UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER
Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade Conference, Nigeria 07/00

Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade Conference, Nigeria 07/00

Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade: The Interior of the Bight of Biafra and the African Diaspora.

Conference to hosted by His Excellency, Governor Chimaroke Nnamini, Enugu State, Nigeria at the Nike Lake Resort, Enugu, Nigeria, July 10-14, 2000.

The Bight of Biafra was one of the most important sources of enslaved Africans sent to the Americas in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Indeed, the forced transport of considerable numbers of Igbo-speaking slaves and others from the interior of the Bight of Biafra across the Atlantic was a central development in the emergence of relatively cohesive ethnic groups in the African diaspora. Igbo, "Moko", "Bibi" and other ethnic groups have been identified in many parts of the Americas, most especially in Jamaica, the tidewater areas of Maryland and Virginia, and other anglophone colonies.

Nonetheless, little research has been undertaken to explore the cultural and historical continuities and disjunctures in this population displacement. Moreover the repercussions of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on the interior of the Bight of Biafra during the period of heaviest population displacement in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries remain poorly understood.

The aim of this conference is to explore the repercussions of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on both the Biafran interior and on the diaspora, especially the emergence of ethnic identities, both in diaspora and in the Biafran hinterland. The conference will explore religious, cultural, linguistic, and social factors associated with the slave trade, including the rise of the Aro commercial and religious network, the role of slavery in the interior of the Bight of Biafra, the social and economic structure of the coastal ports, adjustments after the abolition of the slave trade, and the responses of enslaved individuals to conditions of slavery, both in the Biafran interior and in the Americas.

For additional information, contact: Professor Carolyn Brown, Department of History, Rutgers University <cbrown@panix.com, or to Professor Paul E. Lovejoy, Department of History, York University <plovejoy@yorku.ca>.



Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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