4 ideas
The original was lost in the twentieth century, and it survives only in extracts transcribed by a Scottish missionary. It is the only known contemporary diary by an African slave trader, which makes it a primary test case for any claim about how African elites participated in and profited from the trade.
European captains advanced trade goods on credit, called 'trust,' to Efik merchants, who later repaid in enslaved people or produce. To secure the loans, traders handed over 'pawns,' often dependents or relatives, who could be carried off if the debt went unpaid. This let strangers with no shared legal system lend large sums, with human collateral standing in for courts.
In Old Calabar the Ekpe (Egbo) secret society, dominated by leading merchants, enforced debts by sanctions such as 'blowing Egbo,' which confined or penalized a defaulter until he paid. A graded association of creditors thus functioned as the market's court and police, which made long-distance credit workable without a state.
The diary puts human sales, ritual killings at a notable's funeral, weather, drinking, and palm-oil prices in the same flat daily entries, with no moral commentary. Reading through this register shows that participants experienced the slave trade as ordinary business, and that its violence was folded into the schedule of commerce rather than set apart as exceptional.