The Calabar Massacre of 1767 was one of the pivotal moments of the British ascendancy in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth-century, which is examined through the correspondence between Calabar merchants and British merchants that uncovers how the slave trade operated in one of the principal ports of departure for enslaved Africans. The correspondence establishes the context for the Massacre of 1767.

”This volume brings together the ample, but widely-scattered, evidence of British-Calabar collaboration in the slave trade that resulted in the criminal conspiracy of 1767 and the shocking murder and enslavement of commercial rivals in the nasty business of slaving.”

-James H. Sweet, Vilas-Jartz, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“A gripping reconstruction of one of the darkest episodes in the Atlantic slave trade. Meticulously researched and richly documented, this compelling volume brings a long-suppressed tragedy to light and deepens our understanding of the brutal realities of the slave trade in Africa.”

Senator Sandy Ojang Onor, Professor of Africa History, University of Calabar IS Paul Lovejoy is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in the Department of History, York University, and former Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History

Nicholas Radburn is Senior Lecturer in the History of the Atlantic World 1500-1800, Lancaster University and recipient of the James A. Rawley Prize for his study of trans-Atlantic slavery Randy J. Sparks, formerly Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, is Clement Chambers Benenson Professor in American Colonial History at Tulane University David Imbua is Professor of Atlantic History in the Department of History and International Studies at the University of Calabar, where he is Head of Department and Deputy Director of the Bassey Andah Institute for African and Asian Studies.