It has been established that the europeans were aided by some africans to ship away millions of Africans during the infamous Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to North America, the Caribbean and South America, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.
Only about 10.7 million survived the dreadful journey under bondage in slave ships.
Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 and the United States later abolished it in 1865. Brazil was the last to ban it in the Caribbean in 1888 marking the end of the barbarism inflicted on men, women and children of colour and their descendants.
There were recorded protests by West African chiefs and traders after the abolition of slave trade due to the loss of revenue. In West Africa, the slave traders were known as caboceers and they lived on the coast.
Here are some notorious chiefs and caboceers who were actively involved in selling their own as slaves to the whites.
Tippu Tip (1832-1905)
He was a Swahili-Zanzibari slave trader, businessman and governor who worked for many sultans of Zanzibar. Tippu Tip traded in slaves for Zanzibar’s clove plantations.
He led many trading expeditions into Central Africa by constructing profitable trading posts that reached deep into the region. By 1895, he had acquired “seven ‘shambas’ [plantations] and 10,000 slaves.
He met and helped several famous western explorers of the African continent, including David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley. He claimed the Eastern Congo for himself and for the Sultan of Zanzibar; and was later made governor of the Stanley Falls District in the Congo Free State.
Oshodi Tapa (1800 – 1868)
He was Oba Kosoko’s war captain and one of the most powerful chiefs in the Oba of Lagos’ court. He is reported to have been a slave from the Nupe Kingdom at Bida.
Accounts note that when he was a little boy about to be loaded onto a Portuguese ship bound for the Americas, he escaped and sought refuge in Oba Osinlokun’s palace.
He and another slave (Dada Antonio) were sent by Oba Osilokun to Brazil to learn Portuguese, acquire the necessary commercial and cultural knowledge to conduct trade on behalf of the Oba and to collect duties from Portuguese slave traders. After serving Osilokun, Oshodi Tapa became a key adviser and military chief of Oba Kosoko.
He successfully transitioned from human trafficking to expanding into producing palm oil, cotton, and ivory using slave labour.
Antera Duke
He was an 18th-century African slave dealer and Efik chief from Calabar in eastern Nigeria (now in Cross River State). His diary, written in Nigerian Pidgin English, was discovered in Scotland and published.
This diary records his interactions with British merchants to whom he sold slaves; he writes about wearing “white man trousers” and entertaining the merchants he traded with.
Rabih az-Zubayr (1842-1900)
He was a Sudanese warlord and slave trader who established a powerful empire east of Lake Chad, in today’s Chad. He worked as the right-hand man of the Sudanese slaveholder Sebehr Rahma.
He conquered empires and was killed by the French after he slaughtered their emissaries.
Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur
He was a slave trader in the late 19th century and later became a Sudanese governor. He was at odds with the British Governor General Charles Gordon and was referred to as “the richest and worst”, a “Slaver King” “who [had] chained lions as part of his escort” by England.
William Ansah Sessarakoo (1736–1770)
He was a prominent 18th-century Ghanaian, best known for his wrongful enslavement in the West Indies and diplomatic mission to England.
He was both prominent among the Fante people and influential among Europeans concerned with the transatlantic slave trade.
His father was John Correntee, chief caboceer and head of the Annamaboe (present day Anomabo) government who was a slave trader and an important ally for any trader in the city.
His father sent him to England to gain an education and be his eyes and ears in Europe.
The ship captain entrusted with Ansah’s transport sold him into slavery in Barbados before reaching England. He was discovered in Barbados years later by a free Fante trader who alerted John Corrente.
Corrente petitioned the British to free his son. The Royal African Company, the English company operating the slave trade freed him and transported him to England.
He was received as a prince in England and gained the respect of London’s high society. It is noted that he watched a live performance of a play depicting a wrongly enslaved African prince. He fled the theatre in tears to the surprise of the audience. The play likely reminded Ansah of himself.
He returned to Annamaboe and took up work as a writer at Cape Coast Castle. He later worked as a slave trader.
Efunroye Tinubu (1810 – 1887)
She was a politically significant figure in Nigerian history because of her role as a powerful female aristocrat and slave trader in pre-colonial and colonial Nigeria.
She was a major figure in Lagos during the reigns of Obas Adele, Oluwole, Akitoye and Dosunmu.
In December 1851 and under the pretext of abolishing slavery, the British bombarded Lagos, dislodged Kosoko from the throne, and installed a more amenable Akitoye as Oba of Lagos.
Though Akitoye signed a treaty with Britain outlawing the slave trade, Tinubu subverted the 1852 treaty and secretly traded slaves for guns with Brazilians and Portuguese traders.
