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From about 1820, enslaved people from Yorubaland, mostly from Oyo, Owu, and areas bordering the kingdom of Dahomey, began to predominate in northeastern Brazil, especially in the province of Bahia, where they were called Nago. One reason for the expansion of slavery in Brazil in the early nineteenth century was the growth of coffee and sugarcane plantations in Minas Gerais, Maranhão, and Bahia. By the mid-1830s, they formed the largest cohort of enslaved Africans in the region. The demographic surge partly underpinned a series of Yoruba-led slave revolts, the most significant of which took place in 1835 when a group of mostly Yoruba Muslims led an uprising that killed some planters before the Bahian police suppressed it. In the aftermath of the revolt many enslaved people were arrested and sentenced to punishments ranging from death to imprisonment and flogging. To prevent a re-occurrence the administration also decided to expel liberated Africans, whether they participated in the revolt, or not. The crackdown resulted in a flood of African ex-enslaved people leaving Bahia for West Africa between 1835 and 1850. Others who did not return to Africa left Bahia, sometime later sold in the south to new owners in Rio de Janeiro or momentarily moved by slavers.
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For reasons unknown, D'Avezac was silent on Osifekunde's early life in Brazil, a gap that can now be filled with scattered sources in archives and private collections across Africa, France, and Brazil, and from online sources. After landing in Brazil in 1820, D'Avezac claimed he became "the property" of a Rio de Janeiro-based French trader, "Navarre," since identified as Jean-Baptiste Navarre. ${ }^{16}$ But this was a later event. It now appears that in the 1820s, Osifekunde, according to Alberto da Silva and Olabiyi Yai, was sold to a Recife-based merchant and slaver, Joaquim José da Costa, whose slaving business tentacles reached the Bight of Benin. In addition to selling enslaved Africans in Brazil, he had investments in ships and crew going to Africa. It was from him Osifekunde received the name Joaquim, as enslaved people,
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[^0]: 16 Davezac, Notice, p. 22 and Lloyd, "Osifekunde," p. 237. D'Avezac likely used Rio de Janeiro as a generic name for Brazil. Whether this was to shield Brazilian merchants (including French) against accusations of violating the 1815 treaty limiting the slave to places south of the Equator is unknown.
as social minors, customarily assumed the enslavers' names. ${ }^{17}$ After da Costa's death in 1831 his family hired one of his trade partners, Navarre, who also worked as a broker and auctioneer, to sell off his property including a small ship, four enslaved people, and the ship's crew. The auction was completed in 1832. ${ }^{18}$ Navarre's commission for the job, in addition to cash payment, included Osifekunde, reinforcing the global practice of treating people as wealth, enslaved people as currency, and enslaved adults as large currency bills. ${ }^{19}$ Yai, posits the abolitionist debate in 1831 Brazil, spooked the market and created temporary selloffs. In his words, "the family hoped to avert losses from resistance, price decline, bankruptcy, like 1835." Santana thinks the sale was aimed at paying off da Costa's debt. ${ }^{20}$
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In Navarre's house, Osifekunde became one of the enslaved people owned by a small group of French expatriates in Recife and Rio de Janeiro. While members of the community all traced their ancestry to France, not all came directly from Europe. A section consisted of descendants of French citizens who had emigrated to Brazil in the sixteenth century, while others were first- or second-generation French refugees from St. Domingue, later Haiti, who had fled the Caribbean island in the wake of the revolution of 1791-1804. Many had lost their property and investments and had family members that had been killed by the revolutionaries. Whatever their origins, the French diaspora in Brazil was dominant in two types of vocations. One consisted of artists, architects, craftsmen, tourists and explorers, and the other, traders seeking to make profit. The former became more visible after 1808, when the Portuguese crown relocated to Rio de Janeiro in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. One of the most popular Frenchmen in this category was Jean-Baptiste Debret, a painter who was active in Brazil in the early nineteenth century, and started off painting portraits of members of the Brazilian aristocracy but soon became concerned with the enslavement of both blacks and the Indigenous people. While residing in Brazil from 1816-1831, Debret documented court rituals and the everyday lives of enslaved people. ${ }^{21}$
17 Discussions with Dr Alberto da Silva at the Enslaving Connections Conference, York University, Toronto, 12-15 October 2000 and Olabiyi Yai, Porto Novo, November and December 2001. Yai establishes connections between Da Costa families in Brazil and Benin Republic. For details, see Silke Strickrodt, Afro-European Trade in the Atlantic World: the Western Slave Coast c.1550-c. 1885 (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2015). Santana has since confirmed the name, see "Extraordinaria," p. 39.
18 Navarre might have been chosen because of his work as a ship consignee with deep contacts inside the French mercantile network. See below.
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18 Navarre might have been chosen because of his work as a ship consignee with deep contacts inside the French mercantile network. See below.
19 Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, 1974, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, Boston, Little, Brown and Jan Hogendorn, 1999, "Slaves as Money in the Sokoto Caliphate," in Endre Stiansen and Jane Guyer, eds., Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective, Stockholm, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, pp. 56-71.
20 Interview with Olabiyi Yai, Cotonou, 29 December 2001 and Santana, "Extraordinária," p. 32.
21 Jean-Baptiste Debret, 1834-1839, Voyage Pittoresque et Historique au Brésil, 3 vols., Paris, Firmin Didot Frères, Imprimeurs de l'Institut de France.
The merchants, by contrast, mostly retailed goods imported from France, such as textiles and other fashion products including shoes, hats and perfume, while they exported cotton, fur, leather, rum, sugar, coffee, and wood. Others were deeply involved in the slave trade. The merchants took advantage of good relations between Brazil and France after both countries signed a treaty in which Brazil opened its market to French traders, while France recognized Brazil's independence. Trade records compiled by Jurgen Schneider reveal that between 1827 and 1834, over $43 \%$ of ships engaged in France-Latin America trade came from Brazil, and 39\% of ships sailed in the other direction. Le Havre port saw more ships than Bordeaux and Marseilles combined. Schneider and Edouard Delobette credit Le Havre's growth to the rise of a global trade system, a viable commercial class, and strong institutions, spanning the Atlantic. ${ }^{22}$ This commercial orientation set the foundation for Osifekunde's journey to France.
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In the late 1830s, Navarre, Osifekunde's enslaver, was the local agent of the Quesnel Brothers, a merchant family founded in the eighteenth century by Nicolas Louis Quesnel, a leading Rouen-based merchant family. Nicolas, Philippe Champy asserts, started the firm, L. Quesnel $\mathcal{E}$ Brothers, in the 1770s trading in textiles and wool between France, Spain, and Portugal. Later, his two sons, François and Edouard Prosper (Oct. 1781-1850) took over the family business, having managed the family wool business in Portugal. The business entered a new phase in the early nineteenth century when Edouard, called Le Roi Quesnel, took over the firm. In 1819, he opened a store in Le Havre which his sons Alfred (1807-64) and Gustave (1811-88) later developed into Maison Quesnel Frères et Cie, one of the leading firms in Le Havre with interests in cotton and shipping in Europe and the Americas. ${ }^{23}$
As this background suggests, the French in Brazil were not unaccustomed to slavery and enslaved people. As shown above, many were emigrants from Saint
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[^0]: 22 Jurgen Schneider, 1989, "Trade relations between France and Latin America, 1810-1850" in Reinhard Lieh (ed.), America Latina en la epoca de Simon Bolivar: La formacio de las economias nacionales y los intereses economicos europeos 1800-1850, Berlin, Colloquium Verlag, pp. 426-27 and Edouard Delobette, 2002, "Ces 'Messieurs du Havre': Negociants, Commissionnaires et Armateurs de 1680 à 1830," PhD thesis Université de Caen.
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23 Philippe Champy, 2011, "De l'Andelle au Vexin normand: l'implantation d'une dynastie rouennaise du négoce, les Quesnel," Études Normandes 60, no. 3, pp. 5-28; Delobette, "Ces 'Messieurs du Havre," 2363-64; and "Quesnel", family correspondence [Online],"http://correspondancefamiliale.ehess.fr/index. php?4885. Nicolas's other children were Emilie Thérèse (1804-83); Clémentine (1805-40); Aglaé (180671) and Mathilde (1809-1907). Joseph Quesnel, his brother Pierre, and uncle, Louis-Auguste founded another branch of the family in the Americas in the 1770s. Joseph, a trader, militia and privateer, had visited Madagascar, Brazil, French Guyana and St. Domingue in 1772. He went to Canada in 1799 by accident and was detained in Halifax by Britain for shipping arms to American revolutionaries. Governor Haldimand gave him safe passage to Montreal after the war. He died in 1809 and his son inherited his firm. Chat with Andrew Quesnel, Niagara, 7 May 2008; www.biographi.ca/en/bio/quesnel_joseph_5E. html and https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/joseph-quesnel-emc
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Domingue, having fled the island in the wake of the slave uprising in 1791, to the declaration of Haiti's independence in 1804, and the subsequent attacks on the white population. How many of the emigres came with their enslaved people may never be known. Elsewhere, many of the whites, freed blacks, and mixed raced people who left Saint-Domingue for the United States settled in southern Louisiana. Enslaved Africans who came with their refugee owners became an issue of concern for some southern planters who feared enslaved people who had witnessed and perhaps taken part in the Haitian revolution could ignite similar revolts in the United States. ${ }^{24}$ Therefore, in Brazil, whose slave-based economy expanded dramatically to offset falling sugar supply from the Caribbean French immigrants fed Brazilian authorities with information on how to prevent revolts reminiscent of Saint-Domingue/Haiti. ${ }^{25}$ Indeed, it might not be farfetched to assume some of them had slave ancestries or had black relatives given the popularity of sexual interactions between French men in Brazil and SaintDomingue and their female black female enslaved people and employees.
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Born between 1797 and 1800, Navarre first settled in Rio de Janeiro before moving to Recife in the northeast, though he maintained business interests in the southern city and might have paid periodic visits there. ${ }^{26}$ If Osifekunde had travelled with his new enslaver to Rio de Janeiro in the 1830s he would have seen a cultural shift, having left behind northeast Brazil where many enslaved Africans, especially in Pernambuco and Recife, were Yoruba (Nago) and Gbe (Fon/Jeje), to Southern Brazil dominated by enslaved Central Africans collectively called Kongo in the Americas. As a result, his ethnic identity also would have changed from Nago to Mina, a Portuguese/Brazilian term for the region and people between Cote D'Ivoire and the Niger Delta. With British abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the near cessation of slave exports from the Gold Coast, Mina began to refer primarily to the Bight of Benin and specifically to Yoruba and Gbe-speaking
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[^0]: 24 David B. Davis, 2001, "Impact of the French and Haitian revolutions," in David P. Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia, SC, University of South Carolina Press, pp. 3-9.
25 See João J. Reis, and Falvio dos Santos Gomes, "Repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Brazil, 17911850" in David P. Geggus and Norman Fiering, eds., 2009, The World of the Haitian Revolution, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, pp. 284-314.
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26 Even though an online search came up with a date of 1799, Prof. Femi Ade-Ojo (not a relation), a collaborator with Pierre Verger as well as Santana gave a birth date of 1797. Ojo added that Navarre was born to a Creole mother which he thought drew him to Osifekunde. Santana only cited the French heritage. See https://www.familysearch.org/search/tree/results?count=20\&exactSearching=tru e\&q.givenName=jean\%20baptiste\%20navarre\&q.sex=Male\&q.surname=Navarre; interview with AdeOjo at the "Back to Africa conference," Johannesburg, South Africa 14-15 July 2008 and Washington and Baltimore from 2011-2013; and Santana, "Extraordinaria," p. 29. I also thank Ade-Ojo for showing me his draft essay "Afro-Brazilians, Afro-French, and Luso-French Blacks in nineteenth century France."
people. ${ }^{27}$ Despite their small numbers, enslaved Mina remained visible in Rio de Janeiro. They brought to southeast Brazil a keen sense of community partly reinforced by their small number but also their devotion to African belief systems, especially vodoun and orisa, and for the Yoruba, their familiarity with urban life. In the cities, Mina enslaved people worked for their owners and for themselves. They combined domestic and public duties such as hawking food, water and textiles. Others were masons, craftsmen, hairdressers, cobblers and porters transporting goods and human beings in hammocks and palanquins. They saved their profits to redeem themselves and families, marriage and the acquisition of property. After 1835, some spent their earnings on a return journey to Africa.
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In 1837 Navarre's family, including Osifekunde, left Brazil for France. D'Avezac indicates that Osifekunde was unfree when he came to France, raising questions about Navarre's assumptions about the journey and of French laws regarding slavery. ${ }^{28}$ Whatever his status, there seemed to be no legal obstacle to bringing enslaved people to France, contrary to d'Avezac's assertion that Osifekunde was free upon landing on French soil. Although in August 1791, the French National Assembly banned slavery thereby granting freedom to any slave who landed in France, by 1802, however, the French had overcome their flirtation with emancipation and were back in the business of slavery. The shortage of sugar in Paris that resulted from the Saint-Domingue revolution in the 1790s and
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[^0]: 27 'Kongo'memorializes the old Kongo kingdom, a leading state in early modern Central Africa while Mina originally applied to the gold mining village of El Mina (Elmina (the mine)). On 'Kongo' and 'Mina' identities, see Mariza de Carvalho Soares, "From Gbe to Yoruba: Ethnic Change and the Mina Nation in Rio de Janeiro," in Matt D. Childs and Toyin Falola, eds., 2004, The Yoruba Diaspora in the Atlantic World, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2004, pp. 231-47); Douglas Chambers, "Eboe, Kongo, Mandingo: African Ethnic Groups and the Development of Regional Slave Societies in Mainland North America," International Seminar, "The History of the Atlantic World," Harvard University, 3-11 September 1996; Linda Heywood, ed. 2002, Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora, Cambridge University Press; Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, "African Ethnicities and the Meanings of Mina," in Paul Lovejoy and David Trotman, 2003, Trans-Atlantic Dimensions of Ethnicity in the African Diaspora, London, Continuum, pp. 65-81; and Robin Law, 2005, "Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings of "Mina" (Again)," History in Africa 32, pp. 247-67.
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28 Osifekunde and Navarre sailed to France on the Camelia, a 356-ton ship with a crew of 19 men under Captain Guilbert, consigned by Edouard Quesnel and Brothers. Prof. Yai (citing Pierrre Verger's notes) and Ade-Ojo first identified the ships which took Osifekunde to and from France. French shipping records offer more details. The Camélia departed Le Havre for Pernambuco on December 19, 1836, and returned to France on 21 June 1837. See 6 P 7_9 - Armement et désarmement des bâtiments (18361840)" https://www.archivesdepartementales76.net/ark:/50278/80949e131ed1ad3e237d3b3122b8cdbd/ dao/0/1?id=https\%3A\%2F\%2Fwww.archivesdepartementales76.net\%2Fark\%3A\%2F50278\%2F80949e 131ed1ad3e237d3b3122b8cdbd\%2Fcanvas\%2F0\%2F3\&vx=1912.45\&vy=-1445.21\&vr=0\&vz=2.25147. Yai thought Navarre brought Osifekunde to look after his children. But there could be an added factor. The Muslim/Nago revolt of 1835 caused chaos in northeastern Brazil and forced slavers to rethink their priorities. Moreover, Navarre was going on a long journey, hence planned accordingly. Also see D'Avezac, "Notice," p. 22 and Santana, "Extraordinaria," p. 36.
the establishment of Haiti in 1804 precipitated riots that brought the French revolution crashing down from its high ideals of universal emancipation. Also, the Paris Convention of 1794 did not outlaw the slave trade, and under Napoleon, slavery was reintroduced. This policy reversal is captured by the Slave Voyages which registered at least 664 French-flagged ships engaged in the slave trade between 1800 and 1840. Although the regime of Louis Philippe (1830-48) revived the ban on slavery and criminalized the slave trade in 1830, abolitionism in France, as Lawrence Jennings has argued, was weak. ${ }^{29}$ The Voyages identified thirteen French slaving vessels after 1830, not to count those engaged in the indentured labor emigration scheme. The French Abolition Society, established in 1834, pursued a policy of gradual emancipation over the next decade. ${ }^{30}$
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Whatever the arrangement with Navarre, Osifekunde appeared to have changed his mind in Paris as he did not return to Brazil with his enslaver and was left to fend for himself. Was the enslaver ignorant of French laws and did he not expect Osifekunde to claim his freedom? Did he abandon Osifekunde in Paris? Did Osifekunde become a freedom seeker by escaping as the family prepared to return to Brazil in 1839? D'Avezac claimed that Osifekunde became a "free" man and changed his name to "Joseph", ${ }^{31}$ hence Europeanizing his name and dropping "Joaquim," an aspect of his Brazilian and servile identity, and giving himself a degree of anonymity, self-worth, and also making it difficult for Navarre to find him. Was he indeed free when many French continued to believe in slavery, engage in the slave trade, and had overseas slave estates? ${ }^{32}$ And how much obscurity had he, living in France when his French was sub-par, as we will see below?
Perhaps because he was old (at around 40 years) and certainly due to incompetence in the French language, Osifekunde had a chequered work history in France. He worked for more than one employer, including the owner of a rooming house where he had stayed with his enslaver. ${ }^{33}$ It did not take long before Osifekunde began to regret his decision and have second thoughts about his freedom. First, the French winter was too cold, unlike the tropical weather he knew in Africa and Brazil. D'Avezac said, "the winter [of 1839/40] brought back his homesickness. ${ }^{334}$ There was a long stretch of cold seasons
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[^0]: 29 Lawrence C. Jennings, 2000, French Anti-Slavery: The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in France, 1802-1848, Cambridge University Press.
30 Jennings, French Anti-Slavery, p. 47.
31 D'Avezac, Notice, p. 23 and Lloyd, "Osifekunde," p. 237.
32 See Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, eds. 2003, The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, Durham, NC, Duke University Press.
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31 D'Avezac, Notice, p. 23 and Lloyd, "Osifekunde," p. 237.
32 See Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall, eds. 2003, The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, Durham, NC, Duke University Press.
33 D'Avezac, Notice, p. 23 and Lloyd, "Osifekunde," p. 237. The rooming house might belong to the Quesnel Brothers whose vast housing estates are well documented. See Champy, "De l'Andelle au Vexin normand," pp. 10-14.
34 D'Avezac, Notice, p. 23 and Lloyd, "Osifekunde," p. 237.
during the second half of the 1830s. The period 1837 to 1839 was the coldest during the 1830s and compared only to 1830, described as the coldest since the mid-fifteenth century. ${ }^{35}$ He also had not been in France long enough to learn French. D'Avezac noted he communicated with Osifekunde in Creole Portuguese, yet their conversation was slow and prolonged, suggesting he spoke a Creole version of Brazilian Portuguese, his second language. A poor level of French would have made it more difficult for him to socialize, build relationships, and maintain employment, and would have increased his loneliness and misery. The fact that he changed jobs during his short stay could indicate his difficulty in communicating. As he was already about 40 years old, he must have been discouraged that the situation would not improve quickly. Finally, he had a family; including a son, in Brazil that he was attached to and desired to see.
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In 1839, two years after Osifekunde had arrived in France, and needing assistance to return to Brazil, he was brought to the attention of Marie-Armand Pascal d'Avezac de Castera-Macaya (1800-1875), a French geographer, ethnologist, and the chief archivist of the Ministry of the Navy ("garde des archives de la marine et des colonies"), Vice President of the Ethnology Society of Paris and a senior member of the French Geographical Society. Between 1833 and 1866, d'Avezac de Castera-Macaya served variously as Secretary, Vice president and later President of the Geographical Society. During the first half of the nineteenth century the Society was in a state of renaissance as members developed more interest in the history of exploration and mapping, ultimately developing cartography into a specialized subfield of geography. D'Avezac was an academic researcher more than a humanitarian, and very interested in Africa. When he met Osifekunde, d'Avezac was writing a book on African geography and perhaps had begun a later book on Brazil, two of his numerous publications. ${ }^{36} \mathrm{He}$
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[^0]: 35 On the cold weather and Osifekunde, D'Avezac wrote: "L'hiver renouvela sa nostaligie; il revint me demander son repatriement..." (My italics). See D'Avezac, "Notice," pp. 22-23 and Lloyd, "Osifekunde," p. 237. On April 8, 2011, a blogger posted this on "The History of European climate: "Sept-Nov 1829: cold; winter 1830: coldest in the past 300 years; summer 1830: cool; July 1832: cold; July-August 1833: very cold; May 1835: cold; August 1835: cold; October-November 1836: cold; Spring 1837: incredibly cold; winter 1838: freezing; summer/ autumn 1840: cold." See https://community.netweather.tv/topic/69134-history-of-european-climate/ and https://forum.netweather.tv/topic/69134-history-of-european-climate/. The French author, Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin (aka George Sand) authored her romantic and travel novel Un Hiver a Majorque (1841/42), based on her life during the Winter of 1837-1838. She lamented how the frosty winter disrupted her travels, made her husband's tuberculosis attack worse, and forced them to cut short their holidays. See Dupin, "Un Hiver a Majorque" pp. 55, 81, 84 (La Bibliothèque électronique du Québec Collection À tous les vents 49, version 1.2). https://beq.ebooksgratuits.com/vents/sand-majorque.pdf
36 D'Avezac, Eugene de Froberville, Frederic Lacroix, Ferdinand Hoefer, Jacques MacCarthy and Victor Charlier, 1848, Îles de l'Afrique, Paris, Firmin Didot Frères. D'Avezac's works include Esquisse Générale de l'Afrique et Afrique Ancienne (Paris, Firmin Didot Frères, 1844); Considérations Géographiques Sur L'histoire Du Brésil (Paris, L. Martinet, 1857). Also see Martin S. Staum, 2003, Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race, and Empire, 1815-1848, Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press.
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had read extensively on Africa and spoken with people in European Geographical Societies. However, at the time most of the published accounts, especially on the eastern Bight of Benin from Lagos to the Benin Rivers, focussed on the coastal district with very little information on the interior. Thus, when he met Osifekunde, he must have been pleased to see someone knowledgeable about the coastline and the hinterland but also Yorubaland, which until then had been poorly documented. But D'Avezac was also an ethnographer and orientalist who needed more data than the average geographer. He was interested in Africans and their culture. D'Avezac might have other curiosities as well-about his own family history. He was the great grandson of Pierre Valentin Davezac de Castera, a French bureaucrat turned successful plantation owner in Saint-Domingue in the late eighteenth century. Even more interesting is the fact that his wife, Marie Terese Genevieve Durand, whom he met on the island, was also the daughter of a rich mixed family of planters. ${ }^{37}$ Several members of these families fled the Caribbean in the wake of the Saint-Dominque revolution.
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For some time, D'Avezac convinced Osifekunde to remain in France and not return to Brazil, where he could be punished as a runaway slave. He promised to find him a new employer and arrange his return to Africa. It is significant that leaders of the British Niger Expedition set to depart Britain for the Nigerian Hinterland in 1841 refused to enlist Osifekunde as an interpreter. Probably they thought that he had spent too much in the diaspora to remember much about his homeland or because coming from a coastal state he would have no knowledge of the interior. Moreover, the expedition did not need him, having arranged to recruit African sailors (Kru men of Liberia) and translators in Sierra Leone. The recruits included two Yoruba speakers - Samuel Crowther and Thomas King — both of whom spoke English and were teachers, translators, and agents of the Church Missionary Society, the former described as "an intelligent and well-educated native." ${ }^{38}$ Finally, the expedition was still months away, if not a year, whereas Osifekunde needed urgent remedy. Also, it
[^0]
[^0]: 37 See Margaret Crosby-Arnold, "Hidden Legacy of Mixed Relations: Marie Armand Pascal d'AvezacMacaya's Fascination with Osifekunde Reconsidered," paper presented at the African Studies Association Meeting, Chicago, November 17, 2017.
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38 The expedition commissioned Rev. James Schön, a German CMS pastor and linguist to recruit African language speakers in Sierra Leone and he found twelve including his assistant, Samuel Crowther. See J. Frederick Schön and Samuel Crowther, 1970 [1842], Journals of Rev. James Frederick Schön and Mr. Samuel Crowther who accompanied the Expedition up the Niger in 1841, London, Frank Cass, pp.iv-vi, 2-3 and William Allen and T. Thomson, 1841, A Narrative of the Expedition sent by Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger, in 1841 under the command of Captain H. D. Trotter, 2 vols., London, R. Bentley, vol. I, pp. 77-79. Crowther became the first African Bishop while the expedition chose King to head a proposed British colony in the Niger confluence. Before the mission, Crowther worked with Hannah Killam and Rev. Raban on their books on Yoruba language published in 1827 and 1830-32 respectively while working on a Yoruba dictionary and (with Thomas King) a translation of the Bible. See John Raban, 1830-1832, A Vocabulary of the Eyo, or Aku, a Dialect of West Africa, London, CMS; Crowther, 1843, Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language, London, Seeley, and Ajayi, 1960, "How Yorùbá was reduced to writing," $O D U$ vol. 8, pp. 49-58.
would have required sending Osifekunde to Britain, which would have been totally new to him. If he found Paris tough, London would have been more difficult.
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would have required sending Osifekunde to Britain, which would have been totally new to him. If he found Paris tough, London would have been more difficult.
But Osifekunde was not passive in deciding his own fate. D'Avezac had convinced Captain John Washington of the British Navy, who was familiar with the experiences of enslaved Africans in the Americas and with British activities in West Africa, to arrange his repatriation. But when the opportunity came for him to be sent to Sierra Leone, he refused the offer. ${ }^{39}$ While scholars have focussed on the excuse that he wanted to return to his son in Brazil, it was worth considering the great distance between Sierra Leone and Yorubaland and the chance of his re-enslavement. Santana cited the war of Iperu as a potential obstacle, but it was not, since it was fought in 1833. ${ }^{40}$ Moreover, Osifekunde's town, Makun-Omi, on the lagoon was nearly 120 kilometres away from the battle zone and protected by water. Any military attack on Makun must be by a naval force, which Iperu belligerents never had. The risk lay elsewhere. Only slave ships sailed between Freetown and Lagos, leaving any traveller leaving Lagos for Makun vulnerable on the lagoon. Another possibility was the connection to the British indentured scheme which began around 1838, and forced many liberated Africans from Sierra Leone to the Americas in a slavery-like regime. ${ }^{41}$
At the same time, D'Avezac's primary concern was to extract as much information about Yorubaland as possible, so it was no surprise that between spring 1839 and late summer 1840 Osifekunde had to divide his time between working as a domestic for a French wholesale merchant, Jean-Pierre Firmin Barthélemy Vendryès (1776-1848) of Sablonville, in a Parisian suburb, and sitting down with D'Avezac for many hours of interviews. ${ }^{42}$ Be that as it may,
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[^0]
[^0]: 39 John Washington, 1838, "Some Account of Mohammedu-Sisëi, a Mandingo, of Nyáni-Marú on the Gambia," Journal of the Royal Geographical Society vol. 8, pp. 448-54; Washington to Lord Glenelg, July 23, 1838, CO295/123, The National Archives of United Kingdom (TNA) and D'Avezac, Notice, p. 23.
40 Santana, "Extraordinaria," p. 44.
41 French opinion on British slavery was diverse but there was a general opposition, based on national pride, to the British navy searching French ships for evidence of slave trading while Britain was promoting the indentured scheme. See Jennings, 1969, French Anti-Slavery; Johnson Asiegbu, Slavery and the Politics of Liberation, 1787-1861: A Study of Liberated African Emigration and British Anti-Slavery Policy, London, Longman; Monica Schuler, 1980, 'Alas, Alas, Kongo': A Social History of Indentured African Immigration into Jamaica, 1841-1865, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press; and Rosanne M. Adderley, 2006, 'New Negroes from Africa': Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the NineteenthCentury Caribbean, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
42 D'Avezac, Notice, p. 22. D'Avezac identified him as "M[onsieur] Vendryes, the elder;" court papers as "B[arthelemy] Vendryes" and Ade-Ojo and Yai as Jean Barthlomew Vendryes. For his full name as "Jean-Pierre Firmin Barthélemy Vendryès," see death notice announced in Paris by his wife, Adelaide Victoire Holtz, on 23 January 1849. See "Death Inventory," Archive Nationale (AN) MC/ET/XXII/368; AD. 75 Cote: VD6/74/196/1- (Paris, France) - électorales 1800-1803, Archives de Paris. Cf. https://www. geneanet.org/registres/view/116444/105; Arnaud Vendryes, "La famille Vendryes dans Les Antilles," GHC Bulletin 2 (Feb. 1989): 8-9 and "Roman Catholic Baptisms 1805-1807:" which had him as the godfather at a nephew's baptism but listed as "currently in France". See https://www.ghcaraibe.org/bul/ ghc002/p0009.html; http://www.jamaicanfamilysearch.com/Members/cb1805j.htm
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D'Avezac failed to consider how his quest for information about Ijebu society did not take into consideration Osifekunde's vulnerabilities. Furthermore, while working under Vendryes, he (Vendryes) was in court seeking indemnity for lost property in Saint-Dominque under the principles of French national laws, private property, and national (and we might add racial) pride. Simultaneously, some of his investments in Brazil had been liquidated by two military officers claiming to be shareholders in a joint firm, though Vendryes said these men were no more than agents or trustees. ${ }^{43}$ Were these signs that Vendryes was financially broke? Having been 'sold' once in a business liquidation scheme could Osifekunde risk been sold again? Can we guess what Vendryes was saying about 'blacks' in his private space while lamenting his fate in the hands of black rulers in Haiti? Under these circumstances, in 1840, the informant disappeared-D'Avezac presumed he escaped back to Brazil. He was right. First, Osifekunde left Paris for Le Havre en route to Brazil.
Before he left, however, he had provided extremely rich data on Ijebu society and people which D'Avezac, who later organized and published the account in 1845 as the Notice sur le pays et le peuple des Yébous en Afrique. While the first theme of the Notice concentrates on topography, physical geography and natural history, the second section on the people discusses issues ranging from morals and physiology to childhood, education, industry, philosophy, political organization, body markings, marriage, food, medicine, burial rites, music, architecture, employment, commerce, the numerical system, calendar, religion, and clothing. His memoir addressed an account of the early years of the Yoruba wars, dynastic ties, diplomacy and issues of war and peace. ${ }^{44}$
In January 1841, Osifekunde boarded a Brazil-bound passenger boat, Renard, a 210-ton ship, belonging to or consigned by a trading house under the name Grandin and commanded by Captain Hadewick (later recorded as Hachwyoty or Haelewyelof?
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[^0]
[^0]: 43 On Vendryes's legal issues and full name, see B. Vendryes, De l'Indemnite de Saint-Domingue considérée sous le rapport du droit des gens, du droit public des français et de la dignité nationale, Paris, Dec. 1839a; B. Vendryes, Observations circonstanciées en réponse à chacune des critiques de détail faites, au nom de M. de Montmarie, contre le compte général de gestion et liquidation au Brésil de la Société dite «du Brésil», Paris, Vinchon, 1839c; and Mémoire pour M. B. Vendryes, directeur à Paris de la Société dite du Brésil contre M. le lieutenant-général Montmarie et le lieutenant-colonel Roise, actionnaires se disant mandataires, mais étant de fait cessionnaires à titre gratuit des autres actionnaires, Paris, Vinchon, 1839b. See https://catalogue.bnf. fr/ark:/12148/cb315553411 and https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5785639c/f6.item.texteImage\#
44 A close reading of Notice shows D'Avezac did not understand certain things the informant told him which the writer confessed to while discussing his methodology. See discussions below.
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44 A close reading of Notice shows D'Avezac did not understand certain things the informant told him which the writer confessed to while discussing his methodology. See discussions below.
(letters illegible). ${ }^{45}$ The journey was not without incident. The Renard was partially damaged by a storm off the coast of England, immobilized, and had to be towed back to Le Havre. ${ }^{46}$ In March, Osifekunde joined another cargo ship, the Camélia - the same one that brought him to France in 1837. ${ }^{47}$ It is curious that Osifekunde's journey back to Brazil was with one Joseph Burle, a Recife-based French merchant with family ties to Navarre. According to Santana, Burle and Navarre's wives were sisters. If so, was Burle sent to lure Osifekunde back to Brazil or did Osifekunde choose to join a 'family member' on his return? Nearly fifteen months to the date of his return to Recife, Osifekunde was dead. On July 24, 1842, a group of men kidnapped him and took him to a secret hideout where they shaved his head, a usual punishment for newly enslaved people in many parts of Africa and for freedom seekers in the Americas. The group murdered him. ${ }^{48}$ It is unclear if his murder was a delayed punishment for having escaped in France three years earlier or if he was trying to help some enslaved people to freedom. What seems certain is that since his murder not only took place on Navarre's property, seven years after one of the greatest slave uprisings in Brazil, ${ }^{49}$ the killers, suspected to include powerful citizens in society, might be warning potential "rebellious" enslaved people to be cautious.
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45 The ship was scheduled to leave Le Havre for Bahia on 4 December 1840. After the accident, another departure date of 25-30 December was fixed but later changed to "indefinite suspension." A final entry on 14 January 1841 confirmed a cancellation for a trip to leave for Pernambuco, with a note that the broker, Mervile had 'previous experience with Bahia.' On Renard, see 6 P 7_34 - Armement et désarmement des bâtiments (1838-1845) https://www.archivesdepartementales76.net/arkc/50278/ec9dfab0e8a0c0a63a4cedac6c3c2f7e/dao/0/1/idsea rch:RECH_4c37a2fbb671f192399117dff4c70e26?id=https\%3A\%2F\%2Fwww.archivesdepartementales76. net\%2Fark\%3A\%2F50278\%2Fec9dfab0e8a0c0a63a4cedac6c3c2f7e\%2Fcanvas\%2F0\%2F56\&vx=3773.64 \&vy=-2360.92\&vr=0\&vz=7.21861. Santana gave the Captain's name as "Halewick." See "Extraordinaria," p. 47. Yai and Santana think the ship belonged to Ferrère et Morlot based in Le Havre and owned by Jean-Jacques-Theodore Ferrère (1803-) and his in-law, Charles Morlot, both members of French business and political lobbies from the late 1820s and later headed the business club. On Ferrère and Morlot, see Schneider, "Trade relations," pp. 423-437; Pierre Ardaillou, "Les négociants et armateurs du Havre au XIXe siècle (18151919): une élite libérale," Actes du 124 Congrès national des sociétés bistoriques et scientifiques, Paris, CTHS, 2002 [1999], pp. 239-57; Ardaillou, Les Republicans du Havre au XIX Siecle (1815-1889), Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 1999 and Delobette, "Ces 'Messieurs du Havre," 2363.
46 Discussions with Ade-Ojo and Yai. Also see Santana, "Extraordinaria," p. 47.
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46 Discussions with Ade-Ojo and Yai. Also see Santana, "Extraordinaria," p. 47.
47 For the return journey the ship left Le Havre on March 5, 1841. See "6 P 7_34 - Armement et désarmement des bâtiments (1838-1845)" https://www.archivesdepartementales76.net/ark:/50278/ec9dfab0e8a0c0 a63a4cedac6c3c2f7e/dao/0/1/idsearch:RECH_4c37a2fbb671f192399117dff4c70e26?id=https\%3A\%2F\% 2Fwww.archivesdepartementales76.net\%2Fark\%3A\%2F50278\%2Fec9dfab0e8a0c0a63a4cedac6c3c2f7e\%2 Fcanvas\%2F0\%2F1\&vx=1880.55\&vy=-2148.35\&vr=0\&vz=3.69559. Business records show the Quesnels handing trans-Atlantic cargo and passenger ships including l'Athalie, Le Bresilien, Veloce, Anne Louise, Vauban, L'Amerique, Fenelon, Francois I, Henry IV, Jean Baptiste, La Fontaine, Louis XIV, Mercury, Montezuma and others. Some of their passenger ships to North America are listed by https://stevemorse.org/swiggum/ swiggum.php?fleetkind=exact\&fleetmax=\&fleeturlkind=exact\&fleeturlmax=\&shipkind=contains\&shipmax $=$ catania\&sailedkind=between\&sailedmin=\&sailedmax=\&pagesize=50\&offset=15851
48 Santana, "A extraordinária odisseia," p. 49.
49 João José Reis, 2003, Rebelião Escrava no Brasil: A História do Levante dos Malês em 1835, 2a ed., São Paulo, Companhia das Letras.
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48 Santana, "A extraordinária odisseia," p. 49.
49 João José Reis, 2003, Rebelião Escrava no Brasil: A História do Levante dos Malês em 1835, 2a ed., São Paulo, Companhia das Letras.
Osifekunde's memoir is one of the earliest detailed attempts at documenting Yoruba language and ethnography. Thus, the work has great literary and historical value, particularly its contributions and insights on the development of literacy in Yorubaland, and the role of educated clerks and interpreters. Although d'Avezac-Macaya's suggestion that Osifekunde was not competent in French is suspicious, and perhaps refers to Parisian French and not a Creolized version which he needed and must have spoken to function as a domestic worker and shopkeeper between 1839 and 1840. What he lacked in French he made up for with his relatively fair command of Creole Portuguese and Yoruba, especially the Ijebu dialect. His extensive travels in the eastern Bight of Benin would suggest familiarity with Yoruba dialects, like Egba, Awori, Oyo and Ilaje and non-Yoruba languages like Ijo, Edo and Itsekiri required for trade in the Benin Rivers. Knowledge of more than a language and dialects would have served him well in Brazil and Europe. The only difference was that he went to Europe around age 40 , making the acquisition of another language challenging.
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Of related significance was his role in the development of Yoruba studies and writing. Studies on the reduction of Yoruba into writing have cited the works of British diplomats and traders such as George Robertson, Thomas Bowdich, Hugh Clapperton, and Richard Lander, who compiled lists of Yoruba words, numerals and place names between 1807 and 1830 and specifically the efforts by the Church Missionary Society in Sierra Leone to document and teach Yoruba after 1830. Osifekunde's work was more detailed. He also provided one of the earliest sources on the Owu war which triggered a political explosion in southern Yorubaland and identified reasons for the war, where it took place, the combatants, and impacts. He said the war began and was winding down before his enslavement in 1820, confirming Robin Law's thesis that the war was fought from $c .1817-1822 .{ }^{50} \mathrm{He}$ was right about the brotherhood of Ife and Ijebu kings, alluding to the military alliance between them during the wars and the longheld belief that the Yoruba descended from Ile-Ife. However, his point that Ijebu defeated and annexed Owu must have been second-hand information for him because Owu fell after he had been sold to the Americas. He probably heard this news from other enslaved Yorubas.
Also, contrary to D'Avezac, that Osifekunde did not tell him about the location of Owu kingdom where many of the enslaved Yoruba embarked around 1820 originated, the memoir shows clearly that he did; but the writer,
[^0]
[^0]: 50 Law, 1973, "The Owu war in Yoruba history," Journal of Historical Society of Nigeria, vol. 7, pp. 141-47.
perhaps because of language difficulties, did not understand him. Perhaps Osifekunde disliked D'Avezac's method of asking the same question multiple times, implying the informant was lying. This is an illustration. On trade routes around Ijebu, Osifekunde mapped out a major route in southern Yorubaland:
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a very long day's journey (c. 15 miles) brings one to Eremo [Remo], a dependency of Ijebu. Its first town is Ikbore [Igbore], then two long days' march to Oko, and two more long days to Ikrekou [Ikereku], ... in ... Remo. Still farther, four or five hours are enough to reach Ekbomoso, an Oyo town three days from Oukbo [Ijebu Igbo]. Three days beyond Ekbomoso is Ekboumou [Apomu], an important market town which belongs to the brother of the king of Ijebu. ${ }^{51}$
However, Peter Lloyd thinks "Ekbomoso" was "an Oyo town" and a corruption of Ogbomoso, a northern Yoruba town. ${ }^{52}$ But this interpretation contradicts Osifekunde's statement that "Ekbomoso" was in the south between Ijebu Igbo and Apomu. D'Avezac interviewed Osifekunde repeatedly to verify his data and rule out internal contradictions. Therefore it is reasonable to think either D'Avezac or his publisher misconstrued Osifekunde's recollections by changing ' $h$ ' to ' $b$,' hence rendering 'Echomosho' as Ekbomoso. It is doubtful if Osifekunde, a well-travelled trader, would confuse a town thirty miles north of Ijebu with another located more than a hundred miles away. It also seems implausible that, as a trader, he would not have mentioned such large market towns like Ede, Ibadan, and Iwo, along the Ijebu-Ogbomoso road, if his reference was to Ogbomoso. Moreover, he saw the early days of the Owu wars in which Ijebu fighters were involved and likely met enslaved Owus during his two decades in Brazil (1820-1837).
Furthermore, Lloyd also ignores Osifekunde's claim that "Ekbomoso" was only four to five hours (i.e. 10-13 miles) beyond Ikereku and near River Osun. The shortest distance between Remo and Ogbomoso and Ogbomoso and Osun was 90 and 40 miles respectively. These details put the town (Ecomosho) near the Ijebu, Owu and Ife border. ${ }^{53}$ It is unclear if Lloyd's mistake came from D'Avezac's understanding of the Yoruba drainage system: "Many ... rivers water and fertilize [Ijebu]. The most important is the Ochou [Oshun], which comes
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[^0]
[^0]: 51 D'Avezac-Macaya, Notice, p. 36. Igbore, Oko, and Ikereku were Egba and not Remo towns. Osifekunde took these routes during trade itineraries, so his estimates of time and space must take account of stoppages in market towns. For details, see Ojo, 2017, "The slave ship Manuelita and the story of a Yoruba community, 1833-1834," Tempo 23, no. 2, pp. 360-82.
52 Lloyd, "Osifekunde," pp. 246-50.
53 A ship brought nearly 400 Africans called "Ecomoso" to Cuba in 1834. See Ojo, "The slave ship."
from ... the Oyo country, where it is called "Ichery." It is already a large stream at Ecomosho and too large to be forded at "Oukbo." It crosses Remo and empties into the lagoon at Ikorodu." Lloyd is right that the "description of the courses of major rivers is very muddled. It is the Ogun which rises in Oyo and enters the lagoon near Ikorodu. River Osun rises beyond Osogbo, passing twenty miles east of Ibadan to reach the lagoon near Epe. ${ }^{54}$ However, one might blame D'Avezac for not understanding what Osifekunde, an Ijebu-Yoruba speaker, said in Creole Portuguese and perhaps with a blend of French Creole. Otherwise he could have imposed a personal geographical interpretation from existing works on rivers around Lagos. The reference was not to one river but two - Ogun and Osun. River Osun rises in Ekiti and runs westward to Osogbo where it turns south to flow by Ikire and Ijebu Igbo, before joining the lagoon at Epe. On the other hand, River Ogun rises in northern Oyo and flows through Abeokuta before entering the lagoon at Ikorodu. The claim that Osun entered the lagoon at Ikorodu misunderstood Osifekunde's account. His reference was to a stream with the same name emptying into River Ogun at Iseri village, west of Ikorodu and north of Lagos. No wonder many people around Lagos also refer to Ogun as Iseri as well as Osun. ${ }^{55}$
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Finally, Osifekunde's memoir underlines the Yoruba factor in the slave trade, Atlantic familial, social and business networks, the travails of bondage, agency of enslaved people in the abolitionist era, and the limitations of freedom. It also shines light on the complicated relations between slavers and enslaved people, the birth of global Yoruba history, and the African, American, and European circulations of enslaved Yorubas.
[^0]
[^0]: 54 Lloyd, "Osifekunde," pp. 246-50.
55 D'Avesac, "Notice," pp. 9-10, 37-39.
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# References
Adderley, R. M. 2006. New Negroes from Africa: Slave Trade Abolition and Free African Settlement in the Nineteenth-Century Caribbean. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
Ajayi, J. F. A. 1960. How Yorùbá was reduced to writing. ODU, No. 8, pp. 49-58.
Ajayi, J. F. A. 1967. Samuel Ajayi Crowther of Oyo. P. D. Curtin, (ed.), Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 289-316.
Alagoa, E. J. 1972. A History of the Niger Delta: An Historical Interpretation of Ijo Oral Tradition. Ibadan, Ibadan University Press.
Allen, W. and Thomson, T. 1848. A Narrative of the Expedition sent by Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger, in 1841 under the command of Captain H. D. Trotter, 2 vols. London, R. Bentley.
Ardaillou, P. 1999. Les Republicans du Havre au XIX Siecle (1815-1889). Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre.
Ardaillou, P. 2002 (orig. pub. 1999). Les négociants et armateurs du Havre au XIXe siècle (1815-1919): une élite libérale. Actes du 124 Congrès national des sociétés bistoriques et scientifiques. Paris, CTHS, pp. 239-57.
Asiegbu, J. U. J. 1969. Slavery and the Politics of Liberation, 1787-1861: A Study of Liberated African Emigration and British Anti-Slavery Policy. London, Longmans Green and Co. Ltd.
Bibliotheque nationale (France). Département des livres imprimés. 1863. Catalogue de l'bistoire de France, Tome huitième. Paris, Firmin Didot Frères.
Chambers, D. 1996. Eboe, Kongo, Mandingo: African Ethnic Groups and the Development of Regional Slave Societies in Mainland North America. International Seminar, The History of the Atlantic World, Harvard University, 3-11 Sep.
Champy, P. 2011. De l'Andelle au Vexin normand: l'implantation d'une dynastie rouennaise du négoce, les Quesnel, Études Normandes, Vol. 60, No. 3, pp. 5-28.
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# CHAPTER 11
## NADIR AGHA
The Life of a Black Eunuch, A Journey from Abyssinia to the Ottoman Palace (c. 1870 to 1957)
Özgül Özdemir
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## Note on sources
Nadir Agha dictated his memoir. It was taken down by a headman of the neighbourhood in which he lived. The memoir was preserved by a family that had some links with a professor who had bought Nadir Agha's pavilion. One member of this family transcribed the text into the Turkish alphabet and another, who had once met Nadir Agha during his childhood years, published it in two parts in 1998 in a Turkish magazine, without any critical edition. ${ }^{1}$ Apart from the memoirs, we also have two interviews, one of which was conducted shortly before Nadir Agha's death in 1957 and the other in 1934. ${ }^{2}$ Finally, the archival documents and other memoirs of his contemporaries provide a tool for examining various aspects of his life.
Unlike in the United States of America, where various slave narratives are available, ${ }^{3}$ we are virtually left in the dark concerning Ottoman slave narratives. ${ }^{4}$
[^0]
[^0]: 1 Throughout the article, I will use Nadir Agha's memoir as the main source of his narrative, but I will cite other works if other versions are available (Ertuğ, 1998a pp. 7-15; Ertuğ, 1998b, pp. 6-14).
2 See Unknown author 1957, henceforth referenced as Hayat, 1957, pp. 6-7; Çapanoğlu, 1934, pp. 19, 21, 29.
3 Paul Lovejoy states in the case of slave narratives in the Americas, 'What has survived and in what form varied enormously. We are fortunate that hundreds, perhaps several thousands of such accounts have survived, some very short and some fully developed biographies, often autobiographical' (2011, p. 93).
4 Studies in Egypt and the Islamic Middle East have recently begun to amend this omission through literary strategies as well as innovative methodologies (Toledano, 2007; Toledano, 1993; Erdem, 2010; Troutt Powell, 2012; Troutt Powell, 2006).
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Nadir Agha's struggle for survival, which began in Africa and continued in the Ottoman palace, contributes a particular story and aids our understanding of slavery under the Ottoman Empire. Furthermore, studies of eunuchs and musâbih (royal companions) represent another lacuna, requiring further attention by Ottomanists (Toledano, 1984). ${ }^{5}$ The pioneer of slavery studies in the Ottoman Empire, Ehud R. Toledano, underscores the research potential of biographies despite their filtered nature. He underscores the importance of these accounts as windows into the lives of the enslaved. For instance, their lives in Africa and their capture still represent gaps in studies of enslavement under the Ottoman Empire, which need to be researched and explored (Toledano, 2007, p. 57).
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# Nadir Agha's voyage into the land of the Ottomans
Nadir Agha was probably born in the 1870s in Abyssinia, in a region known as Galla-land. ${ }^{6}$ Richard Pankhurst, expert in the study of Ethiopia, notes that exports of slaves from the Ethiopian region in the early nineteenth century have been estimated at no less than 25,000 per year (1964, p. 228). He cites Blondeel who, quoting official figures, states that there were 600 slaves exported from Ethiopia, 'mainly Gallas, of whom [...] about 100 would be eunuchs' (Pankhurst, 1964, p. 224). As with many other enslaved Africans, Nadir Agha's original Abyssinian name is unknown. He was named Nadir by his first mistress (see below), who gave him the same name as her previous eunuch. A description of his childhood indicates that he had one elder brother and an elder sister who took care of him when he was very young. ${ }^{7}$ The description goes on to state that he lost his father at the age of six or seven in a raid from which he himself emerged with severe injuries. (His mother had passed away earlier.) A while later, he was kidnapped by a slave raider. He escaped from the latter's house only to fall into the hands of a slave trader a second time round, aged eight or nine. The slave trader would carry him into the land of the Ottomans. Before
[^0]
[^0]: 5 For a biography of a chief harem eunuch, see Hathaway 2005. For short and descriptive biographies of thirty-seven African eunuchs of the imperial harem (1574-1752) (Resmi Efenndi, 2000).
6 In the first part of his memoir, Agha states that his native land is Galle, part of Abyssinia, and that his birthplace is a county town named Gümebadula. In his last interview, however, he states that he is from a village named Limnu, located in the southernmost corner of Abyssinia. According to Mahir Şaul, Nadir Agha belonged to an ethnic group named the Oromo, one of the Cushitic-speaking groups of people with physiognomic variations ranging from Hamitic to Nilotic (Ertuğ, 1998a, p. 7; Hayat, 1957, p. 6; Şaul, 2015, p. 10).
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7 On the other hand, in the interview, he states he had two sisters younger than him (Hayat, 1957, p. 6).
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arriving in the Ottoman Empire, he went through a 'middle passage' in the hands of his first mistress. While travelling with the raiders, the numbers of kidnapped Africans increased by stages until the arrival at the port. Without knowing the exact duration of this journey, he explains that it lasted days and nights through jungles and salt lakes. ${ }^{8}$ When the children got tired, the raiders put them on mules and, when they arrived at the salt lakes, the children were made to wear sandals and cover their mouths with masks. This journey through the salt lakes took place during the night, and they rested under a canvas during the day. Nadir Agha adds that the raiders selected isolated places intentionally since they were afraid of being captured by commanders who were obliged to follow slave raiders. ${ }^{9}$ Toledano states that the 'longer, more difficult routes taken by the slave dealers in order to avoid foreign observers and Ottoman officials increased the suffering of the slaves and raised the death toll' (1982, p. 11). During their journey, they were fed rice in small quantities, one cup for two children. Nadir Agha states that he could never forget this. After they arrived in Djibouti, where he witnessed the tide, ${ }^{10}$ Nadir Agha states that they sailed towards the port of Jidda. ${ }^{11}$ During the journey, the children had to stay in the stowage where they suffered from seasickness. After their arrival, they travelled on camelback towards the centre of Mecca, a journey that lasted 18 hours. Nadir underscores the fact that slave traders could walk calmly since slavery usually went uncontrolled there. In the market of Mecca, the trader could not find a customer for him because he looked too thin and weak, so the trader fed him with oil, but to little avail. Eventually
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, the trader could not find a customer for him because he looked too thin and weak, so the trader fed him with oil, but to little avail. Eventually, he was purchased by an upper class lady who named him after her former slave whom she had sent off to the Ottoman palace before his arrival. Toledano informs us that 'Women of the upper-class were also involved privately in the lucrative and highly selective trade in eunuchs' (1982, p. 59), and she was probably one of them. During the next three years, Nadir was taught Arabic in the house of this woman.
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[^0]
[^0]: 8 It is likely that he crossed lake Abbe (Abhe Bad) on his way from his hometown to Djibouti, since the lake is located in the middle of the journey and was, most likely, used as a slaving route.
9 Most probably, the raiders were afraid of being caught, given the general prohibition of the black slave trade in 1857. But Erdem also notes that, despite the ŞeriI, injunctions and new legislation of the reform era, kidnapping, especially on a small-scale, individual level, continued in the Empire so long as there was a demand for slaves (1996, pp. 47,107).
10 One can acknowledge that the tides in Djibouti are common natural events.
11 As Toledano states, 'Jidda was then a Red Sea slaving port and one of the main gateways to the Hijaz and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina' (2007, p. 117).
An Ottoman sharif named Avnüreffik ${ }^{12}$ then sent him to the palace upon the request of the Sultan Abdülhamid II who had asked for Abyssinian eunuchs. ${ }^{13}$ They sailed towards Istanbul. The journey lasted months since they stopped at different ports in order to recruit soldiers, finally arriving at the port of Sirkeci in Istanbul. This second passage through the Mediterranean took place on board a ship named Kamil Paşa. ${ }^{14}$ They went hungry because they ran out of provisions. When they arrived in Istanbul, it was snowing and they could not stop themselves from eating snowflakes. Nadir Agha states that his entrance into the palace was not incidental. The reason behind the Sultan's demand for Ethiopian eunuchs related to events involving two Sudanese eunuchs and the death of one of them. ${ }^{15}$ According to Nadir Agha, after this event, the Sultan only wanted to acquire slaves who did not know any Turkish so that they could not communicate with the other slaves of the palace. Nadir Agha must have been castrated at some point during this part of the journey into enslavement but he does not mention it either in his memoir or in the interviews. ${ }^{16}$
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# His childhood memories concerning his homeland
In the part of his memoirs concerning his homeland, Nadir Agha mentions the local cuisine, the way of dressing and bartering items in the neighbourhood in which he grew up. He states that the most delicious food of his hometown was fresh corn wrapped in banana leaves, called kimbo in his native language. ${ }^{17}$ To the modern reader's surprise, Nadir Agha underscores the value of salt as a barter item. This practice of bartering lasted right into the twentieth century in remote areas of Ethiopia. ${ }^{18} \mathrm{He}$ also describes how hair styles differentiated
[^0]
[^0]: 12 Avnüreffik became the Sharif of Mecca between 1882 and 1905 (Kuneralp, 1999, p. 20).
13 The sharifs' role in slave trading in Mecca must have been a common phenomenon. See, for example, a case discussed by Toledano: 'Those who purchased the boy made him a eunuch and brought him to Jidda, where he was purchased by Ömer Nasif Efendi, agent to the late Sharif of Mecca, who sent him to Istanbul to Ali Paşa, probably the famous grand vizier' (2007, p. 105).
14 Some confirmation is available on this ship but it would be interesting to add reports written during its journey, if suchlike existed.
15 In my archival research, I came across documents concerning this event that took place in 1888. A young eunuch named Firuz was killed by an older eunuch named Nedim, who was later executed as a result of the offence. See the documents: BOA: Y..A.. RES, 45, 2; MV, 37, 7; DH.MKT,1546,117
16 For the dreadful details of castration, death rates and post-castration conditions, see Hathaway, pp. 18-23.
17 To get an idea, see tamele (tamal in Spanish), but I have not come across the word kimbo in Internet searches.
18 http://encyclopedia-of-money.blogspot.com.tr/2011/10/salt-currency.html
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17 To get an idea, see tamele (tamal in Spanish), but I have not come across the word kimbo in Internet searches.
18 http://encyclopedia-of-money.blogspot.com.tr/2011/10/salt-currency.html
women as unmarried or married since teenage girls were obliged to shave the hair on top of their head, leaving the outer fringes unshaven. The shaven hair was allowed to grow only after they had matured and married. The first growth of this shaven hair after marriage was called Endermamit or Fesesay. The hair that had not been shaved, that is, the outer fringe, was either braided or combed. This practice, called sadula, is apparently typical of the Amharas and Tigreans. ${ }^{19}$ This discussion confirms Mahir Şaul's assumption that Nadir Agha came from Oromia Zone of Ethiopia (2015, p. 10). Nadir Agha concludes his narrative by describing jungles in which wild coffee and lemon trees grew. His narrative provides insights into his native land. This aspect of slavery is still unknown in the studies of slavery in the Middle East. We should note, nevertheless, that this material requires a thorough knowledge of African history including the history of specific regions and periods, which would indeed enrich studies of slavery in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere.
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# His life in the palace (1889-1909)
Although the information about his arrival at the palace varies, we can be sure that it took place in 1889. ${ }^{20}$ Nadir Agha mentions his puzzlement when he encountered the Sultan Abdülhamid, who spoke to him in Arabic, paying the most attention to him, among the six eunuchs. On the order of the Sultan, he and the other eunuchs received training in comportment and religion, and earned 500 kurus (piastres) ${ }^{21}$ for their service. However, Nadir Agha notes that they did not receive higher education or qualifications, which were considered dangerous. However, both from different sources and from his own narrative, we can conclude that he was very bright. He gained the appreciation of the Sultan for having found a piece of information on the illness of the Sultan's son from an encyclopaedia. Sultan Abdülhamid's daughter, in her memoir, also writes about Nadir Agha's skills. For instance, he was the only one who was able to drive a car, which had come from Paris for the Sultan. Nadir Agha also used
[^0]
[^0]: 19 http://ethiopedia.blogspot.com.tr/2008/07/ethiopian-hair-styles.html
20 In his memoir, Nadir Agha, as was mentioned, states that he came to the palace immediately after the killing of a young Sudanese eunuch by an elder one, in 1888. Right after, he mentions that his initial days in the palace coincided with the visit of German Emperor Wilhelm II, in 1889. However, in his interview and in the Memoirs of Sultan Abdülhamid's daughter, the year is given as 1885. Nevertheless, I consider the date to be 1889 since the document from the archives states the year as 1889 (Junne, 2016; Toledano, 1984).
21 The exchange value of 100 piastres in 1889 was equal to 110.25 pounds sterling. See Le Moniteur Oriental, (Constantinople), 5 Janvier 1889.
the motorized pedal boat in the pond in the garden of Yıldız Palace (Yılmaz, 2002, p. 98). Archival documents also list medals that he received during his service, even one given by the Shah of Iran. ${ }^{22}$
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Another interesting story he tells us is that Menelik II sent the general Maşaşa, his delegate, to Istanbul, ${ }^{23}$ which gave Nadir Agha an opportunity to search for his family. This had long been his greatest desire. In his interview, he states that:
Sultan Abdülhamid II himself introduced me to the personal delegate of Menelik II at Yıldız Palace, saying: "I will introduce you to your countryman. He will ask you for a favour which I also would like you to accommodate" (Hayat, 1957, p. 6).
General Maşaşa, having a direct interest in the request, took notes based on Nadir Agha's information on his hometown. After a while, when both the Sultan Abdülhamid and Nadir Agha thought that the general Maşaşa had forgotten them, they received a letter from him written in French, and two long bags and a wooden box. In the letter, it is written that in spite of all their efforts and wishes, they were only able to inform him that his family had moved from southern Ethiopia to Kenya at some point. Together with the letter, they also sent two elephant tusks and gold bullion. After sharing this anecdote, Nadir Agha sadly states that, at that point, he lost all hope of finding his family.
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In the second part of his memoir, rather than mentioning himself, he presents his observations about events occurring around him. He acknowledges the Sultan's political stand from his own perspective. It should be noted that one common point throughout his narrative is that he views himself as a loyal subject of his master and remembers the latter with great respect. An apologetic attitude regarding enslavement in Islamic societies has not been an uncommon phenomenon. In his narrative, it would not be wrong to speculate that Nadir Agha creates his own defensive position by creating a tie of loyalty with his former master since 'reattachment was no less important to enslaved Africans, who were brutally detached from their kin groups on the continent and transplanted into an alien milieu, socially and culturally so different from the environment they had grown up in' (Toledano, 2007, p. 31). While evaluating his narrative we should keep in mind that that these people were deracinated and kinless and needed to imagine ties in order to cope with trauma of their enslavement.
[^0]
[^0]: 22 BOA: İ.TAL, 96, 58; İ.TAl, 135, 79; İ.TAL, 208,11; İ.TAL, 227, 36,
23 The visit must have taken place in 1907 since I found a document in the archive concerning the expenditures of his stay in Pera Palace. (BOA-BEO/3184/238773 and BOA- BEO/3232/242326)
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# A free life outside the palace walls (1909-1957)
Look at this weird destiny that my path has taken from the Palace to a hovel (Hayat, 1957, p. 7).
With the dethronement of Abdülhamid II, Nadir Agha found himself in prison. In the words of Hakan Erdem:
The dispersal of the Imperial Harem and the punishment of the ex-Sultan's slaves, who were regarded as the tools of his absolutism, began simultaneously. The eunuchs of the Palace were imprisoned. One of them, the Chief Musäbih (companion), Cevher Aga, was accused of being one of the founders of the obscure Muhammedan League (Cemiyet-iMubammediye) which had incited the mutiny. He was publicly executed and his fortune was confiscated by the Treasury. The Third Musäbih, Nadir Agha, saved his life only by admitting that he had bribed the soldiers to mutiny, and by showing the whereabouts of some of Abdülhamid's valuables to the Macedonians (Erdem, 1996, p. 148).
As in the case of Cevher and Nadir Agha, the proximity of the eunuchs to the members of the Ottoman dynasty put them in a position of both great power and great vulnerability since they had the ear of the Sultan and controlled the information flow. According to Nadir, Cevher Agha, who was always interested in receiving jurnals (information), fell prey to this habit of his. Nadir Agha also agrees with the daughter of Abdülhamid that Cevher Agha was the target of the personal enmity of the jurnalcs (a sort of collector of information) who used to submit his jurnals to Abdülhamid through Cevher and who, afterwards, wanted to get rid of him. After 33 days of imprisonment, Nadir Agha stepped into his new life without any idea of what to do next. His own words are worth quoting at length:
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During the first days, I was very perplexed. After spending so much time within the walls of the Palace, it perplexed me to suddenly face life. I did not know what to do. I did not have money. However, a friend of mine owed me some money, to the tune of 700 kurus. I got it back, it was considered to be an instance of good fortune but it was difficult for someone who had spent 27 years inside the Palace (Hayat, 1957, p. 7).
Regaining his freedom all of a sudden, he, who did not have any experience thereof, must have felt like a fish out of water. With the 700 kurus he had, he bought 40 Crimean cows and started a dairy farm. In this part of the interview, he says: 'Look at this weird destiny that my path has taken from the Palace to a hovel' (Hayat, 1957, p. 7). In his narrative, he does not talk about the
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horrors of slavery. Nor does he talk about the beauty of gaining freedom. We can assume that he still suffered from the stain of slavery even after gaining his freedom. In his narrative, it is hard to discern any conscious appreciation on his part concerning the contrast between slavery and freedom. Freedom seems to have brought him only another form of obscurity after his enslavement. Being a eunuch and black, the integration of Nadir Agha as a freed slave into the community could not be taken for granted. According to Madeline Zilfi, 'black eunuchs, who presided over the gender-segregated security of the imperial harem and of the palace's upper-class imitators, saw little advantage in emancipation' (2010, p. 129). In one of the interviews, titled What does Nadir Agha, Abdülhamid's closest man, have to say about his former master? (Çapanoğlu, 1934, p. 29), the interviewer uses Nadir Agha's past as a eunuch to fashion a derogatory style for his piece, making jokes about castration and slavery. In the same interview, when the interviewer asks him his age, Nadir Agha answers that he did not pay the road tax that year, which means that he was 65 years old in 1934. He passed away in 1957 at the age of 88 . According to Jane Hathaway, 'a eunuch who survived the castration operation had a good chance of living into his eighties or even nineties' (2005, p. 21). During his long life, he experienced terrible events including, to name but a few, losing his father in one of the raids, falling into the hands of slave traders and undergoing castration, which were all part of the evils of slavery. It is hard to understand his real feeling about the institution, which he does not mention during his narration and interviews. Nevertheless, he survived slavery and won the affection of the Sultan Abdülhamid by impressing the latter with his knowledge. With the dispersal of the imperial harem, all eunuchs found themselves 'free' all of a sudden and many faced a difficult predicament, as newspapers of the period indicate (Kandemir, 1936, pp. 66-70; 1950, pp. 432-433
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, all eunuchs found themselves 'free' all of a sudden and many faced a difficult predicament, as newspapers of the period indicate (Kandemir, 1936, pp. 66-70; 1950, pp. 432-433, 438). Nadir Agha was one of the 'luckiest' ones, as he had his own pavilion and a servant to serve him at home. He was also the only one, to our knowledge, who left behind memoirs. The positive aspects of his life story have prompted some historians to view either Ottoman or Islamic forms of slavery as more or less benign because of a sociocultural understanding that provided slaves with the opportunity to rise to a high social status. Against those interpretations, his life story shows that Ottoman slavery was also injurious, having deprived Nadir Agha not only of his freedom and dignity but also exposed him to all sorts of physical and psychological violence.
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# References
Çapanoğlu, M. S. 1934. Abdülhamid'in En Yakın Adamı Nadir Ağa Eski Efendisi İçin Neler Söylüyor? Yedigün, No. 83.
Erdem, H. 1996. Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 1800-1909. London, Macmillan Press.
Erdem, H. 2010. Magic, Theft and Arson: The Life and Death of an Enslaved African Woman in Ottoman İzmit. T. Walz and K. M. Cuno (eds), Race and Slavery in the Middle East. Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean. Cairo, The American University in Cairo Press, pp. 125-46.
Ertuğ,H.F.1998a.Musahib-i sani Hazret-i Şehr-Yari Nadir Ağånın Hatıratı-I. Toplumsal Tarib Says, No. 49.
Ertuğ, H. F. 1998b. Musahib-i sani Hazret-i Şehryari Nadir Ağånın Hatıratı-II. Toplumsal Tarib Says, No. 50.
Hathaway, J. 2005. Beshir Agha. Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem. Oxford, UK, Oneworld Publications.
Junne, G. 2016. Appendix XI: The Inventory that Consists of the Entry Dates and Biographies of the Eunuch Servants of the Imperial Harem (1893). The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire. Networks of Power in the Court of the Sultan. London and New York, I. B Tauris.
Kandemir, F. 1936. Haremağaları (Eunuchs). Aydabir, pp. 66-70.
Kandemir, F. 1950. Son Harem Ağaları (Last Eunuchs). Tarib Dünyası, Vol. 10.
Kuneralp, S. 1999. Son Dönem Osmanlı Erkân ve Ricali (1839-1922). Prosopografik Rehber. İstanbul, İsis.
Lovejoy, P. E. 2011. 'Freedom Narratives' of Transatlantic Slavery. Slavery $\mathcal{E}$ Abolition, Vol. 32, Issue 1, pp. 91-107.
Pankhurst, R. 1964. The Ethiopian Slave Trade in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: A Statistical Inquiry. Journal of Semitic Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 1, pp. 220-228.
Resmi Efenndi, A. 2000. Hamîletül-Küberâ. A. Nezihî Turan (ed.). İstanbul, Kitabevi.
Şaul, M. 2015. Geçmişten Bugüne Siyah Afrika'dan Türkiye’ye Göçler: Kölelikten Küresel Girişimciliğe. M. Erdoğan and A. Kaya (eds), Türkiye'nin Göç Taribi. 14. Yüzysldan. 21. Yüzysla Türkiye'ye Göçler. İstanbul, İstanbul Bilgi University.
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Toledano, E. R. 1982. The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression: 1840-1890. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press.
Toledano, E. R. 1984. The Imperial Eunuchs of Istanbul: From Africa to the Heart of Islam. Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 379-390.
Toledano, E. R. 1993. Shemsigül: A Circassian Slave in Mid-Nineteenth Century Cairo. E. Burke (ed.), Struggle and Survival in the Modern Middle East. Berkeley and Los Angeles, Calif., University of California Press, pp. 59-74.
Toledano, E. R. 2007. As If Silent and Absent. Bonds of Enslavement in The Islamic Middle East. New Haven, Conn., and London, Yale University Press.
Troutt Powell, E. M. 2006. Will That Subaltern Ever Speak? Finding African Slaves in the Historiography of the Middle East. I. Gershoni, A. Singer and Y. Hakan Erdem (eds), Middle East Historiographies. Narrating the Twentieth Century. Washington, Wash., University of Washington Press.
Troutt Powell, E. M. 2012. Tell This in My Memory. Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan and the Ottoman Empire. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press.
Unknown author. 1957. Nadir Ağa. Hayat, No. 60.
Yılmaz, Ö. F. 2002. Sultan Abdülhamid Han'in Harem Hayatı. Istanbul, Eylül.
Zilfi, M. C. 2010. Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
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# CHAPTER 12
## NICHOLAS SAID OF BORNO
American Civil War Veteran<br>Mohammed Bashir Salau
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## Introduction
Nicholas Said (originally known as Mohammed Ali ibn Sa'id) published his autobiography in 1873. Previous studies have recognized the significance of this autobiography, presenting it as an African Muslim/American Muslim slave narrative or the work of a 'Carolinian immigrant'. Departing from earlier approaches, this study highlights the vivid details of slavery in Africa described in the autobiography, and suggests that Said's life experiences and his observations on slavery constitute an important contribution to the historiography of the subject. Also, this study indicates that the narrative was more than that of an African Muslim/American Muslim slave or a 'Carolinian immigrant'.
Nicholas Said was initially known only through a ten-page article that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1867 (Unknown author, 1867; Austin, 1984, 1997). Although Allan D. Austin and others who commented on that article wrongly assumed that Said did not produce a full-length book during his lifetime (Tabish et al., 2005, pp. 214-218), it became clear by 2001 that he had, in fact, published an autobiography in 1873 (Said, 1873). This particular 224-page narrative, on which I draw primarily in this study, was written largely to showcase the accomplishment of an African and to inspire other Africans to similarly undertake 'systematic efforts in the direction of mental culture and
improvement' (Said, 1873, p. v). It includes a preface and thirteen chapters dealing with different topics. Also included in the book is a supplementary chapter on Bladen Springs in Alabama.
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improvement' (Said, 1873, p. v). It includes a preface and thirteen chapters dealing with different topics. Also included in the book is a supplementary chapter on Bladen Springs in Alabama.
Although published in the United States of America, Said's narrative differs in two major respects from others published there. First, Said was not enslaved in the United States. This case was not altogether unique; Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua had not been a slave in the United States but rather in Brazil and escaped from slavery in New York, publishing his narrative in Detroit (Law and Lovejoy, 2007). Unlike Baquaqua's narrative, however, Said's account details the author's experiences of slavery in Africa and the Middle East. Second, unlike most ex-slave narratives published in the United States, Said's autobiography was by an African-born former slave rather than by a person born into slavery in the Americas.
Said's narrative was written in English exclusively in the first person, making it clear that he, unlike Baquaqua and other former slaves, did not need an editor or mediator to have his story told. The narrative is virtually free from grammatical deficiencies and other problems, which reflects his amazing command of language. Said presents the voice of a slave as well as that of an African critic of slavery. He describes his African homeland, his enslavement, his unsuccessful attempts to return to West Africa, his early career as a valet and his evolution as a lecturer and teacher in several institutions in the United States. In addition to these remarkable achievements, the book excels in providing the reader with vivid details of slavery in Africa. He is strangely silent, however, on his emancipation, which must have taken place in Istanbul, before he travelled to Russia.
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Precious Muhammad rediscovered Said's full autobiography in 2000, which now allows an analysis of its place within the literature on Muslim American and African American histories (Muhammad, 2001). Muhammad argues that Said, who associated with some of the most influential Americans of his time, offers a good example of an African with a distinctly Islamic heritage who taught many Christians in the Deep South. She also observes the significance of the fact that he was never a slave in the United States but, instead, witnessed the aftermath of slavery, after the Civil War, experiencing the post-slavery society of the United States.
While Muhammad's discussion is important, she provides little further analysis. Indeed, she does not authenticate the details of Said's account or add to the documentation on Said's life. ${ }^{1}$ Other scholars now refer to the autobiography as
[^0]
[^0]: 1 Furthermore, she does not compare the Atlantic Monthly article with his book-length autobiography.
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[^0]
[^0]: 1 Furthermore, she does not compare the Atlantic Monthly article with his book-length autobiography.
well as the Atlantic Monthly article (these works include Al-Ahari, 2006, pp. 7-36, 99-189; Dabovic, 2012; Horn, 2012; Lixl, 2009, pp. 123-127). However, only Paul E. Lovejoy has attempted to examine the context of Said's life more fully (Lovejoy, 2017). For instance, most of the scholarship concentrates on presenting Said's autobiography as an African Muslim or American Muslim slave narrative or as the work of a 'Carolinian immigrant', but, in so doing, they mainly rehash what is already known and only reproduce the text (see, for instance, Lixl, 2009). Thus, little is said about the contributions of Said's life experiences to the historiography of slavery in Africa and elsewhere. Because Said's article in the Atlantic Monthly says relatively little about slavery, similar problems are evident in the earlier work of Austin and others who mainly draw on this particular material. ${ }^{2}$ Departing from this approach, I suggest that Said's observations on slavery in his autobiography (1873) constitute an important contribution to the historiography of the subject, and that his narrative was more than that of an African Muslim or American Muslim slave and was not that of a 'Carolinian immigrant'.
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# Said's life in Africa
Said was born in Kukawa, the capital city of Borno, possibly in 1831, and certainly not later than 1836. At the time of his birth, the Seifawa dynasty, politically dominant in Borno and Kanem since the fifteenth century, had collapsed. The demise of this dynasty was tied to the jihad of Usman dan Fodio, which started in Hausaland in 1804. From about 1806, inspired by the jihad, the Fulani of Borno organized revolts against the Seifawa dynasty. Ultimately, they overran Birnin Gazargamo, the capital, and established emirates at Hadejia and Katagum territory that had once been in western Borno. Following the increasing influence of the Fulani, the besieged Seifawa dynasty turned to Muhammad al-Amin al-Kanemi, a prominent Muslim cleric who had a significant following, for support. Al-Kanemi, on agreeing to help the Seifawa, eventually restrained the Fulani revolt although, in the context of the clash between the Fulani and the Seifawa, many people were enslaved. Ultimately, al-Kanemi emerged as the virtual ruler of Borno (Cohen, 1967, pp. 20-29; Brenner, 1973). Some reflection on the circumstances surrounding the emergence of Muhammad al-Kanemi as the ruler of Borno and on the reign of his son and successor, Shehu Umar, appears in Said's narrative and, on close examination, his account proves remarkably accurate.
[^0]
[^0]: 2 Besides Austin's work, other studies that primarily draw on this source include Diouf, 1998 and Gomez, 2005.
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[^0]
[^0]: 2 Besides Austin's work, other studies that primarily draw on this source include Diouf, 1998 and Gomez, 2005.
The political history of Borno indicates that the State often recruited officers from among slaves and that each slave officer was given the title of Kachella. Al-Kanemi, after assuming power as the de facto ruler of Borno, further empowered those holding the position of Kachella, so that many of them became powerful military generals, controlling regiments consisting of thousands of followers (Bovill, 1966, vol. 3, p. 321; Cohen, 1967, pp. 20-29; Fisher, 2001, pp. 245-56). Said's report suggests that his father was one of the most powerful Kachella in early nineteenth-century Borno, but the fact that his father held this specific political title also indicates his slave status. In addition to internal evidence from Said's narrative, extant primary and secondary sources confirm that his father, Kachella Barka Gana was a devout Muslim as well as a royal slave appointed by al-Kanemi. According to these sources, although Barka Gana was wealthy and a capable military commander, he was dispossessed of his position and wealth when al-Kanemi became displeased with him in the 1820s, at the time British Ambassador Dixon Denham visited Borno. Barka Gana was, nevertheless, reinstated to that position after the intervention of al-Kanemi's companions (Brenner, 1973, pp. 45-46, 100-101, 245-46.).
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Said tells us that his father was 'the son of the ruling chief of Molgoy, a small country south of, and tributary to Bornou' (Said, 1873, p. 9). Ethnographic studies indicate that Molgoy is another name for the non-Muslim Margi people who inhabited small vassal chieftaincies on the southern frontier of Borno (Askell, 1912, pp. 134, 144-140; Barth, 1857-1859, vol. 2, pp. 104-105). Despite his origins in a non-Muslim society, Said's father became a Muslim, held an important political title during the reign of al-Kanemi and had four wives. The Muslim identity is also confirmed by Said's name. In addition, Said refers to his father as Barka Gana, which is a Kanuri name given to someone who is named after someone else in the family, usually a grandfather or uncle. It really means 'younger' and, hence, 'little' in terms of age not height. Furthermore, the name does not itself indicate that his father was a slave, as was suggested in an earlier study (Kirk-Greene, Newman, 1971, pp. 39, 104).
In effect, Said's father was a royal slave, while his mother, Dalia, is said to have been a freeborn daughter of a Mandara chief. The rulers of Mandara and many of their followers had embraced Islam prior to the nineteenth century and, despite occasional friction with Borno, they formed an anti-Fulani alliance with al-Kanemi. Thus, Said's mother hailed from a Muslim-dominated region, and her Muslim name, Dalia, ${ }^{3}$ confirms her religion. Said tells us that his mother's marriage to his father was arranged and that she had 19 children including himself.
[^0]
[^0]: 3 Dalia is an Arabic name meaning 'gentle' or 'flower'.
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[^0]
[^0]: 3 Dalia is an Arabic name meaning 'gentle' or 'flower'.
Said spent most of his childhood in Kukawa with his parents. In his narrative, he describes the customs, economic activities, geographical and political conditions in Kukawa and other parts of Borno and, in the process, confirms what we know about Borno in those years. In addition, he tells us that, as a child, he interacted with the sons of influential people, enjoyed hunting and took part in sham battles. It is clear that his childhood coincided with many important events. After the death of his father, Said continued his Islamic education in a leading school in Kukawa, under one Malam Katory. Furthermore, he indicates that it was during his third year in Malam Katory's school that he was enslaved.
As noted elsewhere, however, questions arise about one significant detail in his account. Who was the European whom he said he saw in Kukawa in the early 1850s, the British diplomat, Heinrich Barth, as he claimed, or someone else? In his autobiography, he indicates that he met Barth in London, which may be true, but in any event, he clearly knew who Barth was when he published his autobiography in 1873. Barth was not exactly a household name at the time and hence a question arises as to how Said had access to Barth's publications in English, which had only appeared in the United States in 1859 (Lovejoy, 2017). Was Said influenced by Barth's account of his homeland? Further study is required here.
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# Said's life as a slave
Prior to Said's enslavement, long-distance commerce involving the movement of commodities toward the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts had been an important part of the economy of central Sudan, including Borno. Tuareg and other merchants responsible for the movement of these commodities across the Sahara were also slave traders, and historical sources reveal that slaves were acquired in war and sometimes through kidnapping. ${ }^{4}$ This was Said's fate. One day when Said and his friends were hunting near Lake Chad, Tuareg raiders kidnapped him and some of his friends. As Said notes, while he may have already been technically a slave because of the official status of his father, on that day, he became a slave subjected to the slave trade.
Said never returned to Borno subsequently and never saw his mother again, although he apparently had the opportunity to do so. The Tuareg raiders moved
[^0]
[^0]: 4 For further details on long-distance trade and central Sudan see, for instance, Adamu, 1978 and Lovejoy and Baier, 1975.
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[^0]
[^0]: 4 For further details on long-distance trade and central Sudan see, for instance, Adamu, 1978 and Lovejoy and Baier, 1975.
him and other captives to Katsina where he was purchased by a merchant named Abd-el-Kader. From Katsina, Abd-el-Kader and his entourage, including Said, joined a caravan that was headed for North Africa. They passed along one of the six famous trans-Saharan trade routes, the route from Bilma through Murzuk to Tripoli, which Barth and Dorugu describe in their separate accounts (Barth, 1857-1859, vol. I, pp. 150-488 and vol. III, pp. 626-630; Kirk-Greene and Newman, 1971). At Murzuk, Said was purchased by Abdy Aga, a Turkish officer in Ibrahim Pasha's army. He lived briefly with his new master before he was relocated to Tripoli to serve Hadji Daoud, Abdy Aga's father. As a slave, Said accompanied Hadji Daoud to Mecca and Medina, visiting many historic cities including Alexandria, Cairo, Khartoum, Massawa and Muscat. Unfortunately, Hadji Daoud's assets in Tripoli were consumed by fire while he was on pilgrimage, or Said's life would undoubtedly have taken a different course than the one that lay before him. Probably, he would have remained in North Africa. Instead, Hadji Daoud sold Said to an agent who took him to Izmir (Smyrna), where he was sold to one Fuad Pacha, who took him to Istanbul. After some time - Said says about nine months - Fuad Pacha passed him on to his brother-in-law, Reschid Pacha, who in turn, ultimately, presented him to the Russian ambassador, Alexandr Sergeyevich, Prince Menshikov (1787-1867). After gaining custody of Said, Menshikov sent him to St. Petersburg in Russia, although Said also claims that he first went to Odessa on the Black Sea. Since slavery no longer existed in Russia (Hellie, 1982), Menshikov must have freed him before he arrived in St. Petersburg.
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In his years as a slave, Said was employed in various capacities including those of tobacco pipe cleaner, travel companion, and shop boy and assistant. However, he also reports that slaves could be used in various capacities, and that eunuchs and concubines were common in Istanbul as they were in Borno. Although Said and his masters were Muslims during the period of his enslavement, not all his masters treated him kindly. In violation of Islamic law, the Tuareg raiders who enslaved him treated him like they would have 'wild beasts' (Said, 1873, p. 42). Abd-elKader is reported to have beaten him on many occasions, although he is also said to have offered him incentives and otherwise treated him mildly, especially when he revealed that he was Barka Gana's son. Said tells us that he was treated with extreme kindness by Hadji Daoud and his other Turkish masters.
As Said notes, slaves resisted enslavement and negotiated conditions of servitude in many ways. He recounts a story of slaves who escaped from Tuareg merchants, and he mentions other slaves who sought freedom. Also, he tells us that he tried various strategies either to end his enslavement or to soften
its harshness. For instance, he recounts how he sought better treatment and attempted to regain his freedom through ransoming (or by mentioning that he was Barka Gana's son) and how, on one occasion, he begged to be sold to another master. Similarly, he tells us that, as a slave in Islamic societies, he remained a devout Muslim.
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# Said as a freeman
Although Said remained in Menshikov's household after he was freed, his maltreatment by other servants compelled him to accept the position of valet with Prince Nicholas Vassilievitch Troubetzkoy (1828-1900). While he worked for Troubetzkoy, he travelled to many cities in Russia, Austria, Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland and Great Britain. Although Said's narrative provides descriptions of some of the cities he visited in Europe and also offers information about diverse issues, including details regarding his master's household and prison conditions in Rome, he offers relatively little detail regarding his relationship with women and on women in general, and it is not always possible to verify what Said experienced and what he read about or heard.
Troubetzkoy was a pious Christian and required the conversion of Said to the Russian Orthodox Church. Following his baptism in 1855, he was given the name Nicholas and was given more privileges in Troubetzkoy's household. Said was particularly adept at learning languages, as demonstrated during his upbringing in Borno and his time in the Ottoman Empire. Under Troubetzkoy, he learned French and also claimed that he had learned the Armenian language while in Russia. Overall, as a slave and a freeman, Said acquired at least eleven languages, including English, the last language he learned and the one in which he composed his autobiography and his account in the Atlantic Monthly. He also gained considerable knowledge about Europe and North America and adapted quickly to alien cultures. These qualities suggest that he was indeed a cosmopolitan person.
In the period following his enslavement, Said often wished to return to his homeland. Although he eventually convinced Troubetzkoy to allow him to visit Borno for a year, in 1859, his wish to return to his homeland was never realized. Indeed, Said was diverted from returning by Isaac Jacobus Rochussen (1829-1907), who hired him to accompany him and his newly wedded wife to North America and the Caribbean.
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Visiting North America did not undermine his desire to travel to Africa. However, after visiting various parts of the Caribbean and leaving New York for
Canada, he was swindled out of $£ 300$ and left penniless by his employers. In this context, he was forced to relocate to Detroit based on the support and advice of one Reverend D. T. Johnston. In Detroit, Said became a teacher, and in 1863, he enlisted in the all-black 55th Massachusetts Regiment that fought in the Civil War, indicating his solidarity with those committed to ending slavery. It is clear that he falsified several dates after the early 1860s, to suppress his stint in the 55th Regiment, probably because of the danger of reprisals from the Ku Klux Klan. Thanks to Civil War records and newspaper stories, however, we know about his experiences in the United States during the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction that followed.
After the Civil War, Said taught school in Charleston and then elsewhere in Georgia for two years before moving to the region of St. Stephens in Alabama, where he established his own school for black children. In his account, Said tells us that he embraced Swedenborgianism, apparently in Charleston, without revealing who introduced him to this fringe Christian sect of Swedish origin. In Alabama, Said also devoted much time to writing essays and may have started or even completed his autobiography. In 1882, Said was living in Brownsville, Tennessee, but he either died there or dropped out of sight that same year.
Said's narrative is silent on his experiences in the Union Army and on many other issues, but it does reflect his African origins, his enslavement, and his endurance during the desert crossing. Also, his account focuses on his educational mission as well as his quest for promoting liberty and returning to Africa. Given its broad scope, we can see that the narrative is much more than a slave narrative. Said's life helps to elaborate on the contention that African-born slaves sometimes adapted to dramatic changes and new experiences.
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# References
Adamu, M. 1978. The Hausa Factor in West African History. Zaria, Nigeria, Ahmadu Bello University Press.
Al-Ahari, M. A. 2006. Five Classic Muslim Slave Narratives: Selim Aga, Job Ben Sulaiman, Nicholas Said, Omar ibn Said, Abu Bakr Sadiq. Chicago, Ill., Magribine Press.
Austin, A. D. 1984. African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Source Book. New York, Garland Publishing Inc.
Austin, A. D. 1997. African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles. New York and London, Routledge
Barth, H. 1857-1859. Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa. Being a Journal of an Expedition, Undertaken under the Auspices of H. B. M's Government, in the Years 1849-1855, 3 volumes. New York, Harper and Brothers.
Benton, P. A. 1912. Notes on Some Languages of the Western Sudan. New York, Toronto, Ont., and Melbourne, Australia, Oxford University Press.
Bovill, E. W. (ed.). 1966. Missions to the Niger, four volumes. Cambridge, UK, Published for the Hakluyt Society by Cambridge University Press.
Brenner, L. 1973. The Shebus of Kukawa: A History of the al-Kanemi Dynasty of Borno. London, Oxford University Press.
Cohen, R. 1967. The Kanuri of Borno. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Dabovic, S. 2012. Out of Place: The Travels of Nicholas Said. Criticism, Vol. 54, No.1, pp. 59-83.
Diouf, S. A. 1998. Servants of Allab: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas. New York, New York University Press.
Fisher, H. J. 2001. Slavery in the History of Muslim Black Africa. New York, New York University Press.
Gomez, M. 2005. Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press.
Hellie, R. 1982. Slavery in Russia, 1450-1725. Chicago, Ill., and London: University of Chicago Press.
Horn P. E. 2012. Coercions, Conversions, Subversions: The Nineteenth-Century Slave Narratives of Omar ibn Said, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, and Nicholas Said. a|b: Auto/Biography Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 45-66.
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Khair, T., Leer, M., Edwards, J. D., and Ziadeh, H. (eds). 2005. Other Routes: 1500 Years of African and Asian Travel Writing. Bloomington and Indianapolis, Ind., Indiana University Press.
Kirk-Greene, A. and Newman, P. 1971. West African Travels and Adventures: Two Autobiographical Narratives from Northern Nigeria. New Haven, Conn., and London, Yale University Press.
Law, R. and Lovejoy, P. E. (eds). 2007. The Biography of Mabommab Gardo Baquaqua: His Passage from Slavery to Freedom in Africa and America. Princeton, NJ, Markus Wiener Publishers.
Lixl, A. 2009. Memories of Carolinas Immigrants: Autobiographies, Diaries, and Letters from Colonial Times to the Present. Lanham, Md., and Plymouth, UK, University Press of America.
Lovejoy, P. E. 2017. Mohammed Ali Nicholas Sa'id: From Enslavement to American Civil War Veteran. Millars. Espai i Història: Microhistorias de esclavas y esclavos, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 219-32.
Lovejoy, P. E. and Baier, S. 1975. The DesertSide Economy of the Central Sudan. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 551-81.
Muhammad, P. R. (ed.). 2001. The Autobiography of Nicholas Said: A Native of Bornou, Eastern Sudan, Central Africa. Cambridge, Mass., Journal of Islam in America Press.
Said, N. 1873. The Autobiography of Nicholas Said: A Native of Bornou, Eastern Sudan, Central Africa. Memphis, Tenn., Shortwell \& Co., Publishers.
Unknown author. 1867. A Native of Bornoo. The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 20, No. 120, pp. 485-95.
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# FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM
The Interesting Narrative of Gustavus Vassa, the African (aka Olaudah Equiano)<br>Chika Unigwe
Gustavus Vassa was born circa 1742 in an Igbo village in the Bight of Biafra, in what is now known as Nigeria. Vassa names his birthplace as Essaka. There have been various unsuccessful attempts by scholars to identify its precise location. A nation, by his account, of rich soil, dancers, musicians and poets. He was named in the hope that he would be a man of importance. In Igbo culture, the name a child is given bears the hopes that the parents place on his shoulders. Names are, in a way, potentially prophetic. A popular Igbo proverb says that a guo onye afa, chi analu, which translates to, 'when a child is named, the gods hear'. The implication is that the gods then lead the child towards a fulfilment of his name. He writes of this, 'our children were named from some event, some circumstance, or fancied foreboding at the time of their birth' (Equiano, 2004, p. 55).
At birth, he was named Olaudah Equiano. Although scholars have suggested various possible spellings of Equiano, all of them starting with the letter ' $E$ ', I would argue, however, that considering what he says the meaning of his name is and the fact that Vassa consistently uses ' $E$ ' for the Igbo ' $I$ ', for instance, when he writes 'Eboe' for ' $\mathrm{I}(\mathrm{g})$ bo', it is likely to be Ikwueanu: 'when you speak, people will listen'. 'Olaudah', according to him, translates to 'vicissitude or fortunate, also one favoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken' (Equiano, p. 55). His father was a titled man, an Embrenche who had many children, some of whom
died in childhood. 'Embrenche' is most likely an adulterated spelling of onye (g) buru ichi, that is, one with ichi marks. Vassa was the youngest son.
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died in childhood. 'Embrenche' is most likely an adulterated spelling of onye (g) buru ichi, that is, one with ichi marks. Vassa was the youngest son.
Gustavus Vassa always used the name 'Vassa', rather than 'Equiano'. It was also the name he passed on to his children. It is therefore the name he preferred to go by. He probably used his birth name as well as his legal name on his autobiography to lend more credence and authenticity to his story. It is my belief that he also might have made the very deliberate choice to also use his birth name on the cover of his autobiography because he was narrating events that began when he was still called Olaudah Equiano. It is my conjecture, therefore, that this was a conscious conflation of the two names so that readers see the evolution of the young African boy, taken from home, who not only learned to read and write, but also bought his freedom, joined an expedition to the North Pole, helped a prominent scientist with his experiments and became a Christian and an Englishman. If his readers never forget for one second that Equiano was also Vassa, might they not be more inclined to reject slave trade?
When he was about 12 years old, Vassa was home alone with his only sister when they were kidnapped by a gang of three local slave traders. Because of the spate of kidnappings, when the grownups went to work on the farms, children were left behind to mind the compounds and raise an alarm if they sighted kidnappers. Vassa had escaped an initial kidnapping attempt. Soon, Vassa and his sister were separated, sold on to different masters. Vassa never saw his sister again. After months of travelling in his own country and going through multiple masters, Vassa was brought to the sea coast where he saw a slave ship for the very first time. He describes this in his autobiography:
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Thus I continued to travel. Sometimes by land, sometimes by water...till, at the end of six or seven months after I had been kidnapped, I arrived at the sea coast... The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound... and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits.... When I...saw...a multitude of black people...chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate... (Equiano, pp. 69-70).
He left Africa probably via the slave port of Bonny, circa 1754. He was named Michael on board the slave ship. Vassa documents in detail the horrors of the Middle Passage: the brutal conditions of the slaves on board the slave ship, the trepidation which accompanied them during the crossing and the
perception of himself and his unfortunate mates that the white men on board were cannibals who meant to eat them:
I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me... (Equiano, pp. 69-70).
As a political document, such a detailed, visceral description of life on board the slave ship in Vassa's autobiography was very useful in eliciting sympathy, and Vassa was well aware of this.
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As a political document, such a detailed, visceral description of life on board the slave ship in Vassa's autobiography was very useful in eliciting sympathy, and Vassa was well aware of this.
He crossed the Atlantic to Barbados and then to Virginia, where he was renamed Jacob. After a few days in Virginia, he was bought by Michael Henry Pascal, a British naval captain, for $£ 40$. Captain Pascal took him to England around early 1755. His new master renamed him Gustavus Vassa, the name he would come to bear for the rest of his life. It is worth noting, as Lovejoy has argued, that Vassa recounts in his autobiography that he initially rejected the name given to him by Pascal, that he in fact refused to answer to the name because he was unwilling to let go of the name Jacob. Lovejoy speculates, convincingly, that Vassa's protestation could only have been in hindsight, as Vassa could only have understood the significance of the Biblical name Jacob years later, and could also only have understood the significance of being named after Gustav Vasa, the King of Sweden, who was, at the time, a national hero (Lovejoy, 2012, pp. 164-184). Lovejoy notes:
The idea that he was literally beaten into acceptance of this name is worth pausing over [...] It was an immodest way by which he informed his readers that he had only reluctantly accepted his fate [...] Vassa was obviously giving himself agency, even if his resistance was suppressed, but surely he projected his later knowledge of his namesake as an implicit recognition of his own authority. Vassa appears to have attached significance to his assigned name because it drew on public knowledge of the Swedish monarchy, although in 1755 at the time he was allegedly protesting, he could not possibly have known this, any more than he would have known that Jacob climbed a ladder and confronted God (Lovejoy, p. 168).
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It is possible that Vassa - by recounting the story of both names and by choosing to use Vassa even when he could revert to his birth name - was deliberately creating an image of himself as one destined to lead. Jacob, after all, is considered the father of Israel and Gustav Vasa, the father of Sweden. A popular Igbo name is Afamefuna, which translates to 'may my name never
be lost'. Stripping an Igbo man of his name is stripping him of not just his identity but also of his destiny. Vassa would have been aware of this. This could also explain his alleged protestation of being stripped of his second slave name, Jacob. A name with a destiny that is much more aligned to Vassa's birth name than Michael, his first slave name. What is worth noting here, too, is the implied parallel Vassa seems to draw between himself and another Biblical hero, Moses, in the incident with Governor Macnamara. It is obvious that he believes that he is a leader of men.
Vassa served Captain Pascal until December 1762, during which time he lived with the Guerins, Pascal's cousins. He was sent to school, was christened at Westminster and took part in naval campaigns in Canada and the Mediterranean. He was baptized Gustavus Vassa in St Margaret's Church, Westminster, in February 1759. Miss Guerin, one of the two Guerin sisters with whom he spent some time in Blackheath, London, was his godmother. Serving Pascal opened up opportunities for Vassa which would otherwise have been closed to him had he been a plantation slave. This period also gave Vassa a lifelong love of England.
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Captain Pascal then sold Vassa to Captain James Doran. Captain Pascal also kept all of Vassa's prize money and wages, except for six pence during the war. He had also always implied that he would free Vassa, and had often told Vassa that he would instruct him in business. Captain Doran took Vassa to Montserrat and sold him on to Robert King, the island's most prominent merchant. Vassa was sold to King in May 1763. King paid Vassa 10 to 16 pence a week for up to 16 hours of hard labour. King had many boats which went about the island collecting merchandise to be shipped. Vassa rowed boats and helped to load merchandise, among other tasks. He also occasionally worked for King as a clerk, a personal valet and his horse groom. Vassa, ever enterprising and using opportunities available to him, put his wages towards trading. King was prevailed upon by the captain of one of his ships, the Nancy, to let Vassa sail with them and help on board. On these trips, Vassa bought products from Montserrat to sell abroad and brought back products on his return to sell in Montserrat. In 1766, he had saved enough to buy his freedom for the exact amount he had been sold: $£ 40$. His manumission was signed on 10 July 1766. As a free man, he was employed by King to continue sailing with his vessel for thirty-six shillings a month. They sailed from Montserrat to Saint Eustatius and then to Savannah, Georgia. On the return trip, the captain passed away and, as his mate was ill, Vassa replaced the captain, bringing the Nancy back safely to Montserrat.
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While at sea, Vassa missed London. He returned to the city in March 1767 and became apprenticed to a hairdresser in Coventry Court, Haymarket. He trained from September 1767 to February 1768. At the same time, he also took lessons in French horn blowing and in arithmetic. In 1768, he began working as a hairdresser for Dr Charles Irving, a scientist, and was paid $£ 12$ per annum, a sum that was not sufficient for him to live on. He also worked as Dr Irving's assistant. Dr Irving had developed a method for converting sea water into fresh water. In May 1768, Vassa, in order to make more money and to satisfy his peripatetic itch, went to work as a hairdresser on board a ship sailing to Italy and Turkey. He returned in 1770 and hired himself out again in April 1771, as a steward on board another ship headed for the West Indies. Vassa hired himself out again on his return as a steward on a ship headed to Nevis and Jamaica in December 1771. In August 1772, he returned and went to work again for Dr Irving until May 1773. Unable to keep away from the lure of the sea, in 1773, he joined the expedition to the North Pole under the command of Constantine John Phipps. He returned after four months and, in the spring of 1774 , sought employment again as a steward on board a ship. Vassa also recommended an acquaintance, John Annis, as cook. When Annis' former owner kidnapped him from the ship, Vassa came into contact with the English abolitionist, Granville Sharp, whom he hoped would help him to free Annis. Their attempt was unsuccessful, but Vassa was now in touch with one of the most important abolitionists of the day. In 1775, Vassa was employed by Dr Irving to work as an overseer on his new plantation colony on the Mosquito Coast of Central America. Vassa remained in this position until June 1776, when he felt the urge to return to London. After Vassa left Dr Irving's employ, Irving hired a white overseer whose cruelty caused the slaves to attempt an escape; an attempt which ended in all of them drowning.
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His seafaring days over, Vassa would begin to dedicate his life to the abolitionist movement. He worked as a servant for Governor Macnamara who recommended him to the Lord Bishop of London, to be ordained and sent as a missionary to Africa to convert his countrymen. By this time, Equiano had become a dedicated Christian and had made several attempts to convert his fellow servants in the employ of the Governor. Like Moses in the Bible, Vassa was raised in exile; and like Moses, he was chosen to go back and free his people. Again, like Moses, Vassa did not immediately accept. Whereas Moses finally accepted because his brother Aaron would be his 'voice', as Moses was not eloquent, Vassa agreed to go because he would be ordained. I propose that Vassa's recounting of this story and the way he does it was a deliberate literary device to draw attention to the image of himself
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as an ordained liberator. This would have been useful in fortifying his moral authority as an advocate of the eradication of slave trade. Despite the governor's exhortations, the bishop declined to ordain Vassa. However, in 1786, Vassa became involved with the Sierra Leone resettlement project. The government planned to send freed slaves to Sierra Leone to live and work. Vassa was the Commissary of Provisions and Stores for the Black Poor going to Sierra Leone. Vassa was sacked from his commissary position for bringing the corruption and immorality of the officers leading the naval expedition to the attention of the commissioners of the navy. The expedition failed due to the mismanagement Vassa had highlighted. He was eventually paid $£ 50$ for his services. In 1787, he co-formed the 'Sons of Africa', a group of black abolitionists who campaigned for an end to slavery through public speaking, writing anti-slavery letters, and by communicating and cooperating with other prominent (white) abolitionists of the period, such as Wilberforce, Sharpe and Clarkson. In 1788, Vassa led a delegation to the House of Commons to support William Dolben's Slave Limitations Act, a bill that sought to improve conditions on slave ships, by putting a limit on the number of slaves any one ship could carry.
The next year, Vassa published his autobiography: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself. It became an important tool for the abolitionist movement and contributed immensely to the British Slave Trade Act of 1807 which abolished African slave trade. Vassa's autobiography was one of the earliest slave narratives. It gives us a harrowing, intimate, first-person account of the horrors of the Middle Passage and of slavery itself. It was an instant bestseller, was translated into different languages and made Vassa a wealthy man. Vassa left almost $£ 1,000$, a considerable sum in those days, in his will to his surviving daughter, Joanna Vassa, to inherit at 21 years of age.
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In 1792, Vassa married Susannah Cullen, an English woman from Cambridgeshire. The couple probably met in 1789, while Vassa was selling and promoting his book, of which Susannah was a subscriber. They married in St Andrew's Church, Soham, Cambridgeshire, in April, and the happy occasion was announced in the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal. After the wedding, Susannah accompanied Vassa on his book tours and meetings with fellow abolitionists. They had two daughters, Anna Maria (b.1793) and Joanna (b.1795). Susannah died in 1796 after a protracted illness, both Anna Maria (21 July) and Vassa (31 March) died in 1797, and Joanna (later Mrs Bromley) in 1857. There is very little known of Vassa's family life. Vassa's death was announced in the local and national press. 'Tireless campaigning and extensive campaigning had taken their toll' (Osborne, 2007, p. 8). His burial place is still unknown.
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The veracity of Vassa's account of his early life has been called into question by certain scholars, notable among whom is Vincent Carretta. Carretta argues - among other things - that Vassa's place of birth is listed as South Carolina on his baptismal record and on his naval record. He accuses Vassa of making up an African history and an African name. Yet other scholars, including Lovejoy, have counter-argued that there is enough evidence in his narrative to prove that Vassa did indeed come from Africa when he claimed he did. Lovejoy points out, among other things, that Vassa was circumcised at a time when circumcision was not practised in Anglo-America, and mentions the practice at least five times in a book directed at an audience that would have found the practice repugnant. Vassa, also always identified as African in all his letters to newspapers. Vassa was aware of the limitations of his memory and makes this admission in his autobiography, acknowledging that his recollections were helped by information he got from other Igbo people he encountered. One would expect that if he were only pretending to be African, that he would not have openly and willingly admitted to this. Yet, he is detailed in his recounting of the particular rituals and traditions of his own people.
His approximation of Igbo terms is close enough to still be understood centuries later, and he refers to 'mahogany-coloured men from the south-west of us: we call them Oye-Eboe' (Equiano, p. 51). Certain Igbo communities around the present-day Delta/Riverine area refer to the Igbo of the south-east as $O(n)$ ye Igbo. Vassa's transcribed Igbo also sounds like the dialect spoken in those areas. The men who calculated time in his place of birth were called ab-affoe-way-cab. I have not yet found the word this is supposed to replace. However, in Igbo, afo/abo is 'year'. In certain Delta Igbo dialects, wa translates to 'they' and kab to 'foretold' or 'said'.
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In Vassa's childhood, men from certain south-eastern Igbo communities painted their bodies red with camwood. Furthermore, Vassa also documents the names of the masters he served and the dates he served them, details that would have been easily verifiable in his days, I imagine. Moreover, these speculations were also rife in Vassa's lifetime, meant as he saw it to discredit his work and prevent the sale of his Narrative (Equiano, p. 255). Lovejoy notes that:
The attack on Vassa's credibility as a witness to slavery, the form it took and the timing on 25 April 1792, were a commentary on the abolition movement. The Danish edict had been enacted on 16 March, and while it did not end the Danish involvement in the slave trade for another decade, it inspired Wilberforce's renewed motion to abolish the slave trade (Lovejoy, p. 174).
In a later edition of his autobiography, in 1792, Vassa calls as witnesses, 'respectable persons of character who knew me when I first arrived in England, and could speak no language but that of Africa' (Equiano, p. 251). Those persons were presumably still alive and could attest to the truth of his story. The fact that these speculations persist today, and the fact that they are rigorously defended are testament to Vassa's enduring legacy as a historical figure and as a writer.
Despite the speculations, Vassa's story and his written work remain an important window into the social, cultural and economic life of the Igbo society before European colonization, and his accounts of the horrors of the slave trade made a substantial contribution towards its abolition. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself remains as important today as it was when first published.
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# References
Carey, B. 2010. Olaudah Equiano: African or American? K. L. Cope (ed.), 1650-1850. Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, Vol. 17, pp. 229-46. New York, AMS Press Inc.
Carretta, V. 2006. Equiano, the African. Biography of a Self-made Man. New York, Penguin Books. Equiano, O. 2004 (reprint) (orig. pub. 2001). The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. A. Costanzo (ed.). Peterborough, Canada, Broadview Press.
Korieh, C. 2015. The Igbo in Global History. U. Nwala, N. Aniekwu and C. Ohiri-Aniche (eds), Igbo Nation: History, Challenges of Rebirth and Development, Vol. 1, pp. 151-76. Ibadan, Nigeria, Kraft Books Limited.
Lovejoy, P. E. 2012. Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa - What's in a Name? Atlantic Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 2.
Osborne, A. 2007. Equiano's Daughter. The Life $\mathcal{E}$ Times of Joanna Vassa. London, Krik Krak Publishing.
Sapoznik, K. A. (ed.). 2013. The Letters and Other Writings of Gustavus Vassa (Olaudah Equiano, the African). Documenting Abolition of the Slave Trade. Princeton, NJ, Markus Wiener Publishers.
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# CHAPTER 14
## FRAGMENTS OF THE LIFE HISTORY OF FUSENG-BE
A Temne Woman Sold in Freetown, Sierra Leone<br>in the Early Nineteenth Century<br>Suzanne Schwarz
Fuseng-be was among a number of adults and children sold illegally as slaves in the abolitionist colony of Sierra Leone in the early nineteenth century. References in colonial administrative records make it possible to trace aspects of the life history of this young Temne woman who was born in an area less than 80 kilometres to the north-east of Freetown in the early 1790s. Although Fuseng-be did not write a narrative of her experiences, her story is told in court records in Freetown after she lodged a complaint about her ill-treatment with an official at Fort Thornton in 1809.
Fuseng-be, alias Betsey (also Fee Seng be, alias Betsey), was a young Temne woman of approximately 16 years of age, who was sold in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1808. Her sale took place less than four weeks after the settlement had been transferred to British Crown control on 1 January 1808. Her estimated age suggests that she was born in 1792 . This was the same year that over 1,100 Black Loyalist settlers from Nova Scotia arrived in Sierra Leone to start a new life free from slavery. As a result of a complaint, Fuseng-be, lodged with a Justice of the Peace at Fort Thornton in January 1809, the newly-appointed governor, Thomas Perronet Thompson, instigated an enquiry into her illegal purchase by one of these Nova Scotian settlers. The circumstances of her sale were examined in the newly formed Vice-Admiralty Court and reported in the colony's newspaper. In the course of proceedings, testimony given by various deponents revealed rare biographical information on aspects of Fuseng-be's
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life. This evidence can go some way towards helping us to understand Fusengbe's experiences of slavery through her own eyes, although aspects of her story were also recounted by European court officials and witnesses. Through the fragments of surviving evidence, it is possible to reconstruct a picture of a young African woman separated from her home and kin through enslavement, but who developed a range of strategies to secure her own release from slavery.
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The case of Fuseng-be has a wider significance; the sale and use of Africans as slave labour in the abolitionist colony of Sierra Leone was a recurrent problem for the authorities in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1791, the directors of the Sierra Leone Company explained in their first published report that they would not 'deal in slaves themselves, nor allow of any slave trade on their ground'. Abolitionist promoters considered that they had the right to prohibit the sale of Africans within this area of territory, as they claimed that the land occupied by the settlement had been sold, rather than leased, to them by neighbouring Temne leaders. Their intention was not only to halt the export of Africans on slave ships, but also to ensure that Africans were not held as slaves within territory claimed by the settlement. In orders sent out to their employees in West Africa, the directors stated that 'we wish you not to permit any one to continue to be a Slave in our district'. This intended slave-free zone was impossible to maintain in practice. The purchase of Temne and Sherbro people brought into Freetown from neighbouring areas can be traced during the period of administration by the Sierra Leone Company, between 1791 and 1807, as well as during the period of British Crown control from 1808 onwards. Freetown was established in the midst of an area on the Upper Guinea coast supplying Africans for export in the transatlantic slave trade, and was located in close proximity to the slave fort at Bunce Island. Ships carrying Africans for sale into the transatlantic slave trade regularly sailed past Freetown in the period up to 1807. The town was visited by local slave merchants, including the Eurafrican traders William Cleveland and Betsy Heard, who sometimes brought their own slaves into the colony. Regulations introduced in the colony concerning slavery were at odds with local African practice on the sale and usage of labour. These differences were a source of ongoing tension
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, particularly when Africans from neighbouring areas sought asylum in Freetown and refused to return to their masters.
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By the time Fuseng-be made her way up the hill to Fort Thornton on 9 January 1809, she had been living in the household of Warwick Francis, her master, for almost a year. When she arrived at the Fort, she complained to John Donald McGregor that she had been ill-treated by her master's wife. With the injuries she had sustained, the walk uphill would have been arduous. McGregor
reported how 'two of her toes were very near off, and very offensive'. Finding a suitable time when she could leave her master's house unnoticed and make her way to Fort Thornton would have required some careful planning by Fuseng-be. She may have picked up intelligence or rumours in the colony that Governor Thompson was interested in rooting out cases of slave sales, and took the risk of leaving her master in the hope that she would receive a favourable hearing. She complained that, despite her injuries, she was 'obliged to go to wash at the brook, carry water, beat rice, and do all other work about the house'. Her appeal to government and court officials for redress was a type of strategy used widely by other enslaved women in different settings in East and West Africa.
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The case of 'Fee Seng be, alias Betsey', was brought before the ViceAdmiralty Court on 4 September 1809. During the proceedings, attention was focused on the circumstances in which this 'Native of Africa' had been sold. It was established that Francis had purchased her at his house in Freetown on 28 January 1808 from a local trader named Peters, a regular visitor to the colony. It emerged that Fuseng-be had already changed hands twice before being brought into the colony. Peters informed Francis that he had purchased Fuseng-be from a trader named 'Young Smart' at a place called 'Rolullom', and that Young Smart had in turn purchased her from her father. The reason for her sale is not explained in this account, although sales of family members to repay debts or to alleviate poverty were among a range of possible reasons for enslavement. If Fuseng-be had remained in the hands of one of these African traders, her case would not have come to the attention of officials in Freetown, as slave sales in the hinterland were still legal. Settlers who left the colony could still own and sell slaves outside its boundaries, but colonial officials were prepared to step in if any of these individuals (as in the case of Fuseng-be) were brought to live within the boundaries of the colony or were purchased by settlers in the British colony.
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Francis haggled over the sum demanded by Peters for Fuseng-be and eventually succeeded in bargaining her price down from $\$ 120$ to $\$ 100$. As a result of this purchase, Fuseng-be was taken into the household of this man, aged approximately 51 years, who had been a slave on a plantation in South Carolina. He was one of the Black Loyalists who had fought for the British in the American War of Independence, and who had migrated to Sierra Leone after a period of re-settlement in Nova Scotia. It is likely that Warwick Francis was the same person listed in the Book of Negroes in 1783 as 'Warwick, 26, stout fellow [...] Formerly Slave to Aaron Jellet, Charlestown, So[uth] Carolina; left him five years ago'. This description is consistent with evidence Francis gave to Paul Cuffe in 1812 about the cruelty inflicted on slaves by Jellet. Francis's
experience of enslavement in the southern states of America is also confirmed by the reports he gave of cases of cruelty on another South Carolina plantation by John Draten [Drayton].
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In the course of investigations, Fuseng-be's status was described using terms with varying meanings. When McGregor asked Fuseng-be if she was an apprentice to Francis, she answered that 'she was his servant'. The fact that the conversation was conducted through the means of an interpreter may, however, have generated confusion as there were important differences between how Africans viewed slavery and 'British attitudes about slavery and pawnships, indentures, apprenticeships and subordinate status within its own settlement'. When summoned before McGregor, Francis gave contradictory accounts of the woman's status within his household. He initially claimed she was an apprentice bound to him for eleven years. It was in the interest of Francis, a settler who held various civic and religious positions in the settlement, to protect his reputation by claiming he had not intended to use her as a slave. When he was asked to explain his actions to the magistrate, he claimed that it was pity that had motivated him to buy her. By reporting that Peters had told him that she would be sold to a slave ship if no one purchased her, Francis attempted to claim humanitarian motives for his actions. He intimated that, by purchasing Fuseng-be, he had saved her from a far worse fate. He asserted that he intended to 'put her on his farm to raise fowls and ducks', an explanation suggesting a milder and less demanding form of servitude. Francis may have thought that this explanation would find favour with colonial officials, interested in promoting agricultural pursuits. Yet, Fuseng-be's account of her role to McGregor reveals that she had been used to carry out a range of menial and laborious household tasks. Francis also tried to lessen his culpability by stating that it was her father who had sold her in the first instance. He claimed that his actions in acquiring Fuseng-be had been approved by Acting Governor Thomas Ludlam, and he produced a paper certificate signed by Ludlam to support his claim. This printed certificate granted permission to Francis to keep Fuseng-be, alias Betsey
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, and he produced a paper certificate signed by Ludlam to support his claim. This printed certificate granted permission to Francis to keep Fuseng-be, alias Betsey, as a house servant for seven years. The stark internal contradiction in testimony given by Francis, however, was his admission that he had purchased Fuseng-be for his own use. It was reported in the African Herald on 18 November 1809, that when McGregor advised Francis to let Fuseng-be return to her own country, he said he 'could not do this, because he had bought the girl and paid for her'.
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The sale of Fuseng-be was not an isolated incident of Africans being purchased for use in the colony. After Thompson took up office, eight other purchases were reported in the colony's newspaper, the African Herald, in November and December 1809. Four of these cases involved the purchase
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of females between 1805 and 1808: three girls were bought in neighbouring areas and transferred into the colony, and another girl was purchased from a Portuguese slave ship and taken into the colony. George Nicol, a European carpenter formerly employed by the Sierra Leone Company, admitted in August 1808 that he had arranged for the purchase of a 'native girl' of about seven years of age. He had instructed a person named Dominique Garel to purchase a young girl from Pedro Naimbanna (also known as Bartholomew Naimbanna), and he paid $\$ 60$ for the girl in March 1806. Following his acquisition of the girl, he re-named her Nancy and took her to his house. In explaining the circumstances of Nancy's purchase, Nicol's testimony also revealed how Nancy's mother had changed hands several times among settlers in Freetown. Nancy's mother had been given to a Frenchman named Berault in partial repayment of a debt, and Berault had given her to Sophia Small, a Nova Scotian shopkeeper in Freetown. Thereafter, Small passed the woman on to George Nicol, suggesting that each saw some value in her labour. Nicol explained that Nancy's mother was old and decrepit, and he implied he had shown compassion by agreeing to her request to purchase her daughter so that they could live together. In common with Francis, Nicol thereby tried to shift some of the moral responsibility for her purchase by claiming that it was the girl's family who had initially made her available for purchase. In defending his actions, Nicol claimed that he had acted 'ignorantly, blindly, and for lack of better knowledge'. This explanation lacks credibility, however, as the same newspaper article reported how he had purchased another girl from a Portuguese slave ship for $\$ 100$. This girl, aged around 11 years, was described as a 'Native of the Bijuga islands' (Bissagos or Bijagós Islands). His track record of purchases also included the payment of $\$ 100$ for a boy named Yabo in June 1805. Yabo, one of 'two Mandingoes' who had been brought to Freetown by a European trader named Lee
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, one of 'two Mandingoes' who had been brought to Freetown by a European trader named Lee, recounted how he was 'stolen in the night, and not taken in any war'. His account suggests, therefore, that he was enslaved in a manner illegal under local African law, through kidnapping.
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Even fewer biographical details are available for two girls purchased by Captain Smith in Sherbro, to the south of Freetown, in 1805. The report in the African Herald on 2 December 1809 indicated that one of the girls, named Phoebe, was aged approximately eight years and was sold for around $\$ 50$ or $\$ 60$. Smith subsequently acquired a twelve-year old girl named Bessy by swapping her for a boy of 11 years of age whom he had already purchased for $\$ 80$. No further biographical details are available for each of these girls. Fragmentary references in colonial records point to the presence of other girls in Freetown being held in coerced labour relationships.
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Thompson did not baulk at using the term 'slave' to describe Fuseng-be's status. In the judgment he handed down in the Vice-Admiralty Court, he pronounced that she had been 'illegally sold or disposed of as a slave in this colony, and as such to be adjudged forfeited to His Majesty'. As a result, her name was entered in the Register of Liberated Africans (held at the Sierra Leone National Archives), and she was ascribed the unique identity number of 100. Fuseng-be was grouped together in the Register with enslaved Africans who had been released from the American ships Baltimore and Eliza in March 1808. Her circumstances of enslavement were different from those of the 148 men, women and children with whom she was listed under the category of 'Slaves Seized in the Colony' in the Register. As she had been trafficked internally, Fuseng-be did not share the same experiences as those Africans who had been sold into the export trade from Africa. In contrast to the others with whom she had been listed, she had not been embarked on a slave ship, transported in the Middle Passage and intercepted partway through the journey by a Royal Navy vessel. Even so, Thompson's use of the legal processes of the Vice-Admiralty Court to deal with her case meant that she was classified as a 'Captured Negro' or 'Liberated African'. As such, she could be disposed of using the same methods adopted for other 'Captured Negroes', including apprenticeship.
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Two months after his purchase of Fuseng-be, Francis acquired another two African girls to add to his supply of household labour. He took two girls named Creasa and Sasia from among the Africans disembarked from the Baltimore and the Eliza. He paid $\$ 20$ for each girl, and this must have seemed a good deal compared to the amount he had paid for Fuseng-be just two months earlier. The manner in which Ludlam dispersed the Africans among the settlers reflected administrative confusion about what should happen after their release. He may have envisaged that the settlers would take responsibility for the training and education of the Africans in the form of apprenticeship but, judging by the testimony from officials and settlers in Freetown, this payment of $\$ 20$ a head created the impression that they had been sold to them as property. The two girls were no doubt placed in Francis's household, and it is possible that they provided companionship for Fuseng-be.
It is unclear how long Fuseng-be remained in the household of Warwick Francis. Although McGregor had initially advised Francis that he should allow her to return to her home, she was formally allocated as an apprentice to him following the adjudication of her case by the Vice-Admiralty Court in 1809. In effect, her appeal for help to the colonial authorities had failed. Admittedly, it was her mistress whom she had accused of cruelty, but allocating Fuseng-be
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to Warwick Francis did not remove the possibility of continued use and abuse of her in the household by this mistress. These circumstances may explain her absence from a listing three years later, which attempted to track the movements of 1,991 Captured Negroes released between 1808 and 1811. The 'List of Captured Negroes on Hand December 31 ${ }^{\text {st }} 1810$ and of those Received, Enlisted, Apprenticed, Disposed of to December $31^{\text {st }} 1812^{\prime}$, held in the United Kingdom's National Archives at Kew, did not record her death. The absence of information in her entry was interpreted by the colonial authorities to mean that she was among those who had 'deserted to Native Towns in the back parts of the Country'. If so, her flight from the colony was a form of resistance to her conditions in Francis's household, although another explanation for her absence from the colony was the possibility that she had been re-sold in the hinterland of Freetown.
Only a partial reconstruction of Fuseng-be's biography is possible, and the trail of evidence comes to a halt when she was approximately 20 years old. There is scant evidence on which to comment regarding her life before the sequence of three sales commencing late in 1807 or early in 1808. Whilst the testimony in court mentions her father, there is no extant account of her wider family relationships and the nature of her upbringing. How she lived her life after the court case cannot be retraced from the available documentation. Her case is, nonetheless, extremely revealing. Unable to speak English, she still managed to glean knowledge of her rights within an abolitionist colony and contact a British military official to make her case for freedom, or at least amelioration of her treatment. She retained the use of her African name when she contacted McGregor in 1809, even though her new master had given her the name of Betsey following her arrival in Freetown.
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