Fashioning the Self: The Slave Trade, Clothes, and Identity in West Africa, 1700–1900

This paper examines how specific trade goods – Indian cotton cloths, walking sticks, English-style hats, and Italian coral beads – shaped social and political identities in the Bight of Biafra between 1700 and 1900. Drawing on interdisciplinary methods from history, art history, and anthropology, it argues that clothing and adornment were not passive byproducts of the Atlantic slave trade, but active instruments through which African traders and elites articulated power, negotiated hierarchy, and constructed ethnic identities. Focusing on the Efik, Kalabari, Ubani, and Itsekiri ethnic groups, the study demonstrates how imported goods acquired through the exchange of enslaved persons became embedded in local systems of economic power, political authority and ritual practices.

My research addresses three interrelated questions: How did African elites deploy foreign dress to mark social distinction during the height of the transatlantic slave trade? How were these goods recontextualized within political, economic, and spiritual systems after abolition? And how can aesthetic practices of dress illuminate the genealogies of social power and contemporary ethnic categories in the region? By tracing the circulation, adaptation, and symbolic transformation of these objects from the era of slave trading to British colonial rule, the paper contends that communities in the Bight of Biafra actively reimagined foreign materials to consolidate authority and redefine belonging.

Ultimately, this research shows clothing as an archive of meaning and a key lens through which we can understand the entanglements of West African societies with the commercial networks of the Atlantic world.