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  • 1400–1774: The Age of Exploration and the Colonial Era x
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Article

Antera, Duke Ephraim  

David Northrup

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Atlantic merchant, was born and lived in Duke Town, a part of the trading community of Old Calabar, near the Cross River in what is now southeastern Nigeria. The names of his parents are unknown. His name is also given as Ntiero Edem Efiom. He married Awa Ofiong, whom he called his “dear wife,” as well as two other wives whose names are not known. His only known child was a son, Duke Antera.

Antera grew up in a family prominent in the marketing of merchandise brought by Europeans in exchange for African slaves and other goods In addition to the local Efik language the young Antera learned to speak English through contact with the British captains and crew who called at Old Calabar The fact that he could also read and write English suggests he may have received some formal education in England as did the sons of other ...

Article

Gonneville, Paulmier de  

Trevor Hall

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
17 September 2020

Nothing is known about his family. His reason for renown is his 1503 voyage from France to Senegal, defying the Iberian monopoly over European maritime trade with West Africa. Captain Gonneville did not kidnap and enslave West African. He showed Africans that all Europeans did not capture Africans and enslave them in Europe and insular colonies from the Spanish Canaries to the Portuguese Azores, Madeiras, Cape Verdes, and São Tomé.

The French were the first Europeans to question the power of the Catholic Church to give West Africa to Portugal and America to Spain King François I said sarcastically where is it written in the will of Adam that Portugal has monopoly over West Africa Lyautey pp 5 6 The French maintained that no Christian nation has the authority to monopolize the seas and restrict trade with non Christian people whom they had not conquered Captain Gonneville sailed to the ...

Article

Heard, Betsy  

Bruce L. Mouser

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

trader, traditional medical practitioner, and political arbiter, was born on the coast of Guinea-Conakry. She is also known as Elizabeth, Beth, and Liza Heard. Her likely father was a British merchant attached to commercial firms maintaining factories at Bance Island in the Sierra Leone River or on the nearby Iles de Los. It was customary for African headmen to arrange a husband/wife relationship for resident foreign “strangers”—of which Heard’s father was likely one. Her mother’s name and relationship to local leaders are unknown. At a young age, Betsy was recognized as exceptionally intelligent, and she was sent to Liverpool, where she was boarded and educated, with the expectation that she would return to the Windward Coast as an agent for European commerce and Liverpool interests.

By the 1790s Heard had established a commercial footing at Bereira on the southern Guinea Conakry coast At that time Bereira was a border ...

Article

Krotoa  

Julia Wells

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Khoikhoi interpreter and trader at the first Dutch East India Company settlement at the Cape of Good Hope (present-day South Africa), was also known as Eva. Nothing is known of her parents or place of birth, except that her mother lived with a neighboring clan and showed hostility toward Krotoa, who was separated from her sister in infancy. When the Dutch landed on 7 April 1652, Krotoa lived with her uncle, Autshumao, leader of the Goringhaicona people. For several decades, Autshumao ran a postal service for passing ships of various countries. His people lived in the Table Bay area as hunter-gatherers of shellfish, in contrast to neighboring Khoikhoi groups who were itinerant pastoralists. When the Dutch landed and started to construct buildings, the Goringhaicona lived next door and often worked for tobacco, food, and drink.

From roughly the age of twelve Krotoa lived in the household of Jan Van ...

Article

Sidi al-Mukhtar al-Kunti  

Stephen Cory

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

a Sufi leader who revived the Qadiriyya Sufi order in the southwestern Sahara during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In doing so, he assured the dominance of his tribe, the Kunta, as the premier zawaya (clerical) tribe, providing religious and legal education and spiritual leadership throughout the area. His peaceful propagation of the faith led to an increased practice of Islam in the Western Sahara. In addition, his linkage of religious renewal to the promotion of trade led to a realignment of power relations among the tribes, with the Kunta at the top. Sidi al-Mukhtar sought to use the tariqa (Sufi brotherhood) structure to teach Islamic practices, reform social mores, and eliminate non-Islamic religious accretions from society. His descendants, leaders of the peaceful Qadiriyya-Mukhtariyya order, opposed the nineteenth-century jihad movements in West Africa, including the jihad of the Tijani leader Hajj ʿUmar Tal in Senegal.

The Kunta are ...

Article

Snees, Jantie  

Ray A. Kea

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Cape Coast, Gold Coast (later Ghana), trader-broker and officer holder, was also referred to in the documents as “Abee Coffu Jantie Seniees,” “Jan Snees,” “Janque Senece,” or “Johan von Sinesen.” The time and place of his birth are not known. Information about him comes from contemporary trading company records (principally Danish, Dutch, and English) and published texts, which cover a period from the 1640s to the 1670s.

Jantie Snees came from a commoner background and is probably to be identified with a man named Jantie van roeye or Jantie son of the boatman who lived in Kormantse a Fante coastal town where the Dutch West Indies Company had a fort Snees was employed by the company as a trading servant or broker in the 1640s By the late 1650s he was a rich merchant living in Little Komenda a coastal town in the Eguafo polity He was one of the ...