Introduction

For generations, the Arochukwu, an Igbo subgroup in southeastern Nigeria, have been portrayed as the masterminds of a vast hinterland slave-trading network in the Bight of Biafra. According to colonial and later popular accounts, the Aro "Confederacy" allegedly controlled major slave routes, manipulated the Ibini Ukpabi (Long Juju) oracle as a mechanism for enslavement, and coordinated military raids through allies such as Abam and Ohafia.

However, a close examination of primary sources reveals that this narrative rests almost entirely on late-19th-century British imperial propaganda, not on consistent African or European testimony from the peak centuries of the Atlantic slave trade. This paper argues that the Aro did not organize a centralized slave-trading system, and that the myth of the “Aro slave empire” was constructed to legitimize British occupation. The true engines of large-scale enslavement in the region were European merchants, coastal polities such as Old Calabar (Efik), and northern raiders (Fulani), while domestic slavery within Igboland was manipulated through opportunistic kidnapping, not an Aro-run/centralized system.

I. Colonial Origins of the Aro Accusation

The foundational “evidence” used to implicate the Aro came from two British-approved texts produced after the abolition of the slave trade, during Britain’s imperial expansion:

Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society, vol. 14 (1898)
William Balfour Baikie, Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwóra and Bínue (1854)

These works appeared precisely when Britain sought ideological justification for conquering Igboland. Their authors relied heavily on hearsay, unnamed “informants,” and unverifiable anecdotes. Importantly, no pre-19th-century African, European, or Arab source describes the Aro as central organizers of slave trafficking.

This context is crucial: by the 1850s–1890s, the Atlantic slave trade was no longer profitable. Britain had turned toward territorial conquest. To delegitimize existing political-religious authority in the interior, the British constructed an image of the Aro as “deceitful priests,” “slave-dealers,” and “barbarous fetish rulers.” Demonizing the Aro was a strategic pretext for invasion.

primary sources, likes of Equiano, Horton, Crowther, Baikie, Antera Duke, and the Sierra Leone Liberated African Registers, These sources reveal:

No Aro-led military slave-raiding system
No Aro monopoly over interior coastal trade routes
A pattern of individual kidnappers, and European/coastal kingdom -armed raids, Fulani northern raids
Consistent evidence that the Efik, Ijaw, and other coastal states, fulani, not Aro, conducted organized slave warfare

Primary evidence instead shows that the Aro were victims of raids, targets of colonial suppression, and later scapegoats, used to justify British invasion in 1901–1902.

Tea time at a British camp at Itu, present day Akwa Ibom, on the ‘Aro Punitive Expedition’ of 1901

II. What Primary Sources Actually Show: Kidnapping, Not Aro Conspiracy

A pivotal text often misused to implicate the Aro is the Polyglotta Africana, which records testimonies of freed slaves in Sierra Leone. One such individual, Anéke of Naki, describes:

being kidnapped by a “treacherous friend”,

Moved in succession through Aro → Bende → Bonny,

and then being sold overseas.

Far from showing an Aro-run system, this testimony demonstrates:

1.) The capture was individual, not by an Aro army.

2.) The Aro region was simply, in this isolated instance, a by-pass area like every other Igbo region, with the context of domestic slavery normal at the time universally, slaves sold from master to master, ending up in many Igbo regions as domestic workers, not necessarily meant for trade or supply of slaves to Europeans. Native Igbo accounts of Olaudah Equiano, one of the most important primary sources for the Igbo interior before sustained European intrusion (1700s), highlight this dynamic.

3.) This pattern matches broad evidence that certain enslaved Igbo people were seized through opportunistic acts of betrayal and kidnapping.

Other entries in the same source reinforce this pattern of individual criminality and betrayal, not state-sponsored warfare:

Qloma: sold by relatives, taken to Benin (5 years) → ocean.

Tsiél: From Ake (possibly one of the Igbanke communities in Edo State) seized by unknown kidnappers, sold to Igala → ocean

Mbofia: Epham (Cross River/Akwa Ibom region) → Bonny → ocean

Olaudah Equiano: kidnapped by two men and a woman, then moved between Igbo households as a domestic slave before being kidnapped again, this time by non-Igbos (most likely coastal Efiks) with the intent of supply to European slave ships, then taken to the coast.

Equiano describes his final abductors:

“They spoke a language very different from any I had ever heard.”
“They carried me over a large body of water.”

These accounts reveal fragmented, diverse capture routes, not a centralized Aro enterprise.

The case of George Rose is particularly important. He stated:

“Adibe, or George Rose, of Wilberforce, born in the Iséama country, was stolen and brought to Aro when a little boy. He was raised in the village of Asaga in Aro country and lived there until about his twenty-fourth year, when he was sold to the Portuguese in Obane (Bonny). He has been in Sierra Leone twenty-four years, and is the only individual speaking the Aro dialect correctly. There is no native of Aro in Sierra Leone.” See above (“What Primary Sources Actually Show: Kidnapping, Not Aro Conspiracy → Far from showing an Aro-run system, this testimony demonstrates: Number 2”).

III. Domestic Slavery in Igboland vs. the Atlantic Trade: Emphasis on Equiano’s accounts

Olaudah Equiano

It is plausible that the two men and one woman who kidnapped Equiano did not do so with the intent of selling him directly to Europeans. Rather, he was sold into domestic slavery within Igboland. His first master was a blacksmith, then a chief. This shows how the traditional system of domestic slavery in Igbo society, common across the world at the time, was abused through kidnapping. Most Igbo buyers, like Equiano’s blacksmith master or the widow at Tinmah, had no connection to European traders. They bought domestic slaves for domestic home labor, not for resale into the transatlantic trade.

Equiano’s narrative makes clear that he was repeatedly moved between Igbo masters for 6-7 months before being kidnapped a second time in Tinmah, this time by non-Igbo people who spoke an entirely different language and customs from further south which would be Efik coastal regions. These kidnappers took him by canoe over a large body of water to the slave ships.

The traditional system of domestic slavery within Igbo society, while a common institution across the globe at the time, was fundamentally corrupted and escalated by the external economic demands of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Historical accounts firmly distinguish between internal practices and the violent, predatory kidnapping that emerged to supply European traders. As James Africanus Horton noted of traditional Igbo warfare, “They do not capture to make slaves, and take their heads as trophies to their homes.” Burdo Adolphe also notes "They usually take neither prisoners nor slaves ; they carry on their warfare without pity and without mercy, with feverish excitement and an utter contempt for death, cutting off the heads of their enemies,". This indicates that the cultural paradigm prior to extensive European contact was not oriented toward the mass capture of human beings.

The shift toward slave-raiding is directly attributed by contemporary observers to the influence of European commerce. Olaudah Equiano, reflecting on the conflicts of his time, wrote that battles appeared “to have been irruptions of one little state or district on the other, to obtain prisoners or booty. Perhaps they were incited to this by those traders who brought the European goods.” This new, pernicious form of warfare was met with severe internal resistance. Equiano explains that the instigators of this violence were uniquely condemned: “if he falls into the hands of the enemy, he is put to death: for, as he has been known to foment their quarrels, it is thought dangerous to let him survive, and no ransom can save him.” This policy demonstrates that the community recognized the existential threat posed by kidnappers and executed them every time they were caught in the act of kidnapping not even a ransom could save the kidnapper. Such testimony directly contradicts claims that Igbo society, and the Aro in particular, had a long-standing, systemic enslavement enterprise. The transformation of local kidnapping into a profitable activity was triggered by external European demand, not Aro initiative. The rise of predatory kidnapping was part of a broader regional corruption, not an Aro-specific project.

IV. Misidentifying the “Red Men”: Not Aro

“These are sometimes visited by stout mahogany-coloured men from the south-west of us. We call them Oye-Eboe, which term signifies red men living at a distance. They generally bring us firearms, gunpowder, beads, and dried fish. These articles they barter with us for odoriferous woods, earth, and our salt of wood ashes. They always carry slaves through our land; but the strictest account is exacted of their manner of procuring them before they are suffered to pass. Sometimes indeed we sold slaves to them, but they were only prisoners of war, or such among us as had been convicted of kidnapping or adultery, and some other crimes which we esteemed heinous. This practice of kidnapping induces me to think that, notwithstanding all our strictness, their principal business among us was to trepan our people. I remember too they carried great sacks along with them.” - (The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. by Equiano, Olaudah, 1745-1797)

Some have attempted to link Equiano’s reference to “Oye-Eboe” (the “red men” from the southwest) to the Aro. This is geographically impossible. Arochukwu lies to the southeast, while Equiano’s “red men” came from the southwest; these “red men” couldn’t have been Europeans or Whiteman either. Equiano highlights the foreignness of the European white men, “how comes it that in all our country we never heard of them?” Contradicting the well-known “red men” which passed through his country.

Full account:

I asked them if these people had no country, but lived in this hollow place (the ship). They told me they did not, but came from a distant one.

“Then,” said I, “how comes it that in all our country we never heard of them?”

They told me it was because they lived so very far off.

I then asked where their women were, had they any like themselves? I was told they had.

“And why,” said I, “do we not see them?”

They answered, because they were left behind

Finally, So who were these “red men”? see “The red men of Nigeria : an account of a lengthy residence among the Fulani, or "red men", & other pagan tribes of central Nigeria, with a description of their headhunting, pastoral & other customs, habits & religion by Wilson-Haffenden, James Rhodes, 1898-”

V. Debunking the “Long Juju Slave Trap” Myth

The most sensational claim is that the Ibini Ukpabi/long juju oracle lured men to Arochukwu to be secretly sold into slavery.

This accusation collapses under basic scrutiny:

Only men were allowed to consult the oracle, yet enslaved Igbo captives included large numbers of women and children.

Slave ships carried hundreds of captives at a time. For the oracle to supply even one such shipment, hundreds of men would need to be condemned yearly, an impossible scenario that would have sparked widespread avoidance and revolt.

Baikie himself records the case of Chief Agfoekiiin, who visited the oracle and returned home safely.

“The village, which is the first one in the Oru country, is named Agbèri, and the chief, called Agfoekiiin, had been on board as we passed on our ascent. Since that time he had been on a pilgrimage to A'ro, to inquire why his wife had no children, and from this place he had but just returned… He was unwilling to speak freely of Tshyku(Chukwu), whom he told us could not be seen, but could only be heard through the priests.” — Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwóra and Bínue (1854), Baikie

Baikie’s only incriminating description of the oracle was based on unnamed informants and hearsay, precisely the type of colonial rumor-building common in British “pacification” narratives.

“When a man goes to Aro to consult Takuku, he is received by some of the priests outside of the town, near a small stream. Here he makes an offering, after which a fowl is killed, and, if it appears unpropitious, a quantity of a red dye, probably camwood, is spilt into the water, which the priests tell the people is blood, and on this the votary is hurried off by the priests and is seen no more, it being given out that Tshuku has been displeased and has taken him. The result of this preliminary ceremony is determined in general by the amount of the present given to the priests, and those who are reported to have been carried off by Tshuku are usually sold as slaves. Formerly they were commonly sent by canoe, by a little creek, to Old Calabar, and disposed of there. One of my informants had met upwards of twenty such unfortunates in Cuba, and another had also fallen in with several at Sierra Leone.”

This account was also the very first account to indict the Aro priesthood into the slave trade system.

It should be remarked that Baikie was a British naval officer on an expedition most likely to survey the area with plans of British control, invasion and colonization, this was the attitude of the British around the mid 1800s for they were done with the slave trade, in fact sought to abolish it and move on to colonization and imperialism to fund the industrial revolution as slavery became unprofitable and outdated. It was paramount to discredit the existing authorities in the regions they sought to fully take over and to justify their invasion in the future. Accusations of slavery, human sacrifice and all forms of barbarity would have served to the world as justification of the British invasion projecting an image of the British spreading civilization and saving humanity.

Baikie’s unverified hearsay is clearly colonial propaganda

He records the rumor that:

“Those reported to have been carried off by Tshuku are usually sold as slaves.”

But this is reported through:

unnamed people
no dates
no victims’ names
no direct observation

This account by Baikie is isolated, Different sources like "West African Countries and people by James Africanus Horton"(1868), pg 165, and "The Niger and the Benueh; travels in Central Africa" by Burdo, Adolphe, (1849-1891) pg. 151 rephrase the same account but both leave out “Those reported to have been carried off by Tshuku are usually sold as slaves.” and do not mention the Aro priest or Arochukwu in any relation to slavery whatsoever.

VI. The Myth of the Aro Army and the Abam/Ohafia Question

Another common claim is that the Aro commanded large raiding forces through Abam and Ohafia allies. Yet:

No pre-colonial source describes the Aro as maintaining a standing army. such as the likes of the Ashanti, Bornu, Dahomey, or Fulani, the Aro were never described as a militarized state with large-scale organized forces.

Having dismantled the “oracle-slavery” accusation, the next claim often raised is that the Aro organized slave raids by Abam or Ohafia warriors. This argument is drawn mainly from British-sanctioned propaganda, such as Journal, Volume 14, Manchester Geographical Society (1898), which states:

“With all their bounce they are not, however, in my opinion at least, a fighting race; relying on the wiles of deception, and more especially on the widespread reputation and blind belief that their fetish has earned for them. The information that the Abam people fight as well as carry for them, I quite believe to be correct.”
This description itself admits that the Aro were “not a fighting race,” while projecting military activity onto alleged "allied groups". Yet it remains British speculation, not evidence, and reflects the same colonial agenda of portraying the Aro as deceivers who manipulated others into fighting on their behalf.

This narrative served colonial aims: portraying the Aro as deceptive puppet-masters allowed the British to attack them as the “root cause” of regional unrest.

VII. The Real Perpetrators: Coastal States under European Control and traders

Addressing the claim “The Aro acted as middlemen supplying enslaved people to coastal traders, like Europeans, the Efik in Old Calabar and the Ijaw in Bonny and Brass."

There is no credible evidence from the 1400s( onset of trans Atlantic slave raids/trades) to the 1800s (except for the famous 1890 British-sanctioned propagandist pamphlet “journal Volume 14, Manchester Geographical Society” book) that the Aro acted as middlemen for slaves on behalf of coastal traders like the Efik in Old Calabar and the Ijaw in Bonny and Brass or with the Europeans.

There aren't any back-and-forth texts, letters or business records as many European collaborators became fluent in the European tongue and could speak, read, and write very well in various European languages like English, French, Portuguese etc., common with coastal groups who had a trading relationship with Europeans. Contrary to this being the case with the Aro, the Efik coastal groups have texts or records communicating and trading back and forth with Europeans (in the book Efik Traders of Old Calabar, containing The Diary of Antera Duke, an Efik Slave-Trading Chief of the Eighteenth Century, together with an ethnographic sketch and notes by Forde, Cyril Daryll, 1902- editor). The coastal ethnic national groups (tribes) were the prime middlemen the European slave raiders/traders needed in the Bight of Biafra region; they had no use for the hinterland Aro.

The coastal groups were not passive receivers of slaves; they were direct aggressors who raided deep into the interior. The people up the river from the coastal tribes would have been the Aro and Igbos getting raided to be enslaved. Furthermore, make note of the British regalia in the image below of the Efik king, indicating extensive collaboration over the years and influence of the British on the coastal kingdoms of Bight of Biafra region.

Efik, King Duke of Duke Town, Old Calabar, 1890

In the book The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade, Ancient and Modern by W. O. Blake, the text says:

“Mr. Morley states, that in Old Calabar persons are sold as slaves for adultery and theft. On pretence of adultery, he remembers a woman sold. He has been told also by the natives at Calabar, that they took slaves in what they call war, which he found was putting the villages in confusion, and catching them as they could. A man on board the ship he was in, showed how he was taken at night by surprise, and said his wife and children were taken with him, but they were not in the same ship. Mr. Morley had reason to think, from the man’s words, that they took nearly the whole village, that is, all those that could not get away.

Captain Hall says, when a ship arrives at Old Calabar, or the river Del Rey, the traders always go up into the country for slaves. They go in their war canoes, and take with them some goods, which they get previously from the ships. He has seen from three to ten canoes in a fleet, each with from forty to sixty paddlers, and twenty to thirty traders and other people with muskets, suppose one to each man, with a three or four pounder lashed on the bow of the canoe. They are generally absent from ten days to three weeks, when they return with a number of slaves pinioned, or chained together. Captain Hall has often asked the mode of procuring slaves inland, and has been told by the traders, that they have been got in war, and sold by the persons taking them.”

“Mr. J. Parker says, he left the ship to which he belonged at Old Calabar, where being kindly received by the king’s son, he stayed with him on the continent for five months. During this time he was prevailed upon by the king’s son, to accompany him to war.* Accordingly, having fitted out and armed the canoes, they went up the river Calabar. In the daytime they lay under the bushes when they approached a village, but at night flew up to it, and took hold of every one they could see; these they handcuffed, brought down to the canoes, and so proceeded up the river till they got to the amount of forty-five, with whom they returned to Newtown, where, sending to the captains of the shipping, they divided them among the ships. About a fortnight after this expedition, they went again, and were out eight or nine days, plundering other villages higher up the river. They seized on much the same number as before, brought them to Newtown, gave the same notice, and disposed of them as before among the ships. They took man, woman and child, as they could catch them in the houses, and except sucking children, who went with their mothers, there was no care taken to prevent the separation of the children from the parents when sold. When sold to the English merchant they lamented, and cried that they were taken away by force. The king at Old Calabar was certainly not at war with the people up this river, nor had they made any attack upon him. It happened that slaves were very slack in the back country at that time, and were wanted when he went on these expeditions.”

This pattern is confirmed in Efik Traders of Old Calabar:

“The Efiks enslaved those of their own people who were guilty of theft or adultery, and also captured and purchased slaves from neighboring tribes. A raid undertaken for this purpose is described by Isaac Parker (Abridgement of the Minutes of Evidence (taken before a committee of the whole house....), III, 1790 pp.53-4.) a ship keeper who jumped ship in Duke Town in 1765 and remained there for five months. While he was there Dick Ebro asked him to go to war with him, to which he agreed, and they fitted out and armed canoes and so proceeded up the river, till they got to the amount of 45, with whom they returned to New Town/Duke Town, where sending to the captains of the shipping, they divided them among the ships. About a fortnight after they went again, and were out eight or nine days, plundering other villages higher up the river. They seized on much the same number as before, brought them to New Town, gave the same notice and disposed of them as before among ships.”

From Bonny, the scale was even more massive:

“At Bonny, says Mr. Falconbridge, the greatest number of slaves come from inland. Large canoes, some having a three or four pounder lashed on their bows, go to the up country, and in eight or ten days return with great numbers of slaves: he heard once, to the amount of 1200 at one time. The people in these canoes have generally cutlasses, and a quantity of muskets, but he cannot tell for what use. Mr. Falconbridge does not believe that many of these slaves are prisoners of war, as we understand the word war. In Africa, a piratical expedition for making slaves is termed war. A considerable trader at Bonny explained to him the meaning of this word, and said that they went in the night, set fire to towns, and caught the people as they fled from the flames. The same trader said that this practice was very common. In the same voyage an elderly man brought on board said (through the interpreter) that he and his son were seized as they were planting yams, by professed kidnappers, by which he means persons who make kidnapping their constant practice.”

“When a ship arrives at Bonny, the king sends his war canoes up the rivers, where they surprise all they can lay hold of. They had a young man on board, who was thus captured, with his father, mother, and three sisters. The young man afterwards in Jamaica having learned English, told Mr. Douglas the story, and said it was a common practice. These war canoes are always armed. The king’s canoes came with slaves openly in the day; others in the evening, with one or two slaves bound, lying in the boat’s bottom, covered with mats.”

White men often led, orchestrated, and funded these slave raids through war canoe boats with guns on them and weapons.

In the book "A Tropical Dependency: An Outline of the Ancient History of the Western Sudan with an Account of the Modern Settlement of Northern Nigeria" by Flora Louise Shaw Lugard, text says:

“The names quoted by Hakluyt are evidently names to be respected, yet the account given by Hawkins himself of his methods in a subsequent expedition of 1567 differs in nothing from the accounts given by eyewitnesses of Arab slave-raids of the present day. He not only traded, he raided, "There came to us," he says, "a negro sent from a king oppressed by other kings, his neighbours, desiring our aide, with promise that as many negroes as by these warres might be obtained, as well of his part as of ours, should be at our pleasure." As a result, "I went myselfe, and with the helpe of the king of our side assaulted the towne both by land and sea, and very hardly with fire (their houses being covered with dry palm leaves) obtained the towne and put the inhabitants to flight, where we took 250 persons, men, women, and children; and by our friend, the king of our side, there were taken 600 prisoners, whereof we hoped to have had our choise, but the negro (in which nation is seldom or never found truth) meant nothing lesse." The negro king decamped in the night with his prisoners, and Hawkins was left with the "few which we had gotten ourselves." It is interesting to observe, in Hawkins' letters describing these and other expeditions, the perfect reliance of the mariners upon the Almighty to be on their side, and to bring them out of all their dangers with "good store of negroes" for sale... Another famous English sailor, Drake, who as a young man accompanied Hawkins on one of his earlier expeditions to the coast, was more humane or more fastidious in his tastes than his great leader, for after one experience he never again went slave-raiding."

"Slavery and the slave trade in Africa" by Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton), 1841-1904:

"The system adopted by the British crews in those days was very similar to that employed by the Arabs to-day in inner Africa. They landed at night, surrounded the selected village, and then set fire to the huts, and as the frightened people issued out of the burning houses, they were seized and carried to the ships; or sometimes the skipper, in his hurry for sea, sent his crew to range through the town he was trading with, and, regardless of rank, to seize upon every man, woman, and child they met. Old Town, Creek Town, and Duke Town, in Old Calabar, have often witnessed this summary and high-handed proceeding."

Total European Control: Coercion, Betrayal, and Enslavement of Coastal Middlemen

Europeans did not merely trade with coastal groups; they dominated them through violence, turning them against each other and even enslaving them.

“Mr. Falconbridge heard Captain Vicars, of a Bristol ship, say at Bonny, when his traders were slack, he fired a gun into or over the town, to freshen their way. Captain Vicars told this to him and other people there at the time, but he has seen no instance of it himself.”

“Mr. Isaac Parker says the Guinea captains lying in Old Calabar river, fixed on a certain price, and agreed to lie under a £50 bond, if any one of them should give more for slaves than another; in consequence of which, the natives did not readily bring slaves on board to sell at those prices; upon which, the captains used to row guard at night, to take the canoes as they passed the ships, and so stopping the slaves from getting to their towns, prevent the traders from getting them. These they took on board the different ships, and kept them till the traders agreed to slave at the old prices.

Lieutenant Storey says that Captain Jeremiah Smith, in the London, in 1766, having a dispute with the natives of New Town, Old Calabar, concerning the stated price which he was to give for slaves, for several days stopped every canoe coming down the creek from New Town, and also fired several guns indiscriminately over the woods into the town, till he brought them to his own terms.”

“Captain Hall says, in Old Calabar river there are two towns, Old Town and New Town. A rivalry in trade produced a jealousy between the towns; so that, through fear of each other, for a considerable time, no canoe would leave their towns to go up the river for slaves. This happened in 1767. In this year, seven ships, of which five were the following — Duke of York, Bevan; Edgar, Lace; Indian Queen, Lewis; Nancy, Maxwell; and Canterbury, Sparkes, — lay off the point which separates the towns. Six of the captains invited the people of both towns on board on a certain day, as if to reconcile them: at the same time they agreed with the people of New Town to cut off all the Old Town people who should remain on board the next morning. The Old Town people, persuaded of the sincerity of the captains’ proposal, went on board in great numbers. Next morning, at eight o’clock, one of the ships fired a gun, as a signal to commence hostilities. Some of the traders were secured on board, some were killed in resisting, and some got overboard, and were fired upon. When the firing began, the New Town people, who were in ambush behind the Point, came forward and picked up the people of Old Town, who were swimming, and had escaped the firing. After the firing was over, the captains of five of the ships delivered their prisoners (persons of consequence) to the New Town canoes, two of whom were beheaded alongside the ships. The inferior prisoners were carried to the West Indies. One of the captains, who had secured three of the king’s brothers, delivered one of them to the chief man of New Town, who was one of the two beheaded alongside; the other brothers he kept on board, promising, when the ship was slaved, to deliver them to the chief man of New Town. His ship was soon slaved on account of his promise, and the number of prisoners made that day; but he refused to deliver the king’s two brothers, according to his promise, and carried them to the West Indies, and sold them. It happened in process of time, that they escaped to Virginia, and from thence, after three years, to Bristol, when the captain who brought them, fearing he had done wrong, meditated carrying or sending them back, but Mr. Jones, of Bristol, who had ships trading to Old Calabar, and hearing who they were, had them taken from the ship, where they were in irons, by habeas corpus. After inquiry how they were brought from Africa, they were liberated, and put in one of Mr. Jones’s ships for Old Calabar, where Captain Hall was, when they arrived in the ship Cato.

So satisfied were the people of Old Town, in 1767, of the sincerity of the captains who invited them, and of the New Town people, towards a reconciliation, that the night before the massacre, the chief man of Old Town gave to the chief man of New Town one of his favorite women as a wife. It was said that from three to four hundred persons were killed that day, in the ships, in the water, or carried off the coast. The king escaped from the ship he was in, by killing two of the crew, who attempted to seize him. He then got into a one-man canoe, and paddled to the shore. A six pounder from one of the ships struck the canoe to pieces; he then swam on shore to the woods near the ships, and reached his own town, though closely pursued. It was said he received eleven wounds from musket shot.”

The Overlooked Threat: Fulani Slave Raids from the North

The third group that was responsible for the enslavement of Igbos was the Fulani. Many assert that they had no reach or contact with the Igbo regions, but this is false as the evidence would show us.

In the book "The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade" by W.O. Blake, we’re notified of the Fulani capacity to conduct slave raids:

“In 1794, the king of the southern Foulahs, a powerful tribe in Nigritia, was known to have an army of 16,000 men constantly employed in these slave-hunting expeditions into his neighbors’ territories. The slaves they procured made the largest item in his revenue.”

Heinrich Barth, in "Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa", provides specific details of raids into the Igbo country:

“16th. I’bo, dwelling in nine villages on the “black water” (baki-n-ruwa), as many of the Hausa people call the Kwara, although the I'gbo and other tribes in that district give the name “black water" in general to the Benue, while they distinguish the Kwara as the “white water.” The I'bo whom, as well as the Dingding, the Fulbe(fulani) believe to be Christians, have neither cattle, horses, nor asses, but plenty of large sheep, goats, swine, and poultry. The expedition which my informant accompanied in 1848-9 spent two months in this country, plundering it and carrying away a great many slaves. Since that time the Fulbe can in some respects truly say that their empire extends as far as the sea; for day.”

“Now every year the I’bo, at least part of them, and their neighbors are said to bring slaves, salt, and cowries as a kind of tribute to the Governor of Chamba. The same expedition, after having retraced its steps as far as the gari-n-Kachella Bum, again returned toward the Great River, and fell upon and plundered Mbafu, said to be three days' journey north from the I’bo country.*”

Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston’s "History of a Slave" also references an Igbo slave in Fulani territory:

“I, who had been a favourite of the Sultan of Yakuba, and considered myself as much a Muslim as any Arab or Pul-o follower of the Prophet, I was now forced to walk in step with a poor wild pagan slave from the Ibo country, joined to him during the march by a chain which united our heavy wooden collars. Sometimes I would try to show the guards of the caravan that I was a Muslim like themselves, and in a loud voice I would recite the Fatha, the prayer from the Book of books which I had picked up from the Ful-be (fulani) Muslemin, or I would attempt to pray the Two-Bow Prayer, but so often as I did this in the hearing of the guards they would strike me on the mouth and jeer at me, saying that Allah could not understand such jargon, and mocking me for the nonsense that I spoke in the Arabic I had learnt by rote.”

“I doubt if you would ever reach it: yet once or twice I have heard that white men have been near my mother-land. They came — I have heard it said — to spy out the country and the chiefs of the Ful people, and the Wazir of Bornu afforded them protection. Then, too, I have heard that the great rushing river, which was distant a month's walk from my home, towards the north — the river that the Ful-be call Mayo Fumbina, and the Batta call the Benue — that this water flowed towards the setting sun, where it joined the Kwara, which comes from Timbuktu; and up this Kwara they used to say that white men came in big ships to buy slaves. The white men, I heard, would come to Nufe, and sometimes the Arabs have told me they were English, and sometimes they said they were another kind of Englishmen called Merakani(American). And once, too, some white men came up the Benue River in a steamer, and now the Bornu people bring news to Tarabulus that the white men have got houses on the Benue, where they trade with the Ful people. It may be lying, it may be true, I do not know; but you white men are wonderful, and so are the things you do.”

The account seems unsure "It may be lying, it may be true, I do not know" but evidence show white men maneuvered up and down the Niger river, during the Ekumemku resistance against the Niger royal company by the Igbos, the British royal navy used a HMS Flirt gunboat to bomb Asaba in 1898 and other Igbo towns proving they had access to the Niger river and could've went further up the river to Fulani territory.

Furthermore, "Hugh Goldie’s Calabar and its Mission records slaves in modern-day southern Nigeria, Calabar", who were captured by the Fulani:

“By far the greater part of the population is in a state of serfdom, the people or their fathers having been brought into the country, sold for crime or debt, or it may be to get rid of any claim they might have to position or wealth seized by a stronger hand. We have amongst us also captives of the slave raids of the Tibari, as the Fulatos or Fellani are called here.1 Thus about thirteen different tribes are represented in our population... It is commonly reckoned that Duke Town has a population of six thousand, and Creek Town one thousand five hundred. By far the greater part of the people are, however, scattered in the farm districts.”

The History of a Slave (1889) By Harry Hamilton Johnston pg 62-3

Conclusion: The Colonial Motive and the True Picture

Arochukwu was singled out for blame because of the spiritual and judicial influence they held through the respected Igbo priesthood system. These priests served as doctors, magicians, and time-calculators, and they were consulted on important matters throughout Igboland. Equiano himself recalled:

“Though we had no places of public worship, we had priests and magicians, or wise men. I do not remember whether they had different offices or were united in the same persons, but they were held in great reverence by the people. They calculated our time and foretold events, as their name imported, for we called them Ah-affoe-way-cah, which signifies calculators or yearly men, our year being called Ah-affoe.”

Though he does not explicitly say “Aro,” later sources connect these yearly men with the Aro. George Thomas Basden, in Niger Ibos (early 1900s), wrote:

“Aro-Ichu-Aja, sometimes known as Igu-Aro = counting of the year.”

Anthropological report on the Ibo-speaking peoples of Nigeria By Thomas, Northcote Whitridge, 1868- pg 28 wrote:

“Aro( the year) is also found in every town.......”

The British sought to destroy this system in order to weaken Igbo society and make the people dependent and loyal to them, thereby paving the way for colonization. The Aro had played a major role in resisting British control in the region, so lies and propaganda portraying them as slave traders, amongst other heinous accusations, were necessary to justify the direct invasion of the Arochuckwu in the 1901-1902 Aro-Anglo war.

The true picture of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Bight of Biafra is one of multi-frontal assault driven by external demand. The enslavement of Igbo people was facilitated by:

Direct and prolonged raids by coastal kingdoms like the Efik, who armed large fleets to journey for weeks "higher up the river" into the hinterland, demonstrating a capacity that made a separate "Aro middleman system" redundant for the trans-Atlantic trade.
Overwhelming European coercion, where traders not only set prices but fired upon towns, instigated massacres between communities, and enslaved their own coastal partners, revealing a relationship of pure domination, not equal partnership.
Systematic slave-hunting by the Fulani from the north, who conducted two-month long plundering expeditions into the Igbo country, establishing a tributary system and connecting to European traders via the Niger-Benue river system, representing a significant external threat.
The corruption of traditional domestic slavery through rampant, predatory kidnapping by individuals.
The coastal groups served as middlemen to such a high degree and under such direct European control that the need for the Aro in that specific role is not supported by the contemporary evidence. The European presence was the constant, driving force, using extreme violence on all fronts both coast and hinterland to secure captives. The Aro Confederacy was a scapegoat, its role magnified and distorted to serve a colonial agenda, while the primary drivers and perpetrators of the trade, European traders and their direct coastal partners, were strategically obscured. It is time this history was re-evaluated.

"Like the Jews and Mohammedans, who venerate respectively Jerusalem and Mecca, the people of Ebo have their holy city, to which they make frequent pilgrimages. It is Aro, situated in the central part of their country, about twenty-five leagues from the left bank of the Niger ; the inhabitants, who are greatly respected, call themselves Omo-Tshuku, children of the supreme being."- The Niger and the Benueh; travels in Central Africa by Burdo, Adolphe, 1849-1891; Sturge, G. (George)

"The religion of the Egboes is Judaism, intermixed with numerous pagan rites and ceremonies. They believe in the existence of one Almighty, Omnipotent, Omnipresent Being, whom they worship as such, and regard as the Omniscient God who concerns himself with the affairs of man. He is known by the name of Tshuku, contracted sometimes into Tshi. They also admit the existence of another God, or a superior being, who, in one part of the country, is called Orissa, and in another TshukuOkeke, or ‘God the Creator’, or ‘the Supreme God’, thus showing that the nation believes in the division of the Godhead — in two beings each equal in power and influence, yet differing in the Godhead; but the existence of a third person does not seem to be admitted or known by them. Tshuku,* the Omniscient God, who is supposed to preserve them from harm, communicates with his people through his priests, who reside in a city set apart as holy by all the nation. This place is called Aro, or Ano, to which pilgrimages are made, not only from all parts of Egboe, including the tribes along the Coast — viz., Oru, Nimbe, and Brass — but also from Old Calabar in the far east. This city, where the holy shrine of Tshuku exists, is extremely populous, and is spoken of with great reverence and respect, ‘almost at times with a degree of veneration. The inhabitants speak the languages of the surrounding tribes, which are heard among the crowded pilgrim votaries who throng the shrine’, but they speak principally the dialects of Elugu and Isuama. They are said to be skilful artisans, and manufacture swords, spears, and metallic ornaments, specimens of which European travellers have pronounced to be very neatly finished. The town is called God’s Town — ‘Tshuku ab y a ma’, or ‘God lives there’: and the inhabitants God’s children or, Omo Tshuku." West African countries and peoples by James Africanus Horton(1868)

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The Arochukwu and the Colonial Lie: Reassessing the Bight of Biafra Slave Trade Narrative