What to Read, and Why
Primary Sources
- Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) — The essential primary source. Available free at Project Gutenberg and at the Slave Voyages companion site. Read this first.
- Slave Voyages Database — slavevoyages.org — The most comprehensive database of Atlantic slave trade records, searchable by region of origin, port, ship, and destination. The Bight of Biafra data is fully accessible. Indispensable for quantitative understanding of the trade.
- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) — Available free at Project Gutenberg. The most widely read enslaved person's account in American history.
Igbo and Bight of Biafra Specifically
- G. Ugo Nwokeji, The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra (2010) — The definitive modern scholarly study. Essential.
- Paul Lovejoy & David Richardson, "The Business of Slaving: Pawnship in Western Africa, c. 1600-1810" (2004) — On the mechanisms of the trade including Aro network operations.
- Adiele Afigbo, The Warrant Chiefs (1972) — Includes analysis of the Aro trading network and its colonial-era suppression.
- Don Ohadike, The Ekumeku Movement (1991) — Resistance to the Aro network and British colonialism in Western Igboland.
General Atlantic Slave Trade
- Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (1997) — The most comprehensive single-volume history. Dense but invaluable.
- Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007) — The Middle Passage experience reconstructed from ship records, testimony, and material evidence. Essential for understanding the crossing.
- Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944) — The foundational argument that Atlantic slavery financed British industrialisation. Still contested; still essential.
- Vincent Brown, The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (2008) — On Jamaica and the culture of death and resistance in Atlantic slavery.
Igbo Diaspora in the Americas
- Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (1998) — African ethnic identities in the Americas, including a substantial chapter on Igbo presence and cultural continuity.
- Vincent Carretta, Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (2005) — The controversial scholarly biography that questions Equiano's African birth. Read alongside Equiano's own text.
- Tiffany Ruby Patterson & Robin D.G. Kelley, "Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World" (2000) — Theoretical framework for understanding African diaspora cultural persistence.
The Osu System
- Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease (1960) — The essential literary treatment. Read alongside Things Fall Apart.
- Victor Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (1965) — Anthropological account that includes analysis of the osu system in its social context.
- Nwosu Augustina, "The Osu Caste System and Human Rights in Igboland" — various academic journals — Contemporary legal and human rights analysis of the system's persistence.
Abolition and Reparations
- Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (2005) — The British abolitionist movement from the inside. Accessible and thorough.
- CARICOM Reparations Commission, Ten Point Reparation Plan (2014) — Available at caricomreparations.org. The formal Caribbean reparations claim and its legal and historical basis.
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The Case for Reparations" (The Atlantic, 2014) — The most widely read contemporary argument for American reparations. Available free online.
Key Texts — Free Downloads
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