The Books
As each of us individually conducted research on a specific Atlantic traveler, collectively we read these books and used them as our navigational tools to sail the Atlantic's historiographical waters. The books' histories and stories guided us through our own process. Each of the following books features a unique, comprehensive approach to the early modern Atlantic world and the people who traversed it. Their authors provided us physical, conceptual, and narrative maps that we used to navigate our own understanding of the global Atlantic world. These books also offered us a set of concepts to understand and interpret the world our travelers inhabited and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in their journeys. Scott and Hébrard’s “micro-history set in motion,” Sparks's "Atlantic Creoles," Restall and Fernández-Armesto's "armed entrepreneurs," Sweet’s “Black Atlantic,” Jasanoff's "spirit of 1783," Pérez Morales's "masterless Caribbean," and Colley's "biography that crosses boundaries" offered us fruit for thought and nourished our weekly discussions.
The Books
As each of us individually conducted research on a specific Atlantic traveler, collectively we read these books and used them as our navigational tools to sail the Atlantic's historiographical waters. The books' histories and stories guided us through our own process. Each of the following books features a unique, comprehensive approach to the early modern Atlantic world and the people who traversed it. Their authors provided us physical, conceptual, and narrative maps that we used to navigate our own understanding of the global Atlantic world. These books also offered us a set of concepts to understand and interpret the world our travelers inhabited and the challenges and opportunities they encountered in their journeys. Scott and Hébrard’s “micro-history set in motion,” Sparks's "Atlantic Creoles," Restall and Fernández-Armesto's "armed entrepreneurs," Sweet’s “Black Atlantic,” Jasanoff's "spirit of 1783," Pérez Morales's "masterless Caribbean," and Colley's "biography that crosses boundaries" offered us fruit for thought and nourished our weekly discussions.
The Books
The Books
Ramusio Map (1534). Courtesy of John Carter Brown Library
Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004)
By Georgina Cedeño and Jack Mindich
In The Two Princes of Calabar, Randy Sparks details the odyssey of Little Ephraim and Ancona Robin John, two elite members of the Efik tribe in western Africa who, atypically, returned home after enslavement in the Americas. Sparks introduces the monograph with the 1767 capture—a betrayal by British slavers—of the two Robin Johns in Old Calabar (part of modern Nigeria). The Robin Johns and their economic rival (Duke Town) had been engaged in a struggle over who would become the main trading partner with the slavers. Importantly, the Robin Johns had also successfully maneuvered against the British, securing more favorable trading parameters, but frustrating the captains. To hit back, the slavers ambushed the Robin Johns family, taking the two princes prisoner. Following their capture, Ancona and Little Ephraim were transported in a slave ship across the Atlantic to Cape Verde, and then to Dominica. In spite of their new status as slaves, the Robin Johns received better treatment than other enslaved people both aboard the ship and in Dominica. After seven months, a captain offered to smuggle them home, which they accepted. However, the captain reneged on his promise and instead resold the Robin Johns in Virginia. After five years as slaves on a cotton plantation, the Robin Johns again fell victim to the designs of a greedy captain who promised them freedom but instead sold them to a slave owner across the Atlantic. Thus, the Robin Johns landed in Bristol in 1773, still enslaved. Once in England, the Robin Johns wrote repeated pleas for their freedom to Thomas Jones, a British slaver with whom they had been friendly while selling slaves in Calabar themselves. The Robin Johns had to win a court case, but, with the help of Jones and Christian abolitionists Charles and John Wesley, Ancona and Little Ephraim were freed and at last returned to Calabar in 1774, though not before a series of storms forced them to return to England before successfully reaching Africa on their second voyage.
The Atlantic trajectory of Little Ephraim and Ancona Robin John. Image from Randy Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar.
While the Robin Johns’ journey does speak to the potential for non-Europeans to travel extensively in the era of sail, it still reinforces the importance of class. Little Ephraim and Ancona’s acculturation to the British was exceptional among the Africans forced into the Middle Passage and such advantages were drawn directly from their elite upbringing, which had exposed them to both English customs, in general, and the British side of the slave trade, in particular. Indeed, after they were captured, the Robin Johns’ fluency and knowledge yielded them preferential treatment during the Middle Passage and allowed them to appeal to smugglers. Later, their ability to write, not just speak, English permitted the Robin Johns to directly contact Thomas Jones and gain their freedom. Though the Robin Johns’ wile and grit played a foundational role in their liberation, their story is an exception that proves the rule about the workings of class in the early modern Atlantic and the cultural capital that often accompanied it. Most slaves who were transported to the New World could not speak English and thus could not build rapport with the ship crew or captains. These relationships were key to the Robin Johns evading the treatment that killed one out of every five enslaved persons during the Middle Passage. Their written and speaking abilities also helped them avoid some of the most debilitating work in the colonies and, ultimately, proved crucial to their escape from slavery. The Robin Johns’ return to Old Calabar is a testament to their ingenuity, but even more so to the opportunities a privileged, Anglophilic upbringing could offer.
"A Slaver's Canoe". Civilians, and not prisoners of war, are transported to the West African coast to be sold into slavery. Image from Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora (http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/440).
The Robin Johns’ journey also illustrates some significant moral tensions in the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Contrary to common knowledge, the British government claimed to regulate the slave trade with rules that expressly prohibited the enslavement of African people unless they were prisoners of war. These laws, targeted at instilling a sense of legality and decency into a manifestly inhumane system, created a de jure legal standard, but one that was routinely abused as tribe leaders, with the slavers’ blessings, attacked neighboring towns and kidnapped civilians, ostensibly as part of legitimate warfare. However, the existence of any regulatory framework is still significant as it highlights the real strain between British morals and the Empire’s lust for wealth. Perhaps even more notable, though, was the lack of evolution in the protagonists’ perceptions of slavery. We might expect that after experiencing first-hand the brutality of enslavement, the Robin Johns would have denounced their former practice. This did not happen. Instead, in a letter to Charles Wesley, Little Ephraim wrote: “...how shall I pay My good friend Mr. Jones who has been so kind...if we must not sell slaves I know not how we shall pay.” While the Robin Johns recognized that the slave trade was wrong, they saw it as an ‘industry,’ necessary for their economic subsistence; like the British, they used this as justification for participating in a dehumanizing system. It is impossible to know whether Little Ephraim truly believed that participation in the slave trade was inescapable. His explanation, however, highlights the dominant role the industry played in the economic subsistence of the Efik elite. Our historical perspective on the slave trade enables us to condemn the practice and its perpetuators. Yet, the princes’ story provides insight into the nuances British and Africans faced when choosing between economic success and a clean conscience.
Louttit, Henry I. “John and Charles Wesley.” Following their Methodist values, Charles and John Wesley offered crucial help to the Robin Johns. Image from Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.