The Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader

Written by a major African merchant at the height of Calabar's overseas commerce, Antera Duke's diary provides valuable information on Old Calabar's economic activity both with other African businessmen and with European ship captains who arrived to trade for slaves, produce and provisions. The publication of this volume will mark the first publicly available edition of this valuable primary source in over fifty years.

Stephen D. Behrendt is a senior lecturer in history at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is co-author of The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (1999) and author of numerous articles and book chapters on the slave trade. He collaborated with James A. Rawley on a revised edition of The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History (2005).

A. J. H. Latham did field work in Calabar in 1965-66, funded by a Leverhulme Overseas Scholarship, and taught at the University of Wales, Swansea until his retirement in 2003. He is author of Old Calabar, 1600-1891: The Impact of the International Economy Upon a Traditional Society (Oxford, 1973) and many papers and books on African, Asian, and international economic history.

David Northrup is professor of history at Boston College and a specialist on sub-Saharan Africa, Atlantic history, systems of coerced labor, and imperialism. Among other works, he is author of Trade Without Rulers: Pre-colonial Economic Development of Southeastern Nigeria (Oxford, 1978), Africa's Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850 (Oxford, 2002, 2nd ed. 2008) and Crosscurrents in the Black Atlantic, 1770-1965: A Brief History with Documents (2007).