The Political Organization Of Old Calabar

The extracts from Antera Duke’s diary which have been preserved give a tantalizingly brief account of life in Old Calabar at the end of the eighteenth century. But they throw considerable light on several features of the political situation described in the narratives of European travellers half a century later, when Old Calabar and Bonny were the two major ports of the Oil Rivers region, now part of the Rivers and Calabar Provinces of Nigeria.