The Realities of Legitimate Trade on the Oil Rivers

Between 1792 and 1836 one by one the maritime states of Europe and the United States outlawed slave trade, and although smuggling continued (no fewer than 3 million slaves were sent to the Americas in the 1800s), the centuries-old dependency of many African merchants and rulers on the transatlantic slave trade came to an end. Great Britain, the world’s leading slave-trading nation in the 1700s, took the lead in enforcing the new anti-slaving laws in the early 1800s by dispatching ships of the Royal Navy to patrol the African coast. The British also sought to persuade African kings and chieftains to end their dependence on selling slaves and provisioning slave ships in favor of “legitimate trade.” For merchants of the villages on the Niger River delta and the regions just to its east and west, legitimate trade primarily meant trade in palm oil, produced from the nut of the oil palm, a tree that flourished in a relatively small region just beyond the coastal swamplands. A traditional African food, palm oil had been one of the products Africans sold to European slavers, who added it along with pepper to the gruel they served slaves bound for the Americas. In the nineteenth century demand for palm oil soared in Europe, where it was used as a lubricant and as an ingredient in soap and candles. By the 1860s, more than 40,000 tons of palm oil were being exported from Africa annually, and the many creeks and rivers in the Niger delta and its vicinity came to be known as the “oil rivers.”

This shift to legitimate trade in palm oil was a mixed blessing for Africans. Producing palm oil was arduous, labor-intensive work, involving harvesting and sorting palm nuts, cooking them, boiling them, skimming off the oil, and pouring the finished product into thirty-six-pound tins that were transported to the coast in large canoes. As a result of the heavy demand for labor, domestic slavery in palm oil-producing regions actually increased in the 1800s. In addition, the palm oil trade heightened tensions and conflict among the numerous small city-states of the region, whose merchant-chieftains purchased the oil in the hinterland, transported it to the coast, and sold it to Europeans. Finally, as the documents that I would like you to read show African merchants were at a disadvantage in their dealing with the Royal Niger Company, which with the backing of British officials imposed and enforced a host of new trade duties and regulations. Such regulations and duties became especially burdensome from the 1880s onward when the introduction of petroleum-based lubricants in Europe softened the market for palm oil.

The two memoranda I would like you to read (you can read them both by clicking here) reveal some of the problems and frustrations faced by African palm-oil merchants in their dealings with the British. Both memoranda were produced by the king and chiefs of Brass (also known as Nembe), a city-state on the Niger delta with a long history of involvement in trade. More so than other African traders, the Brassmen resisted the British. They complained to British officials, evaded regulations, and occasionally attacked British steamboats and trading facilities. British authorities fined the merchants of Brass for their smuggling and attacks on British property, but they ignored their many petitions of grievance.

After you have read the two memoranda, I would like you to think about and discuss the following: On the basis of the information contained in the two memoranda, describe the economic changes experienced by the merchants of Brass as a result of their dealings with the British in the nineteenth century. What specific grievances do the Brass chiefs have in their dealings with the British? What specific changes in British policy do they seek? In what respects are the Brass traders at a disadvantage in their dealings with the British? How do the Brass traders perceive themselves in their relationship with the British? Do they consider themselves equals of the British? How do their attitudes compare with those of the African slave traders described in Equiano's narrative during Season 3? Your thoughts…

[NOTE: The advertisement above is not from this time period, but it does drive home the point of palm oil being used in soap (hence the brand name "Palmolive")].