The impact of the transatlantic slave trade on Africa is one of the most challenging aspects of its history to explain. How could such a destructive activity thrive for centuries? G. Ugo Nwokeji addresses this question in The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra: An African Society in the Atlantic World, winner of the 2011 Melville Herskovits Award, delivered by the African Studies Association to the most important work in African studies published in English in the previous year. In it, Nwokeji contends that this question can neither be answered merely through analyses of demand and supply, nor can the trade’s impact be attributed to the greed or cunning of European and American merchants alone. African slave traders, such as the Igbo-speaking Aro from the Bight of Biafra, in southeast Nigeria, also played a key role in the traffic. They not only were among the greatest traders in the Atlantic, but they also fostered a culture that rewarded entrepreneurship and encouraged commercial expansion. According to Nwokeji, “Aro slave trade involved both business and social engineering” (2).

Few other historians are better positioned to make such a sensitive or provocative argument. Nwokeji is an Aro man and historian of Nigeria. He is currently associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkley, having previously taught at the flagship campus of the University of Connecticut. The Slave Trade is his first single-authored book. It emerged from his PhD dissertation, defended at the University of Toronto in 1999. As an insider, Nwokeji was able to interview elders, local historians, and other people who would not be as easily available or confortable in sharing their knowledge of the Aro slave trade with other historians. Additionally, he examined an extensive selection of written primary and secondary sources. Not many descendants of slave-owning classes would be willing to discuss their ancestral involvement in what is presently considered an abominable practice. However, Nwokeji makes no attempt to whitewash the Aros’ role in the traffic or finding excuses for their involvement in that activity. Rather, he provides an honest and candid history of the Aro slave trade, highlighting some of the main cultural practices that enabled them to succeed in this long-lasting commercial activity.

The Slave Trade is divided into eight chapters. Chapter One introduces the book’s main issues, arguing that the “rise and expansion of the Aro was the key influence that shaped the character of the Biafra Atlantic slave trade” (19). Chapter Two places Aro history in the context of the traffic, noting that “slavery was integral to Aro political economy, but the origins of slavery within the group are not as important in galvanizing the Biafra Atlantic trade as the origins, structure, development, and expansion of the Aro trading network” (25–26). Chapter Three examines the Aro trading network in detail by placing it in a regional context. It notes that, different from other African trade diasporas, the Aro diaspora “almost always had access to military resources, which was often a decisive factor in their dealing with hinterland groups” (55). Moreover, it claims that the Aro “embarked on a programmatic incorporation of non-Aro into the Aro group,” which “invariably wielded political influence over their host communities” (56). Chapter Four focuses on cultural formation in the trading frontier, arguing that “Aro incursions into Igboland and elsewhere involved the ‘Igboization’ of the Aro, and the ‘Aroization’ of the non-Aro” (83).

Chapter Five discusses whom the Aro regarded as eligible for sale overseas, noting that by the mid-eighteenth century, coastal traders had made “a sharp distinction between captives they intended to keep and those they intended to sell” (117–118). Chapter Six shows that constructions of gender roles helped shape the age and sex structure of the trade, stressing that they “reflected African choices as well” (145). Chapter Seven explains the cultural and economic aftershocks of the traffic, especially in the context of the transition from slave to natural produce trade, which gave rise to new value systems. Some of them included increased militarization and the pursuit of conspicuous consumption, which “promoted greed, impoverished people, and rendered them vulnerable to enslavement by their creditors” (201). Finally, Chapter Eight summarizes the book’s main findings, noting that, although it highlighted the ways one African region shaped the trade, “the impact of external processes remained important throughout the era” (207).

The book’s strength lies in Nwokeji’s deep knowledge of Aro culture. Perhaps the best way to understand Aro success is through the concept of Mmuba, which is “a range of phenomena that at once embraces human proliferation, prosperity, and even territorial expansion” (71). Mmuba, however, is not only a practice but also a mentality that “encouraged the marrying of numerous wives, the acquisition of slaves, and the aggressive promotion of immigration” (71). Although the ownership of people seemed like an end in itself, Nwokeji notes that the measure of Aro affluence went beyond the number of slaves one owned or wives one had. It encompassed “the total number of dependents, including slaves, ex-slave clients, and all kinds of immigrants that one brought into the society” (73–74). Indeed, the Aro slave system apparently exhibited high rates of manumission, and former slaves, as well as free outsiders, could integrate into Aro society through the Ihu rite, which provided these individuals with a permanent place in the lineage hierarchy, “making belonging to Aro society a cardinal condition for belonging in it” (99). Consequently, the rite encouraged slaves to work toward their emancipation and to acquire wealth and dependents, further expanding Aro power and influence over the region. As an Aro would say, “having many slaves was esteemed, but it was even better to have many dependents who were themselves prosperous with many dependents of their own” (74).

However, the book leaves some questions unanswered. For example, what were the chances of slaves actually obtaining manumission? Did they ever rebel or runaway? Although Nwokeji makes a persuasive case about master motivations to grant manumission, did slaves really wish to integrate Aro society? These individuals were surely not among the undesirable ones destined for sale into the Atlantic. What about returning home? Former slaves, as well as free outsiders, were not allowed to marry Aro women (103–104). Would they be content living as “second-class citizens” among the Aro? Finally, how did the increased militarization of Aro society following the abolition of the trade affect concepts of masculinity and femininity in Biafra?

These questions would be better answered in a volume focused on the stories of the oppressed. After all, The Slave Trade deals with the master class, providing a unique perspective on the culture and mentality of one of the most successful trading ventures in history. It well deserved the Herskovits Award, offering as it does an important contribution to the literature of the traffic.