Pre- and Early Colonial Igbo Worlds

Abstract

The Igbo-speaking people of southeastern Nigeria have inhabited, for perhaps four thousand years, the territory situated between the Niger and Cross rivers of West Africa, just north and somewhat east of the Niger Delta. For centuries, it appears that they lived self-sufficiently although not in isolation, producing their own food, textiles, and iron goods, and importing only salt and fish from Delta traders and more luxurious items like copper and beads from more distant locales. With the arrival of European mercantilists in the Delta region in the fifteenth century, Igbo traders acted as middlemen in the slave trade, exchanging slaves for local currency (such iron rods and, later, cowrie shells) and sometimes whiskey with Delta slavers, who themselves exchanged their human cargo for European-manufactured products such as textiles and armaments. The Delta towns of Bonny and Calabar became bustling centers of commerce in human beings, many of them being what we would today call Igbo.