Jean Barbot
1655-1712
Barbot presents himself to the King of Sestro, 1681
Jean Barbot, French Protestant who fled to England in 1685 following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, wrote an account of his voyages along the West African coast, published in England in 1732.
Barbot's homeland, the Ile de Ré, figured in the developing commercial economy of pre-modern Europe. Its merchants traded with Holland and England, in networks that facilitated Barbot's migration in 1685.
Early in his mercantile career, however, Barbot traveled to the Guinea Coast of Africa on two occasions, in 1678-9 and 1681-2. Following his return from the second trip, he located in La Rochelle where he continued his involvement in Atlantic trading voyages, although there is no evidence he ever went to sea again.
Barbot's account tells us several things about West African societies:
[P.E.H. Hair, Adam Jones, and Robin Law, eds., Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712, 2 vols., London, 1992, ix-xiii.]
Economic Specialization: Twin Villages
. . .at the mouth of Old Calabar
river, are two villages at a distance from each other,
call'd Fish-town and Salt-town; the Blacks of the former
being fishermen, and of the latter salt boilers. . .[The
River] is well furnish'd with villages and hamlets all
about, where Europeans drive their trade with the Blacks,
who are good civiliz'd people, and where we get,
in their proper seasons, as at New Calabar, all sorts of
eatables, yams, bananas, corn, and other provisions for the
slaves, which we barter there, as well as elephants teeth,
and I believe have the greatest share of, of any Europeans.
The most current goods
of Europe for the river of Old Calabar, to purchase
slaves and elephants teeth, are iron bars, in quantity,
and chiefly; copper bars, blue rrgs [sic ?]
, cloth, and
striped Guinea clouts of many colours, horse-bells, hawks-bells,
rangoes; pewter basons of one, two, three and four
pounds weight; tankards of ditto of one, two and three pounds
weight; beads, very small, and glaz'd, yellow, green, purple and
blue; purple copper armlets, or arm-rings, of Angola make; but this
last sort of goods is peculiar to the Portugueses. The Blacks
there reckon by copper bars, reducing all sorts of goods to such
bars; for example, one bar of iron, four copper bars; a man slave for
thirty-eight, and a woman slave for thirty-seven or thirty-six
copper bars.
[II, 677-8.]
Trade Languages (pidgins)
It may perhaps not be altogether useless to insert
here a few words of the Old Calabar language. Yo,
Give me. Tata, bobob Speak. Singome, Shew me.
Fai-fay, To truck. Yong-yong, Good and
fair. Qua-qua, Linen. Basin, Basons. Yallo,
Beads. Labouche, A woman. Negro, A Black.
Cokeriko, Chickens. Cakedeko, Tomorrow.
Cakedeko singo, After tomorrow. Machinche,
Yesterday. Singo me Crizake, Shew me the like.
Singo me miombo, Give me some strong liquor.
Kinde nongue-nongue, Go sleep. Chap-chap,
Eat. Foretap, All. Meraba, Water.
[II, 678. These words were mostly corrupt Portuguese; cf. P.E.H. Hair, ed. Barbot's West African Vocabularies of c. 1680. Centre of African Studies, University of Liverpool, 1992.]