonial order. At the same time, since the granting of "emancipation" required Spanish sanction and approval, it was a powerful tool in determining the cultural and economic bent of the community.

In 1929 Maximiliano Jones (1871-1944), the island's richest black planter, received his certificate of emancipation. His life illustrates the ambivalences of and pulls on the Fernandina community. Although he considered himself a British subject, as Spanish economic dominance made itself felt, the planter made himself indispensable to the administration. As a survivor par excellence, Jones indeed had cause to say, toward the end of his life, "I only have reason to thank the Spanish Nation. "41

Jones's devotion to the colonial order was sycophantic. One benefit of his loyalty was government support in his disputes with other Africans. In 1913, for instance, he protested to the colonial government about the advances of a young man, Issac Scholar, toward one of his daughters, Mariana Mehile, and demanded Scholar's severe punishment. A misalliance would, in the mind of the wealthy Fernandina, destroy the social prestige and economic position he had fought so hard to attain:

Head of an honored family, which I succeeded to form in a habitually jaded atmosphere, I believe that I have succeeded, by my conduct and that of my family, to make myself worthy of guarantees for my honor, which ·is assumed to be fully assimilated to the civilization which ... you came to bring us; thus I have believed, and, because of this, full of great confidence, I placed myself in the hands of the Administration of Justice . . . . 42

"Civilization" demanded the preservation of the family, and Jones urged the colonial administration to take note of "the distinction which it is so convenient to make, between those of us who assimilate the imported civilization and those who, rejecting it, cling to savage customs." A Spanish official, who sided with Jones, advised the governor-general that such protection was essential for the achievement of the colonial mission. 43

Scholar was sent to Bata in Rio Muni for a year as an example to others. Although he held himself up as a paragon of European family morality,

Jones's position on polygyny was typical of members of his community. When he died in 1944, he claimed to be unmarried, a move designed to


avoid the rules of inheritance laid down by European law. He left holdings to children he had fathered by seven women, in addition to property left to ten "officially" recognized offspring. Many of his female "friends" already held small farms which they were expected to pass on to their children.

Jones was bilingual and took the precaution of assuring that his children were. Of his ten "legitimate" children, two sons, Daniel and Adolfo (Adolf) were trained in Spain. The latter became an electrical engineer after spending four years in Saragossa. The daughters of the family, Clara, Mabel, and Juana (Joan), also completed their education in the metropole. Mabel's wedding in Barcelona in 1921 was a social occasion of great significance for the Fernandina community. The three-story beaux-arts mansion Jones built for Mabel with materials imported from Europe had no rival in either Lagos or Freetown. At his death Jones had shares in the bank of British West Africa, as well as Brazilian national and municipal bonds, imperial Japanese government bonds, and Chilean government bonds. In addition, he owned urban property on Rawdon Street in Sierra Leone and in Spain at Bilbao. 44

Given his continuing commercial contacts with British West Africa, combined with his heavy real property investment in Spanish Guinea, the planter's economic and cultural loyalties were divided. Toward the end of his life, Jones's nationality became of some concern to him. In his will he announced: "I declare expressly that I possess English nationality from having been born of an English father and from not having undertaken the proper steps in Spanish legislation to have acquired the latter nationality." He professed "nevertheless, my deep love for Spain, for in her territory where I was born, I have fought, I have loved and suffered, and almost all of my life has transpired. "45

Throughout his long life Jones continued to enjoy an extremely amicable relationship with the administration. In 1939 he was described as the "wealthiest man in the island" and as one "with a pull with the Government . . . . "46 Jones's son, Alfred, the island's second wealthiest individual, was the assistant director of agriculture and a future head of the Camara Agricola. Like most Fernando Po planters, the Joneses supported the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. During it the younger Jones exulted: "Today Generalfsimo Franco, taking into account the [importance] that the small exuberant island of Fernando Po has for Spain, is paying prim~ interest to its development, not withstanding the hard struggle that Spain sustains .... "47 The family's fortunes remained intact until the 1960s, when they were swept away by the first post-independence government.

Chapter 9

The Bubi: Acculturation and Resistance

In 1962 a Spaniard writing about Fernando Po described "a new period of [agricultural] expansion with improvement in the yields, in which the Bubi population now participates, compensating for the decline of the Femandinos. "1 Because there were relatively small numbers of both Femandinos and Bubi, both were bypassed as a source of labor. These two groups instead tended to become small-scale agriculturalists dependent on inputs of migrant labor and European credit. Bubi farmers were often persuaded to lease their plots for less favorable ones in order to allow European agrobusinesses (casas fuertes) to amalgamate farms into plantations. Most black agriculturalists were in debt to large European companies, a situation only foreshadowed before 1930. In the period after the Second World War, it intensified and attached the islanders ever more firmly to Spain.

In 1949, 98 percent of the Bubi were already baptized Catholics, and 86 percent were married according to Catholic ritual. At the end of the 1940s supposedly all the islanders had some knowledge of Spanish, and 75 percent knew how to read and write.2 In 1962 school enrollment stood at 90 percent, and the ratio of schools to population was high. In addition, the almost nonexistent Spanish presence of the 1800s had been replaced by a growing number of Europeans. 3 By 1960 the number on Fernando Po had risen to 4,222, out of a total island population of roughly 63,000, the highest

160

The Bubi: Acculturation and Resistance 161

European population in West-Central Africa: one per square kilometer, · versus 0.2 in Cameroon and 0.3 in Gabon at the end of the decade.4

Important for future political and cultural relations was the fact that the two parts of Spanish Guinea were very differently impacted by Spanish cultural imperialism. Only after 1926 was a concerted effort made to extend Spanish missionizing into the interior of Rio Muni. The Fang remained resistant both to the colonial economy and to the colonial religion. They had come into contact with French missionaries from Gabon in the early 1840s, but little was accomplished. Many Fang remained devoted to the traditional Bieri religion, and an increasing number of young men who worked in lumber camps embraced the transethnic Bwiti movement. 5

Fang cultural resistance contrasts with the seeming radical erosion of traditional Bubi belief on Fernando Po. Under the Franco regime, a proponent of Spain's "civilizing mission" remarked: "The modem Bubi remembers absolutely nothing of his ancient customs nor any of the ancient history of his people, [he] classifies all of this disparagingly as things of old people . . . . "6 This is an overstatement. Bubi religion, although subject to intensive outside attack, has retained some of its integrity through the present. In the late 1940s a Spaniard observed that "there ... exists in him [the Bubi], established deep in his soul as in the other primitives, fear towards the supernatural, towards the Morim6 [spirits] and [he has] respect for all the little sorcerers and wizards that still exercise their secret craft. "7

Two decades later a European observed that "in the highlands of the center and south there are villages in which fresh traces of the [religious] past are conserved. "8

What was precolonial belief like among the Bubi? As with other aspects of Bubi culture, many beliefs and religious institutions underwent rapid change and evolution in the nineteenth century. While some represent age-old ideological complexes, others evidence more recent changes. Some religious terms, like Poto for the chief god, are of fairly recent origin and reflect outside influence.

Different nineteenth-century visitors came away from Fernando Po with highly different views of the islanders' religion. To some it was remarkable in its lack of "idolatry." To others it represented one of the best examples of humankind bowing down to "wood and stone." On the one hand, in 1862 a Spanish traveler wrote: "They do not have idols and the only thing I have seen in the tribe of Basile is a hut expressly made for the cult of a divinity for whom there is no image or simulacrum . . . . "9 On the other hand, in the 1880s Catholic missionaries maintained that the Bubi worshipped only "a tree and a stone. "10

162 The Bubi: Acculturation and Resistance

Venerated erect-standing stones are, indeed, still found throughout the island. These stones, however, did not serve as the image of a deity, but rather as the image of spiritual energy-energy essential to the fecundity and vitality of the locale. During the nineteenth century many people moved to new zones for reasons of trade and abandoned the menhirs in their region. Later, when many were rediscovered, the Bubi averred that the stones had not been erected by humans but, instead, were signs from the spirits. Many menhirs were located at commercial crossroads and places for palavers. 11

Sacred stones had three functions: they were places where this world encountered the world of the spirits; places that acknowledged the presence

· of the earth goddess, and places that marked the initial settlement of families. The latter were frequently encountered. A Spanish missionary remarked: "Elders of Batete respected the old man bobo bo Boake and in his honor, on the same spot where he died, they placed a sacred muaririmo stone that perpetuated his memory, together with a small chapel in whose interior they placed a small bowl. "12 Memorial stones are especially abundant in places like Batete, Moka (formerly Riabba), Ureka, and Ombori. At times there was only one stone, which represented the founding male. At times there were two, representing the founding couple. In other cases there was a third, smaller, stone which represented basoome (children). Because the meDhirs were exposed to the elements, small chapels were built close to them for the maintenance of perpetual fires. The chapel was marked by small stones, and the sacred precinct was protected by rites of purification. The principal function of rites before "earth-mother" monoliths was to insure agricultural and human reproduction.

In some locales sacred trees were venerated as places where the spirits of the other world manifested themselves. Sacred trees were considered the great terrestrial wand of the spirits, and their vitality was a sign of the continued productivity of the area. In the 1890s a Spaniard remarked: "We see in many points trees consecrated to religious ceremonies, all with their bases surrounded with stones. "13 Some spirits were also venerated in caves.

Overarching the physical manifestations of Bubi religion was a complex theology. The Bubi worshipped a supreme spirit and a dense variety of lesser spirits. Creation was the act of an original supreme god, after which the universe was divided into heaven and earth. Heaven was the abode of the supreme force, while the earth was dominated by humankind and spirits. The high-god was called Rupe in the north and Eri in the south. The name Poto was also used in the south to designate the Supreme Being; its use probably reflects alien influence, and it may be derived from the word for


"Portuguese." In addition, the Bubi also believed in a female agricultural spirit, Esila (Bisila), who guarded nature's fertility.

The "Great Spirit and Supreme Lord," Rupe or Eri, created all things and gave life to pure spirits, bajula, and to bad spirits, bajula babe. These latter spirits are the cause of humanity's calamities. The supreme god also sold souls to the spirits of the ancestors of families, called baribO in the north and morimo (m'mo) in the south. The latter protected and guided the human heart until death. Each settlement had its titular spirit. Morimo or baribO were arranged hierarchically in accordance with the fear and respect they engendered among the living. Especially honored were the spirits of sanguinary chiefs who had been famous in battle.

A variety of religious specialists existed, surmounted by the chief priest, the Abba Mote. The office is probably not very old. The first Abba Mote had nine successors, six of whom reigned in the past century. As with political leadership, the chief priestly office passed from brother to brother. The Abba Mote lived in seclusion in the southern part of the island and was surrounded with prohibitions. He could not bear arms, could not take long trips, could not sleep away from his residence, could not eat food which was not cooked in a sacred fire, and could not eat deer or goat. He participated in governmental councils and was not subject to civil authority.

The primacy of the Abba Mote rested on belief in powers received from Maobuabioko, the principal spirit of Riabba and all the island. This spirit had the title of Takidye ("he who governs the land). Through it, the Abba Mote was in communication with the spirit who made heaven and earth. The most sacred ritual of the Bubi religion was undertaken by the Abba Mote to communicate with the Maobuabioko. He communed with the voice of the spirit through a sacred stone which was anointed every day. The Abba Mote and three ritual assistants also looked after a special and symbolic. "yam of God." In Riabba the populace waited until the Abba Mote planted the Eberl ole, or the sacred plot, before they began to plant their own. After the harvest, solemn thanksgivings (Roomo) to protective spirits were made. These were attended by a great number of people from all over the island. At them, the Abba Mote announced the _beginning of the year and made the dry season arrive by spreading the ashes of a sacred fire over the land.

Besides the Abba Mote and his assistants, there were numerous ether religious specialists, bojiamo or mohiammo, who communicated with the spirits though ritual and who transmitted the spirits' will to the faithful. Both men and women could be religious specialists, and each village had one. Membership was not hereditary, but came through skill at divination.


Entrance was granted after the completion of certain rites. The aspirant first dedicated himself or herself to the cult of one spirit; the object of devotion was determined by a consultation with the Abba Mote. Once the spirit was known, the candidate would seek it out in a cave, in a forest rock, or in a lagoon, as was indicated by the supreme priest.

Priests had considerable influence. A chief could not be elected without the consent of a bojiammo; neither could a legal marriage be celebrated, nor a war declared, nor peace made. The bojiammo could bring about the dissolution of a marriage when this was demanded by titular spirits. Since death in Bubi belief was seldom the result of natural causes, priests had to seek out those responsible and punish them by asking them to indemnify the deceased person's family.

The Attack on Tradition

From the 1840s onward throughout the nineteenth century, the Spanish attempted, without much success, to win over the Bubi. In 1845 Guillemard de Aragon gave the Bubi gifts and guns, and left Fernando Po believing that he had succeeded in securing the allegiance of the chiefs of Banapa, Basupu, Basile, and Rebola. Given the brevity of his visit, the gesture was purely symbolic. Fifteen years later Governor Jose de Ia Gandara witnessed a Bubi parade and personally gave each chief some liquor, tobacco, and cloth. In the early 1860s the Jesuits began working at Banapa. They started a boarding school for thirty to forty pupils and by 1863 had baptized ninety-five children, five of whom died. From Banapa the Jesuits moved out to work in other villages, and the colonial government planned to construct a mission house for them at Rebola, near the capital. This effort came to naught in the wake of the colonial retrenchment of the 1870s.

When the Claretians arrived on Fernando Po, some colonial administrators were skeptical of their desire to act as buffers between the colonial government and the Bubi. In addition, missionizing was anathema to Ule positivistic anticlericalism of certain imperialists. Joaquin Costa, an ardent colonialist, opposed the Claretians because he considered missions to be an extravagance. Christianity was beyond "the embryonic intelligence" of Africans. In his opinion it was not surprising that Africans were confused by Christianity "if we of the Aryan race, children of the nineteenth century, heirs of a civilization of six thousand years, educated in the universities of Europe, are affected the same way . . . . "14


In 1887 a government official and two clerics went to Riabba to induce Moka to acknowledge Spanish sovereignty and to persuade the Bubi to become laborers. The embassy did not have success. Moka continued to act independently of any other authority. The Bubi-Spanish relationship tended to oscillate between tepid friendship and flashes of hostility. Many times it was marked by indifference. A visitor observed: "I once received the answer: 'The whites are fish, not humans; they may. well lose their way onto land. . . . [I]n the end they again enter their ships and disappear with them at the point of the horizon in the ocean. How can a fish own land?'" Furthermore, "even the Bubi near Santa Isabel respect the Spanish Governor not perhaps as their superior, but as chief of the town of Sta. Isabel . . . . The other Bube worry themselves about him about as much as he worries himself about the Bube. "15 In the next decade Mary Kingsley was told a story of the continuing inability of the Claretians to influence the natives: "A priest had enterprisingly settled himself one night in the middle of a Bubi village with intent to devote the remainder of his life to quietly but thoroughly converting it. Next morning, when he rose up, he found himself alone, the people having taken all their portable possessions and vanished to build another village elsewhere." According to Kingsley, "the worthy Father spent some time chivying his flock about the forest, but in vain." 16

In spite of such setbacks, the Claretians persisted. From 1889 to 1913 the fathers maintained a health station and mission at Musola, 450 meters above sea level. They also worked in Basile and at Banapa, where a vocational school was begun in 1886. Its head, Padre Ciriaco Ramirez, set up a fortyhectare experimental farm which employe4 127 Kru within a year and which had a cigar factory staffed by Cubans. In 1886 the fathers also founded a mission at the village of Bolobe in the Concepcion area headed by Fathers Manuel Puente and Joaquin Juanola, the latter fluent in Bubi. In 1887 a mission was established in San Carlos through the goodwill of the botuku of the Batete.

Missionary success was far from rapid. By the end of the 1880s the San Carlos mission had baptized only thirty-one Bubi and made eight catechumens; ·their school contained thirty-four children. In Concepcion there were eight converts and fourteen children in school. 17 In spite of slow progress, the mission astutely exploited the propaganda value of symbolic advances. For example, in 1888 the son of the botuku of San Carlos was baptized in Madrid in the presence of Queen Maria Cristina; the follow"ing year the first Catholic marriage was solemnized between a Bubi couple.


Increased contact did not deepen comprehension of, or respect for, the inner workings of indigenous religion. In the late 1880s one Claretian reported:

The religion of the Bubi does not consist of anything other than the adoration of demons that they call M6 or Morimo. They offer it sacrifices of goats, yams, and palm wine (tope), in order that it will not harm them or prevent them from obtaining something good. They are not jealous of their religion, for at various times we have attacked their Morimos, which are some stones, with sticks and they have not manifested any indignation, but, instead, admiration and fear, believing that we are able to do more than their gods. One time I was with the second [noble] after the king, before one of the principal Morim6s, and I began to hit the stone with a stick, and a poor old little woman began to run . . . . The poor creature believed that the demon would come out and. was going to kill all of us; and he that accompanied me, in spite of being a courageous man, trembled, and asked me not to hit the stone further, because something bad would happen to me. 18

In spite of their rather jaundiced view of in_dig~nous belief, the ~lare~i.ans had as their persistent aim the peaceful wmnmg over of Bub1 pohtlcal authority. By 1888 the missionaries in Concepcion succe~ed in g~ning the friendship of Moka. In June the king sent an embassy whtch contamed o~e of his sons and various relatives, escorted by one hundred men of the lohua armed with rifles and lances. Moka offered the missionaries his protection. He also warned them not to molest their Bubi neighbors. He reminded all that he had the power of life and death. Moka's embassy was repaid with a visit from the head of the Concepcion mission to Riabba in September of 1888. In 1891 the commander of the gunship Pelicano visited the paramount in the company of Padre Juanola, who interpreted. The Spanish flag was raised and given a rifle salute. Six years later Governor-General Adolfo Espaiia decided to visit Moka personally. Espana's three-day sta~ was truly spectacular; he was received with pomp and .Moka flew ~he Sparu~h flag.

Moka wanted to manipulate European mfluence wtthout bemg overwhelmed by it, obviously a course fraught with dangers. The Claretians were a potential source of both help and political meddling. ~ ~ecember of 18~8 the superior of the mission at Batete stopped the decap1tat1on of a botuku m the Balachli area who had disobeyed Moka's orders. Eight years later the padres came to the aid of one of Moka's subordinates. The chief of Mueri


was accused of failing to respect the administrator of San Carlos and imprisoned. The Bubi escaped and then convinced the Claretians to present his case to the governor-general. The chief was restored to his village. In February of 1891 Moka visited the village of Bantabare, where a man, accused of causing a death, refused to pay a fine. The king's presence, seconded by that of a missionary, secured the fine.

Use of Europeans as mediators and facilitators did not translate into acceptance ofhispanicization. In early 1889 Moka flatly denied petitions to start missionary education in his area, although seven years later he did accept one missionary innovation-potato cultivation. At the end of the 1890s the king of the Bubi continued to present a good face to the European interlopers, in spite of ominous rumblings from his own camp. When, in late 1897, three missionaries went up to Riabba from M usola, they were well received. Moka's lieutenant, Sas Ebuera, objected to their visit and returned cloth they had given to village children. Moka was angered and took away Sas Ebuera's house. It became increasing clear that the two men differed. Moka was for a policy of conciliation designed to retain as much freedom of action as possible. His chief subaltern stood for a firmer policy. It was not long before the tension inherent in the situation burst forth into violence.

On September 1, 1898, Sas Ebuera manifested open resistance to the Spanish. A week later a group of fifteen men was sent against him, but Bubi strength caused the force to return home. As in the past, the confrontation was resolved through the intercession of the Claretians. Moka died in February of 1899, one day before the arrival of a missionary. The Spaniard was not allowed to view the body and was not told where it was buried. Malabo, who would have been Moka's successor, was pushed aside by Sas Ebuera. The coronation took place in October of 1899, and a few days later the new king forbade all contact with Europeans.

The Bubi and the Labor Question

The collapse of the authority of the Bubi kings and the erosion of Bubi religious belief were paralleled by attempts to bring the Bubi within the colonial labor pool. The continued forced migration of laborers to Fernando Po was a testament to the ongoing problems posed by epidemio- . logy. After looking at Fernando Po, Gonzalo Sanz Casas disagrees with· any argument that "forced labor in Africa [was] a historic necessity of capitalism to overcome the resistance of non-capitalist modes [of production] and, [that] at the same time . . . forced· labor is a form of transitional exploitation,


distinct from the 'typical' exploitation of capitalism, that is to say, free labor." On Fernando Po the chief problem was the scarcity of labor rather than "the tenacious resistance of the indigenous population to wage labor. "19

Disease impacted Fernando Po even more than Sao Tome and Principe. In the late nineteenth century the Bubi population seemed to be wending its way toward extinction. The island may have had a population of as many as 30,000 people in the 1820s.20 There were an estimated 20,000 inhabitants in 1848.21 In 1900 the estimate was no more than 14,818, and in 1911 the Bubi numbered about 10,000.22 A year later, according to another authority, there were only about 6,800 out of an African population of 12,545 (54 percent).23 Nineteenth-century epidemics are a probable cause of this decline: yellow fever in 1868; smallpox in 1889; whooping cough in 1893, dysentery in 1896. Late in the century trypanosomiasis was introduced on the eastern side of the island by Fang laborers from Rio Muni. By the last decade of the century, the consequences of population decline were very obvious.

Some colonialists persisted in seeing the Bubi as the island's labor force. Indeed, some Bubi had voluntarily done plantation work for wages as early as the 1880s. The majority of workers on the new cocoa estates in the San Carlos area were Bubi at the tum of the century. They came on their own terms, as day laborers or to do piece work, and they hired themselves out to both Femandinos and Spaniards. Missionaries alleged that the Bubi laborers were attracted by the availability of alcoholY Occasionally, they acted as labor tenants. Planters complained that they were an unstable labor force, prone to sudden disappearances back to their villages. Moreover, they were few in number and they disliked the poor working conditions on plantations. Most Bubi preferred to meet their cash needs by selling crops, small stock, or products of hunting and gathering. "Pagan" Bubi were ostracized by their families if they worked for outsiders, so plantation labor was said to be restricted to Christians. 25 Some Bubi continued to harvest palms on colonial plantations without permission; in retaliation, planters destroyed trees, supposedly driving certain of the Bubi harvesters to suicide.26

In the early 1890s a governor-general demanded village labor for public works. Eventually nearly one hundred Bubi were procured and set to work on bridge construction. The governor-general's death in 1893 ended plans for further public works, and the conscripted Bubi returned to their villages. Five years later the towns of Balacha, Kodda, and Bepepe took to arms, under the leadership of botuku Esasi, to resist the imposition of forced labor.


The issue was finally settled, more or less to the Bubi's satisfaction, without bloodshed.

In 1904 Sas Ebuera "revolted" against European authority. His resistance was specifically sparked by Spanish attempts to step up labor recruitment. All "unemancipated" Africans (that is, those not specifically given European rights after petitioning) were obliged to give two years' labor service on a European plantation. Emancipated Africans could avoid this labor draft by providing an African to serve in their place or by paying a fee. The replacement, or prestado, had to labor for four years on a selected plantation. Each Bubi bese council was made responsible for fulfilling the labor quota.

Sas Ebuera, at the instigation of one of his subordinates, Bioko, and of his half-Kru commander, Pasy, refused to provide labor. In June of 1904 the Spanish official at Concepcion ordered him to present himself, but the monarch refused. Even after he was visited by the police, Sas Ebuera remained obdurate. Reinforcements were sent, and, when again confronted, the paramount gave himself up and was arrested, along with his children. Upon arriving in Santa Isabel, on the first of June, 1904, the deposed king refused to speak or to take food or medicines, agreeing only to receive Padre Juanola. The latter succeeded in instructing the prisoner in the Catholic faith, baptizing him with the name of Pablo. Sas Ebuera's death in custody marked the end of a phase of Bubi culture. Malabo, who followed as Bubi paramount, became a pitiful alcoholic relic of a bygone age.

In 1906 the governor-general informed Malabo that chiefs would have to provide laborers for plantations. The Bubi of San Carlos revolted and were put down by an expedition led by Manuel Balboa and Daniel Kinson. The defeated were forced to sign three-year contracts. By the end of the year, around 1,800 Bubi were working on plantations.27 The coerced laborers worked as little as possible, and the colonial administration was unimpressed with their performance.

In April of 1907 Spanish officials were again instructed to have Bubi present themselves for road work. The next month a decree announced that disputes would henceforth be settled by European authority if the Bubi could not solve their differences among themselves. At the same time, Bubi chiefs were told to plant cotton, cocoa, tobacco, palm oil, and rubber trees. The colonial government promised that those who showed greatest zeal would receive stipends. In September the chiefs were told to present their "unemployed" men to Spanish delegates and post commandants. These islanders were to work as contract laborers on plantations during September, October, and November. The government official receiving the labor was empowered to distribute the workers among plantations already employing


approved labor. Bubi liable for labor draft, but not participating, would have to perform corvee labor for forty days, instead. The coerced wage laborers were proniised one unpaid Sunday per week to devote to their own subsistence farming. The salary was one peseta per day, including a ration. Payment was fortnightly. Women who presented themselves "voluntarily" were paid three reales per day. To enable workers to spend the night at home, the hours of work were from six to eleven and from one to six. At the end of their three-month service, workers were free to continue working on plantations without contracts.

In May of 1908 a decree said that Bubi who had not presented themselves for farm labor in the previous year would be subject to forced labor for forty days. Recalcitrant botukos were to be denied gunpowder, guns, and knives. In June of 1910 Governor Luis Dahan issued an order which produced the last major Bubi resistance. He demanded labor; this time resistant chiefs were threatened with confiscation of their guns and hunting licenses. Resentment was especially strong in the south. A rumor circulated that Bubi

· ,, were being beaten to death on European farms and that Malabo had been kidnapped and was being held prisoner in Santa Isabel. On July 19, three unarmed African guards went to Balachii to convey the government's labor demands. Armed Bubi refused to discuss the matter. On their return the African guards reported to a Spanish corporal who then returned to the village with three armed guards. The Spaniard spoke to Luba, the local ruler; and attempted to make him promise loyalty to the colonial regime. Violence ensued, and when the colonial forces marched on Balacha, they found it deserted and burned it. The Bubi put up guerrilla resistance, but eventually Luba was killed. As in the past, the two sides negotiated. Malabo remained as Bubi paramount; he had not joined the revolt, although he had not actively opposed it. ·

Many ji.nqueros were dissatisfied; the Camara Agricola criticized the too lenient policy which, it felt, had precipitated the clash:

The act of rebellion of those degenerate savages, ignorant and idiotic men of the forest, that led them to perpetrate cowardly murders on the persons of three representatives of the authorities, one of them European, can never be pardoned. If some reason (arbitrariness, abuse, oppression) might have existed, still we would in conscience be able to concede a generous forgiveness. But when the act comes from the stupid and sensitive pride of an idiotic and criminal little king, followed by the petty chiefs of his villages, drunk and useless, that believe themselves powerful and fearless by the work and grace of our too humanitarian policy of

The Bubi: Acculturation and Resistance

attraction and protection, that grants them considerations that no other nation recognizes among the savages of its colonies . . . it demands harsh, long and cruel punishment.28

171

In September of 1910 the Camara Agricola recommended the creation of a force to capture escaped laborers. A sometime governor, who prided himself on his enlightenment, was forced to admit that there were "many who believe that the policy that ought to be followed with the natives of our Guinea colonies is one of terror . . . in order to bring them to civilized life and that the policy which is employed, titled attraction, is judged by those natives as a sign of weakness. "29 Subsequently, Maximiliano Jones praised Governor-General Barrera for implementing "a much more practical native policy ... than that of attraction, invented by 'salon Africanists' and carrying to conclusion a series of expeditions in which he succeeded by very personal [and] superhuman exertion to leave the prestige of our Fatherland better established. "30

The following year, Bubi anger over loss of land and labor abuse led to protest meetings, allegedly organized by mission Africans. They maintained that all the land on the island belonged, by right, to the indigenes. Given the plethora of Bubi complaints, the metropolitan government ruled that forced labor for the benefit of private employers was illegal.31 This response to the labor question did not stop the erosion of nati~e rights, however. For instance, in 1913, the Trasathmtica received the right to harvest oil palms on crown lands.32 Since most unconceded land was deemed "crown land "the Bubi saw this as a further diminution of their sphere of economic ac;ivity. The disarming of the Bubi was not completed until1917, by which time over a thousand rifles and over a million cartridges had been turned over to the Spanish.

The end of Bubi resistance did not mean the end of the Bubi population decline. It was only in 1909 that the government opened a medical laboratory in Santa Isabel. In 1915 there was an outbreak of trypanosomiasis, and it was another eight years before the governor-general introduced stringent methods for the eradication of the disease. In 1928 the Patronato de Indigenas (Native Trusteeship) introduced personal health cards and began a program of hospital construction. Nevertheless, the 1930 League of Nations commission found evidence that disease, especially sleeping sickness, was still prevalent. ·


Instruments and Elements of Change

By the close of the first decade of the twentieth century it appeared, to colonialists, that the core of Bubi cultural and political resistance had been broken. The last Abba Mote died in 1909, and his sacred fire was extinguished. Malabo, who lived on into the 1930s, experienced widespread disobedience to his vestigial authority. Disaffection came from men like Bioko, who had revolted with Sas Ebuera and who lived on in Moka until the 1940s. The same was true of another survivor of the past, Borik6, botuku of Basakato del Este.

New instruments of cultural change came with the new century. In 1904 the colonial government set up the Patronato de Indigenas. Since most islanders were considered legal minors, the ostensible aim of this body was to protect its wards. At the same time, it tried to bring them nearer the norms and control of the metropole. The government financed the Patronato by levying a special tax on exported coffee and cocoa. Its head was the Apostolic Vicar (bishop) of Santa Isabel, assisted by a committee composed of the governor-general and other clerical and administrative personnel who sat on its governing body, the Junta de Patrones. Before its abolition in 1959, the Patronato had acquired landholdings, orphanages, warehouses, small businesses, and savings organizations. The body, along with the Claretians, controlled education and the colony's press.

The Patronato, among other things, urged the reduction of English missionary influence. In 1871 the Primitive Methodists had attempted to penetrate the interior, but failed to make contact with Moka. In 1896 they officially asked to establish themselves at the king's court and were refused. 33 Elsewhere missions were set up with a modicum of success. Notable were Basupu and San Carlos. The Bubi called the English mission at the latter place Rikara, "English Town." Initially the missionaries had settled in the midst of the Bubi village, but accomplished little; only four or five families were won over. Later, at a location near San Carlos, the Primitive Methodists attracted more adherents. 34 They encouraged cocoa farming and the construction of storied houses with zinc roofs. School was taught in English, and European dress was encouraged:35 The English mission supposedly gave out medicines only grudgingly, and many Bubi left it to join with the Catholic mission in Batete.

In 1904 the Claretians bought land for their own San Carlos mission from Gueningo Boukabouka, a man of supposedly Protestant sympathies. Three years later the Spanish traveler Enrique d' Almonte visited the Primitive Methodist Mission at San Carlos "whose powerful influence . . . according


to what was said years ago in the Ministry, was so great that it surpassed those exercised by the Catholic Spanish missionaries. "36 He went away unimpressed. Some of the dwellings were roofed with zinc, but he classed the majority as shacks and concluded that the mission had accomplished little in over twenty years of existence. The English mission followed an ecumenical line, a position favored by the Claretians. More and more Bubi came to Catholic services after the Protestant pastor affirmed that salvation did not depend on denomination.

The Bubi, especially missionized Bubi, were pulled into the colonial cash crop economy. This development was fraught with dangers for traditional life because it pulled them away from political and religious authority. For this very reason, the spread of cocoa held special interest for missionaries. The Claretians encouraged its cultivation from the 1880s onward and used their cocoa-growing expertise as a tactic in proselytization. At the end of the nineteenth century, palm oil was -still the dominant Bubi export, but some cocoa was bartered for firearmsY By 1908, as demand increased, traders were sending agents up into Bubi villages to barter for cocoa, rather than waiting for it to be brought down to the beaches. Bubi-grown cocoa was badly processed, and while it found a ready market, it sold at a lower price than that of the plantations. In 1910 Angel Barrera guessed that the Bubi produced around one third of the cocoa crop. During the First World War a German anthropologist also thought the islanders' contribution to be one third of Fernando Po's total production. 38 An employee of the John Holt Company estimated the islanders' share to be even higher.

Missionized Bubi were encouraged to gain freehold title to land. The Spanish missions adopted the practice of parceling out their land concessions in lots of around two hectares per family. They also helped other Bubi, including some non-Christians, to register land claims. Besides indicating the transition to "civilization," such claims had an added benefit: title to a minimum of one hectare provided exemption from forced labor. Islanders were sometimes refused concessions because they lacked a surname and proof of identity, but missionized individuals could get around this by producing a baptismal certificate. Some Bubi obtained considerably more than a hectare in freehold according to records covering the years between 1909 and 1916.39

Prominent Bubi farmers procured labor in a variety of ways. Afri~an contract laborers who fled Fernandina and Spanish plantations were a potential source of workers, but, as in the 1840s, relations were bedeviled by disputes over women. 40 As of old, but in a new economic setting, corvee labor was performed for chiefs, and younger men worked for older men to


accumulate marriage payments. Debt pawns may also have been used as laborers. In addition, people with little land worked for those who owned more. Probably the most common form of labor on Bubi farms was familial, supplemented by that of neighbors when needed.

Cocoa brought socio-economic change, including increased wealth, to some Bubi. However, on the whole, the effects of the colonial imposition were deleterious. Indeed, it seemed that the Bubi were on their way to extinction. An idee fixe of the Claretians became the concentration of the declining population in larger villages. The missionary journal La Guinea Eepaiiola frequently petitioned the colonial authorities to aid in the project. The Claretians cited the precedent of the reducciones in South America and argued that a similar policy on Fernando Po would facilitate conversion. In 1908 the missionaries established the Maria Cristina (in Bubi, Ripafia or "Spanish Town") mission among the Batete Bubi. Under missionary direction the one hundred inhabitants constructed wide streets, a church, and various schools. Upon Christian marriage each Bubi was given a plot of

.; land for the production of cocoa and other crops. Two years later the missionaries inaugurated a chapel in the missionary settlement of Zaragoza de Etomu. A year later the inhabitants of diverse Bubi settlements were gathered together in San Antonio de Ureca, under the authority of Botuku Boo and his subaltern Bioko. After 1916 four villages were combined into one in the Basuala area. In the same year the settlement of Batorichi was joined to Baho. Ityoy or Batui and Bakona (or Rikona) joined with Bareso in 1919. Bilelipa took over three villages (Rapi, Riaso, and Oloco), as did Balacha: Bosoco, Mmado, and Alahu. On the Moka plain, where eighteen settlements had existed as dependents of the villages of Chiefs Bioko and Malabo, the number was considerably reduced. In the 1920s three villages (Basupu, Baricana, and Bariobata) were merged to create Bariobe. In spite of the power of the colonial church and state, some Bubi continued to resist. In 1931 the people of the reduccion of Baho abandoned the settlement and returned to their previous homes.

It was in the period after the First World War, a period of demographic decline and cultural dislocation, that the first small group of mission-educated Bubi emerged to take their subordinate place in the colonial hierarchy. In 1914 an escuela external (secondary school for nonboarding pupils) was established. The largest ethnic group in attendance was Bubi. Among the school's most notable graduates was Apolonio Eria, who obtained a Spanish teaching certificate and went on to serve as an auxiliary teacher in the Official Children's School. In 1914 a "Minor Seminary" was also formally opened, although some youths had begun to prepare for the


priesthood as early as 1912 at the Banapa seminary of Nuestra Senora de Pilar. It was some time before the first priest, Joaquin Maria Sialo, was ordained. The sisters of the Immaculate Conception pursued a gradualist and authoritarian policy. In 1911 the sisters were accused of employing the girls at the school in Basile in heavy manual labor. The following year the Claretians were accused of detaining girls against their parents' wishes and forcing them into Catholic marriage. Imelda Makole, a trainee at the sisters' school in Basile, became the first African woman to enter the Association of Native Religious Auxiliaries. Few followed in her path; in 1918 there were no more than five African nuns.

In the late 1920s, 903 boys and 282 girls were receiving secondary education through the Roman Catholic missions in Spanish Guinea, almost all on Fernando Po. Five thousand boys and 1,034 girls received primary education. To create loyalty to the metropolitan regime, youths were taken to Spain for education, the avowed intent being that, on their return, they would be colonial propagandists. As a Roman Catholic missionary proclaimed, the purpose of Spain's missions was "to instruct hundreds of youths in letters, arts and trades, the knowledge of which has been frequently employed . . . on our men-of-war and merchant steamers." The utility of missions was already seen as "many of the natives educated by the mission, are at present already able employees in the government offices and heads and administrators of important commercial enterprises, on their own and as employees. "41 From the colonialist point of view, the missionary vocational school at Banapa rendered outstanding service in this regard.

By 1930 what remained of the Bubi population seemed to be firmly under European cultural and political control. A decade later, the pattern was even more clearly visible. Fernando Po had 1,766 fincas indigenas (native plots of less than twenty hectares) in 1940, and Bubi cocoa represented eleven percent of exports. The islanders produced 1,629 tons of cocoa, and their plots had a combined area of 9, 811 hectares, of which a little over half were ceded with title. 42 A small number of Bubi, especially those with access to land, entered the African elite, as was the case with the Mehile family, who intermarried with Fernandinos. 43 However, these and other indigenous strivers faced continuing problems. Many Bubi farmers mortgaged their plots to Europeans and could not keep up with payments.

Tradition continued but, in some cases, was a travesty of its former self. Malabo died in 1937 and was succeed by his brother, Alobari. In 1943 Governor-General Mariano Alonso Alonso married a Bubi princess and briefly proclaimed himself Bubi king, before being removed from office after furious Bubi protests.44 Oriche, a brother of Alobari, was the last Bubi king:


"By the time of Oriche's death in 1952, the group's traditional religion and institutions had been set aside for the ways of Roman Catholicism and modem education. "45 It seemed as if Fernando Po were one of the most acculturated areas in Africa. A Spanish anthropologist commented:

Perhaps none of the African natives are able to show a transformation of their culture as rapid and complete as that of the Bubi, with the complete forgetfulness of their ancient customs and traditions and with a total and complete adaptation, within the possibilities of the native mind, to the customs and mode of life of the European peoples. It is hardly thirty years ago that the Bubi were a completely savage race, with their barbaric customs and primitive laws; today the Bubi group, although reduced, is an example of what the black African might be in the future when he will have completely assimilated civilization. 46

In the 1960s the Bubi were described as "quasi-literate well housed cocoa farmers proud of their Spanish citizenship. "47 In the colony, Bubi customs were "harassed or suppressed altogether in favor of the only true values of triumphant Hispanism: love of the Spanish mother country, the Caudillo [Generalissimo Franco] and the Church. "48 Yet, traditional religion persisted under the watchful eye of Spanish colonialism. Indeed, in the late 1960s Bubi traditional priests emerged as important participants at rallies of the Union Bubi political party. In the late 1980s Equatorial Guinea's director of cultural affairs noted that "there exist Fang, Bubi, and Ndowe customs [which] ... continue spreading .... The Bubi ... welcome morimo . .. in their catacombs in order to adore the dead and purify their spirits. " He acknowledged: "Thus is the reality of the Guinea we have inherited from our ancestors. The Church wanted to combat these practices, but was not able. "49

Epilogue

. A "Model" Colony

The changes that began on Fernando Po in 1827 were truly momentous, but few could have predicted the developments which transformed the island by the mid-twentieth century. On Fernando Po, from the 1820s onwards, change was perceptible, but, at the same time, gradual. Economically the period 1830-1880 was dominated by the palm oil trade. The colonial nucleus implanted by the British did not have the power to impose itself on the island as a whole, although it did contribute to Bubi population decline and political change. In the years from 1880 to 1910, the islanders were increasingly pressured by the Fernandinos for coastal lands. Creole agriculture reached its zenith, although it did not overcome the problems presented by lack of credit, labor, and infrastructure. After World War I the energetic push by Spanish officials and agrobusiness reduced, but did not destroy, the economic role of the Fernandinos and transformed the majority of the Bubi into permanent wards of the colonial state.

A continuing thread throughout the period 1827-1930, and beyond, was the dearth of labor and recurrent charges of labor abuse. The "slavery" scandal of 1929 and 1930 was only one indication of the deeper problem of securing labor for a viable plantation economy. 1 The pattern of labor recruitment and use which began in the 1820s continues into the 1990s although pools of laborers have all but dried up. Increasingly "modernized,;

177

178 Epilogue

and monitored migration has failed to check the tendency towards abuse. Migration has always veered toward coercion; the most serious complaints were registered in the 1820s and 1840s, in 1900, 1930, and 1975.

Had the island been conquered early on by Europeans, as were its neighbors, the economy would have, no doubt, paralleled theirs. Fernando Po would have developed an extroverted economy based on a landless, enslaved, and ethnically distinct population. A more tantalizing speculation is: what would happened if the colonial powers had turned a blind eye to the illicit smuggling of labor in the fifty years after 1880? There are interesting comparisons. Of nearby Cameroon, Ralph Austen notes that "had slavery been allowed to continue . . . it is conceivable that Duala planters might have been able to survive the vicissitudes of international price fluctuations, thus providing Cameroon with much-needed elements of large-scale indigenous entrepreneurship." The Duala experience "challenges the contention that slavery, even in an African context, need necessarily be classified as an institution out of step with economic

'' · modernization. "2

Attention has been drawn to the development of a "brash and vigorous African capitalism" in parts of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Africa. 3 It is tempting to applaud findings of such development. However, it was a mixed blessing. As Rodney noted for nineteenth-century black planters in Guyana: "To survive, members of this embryonic class had to exploit village labor and immigrant labor. As landlords and employers, they had exploitative relations with tenants and displayed towards workers attitudes which were necessarily those of the capitalist class. "4 The same situation obtained on Fernando Po and elsewhere in West Africa. The island's experience itself highlights ambiguities surrounding the emergence of capitalism in modem Africa-ambiguities which persist today. If, as we enter the twentieth-first century, we have learned anything, it should be that "development" is meaningless unless we determine "development for whom?" At what cost?

The Creation of the "Model" Colony

In the decades after 1930 Fernando Po succeeded at last, in colonialist terms. Especially in the Francoist period (1936-1968), colonial development was molded by two considerations, one minor and one major-prestige and patronage. The regime gained through the creation of a colonial showplace-an achievement denied its predecessors. Importantly, a network

Epilogue 179

of marketing syndicates, banks, and companies was created with links to the regime. The planters secured a stable labor supply, and the economy was manipulated for the benefit of large national companies.

Success was highly managed and terribly vulnerable. Statist economic policies, along with oligopolistic manipulation of cocoa and coffee prices, assured invested capital a handsome return and transformed the previously marginal indigenous population into· dependent and largely complacent cash croppers. Spanish colonialism, unlike British colonialism in Nigeria or Kenya, was able to coopt an exiguous and dwindling native population. Fernando Po became home to a peculiar dichotomy. Workers were invariably alien; managers and landowners were nationals, whether African or European.

The Great Depression and the subsequent Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) affected the island's economy in different ways. The value of the island's exports fell immediately after 1930.5 During the Civil War, Spanish colonialists on Fernando Po declared for Franco, and the island became important in the war effort. Moroccan troops were sent in support of the Francoists, and Rio Muni, which supported the Republic, was subdued'by October of 1936. Fernando Po contributed almost all of the Nationalists' crude lumber and almost half of their copra and palm oil. Spain's neutrality during World War II benefited the economy through diversification. The impact of the war was directly felt in 1940 when Franco sent 2,500 Spanish and Moroccan troops to thwart any British attempt to take the island. The war situation cut down on shipping between Spain and its colony. At the same time rubber production stepped up, and cocoa planters were able to shift to coffee and and other crops.

Overall, Spanish colonial imports increased dramatically. From 1932 to 1934· only three percent of the metropole's imports came from the Canaries and the African colonies. In 1940 the budget of Spanish Guinea was separated from that of Rio de Oro; until then the Biafran colony had underwritten Spain's desert colony. From 1940 to 1946 Spanish Guinea's and the Canaries' percentage of Spain's imports rose to sixteen percent. The year 1942 marked the height of colonial imports in percentage terms; Spain's small empire accounted for twenty-one percent of its imports. The Canaries, which were listed as a colony for the purposes of trade statistics, contributed half of these imports, whereas Spanish Guinea contributed most of the rest. 6

By 1945 almost three quarters of Spain's coffee came from its sub-Saharan colony.7

After 1930 new firms entered the colonial field; for instance, in 1933 the Trasathintica's shipping line was taken over by the Transmediteminea firm.

180 Epilogue

In addition, there was a marked tightening of oligopolistic control of the economy. In 1941 the Barcelona-based Casa de Guinea superseded the old Union de Agricultores and coordinated the casas fuertes. The Francoist colonial economy was guarded by three groups: forestry concessionaires, resident Spanish finqueros, and metropolitan tropical produce companies (among them ALENA, GAESA, and CEGUI). Economic development was overseen by marketing syndicates, formed between 1935 and 1946, which guaranteed a higher than world price for bankers and planters. The Cocoa Syndicate, the Coffee Syndicate (PROGUINEA), and the Forestry Syndicate were each run by a metropolitan central committee. Key individuals in government had an interest in highly inflated prices for colonial produce. The burden for what was in essence a grand colonial subsidy was borne by the metropolitan consumer. This would have been difficult in a liberal democratic capitalist regime. It was possible under an authoritarian capitalist one.

As early as 1930, it was apparent that Spain intended Fernando Po (especially its uplands) for use by European cultivators. At that time 18,000 hectares had been conceded to Africans, while some 21,000 hectares had gone to Europeans, a situation which remained legally frozen until1948. In 1942 and 1943, out of 40,000 hectares devoted to to coffee and cocoa, only 4,000 were in the hands of the Africans (see Map 10.1).8 By the 1960s the coastal band on the north, east and west, up to 2,000 feet was almost completely devoted to Spanish plantations; in 1964, 600 European plantations occupied about 90,000 acres (on the average about 150 acres per plantation), and 40,000 acres were occupied by African farms (averaging thirteen acres per farm). 9 Other land-use statistics indicate that fifty-five percent of the island's cultivators controlled less than three percent of the crop producing land in 1962, while 2.3 percent of the farms controlled fifty-three percent of the land in use. In 1968 there were 1,142 cocoa farms of less than ten hectares, 242 of from ten to thirty hectares, 124 of from thirty to 100 hectares, and 100 larger than 100 hectares. The 1,608 plantations covered twenty-nine percent of Fernando Po's surface. 10

Migrant labor fueled agricultural development. With the cessation of the Liberian labor traffic, some labor was obtained from Cameroon. In 1933 the French government complained to the League of Nations about continuing labor abuse. The following year the French commissioner for Cameroon and the Spanish governor-general signed a labor agreement which permitted the annual recruitment of 4,000 laborers. The agreement did not prove satisfactory to the French, and in early 1936 it was abrogated. Thereafter, Nigeria became the predominant source. In 1942 an Anglo-Spanish labor

Epilogue

0

~ Estates assumed to ~ be in European hands

:.-::.:•:·: Est.ates assumed to ~ be 1n Creole hands -< <-: 1 < 'J Reserves

t>:~ Pastoral

~>>) Abandoned estates

--Roads

- - - Proposed road

- Rivers

0

10 km

181

N

t

Ma~ 10.1: Land distributio~ between social categories, 1941. Reprinted from Journal of Afrzcan H1story, 35 (1994), with permission from Cambridge University Press. SOURCE: William Gervase Clarence-Smith, "African and European Cocoa Producers on Fernando ~6o, 1880s to 1910s," Journal of African History, 35 (1994), p. 191, citing "Viaje a las poses1ones Espaiiolas del Golfo de Guinea, Abrii-Septiembre de 1941."

agreement permitted the recruitment of up to 250 Nigerian laborers per month. It recognized a fact; in 1941, 10,000 Nigerians were already on Fernando Po. In 1954-1955 a very conservative estimate of the total number of Nigerian migrants on the island was. "about 15,800. "11 In the

•!.

182 Epilogue

mid-1960s there were approximately 100,000 people on Fernando Po, of whom the majority were Nigerians, two thirds of them Igbo, lbibio, and Efik speaking. 12

A stable source of labor benefited the remaining large- and medium-scale farmers. In addition, the Patronato encouraged Bubi agricultural cooperatives. The first was founded near the village of Moka (formerly Riabba) in the late 1930s with the aim of acquiring seeds, fertilizer, and tools, and organizing the sale and distribution of harvests. After 1945 there were cooperatives in, among other places, Moka (European vegetables and poultry), Batete (cocoa, palm oil), and Baho Chico (cocoa, oil palm). After 1952 the Delegaciones de Asuntos Indigenas (Offices of Native Affairs) oversaw lands, the buying and selling of harvests, and the making of loans · against native lands. With the abolition of the Patronato in 1959, members of cooperatives enjoyed full shareholder rights. However, the organizations remained under the control of the Ministry of Agriculture. Fernando Po had thirty cooperatives in 1962 with a membership of 1,610. 13 By the late 1960s the organizations were flourishing. In 1964 and 1965, companies based in the metropole were responsible for 36.5 percent of the cocoa crop, while 42.8 percent was produced on lands controlled by Spanish family concerns or resident farmers. The remaining 20.7 percent was largely composed of . . the cooperatives's harvests. 14 Increased costs for migrant labor allowed Bubi cooperatives to compete more effectively with European plantations, and in 1968 the African organizations had a budget of $600,000. 15

Bubi agriculture was abetted by the partial demographic comeback of the community. In 1936 the indigenes numbered 9,352, or thirty-six percent of the total island population of 25,770. In 1942 the number was almost the same (9,350). This was out of a total population of 33,980, of whom 30,661 were African. In 1950 the Bubi numbered 11,355, a significant increase considering their long decline, although they comprised only 28.9 percent of the total population. 16 After 1945 once rampant diseases declined in importance, although new ones took their place; Trypanosomiasis was practically eliminated. Whereas at one time forty-three percent of the populace had been listed as infected, by the end of the 1940s the rate was one case per 4,000Y Mortality from smallpox and yellow fever also · declined. Unfortunately, malaria, gonorrhea, and syphilis remained significant health problems. 18 In 1960 there were approximately 20,000 Bubi, 3,000 Fernandinos, 6,000 Europeans, 35,000 Nigerians, 170,000 Fang, and 20,000 others (including the coastal Ndowe of Rio Muni) in Spanish Guinea. 19

Epilogue 183

The Bubi and their Spanish overlords appeared to be prospering by the 1960s. For the colony as a whole, the balance of trade was favorable; in 1964 i~ reached 82~ million pesetas.20 Ninety percent of colonial produce was shipped to Sprun. The production of high quality cocoa reached a total of about 35,000 tons in 1968, three times Sao Tome's production.21 Coffee also did well. In the midst of this prosperity, the Bubi and the Fernimdinos were small and relatively wealthy communities, linked to the casas fuertes by debt. The Bubi, under the leadership of Enrique Gori Molubuela became loyal servitors of the colonial regime. Among the Fernandinos' Wilwardo Jones Niger and Armando Balboa were prominent in the municipai government of Santa Isabel, and Alfredo Jones continued to play an important part in the Camara Agricola. The Bubi and the remaining Fernandinos became, in the main, extremely loyal supporters of the colonial status quo. The colonial administration and the Church continued to oversee a patern~istic network of h~alth and social services. In the 1960s, in spite of the mterest of men hke Salome Jones in Nkrumahist and other Pan-African thought, island opinion, represented by the Union Bubi and the Union Democratica Fernandina, was strongly in favor of continuing links with Spain.22

What appeared as ethnic tension (Bubi/Fernandino versus Fang) at the end of the 1960s was a reflection of the vast differences in overall wealth and class structure in the two parts of Spanish Guinea. Whereas Spanish capital converted Fernando Po into an agricultural "factory," its penetration of Rio Muni was delayed until after the Second World War. Through corvee labor and taxation, the Spanish attempted to transform subsistence cultivators into peasants, although the territory's low population density and the possibility of out-migration militated against this. Educational services and infrastructure were retarded, and Spanish military rule often harsh. The economic mainstay, silviculture, was not labor intensive. In 1955, 625 kilograms of cocoa per hectare were produced on Fernando Po· on the mainlan~, 350 ~logrruns per hectare were produced in the same ~ear. In 1962 Rw. Mum had only four agricultural cooperatives, with a total memb~rship of 2,622. 23 Although in 1968 the mainland had a population of ap~roximately 200,000 (versus 62,612 on the island), timber was its only maJor export (250,000 tons of okume wood). 23 Its population of peasants and fishermen had an annual per capita income of $40, compared to between $250 and ~280 on Fernan~o Po and Annobon. In the 1960s only 3.4 percent of the ~runland was cultivated for cash crops, compared with 24.4 percent of the Island. In 1960 cash crop agriculture employed eighty-three percent

. t,

184 Epilogue

of the wage laborers on Fernando Po versus only twenty-five percent of those in Rio Muni.25

When, in 1964, Spanish Guinea was given limited autonomy, tensions between the constituent parts increased. It became obvious that African nationalism in Rio Muni would, at some point, demand independence. When independence came in 1968, the colony's highly artificial economy collapsed like a house of cards. President Francisco Macias Nguema (1968-1979), a Fang from Rio Muni, made it clear that he was going to dismantle the inherited colonial economic organization. Large Spanish agrobusinesses were removed, along with Bubi cocoa cooperatives and the remnants of creole fincas. Eventually most private properties were seized. The export economy ran down and practically ceased to function by the late 1970s. The Bubi and the Fernandinos, having weathered the onslaught of European imperialism in the nineteenth century, were dispossessed by an indigenous dictatorship in the twentieth .

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

-. •j.

184 Epilogue

of the wage laborers on Fernando Po versus only twenty-five percent of those in Rio Muni.25

When, in 1964, Spanish Guinea was given limited autonomy, tensions between the constituent parts increased. It became obvious that African nationalism in Rio Muni would, at some point, demand independence. When independence came in 1968, the colony's highly artificial economy collapsed like a house of cards. President Francisco Macias Nguema (1968-1979), a Fang from Rio Muni, made it clear that he was going to dismantle the inherited colonial economic organization. Large Spanish agrobusinesses were removed, along with Bubi cocoa cooperatives and the remnants of creole fincas. Eventually most private properties were seized. The export economy ran down and practically ceased to function by the late 1970s. The Bubi and the Femandinos, having weathered the onslaught of European imperialism in the nineteenth century, were dispossessed by an indigenous dictatorship in the twentieth.

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index

APPENDIX

Land Concessions on Fernando Po, 1862-1890

Nov. 7, 1862 Edmundo J. Smith Mar. 17, 1879 John Armobiz Nov. 7, 1862 Juliana Ysabel Apr. 20, 1880 Elias S. Hollist

Linslager May 24, 1880 Tomas R. Prince Aug. 3, 1863 Eduardo Langland July 13, 1880 Guillermo A. Aug. 19, 1863 Jose Mufioz y Vivour

Gaviria July 17, 1880 Enrique M. Torp Aug. 19, 1863 Faustina Carlota July 11, 1881 J.M. Valcarcel

, . . , Betty July 15, 1882 Compafiia July 29, 1864 Carlos Marsons Trasatlantica July 29, 1864 William Richard Sept. 19, 1882 Compafiia Sept. 28, 1864 Anselmo Guzulla Trasatlantica Feb. 16, 1865 Catholic Mission Aug. 16, 1883 Laureano Diaz da

(Jesuit) Cunha Feb. 16, 1865 Heirs of Tomas July 8, 1884 Francisca Cristian

Juvert July 3, 1884 John Holt Apr. 17, 1865 Saturnino Perez July 18, 1884 Pascual (nephew of July 17, 1865 Compafiia Agricola Margarita .Gardney)

y Comercial de July 19, 1884 James R. MacFoy Fernando P6o July 23, 1884 Francisca Cristian

Feb. 16, 1866 Esteban Szola Aug. 1, 1884 Esteban Furtado Rezonizki [sic] Aug. 1, 1884 Gaily Kenedy [sic]

Feb. 12, 1867 Miguel Real Aug. 9, 1884 Julian Licencio May 7, 1868 Senan Prat Aug. 14, 1884 Cristiana Valcarcel Apr. 13, 1868 Macoly Nov. 27, 1868 Manuel Arcadio Sept. 26, 1884 Desiderio Simon6 Jan. 3, 1873 Bernardo Jose de Sept. 15, 1884 Mateo J. Martien

Barros Sept. 19, 1884 Ramon Ripoll and Jan. 16, 1873 Andres Williams Jaime Giralt Mar. 3, 1873 William Holland Sept. 23, 1884 Laureano Diaz da Dec. 8, 1876 Theophilus Parr Cunha July 8, [1877] Bernardo Jose de Sept. 26, 1884 Tomas Smith

Barros Oct. 6, 1884 Daniel Kinson July 15, [1877] Laureano Diaz a

Cunha Dec. 1, 1877 John Holt

187

188

Oct. 6, 1884 Jaime Giralt and Ramon Ripoll

Nov. 27, 1884 Estif Canbell [sic] Sept. 1, 1884 Enrique Torp Sept. 2, 1884 Nicomedes

Limonta Sept. 5, 1884 Daniel Kinson Sept. 5, 1884 Sept. 11, 1884 William Wilford Jan. 31, 1885 Guillermo A.

Vivour Apr. 21, 1885 Francisco R.

Salazar Apr. 24, 1885 Daniel Williams Mar. 16, 1886 Guillermo A.

Vivour

Mar. 20, 1886 Francisco Romera Aug. 6, 1886 Juana Piple Nov. 3, 1886 Cipriano Gainza Feb. 3, 1887 J. E. Gibney Feb. 5, 1887 Francisco Romera Mar. 23, 1887 Richard W. Burnett Mar. 24, 1887 Luis Lolin Mar. 24, 1887 Francisco Zamora Apr. 2, 1887 Cipriano Gainza Apr. 20, 1887 Compafiia

Trasatlantica June 7, 1887 Jeronimo

Echevarria July 15, 1887 Francisco Roca Sept. 12, 1887 Ramon Ripoll and

Jaime Giralt Oct. 2, 1887 David Tailor Nov. 30, 1887 J. E. Gibney Dec. 10, 1887 Cipriano Gainza Jan. 14, 1888 Laureano Diaz da

Cunha Jan. 19, 1888 Jorge Ston (George

Stone) Jan. 20, 1888 Mariana Brook

Davies and Company

Jan. 21, 1888 Tomas Smith Feb. 14, 1888 Luis Izaquirre Feb. 14, 1888 Jaime Barte y Riera Feb. 14, 1888 Gregorio Garcia Feb. 21, 1888 Felipe Norman

Mar. 19, 1888

Mar. 24, 1888 Mar. 24, 1888 Apr. 3, 1888

Apr. 11, 1888

Apr. 12, 1888

Apr. 28, 1888

May 5, 1888

Aug. 16, 1888 Oct. 18, 1888 Oct. 30, 1888

Nov. 12, 1888 Nov. 13, 1888 Dec. 4, 1888 Dec. 6, 1888

Jan. 17, 1889 Feb. 18, 1889 Feb. 25, 1889 Sept. 2, 1889 Nov. 11, 1889 Nov. 18, 1889 Nov. 18, 1889 Nov.21, 1889 Nov. 22, 1889 Nov.23, 1889 Dec. 7, 1889 Jan. 1, 1890

Feb. 8, 1890 Feb. 24, 1890 Feb. 24, 1890 Mar. 9, 1890 Mar. 9, 1890 Mar. 16, 1890 Mar. 17, 1890

Mar. 17, 1890

May 1, 1890 June 21, 1890 July 5, 1890

Appendix

Nacimiento J. Bruzaca Enrique V. Carillo Francisco Romera Jeremias Barleycorn Francisco Zamora y Gertrudiz Rizo TomandM. Cristian Compafiia Trasatlantica Compafiia Trasatlantica Samuel Prince Mission Catolica Compafiia Trasatlantica Simon P. Collina Tomas Collins John Bonasky Jeremias Barleycorn Tomas Williams Juliana Barley Manuel Furtado Tomas A. Davies Peter Stone Guillermo Scott Franklin Williams F. R. L. MacFoy Esteban Benson Rugston MacFoy Ely S. Hollist Vereda B. and M. Pascual Francisco Zamora Jeronimo Lopez Tomas Lyon Alice Nicol Sabina Rhodes William Johnson Antonio Mendez Sousa Jeremias A. Barleycorn Sarah Bernet Jose Rojas Jack Freeman

Appendix

July 14, 1890 Aug. 7, 1890 Sept. 30, 1890

Jorge J. Valcarcel Yabes Smatt Francisco Castellanos

Sept. 30, 1890 Juan Castillo Sept. 30, 1890 Jonnes Viduel

Davies [sic]

189

Oct. 17, 1890 Jaime E. Gibney

SOURCE: Archivo General de Ia Administraci6n Civil del Estado, Alcala de Henares, Secci6n Africa, Caja G-104, expedition 4. This list was compiled and recorded by Francisco Canaras y Castillo, Secretary of the Colony, February 16, 1912.

:I

NOTES

Introduction

1. Armin. Kobel, "La Republique de Guinee Equatoriale, ses resources potentielles et virtuelles. Possibilites et development" (Thesis, Universite de Neuchatel, 1976), p. 198; African Contemporary Record, 1968-69, ed. Colin Legum and John Drysdale (New York, 1969-), p. 489; Spain in Equatorial Africa, Political Documents, vol. 2 (Madrid, 1964), p. 51.

2. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15-18th Century. Vol. 3. The Perspective of the llbrld (New York, 1982), p. 142.

3. Fernando Po's neighbors have those characteristics generally associated with European insular possessions. See J. C. Caldwell, G. E. Harrison, and P. Ouiggan, "The Demography of Micro-States," llbrld Development, 8. 12 (1980), p. 953.

4. Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese llbrking People, 1881-1905 (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 1-18.

5. Marvin Harris, Patterns of Race in the Americas (New York, 1964). 6. Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical

llbrld in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1989). See also Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (New York, 1986).

7. Sir Harry Johnston, George Grenfell and the Congo, vol. 2 (New York, 1910), p. 962.

8. Jose Maria Cordero Torres, Tratado elemental de derecho colonial espafiol (Madrid, 1941), p. 259.

9. Richard Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome, vol. 1 (London, 1864), p. 15 (quoting T. Waitz).

10. The epidemiological costs of the movement of Arab laborers into tropical Africa can be seen in attempts to use Algerians in Senegal in the nineteenth century and Moroccans on Fernando Po in the twentieth. Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, Geografla historica de la isla de Fernando Poo (Madrid, 1947), p. 201; Philip Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (New York, 1990), p. 39.

11. I. K. Sundiata, "Twentieth-Century Reflections on Death in Zanzibar," The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 20. 1 (1987), pp. 45-60.

12. Frederick Cooper, "Islam and Cultural Hegemony: The Ideology of Slaveowners on the East African Coast," in The Ideology of Slavery in Africa, ed. Paul Lovejoy (Beverly Hills, 1981), pp. 279-307.

190

Notes to Pages 6-13 191

13. James MacQueen, A Geographical and Commercial View of Northern and Central Africa Containing a Particular Account of the Course and Termination of the Great River Niger in the Atlantic Ocean (Edinburgh, 1821), p. 184.

14. Max Liniger-Goumaz, Small Is Not Always Beautiful: The Story of Equatorial Guinea, trans. John Wood (London, 1988), p. 29.

15. See Luis Ramos Izquierdo, Descripci6n geogr4fica, y gobierno, administraci6n y colonizaci6n de las colonias espaiiolas del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, 1912), censo 1912.

16. Manuel de Teran, Sfntesis geogr4fica de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1962), p. 60.

17. Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London, 1962), p. 360. 18. Richard Burton, A Mission, vol. 1, p. 15. 19. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison,

1989), p. 3.

Chapter 1. The Island Background

1. Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, 1990), p. 210.

2. The sides of the Pico de Basile are steep enough to produce abrupt climatic changes. The tropical forest zone extends from 600 to 800 meters. This lower belt of tropical vegetation has an average annual rainfall of 1,200-3,000 mm, and its temperature varies between 17 and 35 degrees centigrade, except for the southern coast. There, in a zone of monsoons, the rainfall is from 4,000 to 12,000 mm per year. Six hundred meters is the lower limit for the growth of tree-ferns. The upper limit of the tropical zone is bounded by a transitional zone extending from 600 to 800 meters above sea level, which has a slightly lower average temperature, ranging from 14 to 32 degrees, and is also more pluvial. Rain averages 2,500-4,000 mm per year. The subtropical mountain forest belt runs between 800 meters and 1 ,500 meters; rainfall is 3,000-4,000 mm per year, and the temperature ranges from 10 to 30 degrees. Because of mists, lichens thrive, along with mosses and epiphytic ferns, including orchids. Between 1,500 and 2,500 meters, araliaceae are prevalent in a zone of uniform woodland. The annual rainfall in the woodland belt varies between 2,000 and 3,000 mm; the temperature fluctuates between 30 and 10 degrees. Beyond 2,000 meters this type of vegetation is scarce due to the rugged terrain.

3. Jan Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, 1966), p. 53. 4. Edwin Ardener, "Documentary and Linguistic Evidence for the Rise of the

Trading Polities between Rio del Rey and Cameroons, 1500-1650," in History and Social Anthropology, edited by I. M. Lewis (London, 1968), p. 88.

5. Personal communication, D. Headrick, July 19, 1987. 6. Edwin Ardener, "Trading Polities," p. 88, citing Pieter de Mareez,

Description et recit Historique du Riche Royaume d'Or de Guinea [sic] (Amsterdam, 1610), 93.

192 Notes to Pages 13-17

7. Thomas Boteler, Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery to Africa and Arabia. . (London, 1835). The English had great difficulty in leaving Fernando Po.

According to Boteler, "our efforts were combated by a current which always tended to sweep us back into the Bight of Benin" (vol. 2, p. 472).

8. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, p. 113. 9. The most prolific collector of Bubi oral tradition is Amador Martin del

Molino. See A. Martin del Molino, "Por caminos anchos y profundos," La Guinea espanola, 60, 1567 (1963), p. 132.

10. Carlos Crespo Gil-Delgado, Notas para un estudio antropol6gico y etnol6gico del Bubi de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1949), p. 170.

11. Willem Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), p. 399.

12. L. Silveira, Descripci6n de Ia isla de Fernando P6o en vlsperas del Tratado de San lldefonso (Madrid, 1959), p. 14.

13. Crespo Gil-Delgado, Notas, p. 85. 14. Vansina, "Western Bantu Expansion," Journal of African History, 25

(1985), p. 132. Vansina tentatively follows the evidence of B. Heine, H. Hoff, and R. Vossen, "Neure Ergebnisse zur Territorialgeschicte der Bantu," Zur Sprachgeschicte und Ethnohistorie in Afrika (Berlin, 1977) p. 61.

Palm nuts from "Middle Carbonera" have been radiocarbon dated to the late seventh century A.D. SeeP. de Maret, "Fernando Poo," in The Archeology of Central Africa, ed. F. Van Noten, (Graz, 1982), p. 60; Amador Martin del Molino, "Que sabemos actualmente del pasado de Fernando P6o," La Guinea espanola, (March 15, 1962), p. 67.

15. Vansina, "Western Bantu Expansion," p. 132. 16. Crespo Gil-Delgado, Notas, p. 87. 17. Harry Johnston, George Grenfell and the Congo (New York, 1910), p. 955. 18. Malcolm Guthrie, The Bantu Languages of Western Equatorial Africa

(London, 1953), p. 24. 19. Gunter Tessmann, Die Bubi auf Fernando Poo: volkerkundlische

Einzelbeschreibung eines westajrikanischen Negerstammes (Darmstadt, 1923), p. 12. 20. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, p. 142. 21. Ibid., p. 294. 22. For discussions of this question, see Gunter Tessmann, Die Bubi; Manuel de

Teran, Slntesis geogr4fica de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1962); Vansina, "Western Bantu Expansion," pp. 129-145; Martin del Molino, Los Bubis, ritds y creencias (Malabo, 1989).

23. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, p. 75. 24. Ibid., 140. 25. Philip Curtin, Steven Feierman, Leonard Thompson, and Jan Vansina,

African History (Boston, 1978), p. 245. 26. David Richardson, "Slave Exports from West and West-Central Africa,

1700-1810: New Estimates of volume and Distribution," Journal of African History,


30 (1989), p. 19. Also see Paul Lovejoy, "The volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Synthesis," Journal of African History, 22 (1982), 473-501; idem., Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (New York, 1983). ·

27. Richardson, "Slave Exports," p. 17. 28. Ibid., p. 14. 29. Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969), pp.

267,269. 30. Ralph Austen, "Slavery among Coastal Middlemen: The Duala of

Cameroon," in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, 1977), p. 316. Also see Ralph Austen with K. Jacob, "Dutch Trading Voyages to Cameroon, 1721-1759: European Documents and African History. Annals de Ia Faculte des Sciences humaines, Universite de Yaounde, 6 (1974), pp. 1-27.

31. Tessmann, Die Bubi, p. 13. 32. Martin del Molino, "Datos etnognificos de los Bubis en siglo XVIII,"

Guinea espanola, 60, 1565 (1963), pp. 38. 33. Robert Gard, "Colonization and Decolonization of Equatorial Guinea,"

unpublished manuscript (1974), p. 12. Northwestern University Library, Evanston, Illinois Martin del Molino, "Datos," p. 37. Also see Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, Geografla historlca de Ia isla de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1947), p. 101. ·

34. "Fernando Po, State of the Slave Trade," Quarterly Review, 26 (October-January, 1822), p. 53.

35. J. Holman, Travels in Madeira, Sierra Leone, Tenerijfe ... (London, 1840), p. 426.

36. J. D. Page, "Slaves and Society in Western Africa, c. 1445- c. 1700," Journal of African History, 21 (1980), p. 310.

Chapter 2. Aborted Antislaving

1. David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987), p. 172.

2. David Northrup, "The Compatibility of the Slave and Palm Oil Trades in the Bight ofBiafra," Journal of African History, 17. 3 (1976), p. 359.

3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. David Eltis, "The Export of Slaves from Africa, 1821-1843," Journal of

Economic History, 37 (1977), p. 429 and fig. 3. 6. David Northrup, Trade without Rulers: Pre-Colonial Economic

Development in South Eastern Nigeria (Oxford, 1978), p. 100, citing P.O. 84/9 Sierra Leone (General): Woods to Bandinel, July 5, 1821 and P.O. 84115, Sierra Leone (General): Woods to Bandinel January 5, 1822 [1832]; Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969), table 71.


7. Patrick Manning, Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth in Dalwmey, 1640-1960 (New York, 1982), pp. 34, 45.

8. Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental and African Slave Trades (New York, 1990), p. 69.

9. See Parliamentary Papers, 1830 (661), vol. X, "Report of the Select Committee on the Settlements of Sierra Leone and Fernando Po," pp. 345-347.

10. David Northrup, "African Mortality in the Suppression of the Slave Trade: The Case of the Bight ofBiafra," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 9 (1978), p. 51.

11. Martin Lynn, "Jolm Beecroft and West Africa, 1829-54" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1978), p. 23.

12. Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1989), p. 18.

13. Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa (Madison, 1964), vol. 1, p. 179. 14. Parliamentary Papers, 1822 (223) vol. XXII, "Navy Communications to the

Admiralty, Extract of a Report from Commodore Sir George Collier on the Coast of Africa," December 27, 1821, p. 27.

15. Richard and Jolm Lander, Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger (London, 1832), 3, p. 304.

16. Parliamentary Papers, 1830 (661), vol. X, "Report of the Select Committee on the Settlements of Sierra Leone and Fernando Po," p. 4.

17. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York, 1973), p. 128.

18. J. H. Latham, "Price Fluctuations in the Early Palm Oil Trade," Journal of African History, 19. 2 (1978), p. 213.

19. Kenneth 0. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830-1885 (Oxford, 1956), p. 50.

20. See G. A. Robertson, Notes on Africa (London, 1819); W. H. Hutton, "Voyage to Africa," Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, November 10, 1821. About Fernando Po, Robertson was especially zealous. In 1819 he and a partner

asked for government protection of a projected settlement. 21. James MacQueen, A Geographical and Commercial View of Northern and

Central Africa: Containing a Particular Account of the Course and Termination of the Great Niger in the Atlantic Ocean (Edinburg, 1821), p. 184; idem., "The Civilization of Africa-Sierra Leone-Liberated Africans, an Open Letter to R. W. Hay," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 20 (December, 1826), pp. 872-92; 21 (MarchMay, 1827), pp. 315-29, 596-619.

22. C.O. 82/1, Extract from Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertizer (Freetown, August 17, 1822). See also Robert Brown, "Fernando Po and the Anti-Sierra Leonean Campaign: 1826-1834," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 6. 2 (1973), p. 259.

23. Brown, "Fernando Po," p. 251.


24. Early in 1826 Owen was engaged in supporting troops in the war with Asante. He was in England when, in June of 1827, he was called on to proceed to Fernando Po.

25. See William F. Owen, Na"ative of Voyages to Explore the Shores of Africa, Arabia and Madagascar, (London, 1833) vol. 1, chap. 21.

26. Robert Brown, "William Fitzwilliam Owen: Hydrographer of the African Coast, 1774-1857" (Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1972), p. 196.

27. Owen, Na"ative of Voyages, vol. 1, p. 342. 28. C.O. 82/1, Owen to R. W. Hay, general observations on the British

establishments on the western coast of Africa, November, 1828. 29. C.O. 82/2, William Owen, Return of the Population of Clarence, March 10,

1829. 30. ADM 1/2273, Owen, n. 50, February 21, 1828, enclosure 1, Campbell to

Owen. 31. For a description of the Colonel, see Sir Henry Huntley, Seven Years' Service

on the Slave Coast (London, 1860), vol. 1, p. 158. 32. For instance, see Eltis, Economic Growth (1987), p. 324n. 33. ADM 1/2274, Owen, n. 19, November, 1828. 34. Robert T. Brown, "William Fitzwilliam Owen: Hydrographer of the

African Coast, 1774-1857 (Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1972), p. 218 .. 35. Northrup, "Compatibility," p. 36; idem., Trade without Rulers, Appendix

D. 36. Leslie Bethell and Jose Murillo de Carvalho, "Part One: Empire (1822-

1889)," in Leslie Bethell, ed., Brazil, Empire and Republic, 1822-1930(New York, 1989), p. 95.

37. Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 246. 38. Brown, "Owen," p. 218; Ralph Austen, "Slavery among Coastal

Middlemen: The Duala of Cameroon," in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, 1977), p. 318.

39. C.O. 82/4, Nicolls to Hay, March 31, 1831; C.O. 8217, Nicolls to Hay, Apri12, 1834.

40. Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 92. 41. Ibid., p. 100. 42. C.O. 82/11, James Stephen to J. Strangeways, February 8, 1839. 43. Patrick Manning, "Slave Trade, 'Legitimate' Trade and Imperialism

Revisited: The Control of Wealth in the Bights of Benin and Biafra," in Africans in Bondage, Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade, Essays in Honor of Philip D. Curtin, ed. Paul Lovejoy (Madison, 1986), p. 217.

44. Dike, Trade and Politics, p. 17. 45. ADM 1.2273, Owen, n. 91, July 14, 1828. 46. C.O. 82/6, Nicolls to Hay, December 10, 1833. 47. Holman, Narrative, p. 431.

", •$.-


48. E. H. Burrows, Captain Owen of the African Survey (Rotterdam, 1978), p. 182, citing Alexander Bryson, Report on the Climate and Principal Diseases of the African Station (London, 1847).

49. C.O. 325/37, John Hay memorandum, February 2, 1833. 50. Robert Garfield, "A History of Sao Tome Island, 1470-1655," (Ph.D.

dissertation, Northwestern University, 1971), p. 1. 51. C.O. 267/84, Cockburn to Bathurst, n. 194, January 5, 1827. 52. Curtin, Image, vol. 1, p. 20. 53. Alexander Bryson, A Report on the Climate and Principal Diseases of the

African Station (London, 1847), p. 58. 54. Ibid., p. 62. 55. Ibid., p. 64. 56. Ibid., p. 65. 57. Brown, "Owen," p. 257, citing ADM 1/2274, Captain Owen, n. 50, June

17, 1829. 58. Martin Lynn, "John Beecroft and West Africa, 1829-54," (Ph. D.

dissertation, University of London, 1978), p. 43. 59. Bryson, Report, p. 98. 60. Peter Leonard, Records of a Voyage to the Western Coast of Africa

(Edinburgh, 1833), p. 36. 61. Brown, "Owen," p. 287 citing C.O. 82/3, Backhouse to Hay, n .. 3386,

August 31, 1830. 62. Parliamentary Papers, 1842, VII (551) II, Report from the Select

Committee on the West Coast of Africa, Appendix 206. 63. C.O. 82/5, Nicolls to Hay, January 30, 1832. 64. Curtin, Image, vol. 2, p. 351. See T. F. Buxton, The African Slave

Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1840), pp. 236-37. 65. Curtin, Image, vol. 1, p. 299 citing M. Laird and R. A. K. Oldfield,

Na"ative of an Expedition into the Interior of Africa by the River Niger in 1832-34, (London, 1837) vol. 1, p. 299; Parliamentary Papers, 1830, XI (551), M. Laird memorandum for the West Africa Committee, pp. 350-351.

66. Bryson, Report, p. 64. 67. Lynn, "Beecroft," p. 218. 68. Bryson, Report, p. 58. 69. Lynn, "Beecroft," p. 218. 70. Baptist Missionary Society (London), 4/5, Joseph Jackson Fuller and George

Grenfell, "Cameroon and Fernando Po" (written notebook). Henceforth Baptist Missionary Society cited as BMS.

71. Baptist Missionary Herald (London) (August, 1844), p. 331. 72. Curtin, Image, vol. 2, p. 343, citing the London Times, September 13,

1848, p. 4. .


Chapter 3. Spain in the Bight

1. Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850 (Madison, 1964), vol. 2, p. 438.

2. Teresa Pereira Rodriguez, "Las relaciones marftimo-comerciales entre Canarias y los territorios del Golfo de Guinea (1858-1930)," in Las Canaria y Africa (Altibajos de una gravitacion), ed. Victor Morales Lezcano (Las Palmas, 1985), pp. 51-77.

3. W. G. Clarence-Smith, "The Portuguese Contribution to the Cuban Slave and Coolie Trades in the Nineteenth Century," Slavery and Abolition, 5. 1 (May, 1984), p. 25.

4. David Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (New York, 1980), p. 89; Jose de Moros y Morell6n and Juan Miguel de los Rios, Memorias sobre las islas cifricana de Espaflll, Fernando Poo y Annob6n (Madrid, 1844), pp. 30-31.

5. An Inquiry into the Right and Duty of Compelling Spain to Relinquish Her Slave Trade in Northern Africa (London, 1816), p. 82.

6. Arthur Corwin, Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1888 (Austin, 1967), p. 87.

7. Ibid., p. 15. 8. Parliamentary Papers, 1823, vol. XIX, Explanatory and Additional Articles

to the Treaty of 1817 between Great Britain and Spain, 1823, p. 37. 9. Murray, Odious Commerce, p. 101. Also see David Eltis, "The Impact of:

Abolition on the Atlantic Slave Trade," in The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, ed. David Eltis and James Walvin (Madison, 1981), pp. 155-176.

10. Moros y Morell6n and de los Ri6s, Memorias, pp. 30-31. 11. Eltis, Economic Growth, p. 103. 12. C.O. 267/69, Canning to Bathurst, August, 1825. 13. Ibid. 14. Curtin, Image, vol. 2, p. 300, citing Sir Thomas Powell Buxton, The

Remedy, Being a Sequel to the African Slave Trade (London, 1840), p. 17. 15. Curtin, Image, vol. 2, p. 302; Sir Thomas Powell Buxton, Memoirs, ed.

Charles Buxton (London, 1848), p. 433. 16. C.O. 82/11, George Grey to Edward Nicolls, November 12, 1838. 17. C.O. 82/11, James Stephen to J. Strangways, February 8, 1839. 18. C.O. 82/9, Colonial Office minute (W. Labourchere, May 3, 1839) on

Henry Southern to Lord Palmerston, April20, 1839. 19. Rodolfo Sarracino, Los que volvieron a Africa (Havana, 1988), p. 124. 20. U. J. Asiegbu, Slavery and the Politics of Liberation, 1787-1861 (London,

1969), p. 50, citing Parlimentary Papers, 1843, vol. XXIX [sic], Spanish Foreign Minister to the British Ambassador at Madrid, December 20, 1841, p. 617, and also 1845, vol. XXI. The correct citation should be Parliamentary Papers, 1843 (483),

.,


vol. LVIII, Correspondence with Foreign Powers (Class B), Spanish Foreign Minister to the British Ambassador at Madrid, December 20, 1841, p. 5.

21. Eltis, Ecorwmic Growth, p. 284. 22. Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia historica de Ia isla de Fernando

Poo (Madrid, 1947), p. 147. 23. Julio Arija, La Guinea espanola y sus riquezas (Madrid, 1930), p. 19. 24. Ibid. 25. Curtin, Image, vol. 2, p. 303. 26. Ibid., p. 306, citing Parliamentary Papers, 1842, vol. XI, pp. iv-x. 27. Parliamentary Papers, Correspondence with Foreign Powers Relative to the

Slave Trade [Class] B-184, Slave Trade 22, 1842 [403], XLll, Commander Tucker to the Chief or Head Man of Corisco, November 7, 1840.

28. C. Gonzalez Echegaray, Estudios guineos, vol. 2, Etnologfa (Madrid, 1964), p. 34.

29. Eltis, "Slave Departures from Africa, 1811-1867: An Annual Time Series," African Economic History, 15 (1986), p. 151. .

30. Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, Islas del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, 1945), p. 72.

31. Jeronimo M. Usera y Alarcon, Memoria de Ia isla de Fernando Poo (Madrid, 1848), p. 29.

32. Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia, p. 386. Also see Penelope Campbell, "The Beginnings of Christian Evangelism and African Responses: American Presbyterians in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon," African Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 3-6, 1976.

33. Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa, (Madison, 1990), p. 234.

34. Clarence-Smith, "Portuguese Contribution," p. 25. 35. Arija, Guinea espanola, p. 19. 36. Sarracino, Los que volvieron, p. 135, citing the "declaracion del tribunal de

comercio," en AHNM, secci6n de Ultramar, legajo 3547, esclavitud, IT, pp. 1-18. 37. Arija, Guinea espanola, p.19. 38. Cronica naval de Espana, tomo Xl-cuardemo 1 (June 1, 1860), p. 106. 39. Thomas Joseph Hutchinson, Ten Years' Wandering among the Ethiopians

(London, 1861; reprinted., London, 1967), p. 298. 40. Cronica naval de Espana, tomo Xl-cuardemo 1 (June 1, 1860), p. 106.

Also see Cronica naval de Espana (September, 1860), pp. 292-297. 41. Unzueta y Yuste, Islas, p. 72. 42. Idem., Geografia, p. 155.

. 43. Sir Richard Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (London, 1864), p. 34.

44. Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1989), p. 110, citing H. Poggio, "De Ia


aclimataci6n en Canarias de las tropas destinados a! Ultramar," Revista general de ciencias mMicas y de sanidad militar, 4 (1867), pp. 257, 287, 353, 385, 429, 460, 517, 591.

45. Pedro Armengol y Comet, JA las islas Marianas o al Golfo de Guinea? (Madrid, 1878), p. 10. ·

46. F.O. 28/1176, Lord Russell to Richard Burton, April20, 1862. 47. Jose Antonio Moreno Moreno, Resena historica de Ia presencia de Espana

· en el Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, 1952), p. 57. 48. Sarracino, Los que volvieron, p. 138, citing British and Foreign State

Papers, vol. XXIV, 1845, 1845-46 (1860), the Duque de Sotomoyor to the Earl of Aberdeen, October 11, 1845, p. 618.

49. Murray, Odious Commerce, p. 288. 50. Franklin Knight, Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century

(Madison, 1970), p. 81. 51. Sarracino, Los que volvieron, p. 142. 52. Ibid. 53. Francisco Balmaseda, Los confinados a Fernando Poo e impresiones de un

viaje a Guinea (New York, 1869), pp. 139-140. The deportees of May, 1869 were a distinguished group of Cuban intelligentsia and bourgeoisie. They included Carlos de Castillo, banker and director of the Cuban Savings Bank; Miguel Embril, rich property owner; Jose Manuel Ponce de Leon, plantation owner; Jose Antonio Pefia y Perez, patrician of the Remedios area; Patricio Freixas, doctor; Pedro Barrenqui, British vice-consul in Cardenas; Miguel Bravo, former Cuban representative in Venezuela. The group also included Francisco Javier Balmaseda, Cuban nationalist propagandist. In August of 1869 the writer and naturalist Jose Rosell arrived.

In one of the ships which repatriated the Cubans, there also arrived an expedition of Spanish colonists, which included women and children. Many colonists returned to Spain in the same boat; the rest did so in the Ferrol in June of the following year. Unzueta, Geografia, p. 229.

54. Corwin, Spain and the Abolition, p. 275. 55. Moreno-Moreno, Resena historica, p. 85; Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia,

p. 284. 56. Archivo General de Ia Admistraci6n Civil del Estado, Alcala de Henares,

Seccion Mrica, G, caja 1932, exp. 3, Deportados cubanos y fllipinos, 1897, enclosure in Governor-General Ramon Baillo to Minister of State, April 10, 1897. Henceforth cited as AGA (AF). Unzueta, Geografia, p. 247. See Emilio Valdes Infantes, Los cubarws en Fernando Poo o los horrores de Ia dominacion espanola (Havana, 1898).

57. Stanley Payne, A History of Spain and Portugal (Madison, 1973), vol. 2, pp. 481-82.

58. Billy Gene Hahs, "Spain and the Scramble for Africa, The 'Africanistas' and the Gulf of Guinea" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1980), p .. 60, citing Jose Muiioz y Gaviria (Vizconde de San Javier), "Cr6nica de las islas de


Fernando Poo y Annobon," Cr6nica general de Espana, 12, part 5 (Madrid, 1871), p. 14.

59. Ibid., p. 65, citing Ignacio Garda Tudela, "Informe anual que el gobernador de Fernando Poo dirige a! Excmo. Sr. Ministro de Ultramar demostrando y encareciendo Ia conveniencia y Ia necesidad de abandonar las posesiones espafiolas del Africa occidental," Ms. 15559, no. 17, Museo Naval, Madrid.

60. Unzueta y Yuste, Geograjia, p. 163. 61. Oskar Baumann, Eine afrikanische Tropen-Insel: Fernando Poo und die

Buhe (Vienna, 1888), p. 123.

Chapter 4. Trade and Politics

1. Kenneth 0. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830-1885 (Oxford, 1956), p. 59.

2. C.O. 82/9, John Clarke, to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, November 2, 1841.

3. Baptist Missionary Society (London), Journals of John Clarke, vol. 1 (2d series), 217, p. 15. Henceforth cited as BMS. C.O. 82/9, Clarke to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, November 2, 1841.

4. C.O. 82/9, Nicolls to Grey, November 13, 1838; Baptist Missionary Herald (September, 1841), p. 133; Jeronimo M. Usera y Alarcon, Memoria de la isla de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1848), p. 29; Thomas Joseph Hutchinson, Impressions of Western Africa (London, 1858), p. 180.

5. BMS, Journal of John Clarke, vol. 2 (1st series), p. 450. 6. Martin Lynn, "John Beecroft and West Africa, 1829-54" (Ph.D.

dissertation, University of London, 1978), p. 170. 7. Ibid., p. 171. 8. Ibid. 9. C.O. 82/9, Clarke to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society,

November 2, 1841. 10. Dike, Trade and Politics, p. 128. 11. J. P. Johnson, Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention (London,

1843), p. 505. 12. Joaquin J. Navarro, Apuntes sobre el estado de la costa occidental de Africa

. . . (Madrid, 1859), p. 73. 13. Jose Mufioz y Gaviria Fabraquer, Cr6nica general de Espana. Africa: Islas

de Fernando P6o, Corisco y Annob6n (Madrid, 1871), n.p. 14. Lynn, "John Beecroft," p. 174. 15. Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850

(Madison, 1964), vol. 2, p. 435. 16. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York, 1973), p.

138.


17. George Norregard, Danish Settlements in West Africa, 1658-1850 (Boston, 1966), p. 168.

18. Robert Brown, "Fernando Po and the Anti-Sierra Leonean Campaing: 1826-1834," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 6. 2 (1973), p. 258, citing ADM 1/2273, Owen, no. 91, July 14, 1828.

19. See 0. Nigel Bolland, Belize: A New Nation in Central America (Boulder, 1986).

20. Curtin, Image, vol. 2, pp. 426-27, citing Nicolls, memorandum of July 20, 1842, enclosed with F.O. 82/616, Nicholls to Canning, June 28, 1845.

21. Johnson, Proceedings, p. 254. 22. Lymi, "John Beecroft," p. 107. 23. F.O. 2/25, William Lynslager to Charles Wise, July 19, 1858. 24. C.O. 82/9, Anonymous to Nicolls, July 24, 1838; C.O. 82/9, John Clarke

to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, November 2, 1841; C.O. 82/9, Liberated Africans to Nicolls, August 14, 1838.

25. C.O. 82/9, J. Backhouse to James Stephen, September 29, 1840. 26. African Agricultural Association, Prospectus, 1842 (n.d.). 27. Ralph A. Austen, African Economic History: Internal Development and

External Dependency (Portsmouth, N. H., 1987), p. 88. The term "creole" has been most frequently used for the Westernized descendants of freed slaves in Sierra Leone. In this work it will be applied in the same sense to the descendants of recaptives on Fernando Po.

28. See Leo Spitzer, The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870-1915 (Madison, 1974), pp. 12-13. The term "Krio" is a more recent usage for the creoles of Sierra Leone.

29. 31. C.O. 82/3, Edward Nicolls, Description of the Harbour and Defenses of the Settlement of Clarence upon the Island of Fernando Po, October 24-30, 1830.

30. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823 (Ithaca, 1975), p. 242.

31. C.O. 82/3, Edward Nicolls, A Description of the Harbour., October 24-30, 1830.

32. Adolfo Guillemard de Aragon, Opilsculo sabre la colonizaci6n de Fernando P6o ... (Madrid, 1852), p. 61.

33. F.O. 2/16, William Lynslager to Thomas Hutchinson, October 20, 1856; Church Missionary Society Archives (London) CA2 106, Thomas Hutchinson to Samuel A. Crowther, October 24, 1856. Henceforth cited as CMS .

34. Thomas Carlyle, "The Nigger Question" in Complete Works, vol. 16. Miscellaneous Essays (Boston, n.d.), pp. 293-326, 424-26.

35. Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London, 1962) pp. 113-114. 36. A. J. H. Latham, Old Calabar, 1600-1891: The Impact of the International

Economy upon a Traditional Society (London, 1973), p. 106. . 37. F.O. 2/9, Beecroft to John Russell, March 22, 1853; Foreign Office to

Beecroft, November 15, 1853.


38. P.O. 2/15, Residents of the Town of Clarence to Thomas Hutchinson, January 23, 1856.

39. P.O. 2/19, Hutchinson to the Earl of Clarendon, March 23, 1857. 40. P.O. 2/19, Residents of Clarence to Lynslager, March 7, 1857. 41. Ibid. 42. P.O. 2/19, Hutchinson to Clarendon, March 23, 1857. 43. Fawn Brodie, The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton (New York,

1967), p. 203, citing Richard Burton, Wanderings in West Africa: From Liverpool to Fernando Po (London, 1863), vol. 1., pp. 1, 3.

44. Sir Richard Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (London, 1864), vol. 1, p. 11.

45. . Byron Farwell, Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton (New York, 1963), p. 207.

46. Burton, A Mission, vol. 1, p. 183. 47. Ibid., p. 15. 48. P.O. 2/16, Lynslager to Hutchinson, November 26, 1856. 49. Latham, Old Calabar, p. 108, citing P.O. 84/1508, Hopkins to Foreign

Secretary, August 28, 1878. 50. Kannan Nair, Politics and Society in South Eastern Nigeria, 1841-1906

(Evanston, 1972), p. 142. For developments under colonialism, see Mac Dixon-Pyle, "The Saro in the Political Life of Early Port Harcourt, 1913-49," Journal of African History, 30 (1989), pp. 125-38.

51. P.O. 8411541, Hopkins to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, March 8, 1879.

Chapter 5. Islanders and Interlopers

1. Amador Martin del Molino, "Por caminos anchos y profundos," La Guinea espanola, 60, 1567 (1963), p. 132.

2. John Clarke, Introduction to the Fernandian Tongue (Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1848), p. v.

3. Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, 1990), pp. 142-43.

4. Manuel de Teran, Sintesis geografica de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1962), p. 48.

5. 6.

p. 485.

Vansina, Paths in the Rainforests, pp. 140-41. Amardor Martin del Molino, Los Bubis, ritos y creencias (Malabo, 1989),

7. Ibid. We have a list of the buala at Riabba, the seat of the Bubi paramount kings in the nineteenth century. A. Martin del Molino, giving each buala a lifespan of forty years, has pushed the dates of the first back to the seventeenth century: Babiaoma, pre-1640; Bao, 1600-1640; Balobedde, 1640-1680, Beole, 1689-1720;


Bamaotedde, 1720-1760, Balobicho, 1760-1800, Badya, 1800-1840. Barilaroote, 1840-1924; Bidya, 1924 to the 1960s.

8. Clarke, Introduction to the Fernandian Tongue, p. v. 9. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest, p. 144. 10. Martin del Molino, "La familia real," La Guinea espanola, 59, 1553

(February, 15, 1962), pp. 37-40. 11. Primitive Methodist Missionary Record (April, 1875), n.p. 12. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest, pp. 145-46. 13. Ibid., p. 80. 14. Martin del Molino, Los Bubis, p. 492. 15. Parliamentary Papers, 1830 (661) vol. X, Report of the Select Committee

on the Settlements of Sierra Leone and Fernando Po, p. 48. 16. William Allen and Thomas R. H. A. Thompson, A Narrative of the

Expedition Sent by Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger in 1841, under the command of Capt. H. D. Trotter (London, 1848), vol. 2, p. 205.

17. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest, p. 142. 18. Jose de Moros y Morell6n and Juan Miguel de los Rfos, Memorias sabre las

islas tifricanas de Espana, Fernando P6o y Annob6n (Madrid, 1844), pp. 31-32. 19. John Clarke, Specimens of Dialects: Short Vocabulary of Languages and

Notes on Countries and Customs of Africa (Berwick-upon-Tweed, 1848), p. 75. 20. Henry Roe, West African Scenes, Being Descriptions of Fernando Po

(London, 1874), p. 57. 21. Parliamentary Papers, 1822 (223), vol. XXll, Communications to the

Admiralty, Report from Commodore Sir George R. Collier, December 27, 1821, p. 297.

22. J. Holman, Travels in Madeira, Sierra Leone, Teneriffe, St. Jago, Cape Coast, Fernando Po, Prince's Island, etc., etc . ... (London, 1840), vol. 1, pp. 307-308.

23. Luis Sorela and L. Guxardo Faxardo, Colonizaci6n en el Africa occidental (Madrid, 1888), p. 24.

24. Oskar Baumann, Eine tifrikanische Tropen-Insel: Fernando Poo und die Bube (Vienna, 1888), p. 106.

25. Antonio Aymemi, Los Bubis en Fernando P6o: Colecci6n de articulos publicados en la revista colonial "La Guinea espanola" (Madrid, 1942), p. 66.

26. Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York, 1922), p. 277.

27. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest, p. 77. 28. Aymernf, Los Bubis, p. 66. 29. Adolfo Guillemard de Aragon, Opasculo sobre la colonizaci6n de Fernando

P6o . .. (Madrid, 1852), p. 27. 30. Martin Lynn, "John Beecroft and West Africa, 1829-54" (Ph.D.

dissertation, University of London, 1978), p. 309.


31. Parliamentary Papers, 1822 (223), vol. XXll, Navy Communications to the Admiralty, Report from Sir George Collier, December 12, 1821, p. 27.

32. Thomas Joseph Hutchinson, Impressions of Western Africa (London, 1858), pp. 187-88.

33. Ibid., pp. 186-87. 34. Wilhelm H. I. Bleek, "On the Languages of Western and Southern Africa,"

Transactions of the Philogical Society of London (1855), pp. 40-50. 35. Holman, Travels, pp. 298-99. 36. Martin del Molino, Los Bubis, p. 176. 37. Clarke, Fernandian Tongue, p. v. 38. Ibid. 39. Teran, Sfntesis, p. 47. 40. Roe, West African Scenes, p. 57. 41. Aymemf, Los Bubis, p. 53. 42. Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia hist6rica de La isla de Fernando

P6o (Madrid, 1947), p. 215. 43. Lynn, "John Beecroft," p. 172. 44. C.O. 82/9, Clarke to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society,

November 2, 1841. 45. Lynn, "John Beecroft," p. 183. Basualla on the east coast was also a major

center of trade. 46. C.O. 82/3, Nicolls to Beecroft, January, 1830. 47. Richard Lander and John Lander, Journal of an Expedition to Explore the

Course and Termination of the Niger, vol. 3, p. 302. 48. BMS, Journals of John Clarke, vol. 1 (1st series), p. 429. 49. Ibid., vol. 1 (2nd series), October 26, 1844. 50. BMS, A/11, Clarence Church Book, May 13, 1848. 51. Participating in this expedition were the Kru Felipe Guir and Santiago

Yegiie. These two men had been taken to Spain in 1843. They were baptized in the chapel of the royal palace in Madrid on May 1, 1844. They returned to Fernando Po in 1845 as sergeants in the newly created militia. Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia, p. 153.

52. BMS, A/12, Clarence Church Book, April 30, 1845. 53. Baptist Missionary Herald (March, 1846), p. 228. 54. Hutchinson, Impressions, p. 192; The Early Years of an African Trader

(London, 1962), p. 157; Martin Lynn, "Change and Continuity in the British Palm Oil trade with West Africa, 1830-1855," Journal of African History, 22 (1981), p. 340.

55. United States, National Archives, Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, September 1-16, 1879, Microcopy M-179/Roll 545, William J. Thomson to Commodore R. W. Shufeldt, May 14, 1879.

56. John Holt, The Diary of John Holt, ed. Cecil R. Holt (Liverpool, 1948), p. 74.


57. John Holt Papers (Liverpool) (henceforth cited as JHP), Box 15, File 4, W. J. Jones to John Holt, August~. 1872.

58. JHP, Box 14, File 6, Thomas Holt to John Holt, November 20, 1874. 59. Baumann, Eine qfrikanische Tropen-Insel, p. 134. 60. Gustav Mann, "Account of the Ascent of Clarence Peak, Fernando Po,"

Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 6 (1862), p. 29. 61. Baumann, Eine qfrikanische Tropen-Insel, p. 101. 62. A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York, 1973) p.

133.

Chapter 6. The Cocoa Economy

1. Gonzalo Sanz Casas, "Politica colonial y organizaci6n del trabajo en Ia isla de Fernando P6o: 1880-1930" (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Barcelona, 1983), p. 119, citing Ferrandiz, "Notas de un viaje a Fernando P6o (Enero-Marzo, 1930)," unpublished text.

2. Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London, 1962), p. 353. 3. J. D. Hargreaves, "African Colonization in the Nineteenth Century: Liberia

and Sierra Leone," in Boston University Papers in African History (Boston, 1964), Vol. 1, p. 66.

4. Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone, p. 360. 5. N. A. Cox-George, Finance and Development in West Africa: The Sierra

Leone Experience (London, 1961), p. 136. 6. J. J. Crooks, A History of the Colony of Sierra Leone, Western Africa

(London, 1903),p. 350. 7. William Allen and R. H. A. Thompson, A Narrative of the Expedition Sent

by Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger in 1841, under the Command of Capt. H. D. Trotter (London, 1848), vol. 2, p. 226.

8. Cristobal Fernandez, Misiones y misioneros en La Guinea espanola (Madrid, 1962), p. 673.

9. Sierra Leone National Archives (SLNA), Minute Papers, 844 (1894), James Richard MacFoy to Colonial Secretary, February 23, 1894.

10. Informe de La comisi6n nomhrada por el gobernador de Fernando P6o en mayo de 1860, para La exploraci6n de La isla (Madrid, 1861), p. 32.

11. According to another source, it was introduced by William Pratt, a Sierra Leonean of West Indian origin, who perceived a similarity of climates between Fernando Po and the Caribbean. Max Liniger-Goumaz, Breve Histoire de La Guinee Equatoriale (Paris, 1988), p. 33.

12. United States, National Archives, Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, September 1-16, 1879, Microcopy M-179/Roll 545, William J. Thomson to Commodore R. W. Schufeldt, May 14, 1879.


13. The account may be apocryphal. See Edward Reynolds, Trade and Economic Change on the Gold Coast, 1808-1874 (London, 1974). Cocoa was probably introduced to the Gold Coast a generation earlier by Protestant missionaries.

14. United States, National Archives, Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, September 1-16, 1879, Microcopy M-179, Roll 545, William J. Thomson to Commodore R. W. Schufeldt, May 14, 1879.

15. John Holt, The Diary of John Holt, ed. Cecil R. Holt (Liverpool, 1948), p. 178; JHP, Series 1, Box 15, File 4, W. J. Jones to J. Holt, October 9, 1872.

16. C. S. Smith, Glimpses of Africa (Nashville, 1895), p. 165. 17. Sanz Casas, "Politica," pp. 105-106. These finqueros were a diverse lot.

Da Cunha was Portuguese consul and had one of the best kept plantations. He had traveled in Europe and owned a store in Santa Isabel, as well as a fleet of small vessels. In contrast, the plantation of the Spanish governor was the one which seemed to be doing least well. It was located at Basile under the management of Geronimo L6pez. The altitude did not benefit the cocoa plants, and experiments with quinine seemed to meet with an equal amount of ill luck. Rogozinski, reputedly an officer of the Imperial Russian Navy, had a farm at Banapa. Romera owned a holding at Bokoko. Antonio Borghes, an Afro-Portuguese, owned a shop in Santa Isabel and was also involved in the burgeoning cocoa economy.

18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., p. 115. 20. For a discussion of the relationship between class formation and the

environment, see Howard Parsons, ed., Marx and Engels on Ecology (Westport, 1977), p. 180.

21. Nigerian National Archives (Ibadan), Calprof 9/1, Southern Nigeria Papers, Correspondence-in-letters to High Commissioner, 1900-December 1901, vol. 1, Foreign Office to Major Gallway, C.M.G., D.S.O., Old Calabar, March 31, 1900.

22. Methodist Missionary Society, Primitive Methodist Mission, Fernando Po, (henceforth cited as MMS, PMM), Box 1, Bell to Wiles, 16 January 1904.

23. Archivo General de Ia Administraci6n Civil del Estado (henceforth cited as AGACE), Secci6n Africa-G, caja 153, Isabel Blanca (Elizabeth White) to the governor-general, January 27, 1911. A later case involved one Rebecca Williams, who wrote from England requesting to sell the property of her late husband, Moses Jones Williams. There were no records in the property registry; the governor-general opined that she was due nothing, since the property had long since been sold to John Holt's agent and to MacFoy. AGACE, Secci6n, Africa-G, caja 153, Angel Barrera to Minister of State, November 1, 1919.

24. JHP, Series 1, Box 10, File 6, Suggestion re[garding] Fernando Po Constitution, notes and comments on Reorganization of Fernando Po with its Powers (1904?).

25. MMS, PMM, Box 1, Fairley, Special Report on the San Carlos Mission, n.d.

26. Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Registro de Ia Propriedad (Malabo) File 1915, certificate, Tomas Alberto G. MacCartey [sic], April23, 1915.


27. F.O. 2/946, Foreign Office Draft to Admiralty, November 8, 1905. 28. F.O. 367/15, Frank Wilson to Foreign Office, June 20, 1906. 29. F.O. 367/62, C. K. MacLean to Provincial Commissioner, Old Calabar,

November 1, 1908. 30. F.O. 367/62, Joseph Emmanuel Taylor to Consul A. Nightingale, October

19, 1907. Four years later Taylor wrote to Madrid, describing himself as a Spanish subject who had been defrauded by Ambas Bay. AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 153, Instancia, Jose Jurado, re[garding] Jose Emmanuel Taylor, January 22, 1911.

31. MMS, PM, Box 1, Wiles to General Missionary Committee, February 29, 1904.

32. MMS, PMM, Box 5, H. M. Cook to General Missionary Committee, September 1, 1909.

33. MMS, PMM, Box 4, Hanham to Guttery, December 3, 1909. 34. Sanz Casas, "Politica," p. 88. 35. F.O. 368/1632, Report on Trade, etc., in the Spanish Possessions in the

Gulf of Guinea for the Year 1915, enclosure in Consul Hall-Hall's dispatch (number 17), April17, 1916.

36. Jose de Almada, Portugal: Comparative Essay on Indentured Lahar at Sao Tome and Prfncipe (Lisbon, 1913), p. 57. The numbers given by English and Portuguese observers are often at variance.

37. For a Spanish view, see Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, Islas del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, 1945).

38. Tony Hodges and Malyn Newitt, Sao Tome and Principe: From Plantation Colony to Microstate (Boulder, 1988), p. 30.

39. Over 1,000 tons (1,057,130 kilograms) were exported in 1877. SeeM. E. Lobo de Bulh6es, Les Colonies Portugaises (Lisbon, 1878).

40. Henry W. Nevinson, A Modern Slavery (London, 1906), p. 188. The chief markets for Portuguese colonial cocoa were Britain, Germany, France, Holland, Switzerland, and the United States. Total imports to the latter were $1.5 million in 1885, and $3.8 million in 1895. De Almada, Portugal, pp. 59-60.

41. Hodges and Newitt, Sao Tome and Principe, p. 30. See Robert Nartey, "From Slave to Servic;al: Labor in the Plantation Economy of Sao Tome and Principe, 1876-1932 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1986), p. 911.

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, there were some six distinct groups on Sao Tome. The filhos da terra, descendants of African slave women and Europeans, included nearly everyone who was not a fazendeiro (plantation owner), government official, slave, or angolar (inland maroon). During the period of the island's seventeenth-century decline, many plantation owners had left for Brazil, and the filho group became filled with ex-slaves, who through various means had won their freedom. In the late nineteenth century, some filhos occupied positions of wealth and power, although toward the end of the period they faced increased competition from metropolitan planters and capital. A second social group, the angolares, were descendants of some Angolan slaves who survived a shipwreck in 1540 and lived


freely in the forests of Sao Tome. A third group, calledforros or libertos, was made up of the descendants of slaves freed when slavery was abolished in the nineteenth century. Fourth were the servil;ais, so-called contract laborers who were imported primarily from Angola to labor on plantations. The children of servir;ais born on the islands (tongas) constituted a fifth social group, and they usually found themselves impressed into plantation labor. Least significant in terms of numbers was the small European group which was, until the influx of capital in the late nineteenth century, almost exclusively engaged in colonial administration.

There were similarities and contrasts between Fernando Po and its neighbors. Because of its long history of settlement, the social structure on Sao Tome already differed considerably from the Bubi/creole situation. Whereas the settler community on Fernando Po was oriented toward the West African mainland by consanguinity and commerce, "creole" society on Sao Tome had affinities with Luanda in Angola and Bahia in Brazil.

42. Hodges and Newitt, Siio Tome and Principe, p. 33. 43. See E. D. Morel, The Black Man's Burden (London, 1920), for a critique. 44. De Almada, Portugal, p. 57. Unlike the Portuguese islands, there was an

exiguous European presence on Fernando Po. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the general census of the Sao Tome and Principe listed 42, 130 inhabitants. There were 40,663 blacks, 1,187 whites, and 280 "mulatos." On Fernando Po the number of Europeans was less than 600, even in the period of the First World War. Only after the War did production achieve levels attained on the Portuguese islands at the end of the nineteenth century.

45. William Gervase Clarence-Smith, "African and European Cocoa Producers on Fernando P6o, 1880s to 1910s," Journal of African History, 35 (1994), p. 184.

46. Ibid., pp. 6-7. 47. AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 104, exp. 3, Memorial from Hijos de

Guillermo J. Huelin, May 4, 1904. 48. Transport was to be in Spanish ships direct from the colony to the

metropole; in case a vessel made a stop in a foreign port, a certificate of origin, overseen by the Spanish consul, was demanded.

Cocoa was sent in sacks which had to list the names of the proprietor and the plantation, accompanied by a certificate from the proprietor giving the number of sacks, brand, number, and total brute weight of the kilos embarked and attaching samples of the grain in a sealed packet, stamped and signed by the proprietor. In addition, the governor had to send a separate report to the Ministerio de Hacienda on the areas that the owner devoted to each crop and the quantity of kilos harvested in the previous year. Sanz Casas, "Politica," p. 186, citing royal decrees of December 28, 1899 and December 4, 1900.

49. Luis Ramos/Izquierdo, Descripci6n geogra.fica, y gobierno, administraci6n y colonizaci6n de las colonias espaftolas del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, 1912), p. 29.

50. Sanz Casas, "Politica," p. 133, citing F. Sabater, Ensayo de Estudio sabre una supuesta plantaci6n de cacao en la isla de Fernando P6o (Barcelona, 1907), p. 14.


51. Billy Gene Hahs, "Spain and the Scramble for Africa, The 'Africanistas,' and the Gulf of Guinea" (Ph.D dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1980), pp. 176-79.

52. In 1881 the director of the Revista de Canarias, Elias Zerolo, emphasized that "Spain possesses there [in the Bights], besides the island ... of Fernando Po ... the immediate coast . . . . For certain, the governments ... since 1858 have looked with the greatest indifference [on] the possession of that coast .... " Teresa Pereira Rodriguez, "Las relaciones marftimo-comerciales entre Canarias y los territorios del Golfo de Guinea (1858-1930)," in Las Canarias y Africa (Altibajos de una gravitaci6n), ed. Victor Morales Lezcano (Las Palmas, 1985), p. 71.

53. See MMS, PMM, Box 2, Report on Fernando Po Missions (1903?). 54. William Gervase Clarence-Smith, "The Portuguese and Spanish Roles in the

Scramble for Africa," in Bismarck, Europe and Africa, ed. S. Forster et al. (London, 1988), p. 226.

55. Sanz Casas, "Polftica," p. 122. 56. Clarence-Smith, "Portuguese and Spanish Roles," p. 226. 57. Sanz Casas, "Politica," p. 71. 58. Clarence-Smith, "The Economic Dynamics of Spanish Imperialism, 1898-

1945," in Segunda aula Canarias y el noroestes de Africa, 1986, ed. Victor Morales Lezcano (Las Palmas, 1986), p. 98.

59. Rafael M. de Labra, Cuestiones palpitantes de polftica, derecho y adminstraci6n (Madrid, 1897), p. 426.

60. C.D.C. (Colonial Defense Council), enclosure in C.O. 520/11, March 27, 1901; C.O. 520/11, Foreign Office to Colonial Office, March 28, 1901; West Africa, March 2, 1902; C.O. 520/11, British Ambassador, Berlin, to Foreign Office, July 5, 1901.

61. Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia, p. 247. 62. AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 140, Bases para Ia formaci6n de una

Sociedad de Explotaci6n Agricola, Industrial y Minera ... 1903. 63. Sociedad Fundadora de Ia Compafiia Espanola de Colonizaci6n, Memoria

demostrativa de las ventajas y bene.ficios obtenibles de La colonizaci6n y explotaci6n de los territorios espaftoles del Golfo de Guinea, (Madrid, 1907), p. 7.

64. Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia, p. 290. See Teresa Pereira Rodriquez, "Notas sobre el colonialismo espafiol en el Golfo de Guinea (1880-1912), Estudios Africanos, Revista de La Associaci6n Espanola de Africanistas, vol. 1, 2d semester, no. 1 (1985), pp. 92-107.

65. El boletin o.ficial de los territorios espaftoles del Golfo de Guinea (January 15, 1924), p. 10.

66. Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia, p. 249. 67. Manuel Gongora Echenique, Angel Barrera y las posesiones espaftolas del

Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, 1923), p.49f., citing Angel Barrera, Las posesiones espaftolas del Golfo de Guinea (Barcelona[?], 1921), pp. 10-11.

I,

i


68. Rene Pelissier, "Fernando P6o: un archipel hispano-guineen," Revue fram;aise d'etudes politiques africaines, 33 (September, 1968), p. 98.

69. Clarence-Smith, "Economic Dynamics," p. 22. 70. Sanz Casas, '"Politica," p. 102. 71. Juan Bravo Carbonell, Territorios espaiioles del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid,

1929), p. 206. 72. Clarence-Smith, "Economic Dynamics," p. 24. 73. Sanz Casas, "Politica," p. 143, citing Presidencia del Consejo de Ministros.

Inspecci6n General de Colonias; Resumenes Estadisticos de Importaci6n y Exportaci6n en los Territories Espaftoles del Golfo de Guinea. Afto 1932 (Madrid), 1934.

74. Clarence-Smith, "Economic Dynamics," p. 20. 75. Manuel Gongora Echenique, Angel Barrera, p. 127. 76. Sanz Casas, "Politica," p. 102. 77. Ibid., pp. 198-199. 78. Clarence-Smith, "Economic Dynamics," p. 24. 79. Guillermo Gortazar, Alfonso XIII, Hombre de negocios: persistencia del

antiguo regimen, modernizaci6n economica y crisis politica, 1902-1931 (Madrid, 1986), p. 167.

80. Ibid. Also see Luis Valdes Cavanilles, Memoria redacta referente al viaje realizado a las posesiones espafioles del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, 1928).

81. W. H. Collins, "Fernando Po Today," Primitive Methodist Herald, 14 (March, 1920), pp. 22-28.

82. George Bell, Our Fernandian Field (London, 1926), p. 13. 83. Gongora, Angel Barrera, pp. 46-47. 84. Sanz Casas, "Polftica," p. 118. 85. Clarence-Smith, "African and European Cocoa Producers," p. 196. 86. Ibid., p. 190. 87. Interviews with Abigail Mehile, Malabo, Mar. 2, 1970; Edward Barleycorn,

Malabo, March 2, 1970; Fernanda Fergusson Broderick, Freetown, October 7, 10, 1987.

88. La voz de Fernando P6o, (October 15, 1915), pp. 10-11; Boletfn oftcial, 24 (December 15, 1920), pp. 172-74; Boletin oficial, 4 (February 15, 1921), p. 28.

89. Sanz Casas, "Politica," pp., 116-19, citing Archivo-biblioteca de la Casa de !a Guinea Ecuatorial (Barcelona), Dossier 532. "Relacion de declaraciones juradas (Cierre 31 enero 1929)."

90. Gonzalo Sanz Casas, "Economic Strategies and Management of Labour in the Cocoa Plantations of Fernando Poo (Equatorial Guinea), 1880-1930," paper presented at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Conference on Cocoa Production and Economic Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, September 15-17, 1993, p. 5, quoting Ruiaz, "Noticias de !a Colonia de Santa Isabel, Cosecha," La Guinea Espanola, 647 (1927), p. 14.

91. Boletfn oftcial, 24 (December 15, 1920), pp. 172-74; Boletfn oficial, 24 (February 15, 1921), p. 28.


92. J. Mildbraed, "Fernando Po," in From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile, 2 vols., ed. Adolf Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (London, 1913), vol. 2, p. 251. Camara Agricola, Malabo, Junta Prorrateadora, Maximiliano Jones to President of the Junta, January, 1928.

93. Camara Agricola, Malabo, Junta Prorrateadora, Manuel Balboa to President of the Junta, January 18, 1928.

94. Camara Agricola, Malabo, Junta Prorrateadora, Walter Dougan to President of the Junta, January, 1928.

95. Ralph A. Austen, African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency (Portsmouth, N.H., 1987), p. 131.

96. Hodges and Newitt, Siio Tome and Principe, pp. 30, 34. 97. Ralph Austen, "Slavery among Coastal Middlemen: The Duala of

Cameroon," in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, 1977), p. 325.

98. D. E. Gardinier, Political Behavior in the Community of Doula, Cameroon: Reactions of the Duala People to the Loss of Hegemony, 1944--1955 (Athens, 1966),

p. 2. 99. Patrick Manning, "L'Affaire Adjovi: la bourgeoisie fonciere naissante

au Dahomey, face a !'administration," in Entreprises et Entrepreneurs en Afrique, 2 vols., ed. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (Paris, 1983), vol. 3, pp. 241-67.

100. Olufemi Omosini, "Alfred Moloney and His Strategies for Economic Development in Lagos Colony and Hinterland, 1886-1891," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 3, 4 (June, 1975), p. 657.

101. John Iliffe, The Emergence of African Capitalism (Minneapolis, 1983), p. 28.

102. A. G. Hopkins, "Richard Beale Blaize, 1845-1904, Merchant Prince of West Africa," Tarikh, 1, 2 (1966), pp. 77-78.

103. Kristin Mann, Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (New York, 1985), p. 22.

104. See Reynolds, Trade and Economic Change, p. 118. 105. Merran Fraenkel, Tribe and Class in Monrovia (London, 1964), pp. 117-

18. 106. Iliffe, Emergence of African Capitalism, p. 18, citing Colin Bundy, The

Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (London, 1979), p. 94; 107. lliffe, Emergence of African Capitalism, p. 18, citing Bundy, The Rise and

Fall of the South African Peasantry (London, 1979), p. 94. 108. Norman Etherington, Preachers, Peasants and Politics in Southeast Africa,

1835-1880 (London, 1978), p. 128. 109. Ibid., p. 179. 110. Austen, "Slavery among Coastal Middlemen," p. 326.


Chapter 7. The Search for Labor

1. Sir Richard Burton, A Mission to Galele, King of Dahome (London, 1864), vol. 1, p. 15. .

2. David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987), p. 28. .

3. Frederick Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters: Plantatwn Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925 (New Haven, 1980!, p. 63n.

4. Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, The End of Slavery (Madison, 1989), p. 51.

5. 183.

6. 226.

Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (New York, 1975), p.

A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York, 1973), p.

7. Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900-1945 (New York, 1971), p. 18.

8. Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (New York, 1983), p. 279.

9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. lbid.,p.10. 12. Kathleen Simon, Slavery (London, 1929), p. 191. . 13. Francisco Scarano, Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico: The Plantatwn

Economy of Ponce, 1800-1850 (Madison, 1984), p. 164. . . . 14. AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 1932, exp. 1, Captam J. Aile, C?Ief ~gent

of the Transatl<intica Company to Governor General of the Spanish PossessiOns m the Gulf of Guinea, May 1, 1897.

15. Manuel de Teran, Sintesis geogr4fica de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1962), p. 67.

16. Gonzalo Sanz Casas, "Politica colonial y organizaci6n del trabajo en Ia isla de Fernando P6o: 1880-1930" (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Barcelona, 1983),

p. 234. . . ' . .. 17. Ibid., p. 237, citing F. Madnd, La Gumea Incogmta (Verguenza Y

escandalo colonial) (Madrid, 1933), pp. 92-93. 18. AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 1931, exp. 1, "Memoria refrente a las

Posesiones espafiolas del Golfo de Guinea, formulada por el Teniente Coronel de Ia Guardia Civil ... Joaquin Fernandez Trujillo," 1926. . .

19. Teresa Pereira Rodriguez, "Aspectos maritimo-comerciales del colomahsi?o espafiol en el Golfo de Guinea," in Segunda aula Canarias y el noroeste de Africa (1986), ed. Victor Morales Lezcano (Las Palmas, 1988), p. ~51. . . .

20. Georges Balandier, The Sociology of Black Afrl_ca: So~wl Dynam1cs m Central Africa (London, 1970), p. 142; Jan Vansina, Paths m the Ramforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, 1990) pp. 134-37, 206,


234; Christopher Chamberlain, "The Migration of the Fang into Central Gabon during the Nineteenth Century: A New Interpretation," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 11. 3 (1978), pp. 429-56. For a discussion of Fang religion, see James Fernandez, Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa (Princeton, 1982).

21. Sanz Casas, "Politica," p. 239, citing AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 133, "Nota sobre el Problema de braceros en Fernando P6o. Entregado por el Pte. de Ia Camara Agricola en 14-5-30."

22. C.O. 82/9, John Clarke to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, November 2, 1841.

23. Mark Delancey, "Changes in Social Attitudes and Political Knowledge among Migrants to Plantations in West Cameroon," (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Indiana, 1973), p. 91. Also see Ralph Austen, "Slavery among Coastal Middlemen: The Duala of Cameroon" in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, 1977), p. 318, citing Transcript S190/106, Archives nationales, Fonds allemands, Yaounde Douala district.

24. Joseph Takougang, "Victoria: An African Township under British Administration, 1916-1961" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1985), p. 177.

25. Ibid., p. 180. 26. Gerald Kleis, "Network and Ethnicity in an Igbo Migrant Community"

(Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1975), p. 40. 27. Ralph Austen, "Slavery among Coastal Middlemen," p. 318, citing

A.N.F.A., Douala District Court Transcripts, S1910/106. 28. Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia hist6rica de la isla de Fernando

P6o (Madrid, 1947), p. 200. 29. Akinjide Osuntokun, "Anglo-Spanish Relations in West Africa during the

First World War," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 7. 2 (June 1974), p. 292.

30. Byron Farwell, The Great War in Africa (New York, 1986), p. 70. 31. Oskar Baumann, Eine afrikanische Tropen-1nsel: Fernando Poo und die

Bube (Vienna, 1888), p. 138. 32. F.O. 2/371, Extract from a Report of a Debate in the Spanish Congress,

March 5, 1900, enclosure 11 in Adams, number 18 of March 6, 1900. 33. Baptist Missionary Herald (September, 1841), p. 133. 34. Thomas Joseph Hutchinson, Impressions of Western Africa (London, 1858),

p. 180. 35. Joaquin J. Navarro, Apuntes sobre el estado de la costa occidental de Africa

... (Madrid, 1859), apendice G. 36. George Brooks, The Kru Mariner in the Nineteenth Century (Newark, Del.,

1972), pp. 78, 109. 37. Burton, A Mission, p. 15.

i I I


38. J. Gutterrez Sobral, "The Outlook at Fernando Po," West Africa (March 2, 1901), p. 35.

39. Brooks, Kru Mariner, p. 57. 40. John Clarke in J. P. Johnson, Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery

Convention (London, 1841), p. 260. 41. Henry W. Nevinson, A Modern Slavery (London, 1906), p. 16. 42. Claude Meillassoux, "Essai d'interpretation du phenomene economique dans

les societes traditionelles d'autosubsistance," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 1 (1961), pp. 38-67.

43. Pierre-Philippe Rey, "L 'esclavage linager chez les tsangui, les punu et les kuni du Congo-Brazzaville; sa place dans le systeme d'ensemble ses rapports de production," in L 'Eslavage en Afrique precoloniale, ed. Claude Meillassoux (Paris, 1975).

44. R. W. Davis, Ethnohistorical Studies on the Kru Coast (Newark, Del., 1976), p. 57, citing Thomas Ludlam, "An Account of the Kroomen on the Coast of Africa," African Repository, 1 (1825-1826), p. 49.

45. Monica Schuler, "Kru Migration to British and French Guiana, 1841-1857," in Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade, Essays in Honor of Philip D. Curtin, ed. Paul Lovejoy (Madison, 1986), p. 183.

46. F.O. 47/36, British Consul Errol MacDonell to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, November 27, 1903.

47. Svend Holsoe, "Slavery and Economic Response among the Vai," in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Meirs and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, 1977), p. 288.

48. Cooper, Slaves to Squatters, p. 63. 49. F.O. 367/286, Admiralty to Foreign Office, September 24, 1912, enclosure

in: Report by Lt. Strong on the Exportation of Native Labour from Liberia to Fernando Po, August 5, 1912.

50. F.O. 367/286 Strong to Admiralty, September 9, 1912; F.O. 367/353, Angel Barrera to Vice-Consul Robert Smallbones, June 3, 1913.

51. Sierra Leone National Archives (Freetown) (henceforth cited as SLNA), Colonial Secretary's Office Minute Paper, 3154/1895, Subject: "75labourers engaged by A. T. Porter to be employed in [the] plantation of Don Francisco Romero [sic], Fernando Po."

52. Baumann, Eine afrikanische Tropen-lnsel, p. 29. 53. SLNA, Colonial Secretary, Minute Papers 1888, 1888/2268, Memorandum

on complaint from Charles Cole, June 16, 1888. 54. SLNA, Colonial Secretary, Minute Papers 1892, 1892/1913, Consulate

General to Governor of Sierra Leone, April30, 1892. 55. F.O. 2/231, J. E. Gibney to Sir Ralph Moor, July 21, 1899. 56. Nigerian National Archives (lbadan), Calprof 9/1, Southern Nigeria Papers,

Correspondence-in-letters to High Commissioner, 1900-December 1901, vol. 1, Foreign Office to Major Gallway ... Old Calabar, March 31, 1900.


57. F.O. 2/371, Extract from a Report of a Debate in the Spanish Congress, March 5, 1899, enclosure 11 in Adams, number 18 of March 6, 1900; AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 219, exp. 3, File: "Motin de trabajadores en Fernando P6o, 1900.

58. John Grace, Domestic Slavery in West Africa, with Particular Reference to the Sierra Leone Protectorate 1896-1927 (New York, 1975), p. 188, citing C.O. 267/472/14840. King-Harman to C.O., April 8, 1904, forwarding report on Sherbro District by Acting D.C.

59. F.O. 458/39, Report upon the General Situation in Liberia as at the end of 1913, enclosure in Mr. Maugham's dispatch No. 74 of April1, 1914.

60. F.O. 367/17, W. S. Brock, Consul at Loanda, to the Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, December, 1905.

61. F.O. 367/61, Consul Nightingale (Boma) to the Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, December 17, 1905.

62. F.O. 367/254, Lt. F. E. K. Strong to Admiralty, November 20, 1911. 63. F.O. 367/285, Consul Bedwell to the Colonial Secretary, April 6, 1912,

enclosing minute by C. Morse, Assistant Commissioner of Police, March 21, 1912. 64. F.O. 367/33, Governor-General Barrera to Vice-Consul Robert Smallbones,

June 7, 1913. 65. F.O. 367/286, Colonial Office to Foreign Office, September 2, 1912. 66. F.O. 367/286, Governor-General Barrera to the British Consul at Calabar

June 7, 1912; F.O. 367/285, Garcia Prieto to Sir M. de Bunsen, July 8, 1912. ' 67. F.O. 367/286, Commander Strong to Admiralty, September, 1912. 68. F.O. 367/286, Admiralty to Foreign Office, September 24, 1912, enclosure

1: Report by Lt. Strong on the Exportation of Native Labour from Liberia to Fernando Po, August 5, 1912.

69. F.O. 367/353, Angel Barrera to Vice-Consul Robert Smallbones June 3 1913. , ,

70. Ibid.; AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 1696, exp. 1, Fernandino Agriculturalists to Minister of State, July 17, 1913.

71. Archivos Nacionales de la Republica de Guinea Ecuatorial (Malabo), file 1036, Manuel Balboa, Ministerio de Estado, Seccion Colonial, Memorandum, 1909.

72. F.O. 367/353, Vice-Consul Smallbones to the Curador, June 10, 1913. 73. F.O. 37111970, Vice-Consul Lewis Bernays to Consul-General Hall-Hall,

February 26, 1914. 74. F.O. 367/353, Decree published in the Boletin oficial of the Spanish

Possessions in the Gulf of Guinea on August 15, 1913, in Smallbones to Grey, August, 1913.

75. Ibid. 76. F.O. 367/353, Foreign Office Minute, October 23, 1913, Bernays to Grey,

September 20, 1913. · 77. F.O. 367/353, Vice-Consul Lewis Bernays to Foreign Office, October 3,

1913, enclosure number 3: copy of a letter addressed by a wealthy native planter to the head office in England of a local firm, September 8, 1913.


78. Akin Mabogunje, Regional Mobility and Resource Development in West Africa (Montreal, 1972), pp. 1-2.

79. F.O. 458/39, Dispatch no. 38/14, Acting Consul General H. Parks to F.O., May 16, 1914.

80. MMS, PMM, Box 3, File: Fernandino Cocoa Report, H. Markham Cook to General Missionary Committee, June 10, 1915.

81. League of Nations, Secretariat, Report of the Liberian Commission of Enquiry (C.658.M272), June, 1930, p. 36 (henceforth cited as League of Nations, Report).

82. Raymond Buell, The Native Problem in Africa (New York, 1928), vol. 2, p. 782.

83. League of Nations, Report, p. 44. 84. Juan Bravo Carbonell, Territorios espafwles del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid,

1929), p. 103. 85. F.O. 371/12759, Vice-Consul C. H. Chew, Santa Isabel, to Consul-General,

Monrovia, November 9, 1928. 86. League of Nations, Report, p. 41. 87. Ibid., p. 36. 88. F.O. 37117211, Manuel Gonzalez Hontoria to Sir Esme Howard, Madrid,

January 6, 1922. 89. League of Nations, Report; p. 41. 90. George Schuyler, "Wide 'Slavery' Persisting in Liberia, Post Reveals,"

Evening Post (New York), June 29, 1931, p. 1. 91. Nnamdi Azikiwe, "In Defense of Liberia," Journal of Negro History, 17. 1

(January, 1932), p. 44. 92. Ibid. 93. "Home of the Free," New Statesman, 36, 925 (January 17, 1931), p. 429. 94. Claude Barnett Papers. Chicago Historical Society, Associated Negro Press

News Release, January 28, 1931. 95. Otto Rothfield, "Liberia and the League of Nations," The Crisis, (April

1931), p 121. 96. Sanz Casas, "Politica," p. 247, citing AGACE, carpeta 136, "Informacion

instruida para depurar hechos denunciados en la Direccion general de Marruecos y Colonias sobre la reculta de braceros ... " (1931).

97. Ibid., p. 246. See AGACE, Seccion Africa-G, caja 132, "Carpeta 22 sobre esclavitud en Liberia, Presidencia del Consejo de Ministros, Direccion General de Marreucos y Colonias, Seccion de Colonias, Madrid, 25 julio 1932, Antonio Canovas al Ministro de Estado.

98. F.O. 458/126, British-Consul, Santa Isabel to Foreign Office, April 30, 1936. Also see F.O. 4581127, Yapp, Report on Employment of British Coloured Labour in Fernando Po as the result of a visit made August 29- September 1, 1936, enclosure no. 1 to Mr. Yapp's despatch no. 72 from Monrovia, dated September 15, 1936.


In 1936 the West African Review attacked "Slavery in Spanish Guinea" and wrote: "We have seen Abyssinia and Liberia under reprimand for this offence, yet little or nothing has been said about the trade still carried on by Spain in her territories in the Gulf of Guinea. . . . All too little publicity has been given to the unlawful activities of people employed by Spain to recruit. ... " West African Review, 104 (May, 1936), p. 14. In February of 1936 the Foreign Office received, via the consulate in Monrovia, a letter from six African British subjects on Fernando Po, who complained of bad treatment and bad land dealings.

99. See Harry Greenwalt and Roland Wild, Unknown Liberia (London, 1936).

Chapter 8. Creole Culture and Change

1. Rene Pelissier, "Fernando Poo: un archipel hispano-guineen," Rew franfaise d'etudes politiques africaines, 33 (September, 1968), p. 95.

2. See John Holm, Pidgins and Creoles (New York, 1989), vol. 2, pp. 418-21 3. See Arthur Porter, Creoledom: A Study of the Development of Freetowi.

Society (London, 1963), P. C. Lloyd, Africa in Social Change (Baltimore, 1967); Akintola Wyse, The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretive History (London, 1989); Leo Spitzer, Lives in Between: Assimilation and Marginality in Austria, Brazil, West Africa, 1780-1945 (New York, 1989).

4. P. C. Lloyd, Africa in Social Change, p. 128. 5. Kristin Mann, Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change among

the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (New York, 1985), p. 33. 6. Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (London,

1979), p. 92. 7. Mann, Marrying Well, p. 4. 8. In 1869 a member of the Cameroonian Baptist mission reported that all he

"could do was to speak to a few in private, who came to see me, or whom I went to see at their own houses; but the generality of the people and other strangers there had not the benefit of my visit. ... " Baptist Missionary Herald (January 1, 1870), n.p.

9. Cristobal Fernandez, Misiones y misioneros en la Guinea espanola (Madrid, 1962), p. 82.

10. "Manunies" Campbell, Attee, Nicol, Kennedy, Hollist, Collins, Kinson, Knox, Brown, Jones, Barleycorn, Coker, and Orgill were all involved with the Primitive Methodist Mission. Perhaps the mission's most ardent supporter was Elizabeth ("Mama") Job. She was an lgbo woman who landed in the time of Owen; before her death in 1896 she had raised more than a hundred orphans. The matron had been the guiding light in the maintenance of Protestant worship and education in the period from 1858 to 1869 and had been among the first to welcome the Primitive Methodists in 1870." Primitive Methodist Missionary Record (January, 1870), p: 11; Nathaniel Boocock, Our Fernandian Missions (London, n.d.), p. 20.


11. See John Peterson, "The Sierra Leone Creoles: A Reappraisal," in Freetown: A Symposium, ed. Christopher Fyfe and Eldred Jones (Freetown, 1968), pp. 100-17.

12. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structures (Glencoe, Til., 1957), p. 58, paraphrasing Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York, 1928), chps. 2-4.

13. K. E. DeGraft-Johnson, "The Evolution of Elites in Ghana," in The New Elites of Tropical Africa, ed. P. C. Lloyd (London, 1966), p. 109.

14. Mann, Marrying Well, p. 50. 15. MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 5, Boocock file, MacFoy to the General

Missionary Secretary, February 6, 1895. 16. Ibid. 17. MMS, PM, Fernando Po, Box 4, Hanham to Pickett, October 16, 1907;

Guttery, March, 1909. 18. MMS, PM, Fernando Po, Box 4, Barleycorn to Travis, August 28, 1890. 19. Julio Arija, La Guinea espafwla y sus riquezas (Madrid, 1930), p. 136. 20. Philip Curtin, The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850

(Madison, 1964), vol. 1, p. 252. 21. MMS, PM, Box 5, J. Bell to Pickett, May 31, 1905. 22. MMS, PM, Box 4, Hanham to Pickett, October 16, 1907. 23. Nigerian National Archives (Ibadan), Calprof 9/1, Southern Nigeria, Papers,

Correspondence-in-Letters to High Commissioners, 1900-December 1901, vol. 1, F.O. to Major Gallway ... Old Calabar, March 31, 1900.

24. Cristobal Fernandez, Misiones, p. 614. 25. Armengol Coli, Segunda memoria de las misiones de Fernando P6o y sus

dependencias (Madrid, 1911), p. 75. 26. MMS, PM Fernando Po, Box 2, Report on Fernando Po Missions (1903?). 27. Juan Bravo Carbonell, Fernando P6o y el Muni: sus misterios, sus riquezas,

su colonizaci6n (Madrid, 1917), p. 160. 28. "Censo de Santa Isabel 28 de febrero de 1920," La Guinea espanola, 7

(April 25, 1920), p. 80. According to the source, there were only 202 Fernandina adults, out of an African population of 3,250. The adult creole population was outnumbered by the 280 Europeans (the number given is actually 286).

29. Gonzalo Sanz Casas, "Politica, colonial y organizaci6n del trabajo en la isla de Fernando P6o: 1880-1930" (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Barcelona, 1983), p. 287, citing Census, December 31, 1923, Boletin Oficial, January 15, 1924.

30. Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, Geografia hist6rica de la isla de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1947), p. 299.

31. Abelardo de Unzueta y Yuste, "Ethnografia de Guinea: algunos grupos inmigrantes de Fernando P6o," Africa, 77-78 (May-June, 1948), pp. 28-31.

32. MMS, PMM, Box 5, Boocock file, James MacFoy to General Missionary Society, February 6, 1895.


33. Church Missionary Society Archives (London), G 3 A3/0, 1904, no. 110, James Johnson, A Report of a Missionary Journey within and beyond the Southern Nigeria British Protectorate from November, 1903 to July, 1904.

34. MMS, PMM, Box 5, Jabez Bell, Fernando Poo Missions, 1903. 35. AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, caja 71, expidiente 28, Daniel Dore and Gil de

Ory (?) to the President of the Council of State, September 26, 1911. 36. MMS, PMM, Box 2, Quarterly Meeting, December 9 and 10, 1919. 37. MMS, PM, Box 2, Quarterly Meeting, Santa Isabel, November 19, 1924. 38. George Bell, "Our Position and Prospects in Fernando Poo," Primitive

Methodist Herald, 16 (March, 1922), pp. 28-29. 39. George Bell, "Something Attempted at Santa Isabel," Primitive Methodist

Advance (February, 1931), p. 22. 40. Examples abound. Abigail Hannah Barleycorn MacFoy, the daughter of

James MacFoy, was educated at the Wesleyan Girls High School in Sierra Leone. Later she spent two years in school in Barcelona. She acquired further education in England and returned to the island in 1903. In 1922 she moved to Abba, Nigeria, with her grandchildren and returned to Fernando Po only at the end of the 1960s. Interview with Abigail Hannah Barleycorn MacFoy Mehile, Santa Isabel, March, 1970.

41. Testament of Maximiliano C. Jones, May 23, 1944. The will is now in the possession of Sr. Samuel Ebuka, former Equatorial Guinean ambassador to Ethiopia.

42. Archivo Nacional de la Republica de Guinea Equatorial, Malabo (henceforth cited as ANRGE), Correspondencia, Jones, File 65, Maximiliano Jones to Governor-General, August 8, 1913.

43. ANRGE, Correspondencia, citing memorandum, Francisco Canarias y Castillo to Governor-General, September 11, 1913.

44. Testament ofMaximiliano C. Jones, May 23, 1944. 45. Ibid. 46. MMS, Mss. NIT 23, Rev. F. W. Dood, "Fernando Po, Sierra Leone and

the Gambia, February-June, 1939. 47. AGACE, Secci6n Africa-G, G.l859, Memoria sobre el problema de la

mano de obra en la isla de Fernando P6o por Don Alfred Jones Niger, Perito Agricola del Agronomico de los Territorios espaiioles del Golfo de Guinea, Santa Isabel, December, 1938.

Chapter 9. The Bubi: Acculturation and Resistance

1. Manuel de Teran, Sfntesis geogr4fica de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1962), p. 87.

2. Carlos Crespo Gil-Delgado, Notas para un Estudio antropol6gico y etn6logico del Bubi de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1949), p. 192.

3. Rene Pelissier, "Uncertainties in Spanish Guinea," Africa Report, 13 (March, 1968), p. 19.

I'' I ,!1

'

II 'I·

I


4. Max Liniger-Goumaz, Breve Histoire de La Guinee Equatoriale (Paris, 1988), pp. 71-72.

5. See A. de Veciana Viladach, La secta del Bwiti en La Guinea espanola (Madrid, 1958); James Fernandez, Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa (Princeton, 1982).

6. Crespo Gil-Delgado, Notas, p. 191. 7. Ibid. 8. R. Howe, "Spanish Equatorial Island," Africa Report, 11 (June, 1966), p.

48. 9. Amador Martin del Molino, Los Bubis, ritos y creencias (Malabo, 1989), p.

374, citing Jose Mufioz y Gaviria, Tres anos en Fernando P6o: Viaje a Africa por el vizconde de San Javier (Madrid, 1871).

10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., p. 378. 12. Ibid., citing A. Aymemf, La Guinea espanola 644 (1927), p. 6. 13. Ibid., citing Jose Valero, "La Guinea espanola. La Isla de Fernando Poo,"

Boletfn de La Sociedad Geogr4fica Colonial y Mercantil, 32 (1892), p. 167. 14. Billy Gene Hahs, "Spain and the Scramble for Africa: The 'Africanistas'

' and the Gulf of Guinea" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1980), p. 182. The founder of the Claretians was Father Claret, the "Apostle of Spain." The cleric was the enemy of secularizing tendencies in mid-nineteenth-century Spain. In the 1840s he had undertaken evangelizing tours in Spain and urged his countrymen to return to the Faith. His catechism sold over four million copies, and in 1857 he became confessor to Isabel IT. In his view, religion and good works by the aristocracy would stave off the threat of social revolution. He argued that the government should abandon liberal principles in an effort to preserve Spain from what he perceived as "atheism." Raymond Carr, Spain, 1808-1939 (Oxford, 1966), p. 286.

15. Oskar Baumann, Eine afrikanische Tropen-Insel: Fernando Poo und die Bube (Vienna, 1888), p. 123.

16. Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, 1897), pp. 57-58. 17. Cristobal Fernandez, Misiones y misioneros en La Guinea espanola (Madrid,

1962), p. 270. 18. Ibid., p. 224. 19. Sanz Casas, "Polftica colonial y organizacion del trabajo en Ia isla de

Fernando Poo: 1880-1930" (Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Barcelona, 1983), p. 206.

20. Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, 1990), p. 113.

21. John Clarke, Introduction to the Fernandian Tongue (Berwick-on-Tweed, 1848), p. v. .

22. See Teran, Sfntesis, pp. 58-59; Spain in Equatorial Guinea (Madrid, 1964), p. 23; Luis Ramos Izquierdo, Descripci6n geogr4fica y gobierno, administraci6n y colonizaci6n de las colonias espanolas del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, 1912), p. 20.


23. See Gunter Tessmann, Die Bubi auf Fernando Poo: volkerkundliche Einzelbeschreibung eines westafrikanischen Negerstammes (Darmstadt, 1923), p. 24.

24. William Gervase Clarence-Smith, "African and European Cocoa Producers on Fernando Poo, 1880s to 1910s," Journal of African History, 35 (1995), p. 186, citing Methodist Missionary Society Archives (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), 1153, mf 183, W. Barleycorn to Mr. Burnett, September 21, 1900; AGACE, C-148, E-6, GG to Ministry, November 28, 1910.

25. Ibid., p. 187, citing Tessmann, Die Bubi, pp. 216-17, 236-37. 26. Ibid., citing AGACE, C-974, E-25, L. Navarra, "Consideraciones,"

January 1, 1888. 27. Ibid., p. 15, citing AGACE, C-148, E-6, Governor-General to Ministry,

September 15, 1906, October 1, 1906, and December 13, 1906. 28. Juan Bravo Carbonell, Fernando P6o y el Muni: sus misterios, sus riquezas,

su colonizaci6n (Madrid, 1917), p. 197. 29. Ramos-Izquierdo, Descripcion geogr4fica, p. 345. 30. La voz de Fernando P6o, 39 (January 15, 1912), p. 8. 31. Clarence-Smith, "African and European Cocoa Producers," p. 187, citing

AGACE, C-2, E-5, "Bando sobre el trabajo de los Bubis," July 26, 1912. 32. Ibid., citing Rhodes House, Oxford, Mss. Afr. s 1525, 13/7, Holt to Huelfn,

February 13, 1913. 33. See Nathaniel Boocock, Our Fernandian Missions (London, n.d.), p. 90. 34. Ibid., p. 90. 35. Fernandez, Misiones, p. 529. 36. Ibid., p. 521. 37. Clarence-Smith, "African and European Cocoa Producers," p. 181, citing

Ferrer Piera, Fernando P6o y sus dependecias (descripci6n, producciones y estado sanitaria (Barcelona, 1900), p. 115. This avenue for Bubi acquisition of guns was cut off by the government in 1906, when the Spanish forbade such trade. AGACE, C-148, E-6, GG to Min., October 30, 1906.

38. Ibid., citing AGACE, C-148, E-6, Governor-General to Ministry, November 28, 1910; Liverpool City Library, 380 JHP-1, 9/1, Fernando Po letter, December 21, 1910; G. Tessman, Die Bubi, p. 216.

39. One concession of over eighteen hectares was registered. Clarence-Smith, "African and European Cocoa Producers," p. 187, citing Archivo de Ia Casa de Guinea, Barcelona, "Relacion de los terrenos concedidos," 1909-1916.

40. Ibid., p. 194, citing AGACE, C-148, Governor-General to Ministry, October 15, 1910.

41. Lo que es y lo que podra ser La Guinea espanola (Barcelona, 1931), n.p. 42. Clarence-Smith, "African and European Producers," pp. 197-98, citing

Sanz Casas, "Politica colonial," p. 117; J. L. Barcelo, Perspectivas econ6micas del Africa Ecuatorial Espanola (Madrid, 1947), p. 34; "Viaje a las posesiones Espaiiolas del Golfo de Guinea, Abril-Septiembre de 1941," pp. 80-81, 88-92 and map.


43. Interview with Abigail Mehile, Malabo, March 2, 21, 1970. 44. Liniger-Goumaz, Breve Histoire, pp. 14-15. 45. Randall Fegley, Equatorial Guinea: An African Tragedy (New York, 1989),

p. 26. 46. Crespo Gii-Delgado, Notas, p. 191. 47. Howe, "Spanish Equatorial Island," p. 48. 48. Rene Pelissier, "Spain's Discreet Decolonisation," Foreign Affairs, 43. 3

(April27, 1965), p. 525. 49. Pedro Nsue Ela, letter to the editor, Africa 2000, 213 (1987), p. 48.

Epilogue

1. Jan Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, 1990), p. 210.

2. Ralph Austen, "Slavery among Coastal Middlemen: The Duala of Cameroon," in Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff (Madison, 1977), pp. 326-27.

,, · 3. John Iliffe, The Emergence of African Capitalism (Minneapolis, 1983), p. 18.

4. Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905, p. 107.

5. Akinjide Osuntokun, "Nigeria-Fernando Po Relations from the Nineteenth Century to the Present," paper delivered at the Canadian African Studies convention, Universite de Sherbrooke, April 26-May 3, 1977, p. 44, citing P.O. 371/49690, Research Department, February 1, 1945.

6. William Gervase Clarence-Smith, "The Impact of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War on Portuguese and Spanish Africa," Journal of African History, 26 (1985), p. 324.

7. Ibid. 8. Robert Gard, "Colonization and Decolonization of Equatorial Guinea"

(unpublished manuscript, Northwestern University, 1974), p. 92; citing Anuario de Estadistica y Cadastro de la Direccion de Agricultura (Madrid, 1944).

9. R. J. Church, et al., Africa and the Islands (New York, 1964), p. 278. 10. Armin Kobel, "La Republique de Guinee Equatoriale, ses resources

potentielles et virtuelles. Possibilites de developement" (Ph.D. dissertation, Universite de Neuchatel, 1976), p. 206, citing estimates of the Servicio Agronomico, Malabo, 1972.

11. S. 0. Osoba, "The Phenomenon of Labour Migration in the Era of British Colonial Rule: A Neglected Aspect of Nigeria's Social History," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 4. 4 (1969), p. 520, citing Nigeria, Annual Report of the DepartmentofLahour, 1954/55, Lagos, p. 13.


12~ Osuntokun, "Nigeria," p. 33. 13. Max Liniger-Goumaz, Small Is Not Always Beautiful: The Story of

Equatorial Guinea (London, 1988), p. 32. 14. Gard, "Colonization," p. 871. 15. Liniger-Goumaz, Small Is Not Always Beautiful, p. 32. 16. Manuel de Teran, Sfntesis geognijica de Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1962), p.

87. 17. C. LOpez Moms, "Aspectos de Ia lucha sanitaria en Guinea," Archivos de

Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 9 (August, 1949), p. 10. 18. A. Arbelo Curbelo and R. Villarino Ulloa, Contribuci6n al estudio de la

depoblacfon indfgena en los territorios espafwles del Golfo de Guinea, con particularidad en Fernando P6o (Madrid, 1942), p. 100.

19. Robert af Klinteberg, Equatorial Guinea-Macfas Country (Geneva, 1977), p. 5.

20. Spain in Equatorial Africa, Political Documents, 2 (Madrid, 1964), p. 50. 21. "Equatorial Guinea," African Contemporary Record, vol. 1, 1968-1969, ed.

Colin Legum (London, 1970), p. 483; Kobel, "La Republique," p. 198. 22. Gard, "Colonization," p. 406. 23. Max Liniger-Goumaz, Connaftre la Guinee Equatoriale (Geneva, 1986), p.

55. 24. "Update," Africa Report (January, 1969), p. 26. 25. Gard, "Colonization," p. 871.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Archivo General de Ia Administraci6n Civil del Estado (AGACE), Alcala de Henares. Consult Africa: Guinea-Inventario Topogrdfico. Secci6n Africa-G Torno I, cajas G. 2, 15, 71, 104, 153, 155, 219; also cajas G. 1696, 1753, 1859, 1876, 1931, 1932.

Archivos Nacionales de Ia Republica de Ia Guinea Ecuatorial (ANRGE), Malabo. (Consult Constantino Ocha'a Mve Bengobesama, Fuentes Archivfsticas y Bibilotecarias de Guinea Ecuatorial [Gufa general del administrativo del investigador y del estudiante], Madrid: Anzos, S. A., 1985. Archival Files: 1036/Balboa, 65/Jones, 170/Dougan, 10911Dekage. Registro de Ia Propriedad: File 1915. Camara Agricola: Record Books, 1927, 1928 Correspondencia, Secci6n de Prorrateo, 1928-30.

Baptist Missionary Society Archives, London (BMS), Cameroons and Fernando Po Mission: Correspondence of John Merrick, Joseph Diboll, and various other missionaries. Miscellaneous documents and deeds. Joseph Jackson Fuller, "The West African Mission of the B.M.S. from Its Beginning to 1887."

The Clarence Church Book, October 2, 1842-February 18, 1849. Chicago Historical Society. Claude Barnett Papers. Church Missionary Society Archives, London (CMS). G3 A3/0 1904, Number 110:

James Johnson. "A Report of a Missionary Journey within and beyond the Southern Nigeria British Protectorate from November 1903 to July 1904." CA3 04/326: "Chairman and Members of the Committee appointed at a Public Meeting to take steps for introducing a Protestant Church in Fernando Po to Bishop Samuel A. Crowther, October 6, 1869." CA2 016: Thomas Hutchinson to Samuel A. Crowther, October 24, 1856. CA3 03: Thomas Hutchinson to Samuel A. Crowther, October 24, 1856.

The John Holt Papers, Liverpool (JHP). Series 1: Box 11Files 1 and 2; 10/6; 1114; 12A/3, 6, 7; 13/3; 14/6, 6, 8, 9, 10; 15/4, 5, 6; 17/3; 19/1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9; 22/2C-G, 4, 5; 25/3, 4; 26/1, 1A, lB, 2, 3; 30/1. Journals of John Clarke: First Tour: Vols. 1 and 2, 1840-42; Second Tour: Vols. 1, 2, 3, 1843-46.

224

Bibliography

Methodist Missionary Society, London (MMS). Primitive Methodist Mission, Fernando Po (PMM). Boxes 1, 2: incoming correspondence, 1892-1933.

225

Box 3: financial data on the San Carlos mission (1894-1912) and Santa Isabel (1894-1912). Box 4: miscellaneous. Box 5: biographical reports, West Africa. Box 6: papers of Robert Farley; journal of W. B. Luddington. Mss.N/T 23: Report, "Fernando Po, Sierra Leone and the Gambia, FebruaryJune, 1939.

Nigerian National Archives, lbadan. Calabar Provincial Papers (Calprof) Southern Nigeria Papers. Vol. 1: correspondence-in-letters to High Commissionioner, 1900-December 1910.

Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, Africana Library microfilm. Great Britain. Foreign Office Correspondence from the Consulate-General, Monrovia, 1929-36 (F.O. 458/119-F.O. 458/127).

Public Record Office, London. Admiralty

112259-2276, Captain's letters 1808-39; 112634, Captain's letters 1820-29; 1/1, Admiral's dispatches Africa 1830-32. 2/1586-1590, Out dispatches, Military, Foreign stations 1822-31. 49/51, Fernando Po 1827-28. 53/485, Captain's log, Eden

Colonial Office C.0.267 Correspondence from Sierra Leone to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. C.0.323/144-171 private letters to Hay concerning Africa, 1825-33 C.0.325/37 C.0.82/1-11 Fernando Po. Correspondence and memoranda between the Colonial Office and Fernando Po during the British occupation. C.0.520/ll.

Foreign Office F.O. 2 Fernando Po. Correspondence between the British Consulate on Fernando Po and the Foreign Office. F.O. 28/1176. F.O. 72/1826. F.O. 47/36 Liberia. F.O. 84 Foreign Office letters and reports concerning the slave trade. F.O. 367/15, 16, 17, 33, 61, 62, 254, 285, 286, 353, 1970. F.O. 368/1632. F.O. 371/1960, 5562, 7211, 8465, 12757, 12758, 12759, 13480.

~·I' I 'I

:I

226 Bibliography

F.O. 458/29, 39, 60, 74, 126, 127. Sierra Leone National Archives

Freetown (SLNA). Colonial Secretary's Office, Minute Papers, 1888-98, Documents 46, 844, 1913, 1798, 2254, 2958, 2266, 2268, 3090, 3154, 3476, 5669.

United States National Archives, Department of State, Washington, D.C. Miscellaneous letters of the Department of State, September 1-16, 1879. Microfilm number M-179/Roll 545, William J. Thomson to Commodore R. W. Shufeldt, May 14, 1879. Record Group 59: General Records of the Deparment of State. Records of the Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Liberia, 1910-41. Records of the Department of State Relating to the Political Relations of Liberia with United States, 1919-41. Records of the Department of State Relating to the Affairs of Liberia, 1919-29. Political Affairs. Washington, D.C., 1965. Also available on microfilm. Northwestern University Library. Evanston, lllinois.

,, Published Official Sources

League of Nations. Secretariat. Report of the Liberian Commission of Enquiry, C.658.M272, June 1930.

Parliamentary Papers Shannon Ireland: Irish University Press, 1969. The Irish University Press Slave Trade series volume numbers are given in the left column below. In the middle column are the volume and session numbers cited throughout the text which are the original Parliamentary Papers reference numbers. A short title is given in the right column.

1830 (661) X

11 1826-27 XXVI

1828 (542) XXVI

12 1829 XXVI

13 1831-32 XLVII

22 1842 [403] XLIII 23 1843 [483] LVIII 64 1822 (223) XXII 66 1823 XIX

Report of the Select Committee on the Settlements of Sierra Leone and Fernando Po Correspondence with British Commissioners (Class A) and with Foreign Powers Class B) Correspondence with British Commissioners (Class A) and with Foreign Powers (Class B) Correspondence with British Commissioners (Class A) and with Foreign Powers (Class B) Correspondence with British Commissioners (Class A) and with Foreign Powers (Class B) Correspondence with Foreign Powers (Class B) Correspondence with Foreign Powers (Class B) Papers Relating to the Slave Trade, 1821-22 Other treaties and papers. Explanatory and

Bibliography 227

additional articles to Anglo-Spanish treaty. United States Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1910-41.

Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Private Documents and Communications

Papers of Sr. Samuel Ebuka and Sra. Trinidad Moragades (Malabo). Personal Communication, D. Headrick, July 19, 1987.

Interviews

Edward Barleycorn, Malabo, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, March 2, 1970; Abigail Mehile, Malabo, March 2, 1970; Seraphim Dougan, Malabo, March 9, 1970; Fernanda Fergusson Broderick, Freetown, October 7, 10, 1987; Tita Taylor-Morgan, Freetown, October 11, 1987; Sylvia Barleycorn de Fige-Davies, Freetown, October 12, 1987; Mable Ferguson, Freetown, October 13, 1987; Egerton Luke, Freetown, October 13, 1987; Emilio Barleycorn, Malabo, November 4, 1987; Samuel Ebuka, Malabo, November 9, 1987; Trinidad Morgades, Malabo, November 9, 1987.

Secondary Sources

Books and Pamphlets

Adams, John. Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo, 1st ed., 1823; reprinted., London: Frank Cass and Co., 1966.

African Agricultural Association. Prospectus, 1842. N.p., n.d. Allen, William, and Thomas R. H. A. Thompson. Na"ative of the Expedition Sent by

Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger, in 1841, under the Command of Capt. H. D. Trotter. 2 vols. London: R. Bentley, 1848; reprinted., New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1967.

Almada, Jose de. Portugal: A Comparative Essay on Indentured Labor at Siio Tome and Principe. Lisbon: National Printing Office, 1913.

Arbelo Curbelo, A., and R. Villarino Ulloa. Contibuci6n at estudio de Ia depoblaci6n indigena en los Territorios espaiioles del Golfo de Guinea, con particularidad de Fernando P6o; campaiia sanitaria de 1939-40. Madrid: Servicio Sanitario Colonial, 1942.

Arija, Julio. La Guinea espaiiola y sus riquezas. Madrid: Espaiia Colpe, S. A., 1930.

Armengol y Comet, Pedro. lA las islas Marianas oat Golfo de Guinea? Madrid: Imprenta y Librerfa de Eduardo Martinez, 1878.

228 Bibliography

Asiegbu, U. J. Slavery and the Politics of Liberation, 1787-1861. London: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1969.

Austen, Ralph A. African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency. Portsmouth, N.H., Heinemann, 1987.

Aymerni, Antonio. Los bubis en Fernando Poo, Coleccion de articulos publicados en Ia revista colonial "La Guinea espanola. " Madrid: Galo Saez, 1942.

Baikie, William Balfour. Narrative of an Exploring Voyage . .. in 1854. London: J. Murray, 1856; reprinted., London: Frank Cass and Co., 1966.

Balandier, Georges. The Sociology of Black Africa: Social Dynamics in Central Africa. London: Andre Deutsch, 1970.

Balma~eda, Francisco. Los confinados a Fernando Poo e impresi6nes de un viaje a Gutnea. New York: hnprenta de Ia Revoluci6n, 1869.

Baumann, Oskar. Eine ajrikanische Tropen-Insel: Fernando Poo und die Bube. Vienna: E. HO!zel, 1888.

Bell, G. Our Fernandian Field. London: Primitive Methodist Missionary Society, 1926.

Bethell, Leslie, ed. Brazil, Empire and Republic, 1822-1930. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

'Bolland, D. Nigel. Belize: A New Nation in Central America. Boulder: Westview Press, 1986.

Boocock, Nathaniel. Our Fernandian Missions. London: W. A. Hammond, n.d. Bosman, Willem. A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea. London:

J. Knapton, 1705; reprinted., New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967. Boteler, Thomas. Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery to Africa and Arabia . ... 2

vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1835. Braude!, Femand. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century. Vol. 3. The

Perspective of the World. New York: Harper and Row, 1982. Bravo Carbonell, Juan. Fernando Poo y el Muni: sus misterios, sus riquezas, su

colonizacion. Madrid: hnprenta de "Alrededor de Mundo," 1917. Bravo Carbonell, Juan. Territorios espaiioles del Golfo de Guinea. Madrid:

hnprenta Zoila Ascasibar, 1929. Brodie, Fawn. The Devil Drives: A Life of Sir Richard Burton. New York: W. W.

Norton and Company, 1967. Brooks, George. The Kru Mariner in the Nineteenth Century. Newark, Del.:

Liberian Studies Association, 1972. Bryson, Alexander. A Report on the Climate and Principal Diseases of the African

Station. London: William Clowes and Sons, 1847. Buell, Raymond. The Native Problem in Africa. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan,

1928. Bundy, Colin. The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry. London:

Heinemann, 1979. Burrows, E. H. Captain Owen of the African Survey. Rotterdam: Balkema, 1979.

Bibliography 229

Burton, Sir Richard. Abeokuta and the Cameroons. London: W. Cloves and Sons, 1863.

Burton, Sir Richard. A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome. 2 vols. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1864.

Burton, Sir Richard. Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo. 2 vols. London: Sampson Low, Marston Low, and Searle, 1876.

Burton, Sir Richard. Wanderings in West Africa: From Liverpool to Fernando Po. 2 vols. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1863.

Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell. The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy. London: J. Murray, 1840; reprinted., London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968.

Buxton, Sir Thomas Powell. The Remedy, Being a Sequel to the African Slave Trade. London: W. Clowes and Sons, 1840.

Buxton, Sir Thomas Powell. Memoirs. Charles Buxton, ed. London: John Murray, 1848.

Carlyle, Thomas. Thomas Carlyle's Complete Works. Vol. 16. Miscellaneous Essays. Boston: Estes and Lauriat, n.d.

Carr, Raymond. Spain, 1808-1939. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. Cencillo de Pineda, Manuel. El brigadier Conde de Argelejos y su expedicion militar

a Fernando Poo en 1778. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Invesigaciones Cientificas, Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1948.

Church, R. J. Harrison, et a!. Africa and the Islands. 4th ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977.

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825-1975. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.

Clarke, John. Introduction to the Fernandian Tongue. Berwick-on-Tweed: Daniel Cameron, 1848.

Clarke, John. Specimens of Dialects: Short Vocabulary of Languages and Notes on Countries and Customs of Africa. Berwick-on-Tweed: B. L. Green, 1848.

Coli, Armengol. Segunda memoria de las misiones de Fernando Poo y sus dependencias. Madrid: "hnprenta Iberia" de E. Maestre, 1911.

Cooper, Frederick. From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980.

Cordero Torres, Jose Maria. Tratado elemental de derecho colonial espaiiol. Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1941.

Corwin, Arthur. Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817-1888. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.

Cox-George, N. A. Finance and Development in West Africa, The Sierra Leone Experience. London: Dennis Dobson, 1961.

Crespo Gil-Delgado, Carlos. Notas para un estudio antropologico y etnologico del bubi de Fernando Poo. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1949.

Crooks, J. J. A History of the Colony of Sierra Leone, Western Africa. London: Brown and Nolan, 1903; reprinted., Metro Books, 1972.

230 Bibliography

Crosby, Alfred. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Curtin, Philip. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1969.

Curtin, Philip. Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Curtin, Philip. The Image of Africa: British Ideas and Action, 1780-1850. 2 vols. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1964.

Curtin, Philip. The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Curtin, Philip, Steven Feiennan, Leonard Thompson, and Jan Vansina. African History. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1978.

Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975.

Davis, R. W. Ethnohistorical Studies on the Kru Coast. Newark: Liberian Studies Association, 1976.

De los Rios, Juan Miguel. Memoria sobre las islas de Fernando P6o y Annob6n. Madrid: Sociedad Economica Matritense, 1844.

'Dike, Kenneth 0. Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830-1885. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.

Direccion General de Marruecos y Colonias. Anuario de estadfstica y catastro de la Direcci6n de Agricultura, 1944. Madrid: Direccion de Agricultura de los Territorios espafioles del Golfo de Guinea, 1944.

Duffy, James. A Question of Slavery. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967. Duffy, James. The Early Years of an African Trader. London: John Holt and

Company, 1962. Ellis, Alfred Burdon. West African Islands. London: Chapman and Hall, 1885. Eltis, David. Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Eltis, David, and James Walvin, eds. The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade:

Origins and Effects in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1981.

Etherington, Norman. Preachers, Peasants and Politics in Southeast Africa, 1835-1880. London: Royal Historical Society, 1978.

Farwell, Byron. Burton: A Biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton. New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1963.

Farwell, Byron. The Great War in Africa. New York: Norton, 1986. Fegley, Randall. Equatorial Guinea: An African Tragedy. American University

Studies. Series XI, Anthropology and Sociology. Vol. 39. New York: Peter Lang, 1989.

Fernandez, Cristobal. Misiones y misioneros en la Guinea espafwla. Madrid: Editorial Co. CUL. S.A., 1962.

Bibliography 231

Fernandez, James. Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Fraenkel, Merran. Tribe and Class in Monrovia. London: Published for the International African Institute by Oxford University Press, 1964.

Frazer, Sir James George. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. New York: Macmillian Company, 1922.

Fyfe, Christopher. A History of Sierra Leone. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Gardinier, D. E. Political Behavior in the Community of Douala, Cameroon: Reactions of the Duala People to the Loss of Hegemony, 1944-1955. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1966.

Gongora Echenique, Manuel. Angel Barrera y las posesiones espafwlas del Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: San Hernando, 1923.

Gonzalez Echegaray, C. Estudios Africanos. Vol. 2, Etnologfa. Madrid: lnstituto de Estudios Africanos, 1964.

Gortizar, Guillermo. Alfonso XIII, Hombre de negocios: persistencia del antiguo regimen, modernizaci6n econ6mica y crisis polftica, 1902-1931. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1986.

Grace, John. Domestic Slavery in West Africa, with Particular Reference to the Sierra Leone Protectorate, 1896-1927. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975.

Green, Lawrence. Islands Time Forgot. London: Putnam, 1962. Greenwall, Harry, and Roland Wild. Unknown Liberia. London: Hutchinson and

Company, 1936. Guillemard de Aragon, Adolfo. Oplisculo sobre la colonizaci6n de Fernando P6o y

revista de los principales establecimientos europeas en la costa occidental de Africa. Madrid: lmprenta Nacional, 1852.

Guthrie, Malcolm. The. Bantu Languages of Western Equatorial Africa. London: Published for the International Africa Institute by Oxford University Press, 1953.

Harris, Marvin. Patterns of Race in the Americas. New York: Walker, 1964. Hastings, A. C. G. Voyage of the Dayspring. London: Bodley Head, 1926. Hobsbawm, Eric J. The Age of Capital, 1848-1875. New York: Charles Scribner's

Sons, 1975. Hodges, Tony, and Malyn Newitt. Siio Tome and Principe: From Plantation Colony

to Microstate. Boulder: Westview Press, 1988. Holm, John. Pidgins and Creoles. 2 vols. New York: Cambridge University Press,

1989. Holman, J. Travels in Madeira, Sierra Leone, Teneriffe, St. Jago, Cape Coast,

Fernando Po, Prince's Island, etc., etc. . . 4 vols. London: George Routledge, 1840; reprinted., Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1972.

Holt, John. The Diary of John Holt. Edited by Cecil R. Holt. Liverpool: Henry Young and Sons, 1948.

Hopkins, A. G. An Economic History of West Africa. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.

232 Bibliography

Huntley, Sir Henry. Seven Year's Service on the Slave Coast. 2 vols. London: Thomas Cautley Newby, 1860.

Hutchinson, Thomas Joseph. Impressions of Western Africa. London: Longmans, Brown, Green, Longmans and Robert, 1858.

Hutchinson, Thomas Joseph. Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1861; reprinted., London: Frank Cass and Co., 1967.

Iliffe, John. The Emergence of African Capitalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.

Informe de Ia comisi6n nombrada por el gobernador de Fernando P6o en 5 de mayo de I860, para Ia exploraci6n de Ia isla. Madrid: hnprenta Nacional, 1861.

An Inquiry into the Right and Duty of Compelling Spain to Relinquish Her Slave Trade in Northern Africa. London: J. Butterworth and Son, 1816.

Iradier y Bulfy, Manuel. Africa: viajes y trabajos de Ia asociaci6n euskara "La Exploradora." 2 vols. Vitoria: hnprenta de Ia Viuda e Hijos de Iturbe, 1887.

Johnson, J. F. Proceedings of the General Anti-Slavery Convention. London: John Snow, 1843.

Johnston, Sir Harry. George Grenfell and the Congo. 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1910.

. J(ingsley, Mary. Travels in West Africa. London: Macmillan and Co., 1897. Klinteberg, Robert af. Equatorial Guinea-Macias Country. Geneva: International

University Exchange Fund Field Study, 1977. Knight, Franklin. Slave Society in Cuba during the Nineteenth Century. Madison,

University of Wisconsin Press, 1970. Labra, Rafael M. de. Cuestiones palpitantes de politica, derecho y administraci6n.

Madrid: Tipografia de A. Alonso, 1897. Laird, M., and R. A. K. Oldfield. Narrative of an Expedition into the Interior of

Africa by the River Niger in 1832-1834. London: R. Bentley, 1837. Lander, Richard, and John Lander. Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course

and Termination of the Niger. 3 vols. London: John Murray, 1832. Lastres y Juiz, Francisco. La colonizaci6n penitenciaria de las Marianas y Fernando

P6o. Madrid: hnprenta y Libreria de Eduardo Martinez, 1878. Latham, A. J. H. Old Calabar, 1600-1891: The Impact of the International Economy

upon a Traditional Society. London: Clarendon Press, 1973. Legum, Colin, and John Drysdale, eds. African Contemporary Record, Annual Survey

and Documents, I968-69. New York: Africana Pub. Co., 1968-69. Note vols. for 1968/69 published in London by Africa Research Limited, 1969.

Leonard, Peter. Records of a Voyage to the Western Coast of Africa. Edinburgh: Printed by Andrew Shortrede for William Tait, 1833.

Liniger-Goumaz, Max. Breve Histoire de Ia Guinee Equatoriale. Paris: Editions L'Harmattan, 1988. Translated by John Wood and published as Small Is Not Always Beautiful.· The Story of Equatorial Guinea. London: C. Hurst and Company, 1988.

Bibliography 233

Liniger-Goumaz, Max. Connaftre Ia Guinee Equatoriale. Geneva: Editions des Peuples Noirs, 1986.

Liniger-Goumaz, Max. Statistics of Nguemist Equatorial Guinea. Geneva: Editions du Temps, 1986.

Lloyd, P. C. Africa in Social Change. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967. Lobo de Bulhoes, M. E. Les Colonies Portugaises. Lisbon: hnprensa Nacional,

1878. LOpez Perea, Enrique. Estado actual de los territorios espafloles de Guinea. San

Fernando: J. M. Gay, 1905. LOpez Perea, Enrique. Lo que es y lo que podni ser Ia Guinea espafwla. Barcelona:

"El Misionero," 1931. Lovejoy, Paul, ed. Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade,

Essays in Honor of Philip D. Curtin. Madison, University of Wisconsin African Studies Program, 1986.

Lovejoy, Paul, ed. The Ideology of Slavery in Africa. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1981.

Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Mabogunje, Akin. Regional Mobility and Resource Development in West Africa . Montreal: Center for Developing Area Studies by McGill, Queens University Press, 1972.

MacQueen, James: A Geographical and Commercial View of Northern and Central Africa: Containing a Particular Account of the Course and Termination of the Great River Niger in the Atlantic Ocean. Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1821.

Madrid, F. La Guinea Incognita (Vergiienza y escandalo colonial). Madrid: Editorial Espafia, 1933.

Mann, Kristin. Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonia/Lagos. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Manning, Patrick. Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental and African Slave Trades. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Manning, Patrick. Slavery, Colonialism, and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640-1960. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Martin del Molino, Amador. Los Rubis, ritos y creencias. Malabo: Central Cultural Hispano-Guineano, 1989.

Martinez y Sanz, Miguel. Breves apuntes sobre La isla de Fernando Po6 en el Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: hnprenta de H. Reneses, 1859.

Mas y Laglera, Jose. En el pais de los bubis, escenas de Ia vida en Fernando P6o y sus dependencias. Madrid: n.p., 1890.

[Matas, Jose de.] Memoria de las misiones de Fernando P6o y sus dependencias. Madrid: n.p., 1890.

Memoria que presenta a las Cortes el Ministro de Estado respecto a La situaci6n politica y econ6mica de las posesiones espafwles del Africa Occidental en el afio 'de 1915. Madrid: hnprenta de Juan Perez Torres, 1915.

234 Bibliography

Merton, Robert K. Social Theory and Social Structures. Glencoe: The Free Press, 1957.

Miers, Suzanne, and Igor Kopytoff, eds. Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1977.

Miers, Suzanne and Richard Roberts, eds. The End of Slavery in Africa. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

Morel, E. D. The Black Man's Burden. London: National Labour Press, 1920; reprinted., New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969.

Moreno Moreno, Jose Antonio. Resena hist6rica de la presencia de Espana en el Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1952.

Moros y Morell6n, Jose de, and Juan Miguel de los Rios. Memorias sabre las islas africanas de Espana, Fernando P6o y Annob6n. Madrid: Compaiiia Tipognifica, 1844.

Mountjoy, Alan B., and Clifford Embleton. Africa: A New Geographical Survey. New York: Frederick Praeger, 1967.

Mufioz y Gaviria Fabraquer, Jose (Conde de Fabraquer, Vizconde de San Javier). Cr6nica general de Espana. Africa: Islas de Fernando P6o, Corisco y Annob6n. Madrid: Rubio y Vitturi, 1871.

Muiioz y Gaviria Fabraquer, Jose (Conde de Fabraquer, Vizconde de San Javier). Tres anos en Fernando P6o: viaje a Africa por el vizconde de San Javier. Madrid: n. p., 1871.

Murray, David. Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Nair, Kannan. Politics and Society in South Eastern Nigeria, 1841-1906. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972.

Navarro, Joaquin J. Apuntes sabre el estado de La costa occidental de Africa y principalmente de las possessiones espanoles en el Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1859.

Ndongo Bidyogo, Donato. Historia y tragedia de Guinea Ecuatorial. Madrid: Cambio 16, 1977.

Nevinson, Henry W. A Modern Slavery. London: Harpers, 1906; reprinted., New York: Schoken Books, 1968.

Norregard, George. Danish Settlements in West Africa, 1658-1850. Boston: Boston University Press, 1966.

Northrup, David. Trade without Rulers: Pre-Colonial Economic Development in South Eastern Nigeria. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.

Nosti Nava, Jaime. La agricultura en Guinea espanola. Madrid: Direcci6n General de Marruecos y Colonias, 1955.

Obra de colonizaci6n alemana en Fernando P6o. Madrid: Blass y Compaiiia, 1919. Osuntokun, Akinjide. Equatorial Guinea-Nigerian Relations. Ibadan: Oxford

University Press for the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, 1978.

Bibliography 235

Osuntokun, Akinjide. Nigeria in the First World War. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979.

Owen, William F. Narrative of Voyages to Explore the Shores of Africa, Arabia and Madagascar. 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1833.

Parsons, Howard, ed. Marx and Engels on Ecology. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1977.

Patterson, K. David. The Northern Gabon Coast to 1875. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Payne, Stanley. A History of Spain and Portugal. 2 vols. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973.

Porter, Arthur T. Creoledom: A Study of the Development of Freetown Society. London: Oxford University Press, 1963.

Ramos Izquierdo, Luis. Descripci6n geogr{ifica y gobierno, administraci6n y colonizaci6n de las colonias espanolas del Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: F. Peiia Cruz, 1912.

Reparaz, Gonzalo de. Espana en Africa. Madrid: Saenz de Jubera Hermanos, 1891. Reynolds, Edward. Trade and Economic Change on the Gold Coast, 1808-1874.

London: Longmans, 1974. Rio Joan, Francisco del. Africa Occidental espanola (Sahara and Guinea). Madrid:

Imprenta de Ia "Revista Tecnica de Infanterfa y Caballeria," 1915. Robertson, G. A. Notes on Africa. London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1819. Rodney, Walter. A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905. Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. Roe, Henry. Fernando Po: A Consecutive History of the Opening of Our First

Mission Station to the Heathen, with Notes on Christian African Settlers, African Scenery, Missionary Trials and Joys. London: n.p., 1882.

Roe, Henry. West African Scenes, Being Descriptions of Fernando Po. London: Eliot Stock, 1874.

Saavedra y Magdalena, Diego. Memoria presenta at excelentfsimo Senor Ministro de Estado, D. ManuelAllendesalazar. Madrid: Vincent Rico, 1907.

Saker, Emily M. Alfred Saker, Pioneer of the Cameroons. London: Carey Press, 1929.

Sarracino, Rodolfo. Los que volvieron a Africa. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1988.

Scarano, Francisco. Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico: The Plantation Economy of Ponce, 1800-1850. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Schon, J. F., and Samuel Crowther. Journal of the Revd. James Frederick Schon and Mr. Samuel Crowther. London: Hatchard and Son, 1842.

Scott, Rebecca. Slave Emancipation in Cuba: The Transition to Free Labor, 1860-1899. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Silveira, Luis. Descripci6n de La isla de Fernando P6o en visperas del Tratado de San /ldefonso. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1959.

II

1

.1 I, li I

236 Bibliography

Simon, Kathleen. Slavery. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1929. Sindicato de Promocion de Negocios Industriales y Financieros (de) Madrid.

Fernando Poo y La Guinea continental espanola. Madrid: Sindicato de Promocion de Negocios Industriales y Financieros (de) Madrid, 1915.

Smith, C. S. Glimpses of Africa. Nashville: A.M.E. Church Sunday School Union, 1895.

Sociedad Fundadora de !a Compania Espanola de Colonizacion. Memoria demostrativa de las ventajas y beneficios obtenibles de los territories espanoles del Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: Imprenta de Fortanet, 1905.

Sorela, Luis. Les possessions espangoles du Golfe de Guinee, leur present et leur avenir. Paris: A. Lahure, 1884.

Sorela, Luis, and L. Guxardo Faxardo. Colonizacion en el Africa occidental. Madrid: n.p., 1888.

Spain in Equatorial Africa. 2 vols. Madrid: Spanish Information Service, 1964. Spitzer, Leo. The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Responses to Colonialism, 1870-1915.

Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974. Spitzer, Leo. Lives in Between: Assimilation and Marginality in Austria, Brazil, West

Africa, 1780-I945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Suret-Canale, Jean. French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900-I945. New York:

Pica Press, 1971. Teran, Manuel de. Sfntesis geogrtifica de Fernando Poo. Madrid: Consejo Superior

de Investigaciones Cientificas, Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1962. Tessmann, Gunter. Die Bubi auf Fernando Poo: vo!kerkundlische

Einzelbeschreibung eines westafrikanischen Negerstammes. Kulturen der Erde. Marterialien zur Kultur - und Kunstgeschicte alle Volker. IX, Fernando Po. Darmstadt: Filkwan, 1923.

Underhill, Edward Bean. Alfred Saker. London: Baptist Missionary Society, 1884. Unzueta y Yuste, Abelardo de. Geogrcifla hist6rica de Ia isla de Fernando Poo.

Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, lnstituto de Estudios Africanos, 1947.

Unzueta y Yuste, Abelardo de. Islas del Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Politicos, 1945.

Usera y Alarcon, Jeronimo M. Memoria de La isla de Fernando Poo. Madrid: Imprenta de T. Aguodo, 1848.

Valdes Cavanilles, Luis. Memoria redactada referente at viaje realizado a las Posesiones espanolas del Golfo de Guinea. Madrid: Talleres del Deposito de !a Guerra, 1928.

Valdes Infantes, Emilio. Los cubanos en Fernando Poo o los horrores de La dominacion espanola. Havana: Imprenta "El Figaro," 1898.

Van Noten, Francis, ed. The Archaelogy of Central Africa. Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- u. Verlaganstalt, 1982.

Vansina, Jan. Kingdoms of the Savanna. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.

Bibliography 237

Vansina, Jan. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Traditon in Equatorial Africa. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.

Veciana Viladach, A. de. La secta del Bwiti en Ia Guinea espanola. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1958.

Wyse, Akintola. The Krio of Sierra Leone: An Interpretive History. London: Hurst, 1989.

Y aniz, Juan Pedro. La Crisis del pequeno imperio espanol. Barcelona Editorial Dirosa, 1974.

Articles and Papers

Ardener, Edwin. "Documentary and Linguistic Evidence for the Rise of the Trading Polities between Rio del Rey and Cameroons, 1500-1650," in History and Social Anthropology. Edited by I. M. Lewis. London: Tavistock Publications, 1968, pp. 81-126.

Austen, Ralph. "Slavery among Coastal Middlemen: The Duala of Cameroon." In Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Edited by Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1977, pp. 305-33.

Austen, Ralph A., with K. Jacob. "Dutch Trading Voyages to Cameroon, 1721-1759: European Documents and African History." Annals de Ia Faculte des Sciences

humaines, Universite de Yaounde, 6 (1974), pp. 1-27. Azikiwe, Nnamdi. "In Defense of Liberia." Journal of Negro History, 17, 1 (January

1932), pp. 30-50. Bell, George. "Our Position and Prospects in Fernando Poo." Primitive Methodist

Herald, 16 (March 1922), pp. 28-29. Bell, George. "Something Attempted at Santa Isabel." Primitive Methodist Advance

(February 1931), p. 22. Bethell, Leslie. "The Mixed Commissions for the Suppression of the Transatlantic

Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century." Journal of African History, 1. 1 (1966), pp. 79-93.

Bleek, Wilhelm H. I. "On the Languages of Western and Southern Africa." Transactions ofthe Philological Society of London, (1855), pp. 40-50.

Bravo Carbonell, Juan. "Possibilidades economicas de !a Guinea espanola." Boletfn de Ia Sociedad Geogrtifica Nacional, 62. 8 (August 1933), p. 525.

Brown, Robert. "Fernando Po and the Anti-Sierra Leonean Campaign, 1826-1834." International Journal of African Historical Studies, 6. 2 (1973), pp. 249-64.

Caldwell, J. C., G. E. Harrison, and P. Ouiggan. "The Demography of Micro-States." World Development, 8, 12 (1980), pp. 953-67.

Chamberlin, Christopher. "The Migration of the Fang into Central Gabon during the Nineteenth Century: A New Interpretation." International Journal of African Historical Studies, 11. 3 (1978), pp. 429-56.

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. "African and European Cocoa Producers on

f,

238 Bibliography

Fernando P6o, 1880s to 1910s." Journal of African History, 35 (1994), pp. 179-99.

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. "The Economic Dynamics of Spanish Imperialism, 1898-1945." In Segunda aula Canarias y el noroeste de Africa, 1986. Edited by V. Morales Lezcano. Las Palmas: Ediciones del Cabildo de Gran Canaria, 1986, pp. 17-26.

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. "La Traite portuguaise et espagnole en Afrique.au XIXe Siecle." In De La Traite a L 'Esclavage. Vol. 2. Actes du Colloque International sur La traite des Noirs. Nantes, 1985, Centre de Recherche sur l'Histoire du Monde Atlantique. Societe Fran~;aise d'Histoire d'Outremer. Pp. 425-34.

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. "The Portuguese and Spanish Roles in the Scramble for Africa." In Bismarck, Europe and Africa, edited by S. Forster, et al. London: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 215-27.

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. "The Portuguese Contribution to the Cuban Slave and Coolie Trades in the Nineteenth Century." Slavery and Abolition, 5. 1 (May 1984), pp. 24-33.

Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. "The Impact of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World on Portuguese and Spanish Africa." Journal of African History, 26 (1985), pp. 309-26.

Collins, W. H. "Fernando Po Today." Primitive Methodist Herald, 14 (March 1920), pp. 12-28.

Cooper, Frederick. "The Problem of Slavery in African Studies." Journal of African History, 20 (1979), pp. 103-25.

Cordero Torres, Jose. "Tipos legendarios: Pedro Blanco, negrero y colonizador." Africa (Madrid), 18 (June 1943), pp. 28-30.

"The Civilization of Africa-Sierra Leone-Liberated Africans, an Open Letter to R. W. Hay." Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 20 (December 1826), pp. 872-92; 21 (March, May 1827), pp. 315-29, 596-619.

Curtin, Philip, and Jan Vansina. "Sources of the 19th-Century Atlantic Slave Trade." Journal of African History, 5. 2 (1964), pp. 185-95.

DeGraft-Johnson, K. E. "The Evolution of Elites in Ghana." In The New Elites of Tropical Africa. Edited by P. C. Lloyd. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Delancey, Mark. "Health and Disease on the Plantations of Cameroon, 1884-1939." In Disease in African History. Edited by Gerald Hartwig and K. David Patterson. Durham: Duke University Press, 1978.

De Maret, P. "Fernanado Po." In The Archaeology of Central of Central Africa. Edited by F. Van Noten. Graz: Akademische Druck-u Verlaganstalt, 1982.

Dike, Kenneth 0. "John Beecroft." Journal of the Nigerian Historical Society, 1 (December 1956), pp. 5-14.

Dixon-Fyle, Mac. "The Saro in the Political Life of Early Port Harcourt, 1913-49." Journal of African History, 30 (1989), pp. 125-38.

Bibliography 239

Dommen, Edward. "Some Distinguishing Characteristics of Island States." World Development, 7. 12 (December 1980), pp. 931-43.

Ela, Pedro Nsue. Letter to the Editor. Africa 2000, 213 (1987), p. 48. Eltis, David. "The Export of Slaves from Africa, 1821-1843." Journal of Economic

History, 37 (1977), pp. 409-33. Eltis, David. "Slave Departures from Africa, 1811-1867: An Annual Time Series."

African Economic History, 15 (1986), pp. 143-69. Fage, J. D. "Slaves and Society in Western Africa, c. 1445-c. 1700." Journal of

African History, 21 (1980), pp. 289-310. Fage, J. D. "Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Context of West African History."

Journal of African History, 10 (1969), pp. 393-404. "Failure of Another Expedition to Explore the Interior of Africa: Correspondence

between Colonel Nicholls, Mr. C. H. Coulthurst, R. W. Hay and Duke Ephraim, King of Old Calabar." Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 2 (1832), p. 305.

"Fernando Po, State of the Slave Trade." Review of James MacQueen, A Geographical and Commercial View of Northern Central Africa. Quarterly Review (London), 26 (October-January 1822), pp. 51-82, passim.

Ferraz, Luis Ivens. "The Creole of Sao Tome." African Studies, 37 (1978), pp. 235-288.

Fyfe, Christopher. "Peter Nicholls, Old Calabar and Freetown." Journal of the ·Historical Society of Nigeria, 2 (1960), pp. 105-14.

Gutterrez Sobral, J. "The Outlook at Fernando Po." West Africa (March 2, 1901), p. 35.

Hargreaves, J. D. "African Colonization in the Nineteenth Century: Liberia and Sierra Leone." Boston University Papers in African History. Vol. 1. Boston: Boston University Press, 1964, pp. 55-76.

Headrick, Daniel. "The Tools of Imperialism: Technology and the Expansion of European Colonial Empires in the Nineteenth Century." Journal of Modern History, 51 (1979), pp. 231-63.

Holsoe, Svend. "Slavery and Economic Response among the Vai." Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Edited by Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977, pp. 287-303.

"Home of the Free." New Statesman, 36, 925 (January 17, 1931), pp. 429-430. Hopkins, A. G. "Richard Beale Blaize, 1845-1904, Merchant Prince of West

Africa." Tarikh, 1. 2 (1966), pp. 70-79. Howe, R. "Spanish Equatorial Island." Africa Report, 11 (June, 1966), pp. 48-49. Hutton, W. H. "Voyage to Africa." Royal Gazette and Sie"a Leone Advertiser,

November 10, 1821, n.p. · Ifemesia, C. C. "The Civilizing Mission of 1841: Aspects of an Episode in

Anglo-Nigerian Relations." Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 2. 3 (December 1962), pp. 291-310. ·

240 Bibliography

Klein, Martin. "The Study of Slavery in Africa." Journal of African History, 19. 4 (1978), pp. 599-609.

Lamusee, Roland. "Labour Policy in the Plantation Islands." World Development, 7. 12 (1980), pp. 1035-50.

Latham, J. H. "Price Fluctuations in the Early Palm Oil Trade." Journal of African History, 19. 2 (1978), pp. 213-18.

LOpez Monis, C. "Aspectos de Ia lucha sanitaria en Guinea." Achivos del Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 9 (August 1949), pp. 7-16.

Lovejoy, Paul. "The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Synthesis." Journal of African History, 22 (1982), pp. 473-501.

Ludlam, Thomas. "An Account of the Kroomen on the Coast of Africa." African Repository and Colonial Journal, 1 (1825-26), pp. 43-45; originally published in the Sixth Report of the Directors of the African Institution (London, 1812).

Lynn, Martin. "Change and Continuity in the British Palm Oil Trade with West Africa, 1830-1855." Journal of African History, 22 (1981), pp. 331-348.

Lynn, Martin. "Commerce, Christianity and the Origins of the Creoles of Fernando Po." Journal of African History, 25 (1984), pp. 257-78.

Lynn, Martin. "From Sail to Steam: The Impact of the Steamship Services on the British Palm Oil Trade with West Africa, 1850-1890. Journal of African History, 30. 2 (1989), pp. 227-45.

Lynn, Martin. "Technology, Trade and 'A Race of Native Capitalists'; The Krio Diaspora of West Africa and the Steamship, 1852-95." Journal of African History, 33 (1992), pp. 421-40.

MacQueen, James. "The Civilization of Africa-Sierra Leone-Liberated Africans: An Open Letter to R. W. Hay," Black Edinburgh Magazine, 20 (December, 1826), pp. 872-92; 21 (March-May 1827), pp. 315-29, 529-619.

Mann, Gustav. "Account of the Ascent of Clarence Peak, Fernando Po." Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 6 (1862), p. 27.

Manning, Patrick. "L'Affaire Adjovi: Ia bourgeoisie fonciere naisasante au Dahomey, face a I' administration." In Enterprises et Entrepreneurs en Afrique. Acts du Colloque Enterprises et Entrepreners en Afrique, X/Xe et XXe Siecles. Laboratoire "Connaissance du Tier Monde." 2 vols. Edited by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1983. Vol. 1, 241-67.

Manning, Patrick. "Slaves, Palm Oil, and Political Power on the West African Coast." African Historical Studies 2. 2 (1969), 279-88.

Martin, Jane. "'Krumen Down the Coast': Liberian Migrants on the West African Coast in the Nineteenth Century." Working Paper 64. Boston University African Studies Center, 1982.

Martfn del Molino, Amador. "Datos etnograficos de los bubis en el siglo XVIII." La Guinea espanola, 60 (1963), pp. 35-42.

Martfn del Molino, Amador. "La familia real." La Guinea espanola, 59 (1962), pp. 37-40.

Bibliography 241

Martfn del Molino, Amador. "Por caminos anchos y profundos." La Guinea espanola, 60 (1963), pp. 131-134.

Martfn del Molino, Amador. "Que sabemos actualmente del pasado de Fernando P6o." La Guinea espanola, 59 (1962), pp. 67-68.

Meillassoux, Claude. "Essai d'interpretation du phenomene economique dans les societes traditionelles d'autosubsistance," Cahiers d'etudes Africaines, 1 (1961), pp. 38-67.

Mildbraed, J. "Fernando Po." In From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile. 2 vols. Edited by Adolf Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. London: Duckworth and Co. 2 (1913), pp. 227-62.

Northrup, David. "African Mortality in the Suppression of the Slave Trade: The Case of the Bight of Biafra." Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 9 (1978), pp. 47-64.

Northrup, David. "The Compatibility of the Slave and Palm Oil Trades in the Bight ofBiafra." JournalofAfricanHistory, 17. 3 (1976), pp. 353-64.

Northrup, David. "Nineteenth-Century Patterns of Slavery and Economic Growth in Southeastern Nigeria." The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 12. 1 (1979), pp. 1-16.

Nunan, T. J. "Fernando Po." Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society, 20 (1904), pp. 31-33.

Omosini, Olufemi. "Alfred Moloney and His Strategies for Economic Development in Lagos Colony and Hinterland, 1886-1891." Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 3. 4 (June 1975), pp. 657-72.

Osoba, S. 0. "The Phenomenon of Labour Migration in the Era of British Colonial Rule: A Neglected Aspect of Nigeria's Social History." Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 4. 4 (1969), pp. 515-38.

Osuntokun, Akinjide. "Anglo-Spanish Relations in West Africa during the First World War." Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 7. 2 (June 1974), pp. 291-301.

Osuntokun, Akinjide. "Nigeria-Fernando Po Relations from the Nineteenth Century to the Present." Paper presented to the Canandian African Studies Association Conference, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, April26- May 3, 1977.

Parr, T. "Fernando Po." Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society, 5 (1869), pp. 21-23.

Pelissier, Rene. "Fernando P6o: un archipel hispano-guineen." Revue franr;aise des etudes politiques africaines, 33 (September 1968), pp. 80-112.

Pelissier, Rene. "Spain's Discreet Decolonisation." Foreign Affairs, 43. 3 (April27, 1965), pp. 519-27.

Pelissier, Rene. "Spanish Guinea: An Introduction." Race, 6. 2, pp. 117-28. Pelissier, Rene. "Uncertainties in Spanish Guinea." Africa Report, 13 (March 1968),

pp. 16-20, 37-8.

242 Bibliography

Pereira Rodriguez, Teresa. "Aspectos maritimo-comerciales del colonialismo espafiol en el Golfo de Guinea." fu Segunda aula Canarias y el noroeste de Africa (1986). Las Palmas: Ediciones del Cabildo fusular de Gran Canaria, 1986, pp. 247-62.

Pereira Rodriguez, Teresa. "Notas sobre el colonialismo espafiol en el Golfo de Guinea (1880-1912)". Estudios Africanos, Revista de la Associacion Espanola de Africanistas, vol. 1, 2nd semester, 1 (1985), pp. 92~107.

Pereira Rodriguez, Teresa. "Las relaciones maritimo-comerciales entre Canarias y los territorios del Golfo de Guinea, (1858-1930)." mLas Canarias y Africa (Altibajos de una gravitacion). Edited by Victor Morales Lezcano. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1985, pp. 247-72.

Peterson, John. "The Sierra Leone Creole: A Reappraisal." Freetown, A Symposium. Edited by Christopher Jones and Eldred Jones. Freetown: Sierra Leone Press, 1968, pp. 100-17.

Rey, Pierre-Philippe. "L'Esclavage linager chez les tsangui, les ·punu et les kuni du Congo-Brazzaville; sa place dans le systeme d'ensemble des rapports de production." fu L 'Esclavage en Afrique precoloniale. Edited by Claude Meillassoux. Paris: Francois Maspero, 1975, pp. 509-28.

Reynolds, Edward. "Abolition and Economic Change on the Gold Coast." fu The Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Edited by David Eltis and James Walvin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981, pp. 141-151.

Richardson, David. "Slave Exports from West and West-Central Africa, 1700-1800: New Estimates of Volume and Distribution." Journal of African History, 30

(1989), pp. 1-22. Rodney, Walter. "African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the

Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade." Journal of African History, 7 (1966), pp. 431-43.

Rothfield, Otto. "Liberia and the League of Nations." The Crisis. 121 (April 1931), pp. 121-22.

[Ruiaz]. "Aiio Negro." La Guinea espanola, December 21, 1930, p. 386. . Schuler, Monica. "Kru Migration to British and French Guiana, 1841-1857." fu

Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave, Trade: Essays in Honor of Philip D. Curtin. Edited by Paul Lovejoy. Madison: University of Wisconsin African Studies Program, 1986, pp. 155-201.

Schuyler, George. "Wide 'Slavery' Persisting in Liberia, Post Reveals." New York Evening Post, June 29, 1931, p. 1.

Sullivan, Jo Mary. Review of Ethnohistorical Studies on the Kru Coast by Ronald Davis. Journal of African History, 19. 2 (1978), pp. 280-82.

Sundiata, I. K. "Twentieth-Century Reflections on Death in Zanzibar." The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 20. 1 (1987), pp. 45-60.

"Treaty Concerning the Conditions of Employment of Nigerian Workers in Fernando Po." International Labour Review, 38 (August 1943), pp. 238-39.

Unzueta y Yuste, Abelardo de. "Ethnograffa de Guinea: algunos grupos irnigrantes de Fernando P6o." Africa, 77-78 (May-June 1948), pp. 28-31.

Bibliography 243

Vansina, Jan. "Western Bantu Expansion." Journal of African History, 25 (1985), pp. 129-45.

Vilar, Juan. "Espafia en Guinea Ecuatorial (1778-1892)." Anales de la Universidad de Murcia 28, 3/4 (1969-70), pp. 265-306.

Printed Bulletins and Organizational Publications

Advance. London: Methodist Missionary Society, 1923-26. Baptist Missionary Herald. London El boletfn official de los territorios espafl.oles del Golfo de Guinea. Santa Isabel. Church Missionary Intelligencer. London. Cronica naval de Espana. Madrid, 1859-60. Published by Jorge Lasso de la Vega

and Jose Marcelino Travieso. La Guinea espanola. Santa Isabel. The Herald. London: Methodist Missionary Society, 1905-22. The Missionary Echo. London: Methodist Missionary Society, 1916-32. Primitive Methodist Missionary Record. London. La voz de Fernando Poo. Barcelona.

Unpublished Dissertations, Theses, and Reports

Brown, Robert Thomas. "William Fitzwilliam Owen: Hydrographer of the African Coast, 1774-1857." Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1972.

Campbell, Penelope. "The Beginnings of Christian Evangelism and African Responses: American Presbyterians in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon." African Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 3-6, 1976.

Davis, R. · W. "Historical Outline of the Kru Coast, Liberia, 1500 to the Present." Ph.D. dissertation, fudiana University, 1968.

Delancey, Mark. "Changes in Social Attitudes and Political Knowledge among Migrants to Plantations in West Cameroon." Ph.D. dissertation, University of fudiana, 1973.

Elango, Lovett. "Britain and Bimbia in the Nineteenth Century, 1833-1878: A Study of Anglo-Bimbian Trade and Diplomatic Relations." Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1975.

Gard, Robert. "Colonization and Decolonization of Equatorial Guinea." Northwestern University Library, Evanston, lllinois, unpublished manuscript, 1974. Later partially published as Machinations in the Founding of a National Bank. Pasadena: Munger Africana Library, 1974.

Garfield, Robert. "A History of Sao Tome Island, 1470-1655." Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1971.

Gertzel, C. "John Holt: A British Merchant in West Africa in the Era. of Imperialism." Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 1959.

244 Bibliography

Hahs, Billy Gene. "Spain and the Scramble for Africa: The 'Africanistas' and the Gulf of Guinea." Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1980.

Kleis, Gerald. "Network and Ethnicity in an Igbo Migrant Community." Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1975.

Kobel, Armin. "La Republique de Guinee Equatoriale, ses resources potentielles et virtuel!es. Possibilites de developpment." Thesis, Universite de Neuchatel, 1976.

Lynn, Martin. "John Beecroft and West Africa, 1829-54." Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1978.

Mellor, G. R. "British Policy in Relation to Sierra Leone." M.A. thesis, University of London, 1935.

Nartey, Robert. "From Slave to Servic;:al: Labor in the Plantation Economy of Sao Tome and Principe, 1876-1932." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1986.

Sanz Casas, Gonzalo. "Economic Strategies and Management of Labour in the Cocoa Plantations of Fernando Poo (Equatorial Guinea), 1880-1930." Paper presented at the School of Oriental and African Studies Conference on Cocoa Production and Economic Development in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, University of London, September 15-17, 1993.

Sanz Casas, Gonzalo. "Polftica colonial y organizaci6n del trabajo en Ia isla de Fernando P6o: 1880-1930." Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Barcelona, 1983.

Scotter, W. H., "International Rivalry in the Bights of Benin and Biafra, 1815-1865." Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1933.

Takougang, Joseph, "Victoria: An African Township under British Administration 1916-1961." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1985.

INDEX

Abba Mote, 81, 82, 163-64, 172 Adjovi, Jean, 116 African Agricultural Association, 64 Akitoye of Lagos, 70 ALENA, 110, 180 Alobari, 77, 175 Alonso, Mariano, 175 Ambas Bay, 108, 136 Ambas Bay Company, 97, 105, 130 Amilivia, Pedro (Company), 105 Anglo-Spanish labor agreement, 180-82 Annob6n, 5, 12, 43, 44, 52, 183; Mention

of Guinea Islands, 18 Archibong (Old Calabar), 72 Argelejos, Conde de, 146; Expedition,

19-20 Armengol y Comet, Pedro, 50 Associated Negro Press, 145 Atangana, Chief, 126 Austen, Ralph, 65, 115, 178 Azikiwe, Nnamdi, 144-45

babala, 75 "Baffler": Kru leader 1840s, 87 Baikie, William, 89 baita, 75, 80, 82 Balboa, Armando, 183 Balboa, Manuel, 113, 114, 138, 140, 169 Balmaseda, Francisco Banapa, 98, 164, 165, 175 Banco Colonial Espafiol del Golfo

de Guinea, 110 Banco Exterior de Espana, 110 Bank of British West Africa, 110 Banni (Baney), 16, 79, 87 Baptist Missions, 59, 60, 67, 84, 149 Barcelonesa (Plantation), 107 Barleycorn, Edward E., 87, 110, 143

Barleycorn, Gertrude (S.) Johnson, 114

Barleycorn, Jeremiah, 113 Barleycorn, William Napoleon, 149-51 Barrera, Angel, 106, 111, 135, 136, 137,

171, 173 Basile, 98, 102, 103, 161, 164-65, 175 Bata, 123, 124, 126, 141, 158 Batete, 15-16, 82, 114, 165-66, 172,

174, 182 Batuku, 75, 82. See botuku Beecroft, John; Spanish Governor, 46, 48;

Baptists, 67; Biography, 62, 87; F. P. nationality question, 70; Trading activities on F. P., 58, 62-64; Trading in Bubi, 83, 85, 87; Trips for African Association, 59, 63

Beecroft, Maria, 60 Belize, 62 Benga, 15, 45-47, 122 Bengoa Arriola, Pedro, 103, 105 bese, 75, 86, 169 Bimbia, 33, 51, 58, 60-61, 63, 126 Bioko, 169, 172, 174 Blanco, Pedro, 43-44, 52, 130 Bleek, Wilhelm, 83 Blunt, J. , 63 Bokoko, 15-16, 80, 92 Bonelli, Emilio, 102, 105, 114 Bonkoro I, 46-47 Bosman, Willem, 14 botuku, 77, 82, 165. See batuku Braude!, Femand, 3 Bravo Carbonell, Juan, 105 Brew, Samuel Richard, 93 Buadjamita, 76 Bubi, 8, 11; 19th C. change, 74-75;

Agricultural cooperatives, 184; Argelejos Exp., 29-30; Arms, 221n37;

buala, 75-76, 203n7; Burton's

245

246

perception of, 73; Catholic Church & Literacy, 161, 163; Catholic ed., 176-77; Centralization, 7 6-78; Claretian villages, 175-76; Cocoa, 170, 174, 177; Conflict with Clarence, 85; Development in 1960s, 184; Family life, 82; Labor, 169-73; Name, 22; Origins, 22-25, 28; Origins, theories, 82; Population decline, 169; Population increase, 183; Primitive Methodists and, 173-74; Rulers, 76; Slaving, 31-32; Traditional religion, 163-65

Burton, Richard, 7, 71-72, 119, 127 Buxton, Thomas Fowell; Advocacy of

F. P. 1820s, 6, 25; Origin of the Niger Expedition, 36, 42, 45, 61

'·· .. Cacheu Company, 12 Cadbury, William, 131 Calabar, 22, 57, 63, 88-89, 97, 132

134-37, 157 Camara Agricola, 100, 103, 105, 109,

111, 124, 139-40, 143, 159, 170-71, 183

Cameroon, 3, 9-10, 15, 18, 20, 23, 31, 33, 47, 57, 59-61, 63, 66, 68, 88-89, 92, 102, 104, 116, 118, 122, 137, 148-49, 152, 161, 178, 180

Campbell, Benjamin, 70 Canaries, 44, 50, 55, 83, 104, 108, 179 Carlyle, Thomas, 68 Castro y Casaleiz, Antonio, 104 CEGUI, 180 Chacon, Carlos, 49, 68 Church Missionary Society, 59, 67-68 Clarence, 3, 26, 27, 29, 31-33, 35-36, 46,

57-58, 59, 61, 64, 65, 68, 78, 82, 84, 86-87, 103, 148. See also Santa Isabel

Clarence-Smith, Gervaise, 47, 103, 112-13, 181

Claretians, (Hijos del Inmaculado Corazon de Maria), 153-54, 156, 164-67, 173-75, 219n40

Clarke, John, 37, 66-67, 76, 78, 84, 125, 127

Cocoa; Amelonado-growing of, 92, 95;

Index

"Cacao Hybrido," 95; Early production, 6, 95, 99, 103; Early concessions, 92-94; F. P. beginnings, 90; Production to 1930, 106, 109; Shipment, 208n48; Spanish tariff policy, 99-101; Tariffs, 103

Cocoyams, 16 Coello, Francisco, 101 Coffee, 3, 6, 8, 63, 91, 99-100, 105,

109, 117, 123, 144, 172, 179-80, 183 Cole, Charles, 132 Coli, Armengol, 156 Compaiiia Colonial de Fernando Poo, 102 Compaiiia Espanola de Colonizacion, 104 Compaiiia Espanola del Golfo de Guinea, 110 Compaiiia Nacional de Colonizacion

Africana (ALENA), 110 Concepcion, 16, 53, 103, 114, 156, 165

166, 169 Concepcion Bay, 78, 85, 86 Conceptionists (Las Religiosas

Misioneras de Ia Inmaculada Concepcion), (Sisters of the Immaculate Conception), 153, 156, 175

Congreso de Geografia Colonial y Mercantile, 101

Consejo de Vecinos, 111, 154 Cooke, Nathaniel, 73, 149 Cooper, Frederick 5, 131 Corisco, 45-47, 50 Costa, Joaquin, 101, 164 Creoles, 68-71, 89, 115; Agriculture

Fernando Po, 90, 177; Agriculture Sierra Leone, 91, 177; Culture, 96, 146-159; Defmition, 65; Life-Style, 147, 149-152; Sierra Leoneans vs competition 1850s, 56, 73, 105

Crowther, Samuel (Bishop), 68 Cuba, 45, 49; Cubans in Africa, 50-54;

On Biafran Coast, 88, 92, 165; Slave Trade to, 39, 48, 102, 121; Sugar production to 1840, 44; Deportees to Fernando Po, 6, 52-53, 146, 199n53

Cunha Lisboa, Laureano da, 126, 132, 136, 206n17

Curadoria, 113, 135, 139

Index

Daban, Luis, 170 Dahomey, 22, 58, 116 Davis, David Brion, 65 Del Cerro, Juan, 152 Delegaciones de Asuntos Indigenes

(Office of Native Affairs), 182 Dike, Keuneth 0., 56, 58 Direccion General de Marruecos y

Colonias, 110, 145, 154 Disease, 4-6, 34-37, 50, 53, 61, 168,

171; Gonorrhea, 47, 144, 182; Syphillis, 47, 144, 182. See also Malaria

Dougan, Joseph Walter, 93, 114, 115, 135 Duala, 18, 31, 92, 116, 118, 124, 125,

178 Duke Ephraim and Clarence, 33 Dulce, Domingo, 53

Ef~, 33, 57, 69, 72, 92, 182 Eltis, David, 21-22, 29, 31, 40, 119 Elobey, 47, 123, 124, 136 Emancipado (status), 53, 157 Ernancipados (Cuban), 51-54 eria, 75, 171 Espaiia, Adolfo, 166 Esquivel, Luis Ramos de, 12 Eyo II, 69

Fang, 47, 122-24, 143, 161, 168, 176, 183, 184

Fernandinos, 7, 54, 90, 96, 101, 111-115, 140, 160, 177, 183-84; Agricultural problems of, 96, 99, 110; Culture, 146-48, 158; Labor ordinance 1913, 138; Religious Beliefs, 151-52; Social structure, 155-56, 175

Forced Labor Convention 1930, 145 Franco, Francisco, 5, 110, 146, 159, 161, 176, 179 Frazer, Sir James, 81 Freetown. See Sierra Leone Fyfe, Christopher, 7, 90, 91

Gabon, 10, 40, 45, 46,47, 60,122,124,

145, 161 GAESA, 180 Gandara, Jose de Ia, 164 Gardner, Henry Hugh, 96, 152

247

Geography (Fernando Po), 10-11, 180-81, 191n2

Gold Coast, 12, 24, 33, 59, 61, 85, 92, 117, 118, 131, 133, 135, 137

Gomes Ferreira, Vicente, 18 Gomes de Silva, Manuel, 19 GonzaJez, Antonio, 46 Gori Molubuela, Enrique, 183 Grebo, 126, 127, 129 Guillernard De Aragon, Adolfo, 47, 50,

52, 67, 164

Hargreaves, J. D., 91 Harris, Marvin, 4 Hay, John, 34 Hobsbawm, Eric, 119 Holt, John (Company), 93, 105, 108, 130,

173 Holt, John, 60, 88, 92 Hopkins, A. G., 61, 120 Horsfall and Company, J., 49, 88 Hoto of Monohlu, Chief; Liberia, 144 Huelin, Casa (Cocoa Brokers), 102, 110 Humplmeyr, August, 130 Hutchinson, Thomas; F. P. nationality

question, 70; on Bubi, 83

Igbo, 7, 23, 57, 69, 123, 148, 182 lradier y Bulfy, Manuel, 51, 101-102, 122

Jamaica, 37, 46, 66-67 Jamieson, Robert, 64, 85 Jesuits, 153, 164 Johns, George; Liberian consul, 143 Johnson, Gabriel, 117, 142 Johnson, James, 155 Johnston, Sir Harry, 4, 15 Jones, Alfred, 159, 183 Jones, Edward, 6, 68, 69 Jones, Joan (Juana), 159

248

Jones, Mabel, 159 Jones, Maximiliano, 105, 171;

Accumulation, 114; Beginning, 93; Family life, 158-59

Jones Niger, Wilwardo, 183 Jones, Salome, 183 Jones, W. J., 88 Jones, Wilwardo, 114 jonnu, 129-30 Juanola, Padre Joaquin, 165, 166, 169 Junta de Patrones, 172

King Akwa (Acqua), 20, 125 King Bell, 125 King, Charles D. B., 142-43 King Duke, 69 King Eyo, 69 King William, 51, 125 Kingsley, Mary, 165 Kinson, Daniel, 169 Kinson, Samuel, 93, 138 Knox, J. W., 93 Kpelle, 129-30 Kru, 57, 58, 73, 93; Labor recruitment,

126-30, 165; Origins, 7, 111; Wars with Bubi, 86-87;

Labor Abuse, 130-40; Agreements, 140-45; Recruitment, 122-30

Lagos, 58, 70, 72, 82, 117, 134, 147, 150, 152, 157, 159

Lardner, H. H., 92 League of Nations, 130, 144-45, 171, 180 Lerena, Juan Jose de, 46-47 Liberia, 26, 56, 64, 91, 111, 117, 126,

129, 134, 136-37, 140-45 Livingstone, C. (Consul 1869), 72 lohUa, 80, 166 Lopez de Ia Torre Ayllon, P., 50 Lopez y Bru, Claudio (2nd Marques de

Comillas), 102, 156 Lopez y Lopez, Antonio (1st Marques de

Comillas), 102 /ova, 75 Lovejoy, Paul, 17, 120

Index

Luba, 16, 20, 170 Lynslager, Wm., 48, 59, 72; Baptists, 67;

Biography, 58, 60, 70

MacFoy, Abigail. See Mehile, Abigail MacFoy, James, 91, 150, 155;

widow, 96, 138 Macias Nguema, Francisco, 184 MacQueen, James; On suitability of

F. P., 6, 24; Proposal for company 1840s, 65

Malabo, 76, 77, 167, 169, 170, 172, 175 Malaria; Antislaving base

considerations, 19, 24, 36; Importance on F. P., 4-5; Influence on Clarence [passim], 36; Mid-century Spanish mortality, 182

Mallo Brothers, 115 Mann, Kristin, 147 Manterola, Nicolas de, 47, 50 Maria Cristina (Mission), 174 Maris Carneiro, Antonio de, 14 Martin del Molino, Amador, 74, 76, 77 Martinez, Miguel, 152-53 Matthews, Wm. Henry, 67, 59 Mehile, Abigail, 2!9n40 Mehile family, 175 Meillassoux, Claude, 128 Mende, 7, 132 Miers, Suzanne and Roberts, Richard,

7, 119 Mixed Commission Court (Freetown),

21, 23, 25, 27, 39, 41-43, 46 Moka (town). See Riabba Moka (King), 77, 78, 80, 82, 165-67,

172 Montes de Oca, Jose, 93, 102 morim6 (mmo), 83, 163 Moritz, E. H., 105 Moros y Morellon, Jose de, 39 Mpongwe, 122 Munga, 47 Munoz y Gaviria, Jose (Vizconde de San

Javier), 54 Mustrich, Domingo, 48

Index

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 145

Ndowe, 176, 183 Nevinson, Henry, 127 Nicholls, Peter, 69, 70, 85 Nicol, William Fergusson, 93 Nicolls, Col. Edward, 27, 28, 31, 35, 79;

and Breaking up of settlement, 33; Baptists, 67; Consulted on Niger Exp., 43; Development schemes, 65; Need for a base in Bimbia, 32-33; On Africanintellect, 62; Settlement of F. P., 64, 86; View of efficacy of Clarence, 31; West Africa Co., 62-63

Niger, Daniel, 113 Niger Expedition, 6, 24, 36, 42, 45, 59,

88 Nigeria, 3, 10, 20, 29, 60, 97, 103-104

122, 125, 131, 135, 137, 155, 179-180

O'Donell, Leopoldo, 49 Old Calabar, 19, 22-24, 32-33, 40, 64,

69, 72, 88, 92 Opubu, 32 Oriche, 77, 175-76 Ossorio, Amado 102, 122 Owen, William F., 28, 31, 35-36, 59;

Development schemes, 32, 34, 41, 61-62; E. Africa, 33; Settlement of F. P., 25-27; View of African rulers, 32-33

Palm oil, 6-7, 31, 35, 69, 75, 84, 90-92, 117, 124, 173, 179; 1850 prod. Biafra, 59, 60, 63-64, 68, 72-73, 74, 177, 182; Cultivation, 16, 148, 169; Description, 14, 40, 83; Early 19th C. production and prices, 24-25

Patronato de Indigenas, 157, 171-72, 182 Pelissier, Rene, 146 Pelion y Rodriguez, Julian, 50 Pepple, King, 58 Perez y Mora (Company), 105 Porter, A. T., 132 Potugi, 18 Primitive Methodist Mission, 93, 153, 157,

249

172; Beginning on Fernando Po, 78; Early 20th C., 141, 148-49; Women in mission, 156, 218nJO

Primo de Rivera, Joaquin, 19, 110, 146 Prince, G. K., 66 Principe, 5, 7, 10-13, 14, 18-19, 45, 51,

57, 95, 98-99, 121, 131, 148, 168 PROGUINEA, 180 Puerto Rico, 38, 42, 50, 121

Recaptives, 7, 21, 23, 26, 27, 28, 33, 56-57, 58, 62-63, 65, 69, 148; Provenance, 23

Reglamento del Trabaja Indigenas, 134 Rey, Pierre-Philippe, 128 Riabba, 18, 77, 78, 80, 88, 105, 162,

163, 165, 166-67' 182 Richard Dillon and Company, 62, 63, 85 Rio Gallinas, 43-44 Rio Muni, 15, 45-47, 74, 101-105, 110,

122-24, 125, 141, 143, 158, 161, 168, 179, 183-84

Rodney, Walter, 4, 178 Romera, Francisco, 92, 114, 132 Ross, Samuel, 143-44

Saker, Alfred Rev., 66 San Carlos, 55, 92, 93, 97, 98, 114, 132,

136, 146, 149, 167-68, 172 San Carlos Bay, 16, 20, 64, 84, 86, 133 Sanchez Toea, J., 105 Santa Isabel (Clarence), 3, 26-36, 46,

55, 57-63, 68, 70, 84, 87-9, 110, 111, 126, 146-49, 150, 152, 154, 156, 165, 169, 170, 171, 172, 183; Impact on slave trade, 27-36; Population early 1900s, 98, 103, 105, 123; Population-20th C., 123, 153, 154-55

Sanz Casas, Gonzalo, et al., 167 Sao Tome, 45, 52, 121, 115, 120, 148,

183, 207n4J; Cadbury Scandal, 131, 135; Comparison F. P. (navigation), 10, 13; Comparison F. P. cocoa 1880s, 95, 98-100; Comparison F. P., 13, 18, 19, 98; Disease factor, 34, 168; Plantation

250

Economy, 3, 5, 7, 11, 12; Slave Trade, 12, 51

Sas Ebuera, 77, 167, 169, 172 Scarano, Francisco, 121 Schuler, Monica, 129 Schuyler, George, 144 Scott, John, 59, 60,67 Scott, Jonathan, 59 Sierra Leone, 7, 21, 23-25, 29, 33-36, 43,

46-51, 56, 59, 63, 65, 67-73, 98, 90, 92, 97, 126, 129, 132, 133, 134, 137, 157, 159

Sierra Leoneans. See Creoles Sindicato Agricola de los Territories;

Espanola del Guinea, 109, 143 Slaving, 6, 7, 8, 18, 19, 21, 32, 33, 43,

45-52, 61, 125, 129-30; 18th C. numbers, 12, 17-18; Early 19th C.

' ,c· numbers, 20; Decline in 1830s, 22, 25-27, 31

Smallbones, Robert, 135, 138 Sociedad de Explotacion Agricola Industrial

y Minera, 104 Sociedad Economica de Barcelona, 49 Sociedad Economica Matritense, 49 Sociedad General; Hispano-Africana, 104 Sociedad Geografica de Madrid, 101 South Africa, 117, 141, 147 South Atlantic System, 21, 38, 45 Spain, 3; 1778 Expedition, 6; Anti-

slaving diplomacy, 32, 39-45; Colonial retrenchment, 83-85, 164; Colonization 1870s, 91; Economy 1890s, 110; In the Bight (overview), 11, 21; Internal politics, 38; Labor agreement 1914, 140-45; Negotiation on cession, 40-41, 94; Nineteenth C. imperialism, 72, 101; Slaving, 38; Spanish Guinea, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 161, 175, 179, 183-84

Stanley, Henry M., 101, 102 Suret-Canale, Jean, 120

Taylor, Joseph Emmanuel, 97-98 Tovalou Quenum, Joseph, 116 Trasatlantica (Transatlantica), Compaiiia,

102, 105, 114, 156

Index

Transmediterranea Company, 145, 179 Trypanosomiasis, 4, 182

Union Bubi, 176, 183 Union de Agricultores de Guinea

Espanola, 109, 180 Union Democratica Fernandina, 183 Universal Negro Improvement Association,

117, 142 Ureka, 15, 77, 78, 80, 162 Usera, Jeronimo, 152

Vai, 129-30 Valdes, Jose Salome, 51 Valdes Cavanilles, Luis, 110 Vansina, Jan, 9, 14, 15, 16, 76, 78, 82 Varela y Ulloa, Jose de, 19 Vigatana de Fernando P6o, 102, 107, 108,

135, 136 Vivour, Amelia, 93, 113, 114, 132, 133,

156 Vivour, William Allen, 92-93, 113, 114,

115, 126, 132, 136

West African Company, 63-64, 67, 72, 85, 87

Weyler Valeriano, 104 Wiechers and Helm, 130 Williams, Thomas, 70 Wilson, Francis, 105 Woermann Line, 55, 60, 108 Wrisberg, Johan, 61

Yams, 16, 18, 26, 75, 81, 86, 132, 166 Yancy, Allen, 143-44

Zanzibar, 3, 5, 6, 7, 104, 120 Zulueta, Pedro de, 52

..-~~·=·==~"·~="""''fi

~ Univ. Bayreuth

l~~=.:~~~

Sundiata, Ibrahim. From Slaving to Neoslavery: The Bight of Biafra and Fernando Po in the Era of...

Documents

Transcript of Sundiata, Ibrahim. From Slaving to Neoslavery: The Bight of Biafra and Fernando Po in the Era of...