06 · Explore
The Aro, the slave trade and resistance to empire
From the oracle at Arochukwu to the guerrillas of Anioma, the Igbo story is also one of coercion, trauma and refusal.
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This chapter covers some of the hardest pages of Igbo history: the slave trade, the stories of refusal and the wars against colonial rule. Real people made real choices, and the record is complicated.
In this chapter
01The Aro Confederacy and the Ibini Ukpabi
Traders, oracle and fighters: the network that ran a region.
2 min read →
02Igbo Landing, 1803
A story of captives who walked into the water in 1803.
1 min read →
03The Anglo-Aro War, 1901–1902
The war that opened the interior to British rule.
1 min read →
04The Ekumeku Movement, 1883–1914
Thirty years of guerrilla resistance in the west.
1 min read →
05Collective punishment and memory
What happens to a people after punishment, and what they remember.
1 min read →