🧵9/9 - Citations - Sources: Cambridge — David Eltis cambridge.org/core/books/abs… Cambridge — Herbert Klein cambridge.org/core/books/abs… JSTOR — Old Calabar correspondence jstor.org/stable/jj.4820347 Slavery & Remembrance — John Corrantee/Sessarakoo slaveryandremembrance.org/pe… JSTOR — Old Calabar merchants & British traders jstor.org/stable/24672379 Maryland State Archives — Ayuba Suleiman Diallo msa.maryland.gov/megafile/ms… National Portrait Gallery — Ayuba Suleiman Diallo npg.org.uk/collections/searc… Cambridge University Press — William Ansah Sessarakoo cambridge.org/core/journals/… Cambridge University Press — Diallo & Sessarakoo cambridge.org/core/books/bey…

🧵8/9 - King Ghezo of Dahomey famously stated this when the British Navy pressured him to stop his slave trading business: “The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth… the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery” These are just the documented kingdoms, polities, and individuals who were active participants in the slave trade. Africa is not a victim in regard to this part of history; it was involved with various slave trades throughout history, even to the point that there are still active slave trades occurring on the continent in the present day. Numerous were business partners with Europeans, and yet think that we should care that they got snaked at some point? Nah, y'all ancestors sold their souls and got burned for it, and got the continent burned as well. 🤷🏽‍♂️

🧵7/9 - Now for the list of Slave Trading African “Kingdoms”: The Kingdom of Loango The Empire of Lunda The Kingdom of Luba The Kingdom of Mbundu The Kingdom of Matamba The Kingdom of Kisanje/Jaga/The Imbangla The Kingdom of Bakongo The Kingdom of Kaabu The Jola/Diola people The Kingdom of Khasso The Kingdom of Bamana The Kingdoms of Futa Jallon and Futa Toro The Kingdom of Koya The Kingdom of Kong The Kingdom of Songhai The Empire of Akan/Asante/Twi The Fante Confederacy The Bono State present-day The Salaga Slave Market The Coast Town of Aneho/Little Popo The Kingdom of Dahomey The Kingdom of Allada The Kingdom of Whydah/Yoruba people The Empire of Oyo/Yoruba people The Aro/Arochukwu Confederacy/Igbo people The Kingdom of Kanem Bornu The Empire of Benin/The Edo people The Kingdom of Igala

🧵6/9 - Antera Duke of Old Calabar (mentioned in the list above) offers another unusually detailed case because he left behind his own diary. Antera Duke was an Efik slave trader who conducted business with European slave merchants. His diary records commercial transactions and interactions surrounding the slave trade, while surviving correspondence documents relationships between Old Calabar merchants and European traders. Historians have even recovered letters exchanged between African merchants at Old Calabar and British slave merchants. European slave merchants frequently advanced merchandise to African brokers on credit. African commercial institutions such as pawnship could then be used to secure those debts. Historians Paul Lovejoy and David Richardson found this system operating across numerous parts of West Africa during the slave-trading era. There were established African-European commercial partnership networks involving: African suppliers and brokers European buyers credit negotiated prices repeat customers correspondence commercial agents political agreements gifts and customs payments family connections education abroad and long-term business relationships. A historical study specifically examining Old Calabar merchants and British slavers describes them as “trading partners in the Atlantic economy” and discusses the economic and social benefits Efik middlemen obtained through their collaboration with British slavers. Today, they’ll tell you that their ancestors were forced by the white man to do this shit, but back then they acknowledged that these were commercial business partnerships, lol.

🧵05/9 - Pan-Africanist also love framing it as “African slave traders were generally forced by Europeans to sell enslaved people”, which is not an accurate description of how much of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade operated. The relationship between many African sellers and European buyers was a commercial partnership; African rulers, merchants, brokers, and slave traders negotiated with European merchants, supplied captives, extended and received credit, formed long-term trading relationships, and sometimes competed over which European partners they would trade with. Historians such as David Eltis, and Herbert Klein, summarizes the relationship bluntly: for roughly 350 years, African and European slave merchants traded with one another on the African coast as commercial counterparts, with Europeans generally having to respect African rules governing trade and enslavement. European buyers were dependent upon African sellers for their supply of captives. Europeans generally remained on the coast and did not control the interior. African merchants transported enslaved people from inland regions to coastal markets where European merchants purchased them. John Corrantee of Anomabo is an excellent example. Corrantee was a powerful Fante leader and intermediary on the Gold Coast. European slave merchants competed with one another for profitable relationships with him. He used that competition to improve his own commercial position. His relationship with Europeans became so established that he sent one son to France and another, William Ansah Sessarakoo (mentioned above) to Britain for education, apparently in part to strengthen his family’s relationships with European trading partners. That is not the behavior of a “powerless” people being forced by Europeans to participate in commerce. European merchants were actively competing for his business.

🧵04/9 - Another great example of this flawed framing is, William Ansah Sessarakoo, also mentioned in the above list. Sessarakoo’s story is slightly different from Diallo’s, and it’s worth keeping that difference exact. William Ansah Sessarakoo was born in Anomabo on the Gold Coast, in present-day Ghana, around the 1730s. Anomabo itself was one of the most important slave-exporting ports on the Gold Coast. <— Hilarious considering Ghanas current reparations push for slavery. Sessarakoo’s father wanted him educated in England and intended him to strengthen the family’s connections with British commercial interests. During the 1740s, Sessarakoo was entrusted to a British ship’s captain for transportation to Europe. The captain betrayed him. Instead of delivering Sessarakoo safely to England, the captain sold him into slavery in Barbados. Historical documents cite this betrayal directly. What happened next illustrates just how unusual Sessarakoo’s position was compared with an ordinary captive entering the Atlantic trade. Sessarakoo was eventually recognized in Barbados by a free Fante trader who knew who he was. Word reached his father on the Gold Coast. His father had enough political and commercial influence to petition the Royal African Company and mobilize European connections on his son’s behalf. An agent was dispatched, Sessarakoo was emancipated, and by 1748 he had reached Britain. In Britain, he became somewhat of a celebrity; the supposed African “prince” who had been wrongly enslaved. His portrait was produced, he mixed in elite British society, and contemporary writers made his story famous. Modern scholarship notes that British representations of Sessarakoo emphasized his aristocratic status and distinguished him socially from the ordinary Africans being transported as slaves. Then, in 1750, Sessarakoo returned to the Gold Coast. Historical accounts confirm his repatriation. He later worked at Cape Coast Castle and remained embedded in the commercial world linking Fante intermediaries and European traders. The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery catalog identifies William Ansah Sessarakoo not only as an enslaved person but as a “slave trader” under his occupation/business classification. Later biographical accounts likewise record him participating in slave trading after his return to the Gold Coast. It’s interesting to think about all that “power” and “influence” they had, what they did with it, right?

🧵02/9 - Individuals Tippu Tip Mansa Musa Efunsetan Aniwura Agaja and Tegbesu of Dahomey Akinsemoyin Adele Ajosun Madam Tinubu Fenda Lawrence Mary Faber Betsy Heard Caty Louette Anne Rossignol Catherine Phipps Niara Bely (Elizabeth Baily Gomez) Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba Babatu (Baba Ato) John Cabess Chief Kivoi Mwendwa Daaga Ayuba Suleiman Diallo Antera Duke (He has a published diary in which he glotes about his slave trading, and dressing like the white man) Kwadwo Egyir (Brempong Kojo/Caboceer Cudjo) Gogo Habiba Kosoko The Robin Johns Msiri N'Gangue M'voumbe Niambi Lusinga Iwa Ng'ombe Zolu Duma Bibiana Vaz De Franca Oshodi Tapa Omar Saidou Tall Mammy Skelton William Ansah Sessarakoo Crispina Peres Anne Pépin Anna Colas Pépin Maazi Okoroji Oti Oba Eshinlokun Daniel Conrad Taiwo Ologun Kutere Okoro Idozuka

🧵01/9: ☝🏽🤓 Fuck it, here’s a thread of historically documented African slave traders, and slave owners. Research these people, these “kingdoms”, and their participation in the slave trade. Learn something, because all these people do is lie, and misrepresent the truth! The way Pan-Africans, frame the Trans-Atlantic Slave-Trade is always funny to me, there were at least 3 Slave-trades out of Africa that predate the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade. By their logic if they weren’t selling their own people because no continental African identity existed, and their was no Pan-African ideology present in Africa until it was created here in the West, then why is that all these centuries late we have them claiming that Black Americans are their people? This framing completely dispells that idea. If we weren’t your people back then, we’re not your people now.