As King Eyo and his supporters had expected, the liberated Africans from Freetown did help to stimulate growth in the major sectors of Calabar's economy in significant ways. As intellectuals with an African background, they possessed knowledge of great value for the proper development of society. Latham (1973) asserts that it was in the education sector that the liberated Africans made their greatest contribution to the development of Calabar. Highly creative, innovative  
and possessed of enormous energy, they were uncompromising in their focus on the goals of a good society and strongly opposed to any exploitation of Africans by Europeans in Calabar; ${ }^{1}$ and not many of the arguments used by the Calabar elites in countering allegations brought against them by European traders would have been as astonishingly effective as they were without the presence of liberated Africans who were abreast of British trade and race relations policies. Owing to space constraints, it is the exploits of the liberated Africans of Calabar in trade between 1850 and 1920 that are highlighted here as their key contribution.