Nineteenth Century Socio-Economic Vertical Mobility of People in Bonny and Calabar: An Awake of Uprise

This paper has vividly given a historical analysis of some dramatic events in the economic and social developments of the Delta City States, particularly in Bonny and Calabar from the change of the slave trade to the palm-oil trade in the 19th century. It was contended that the abolition of the overseas slave trade was probably the most dramatic factor for a switch of the economic and social systems of the Delta States in especially the aforementioned cities in this period. Adopting the qualitative research methodology of content analysis, the work revealed that the decline of the slave trade carried the nobility down with it, while the prosperity of the palm oil trade carried the new men to wealth and power owing to social upheaval of revolutionary proportions as the lower classes of men such as Alali, Oko Jombo and Jaja in Bonny, and the Blood Men in Calabar struggled upwards against the prejudices and oppression of the nobility prevalent during the period under review. The work however, asserted that in spite of these internal developments, it was the British usurpation and takeover of the middlemen role from the coastal rulers-both new men and the kings that caused the natives economic want and political prostrate and sank them into economic misery and poverty during and even after the period under review. One simple solution to the economic and social advancement of the city-states as whole is to leave the past behind and work to develop the present and the future.