How did two communities on opposite ends of southeastern Nigeria [I am not using that term here in its geopolitical sense] end up with the same name (New Calabar and Old Calabar)?

Where did the name come from? The name doesn't appear to be indigenous to either community, who historically had other names for themselves.

Is it a European word foisted on these communities by sailors? Is it "Calm bar" as has been said in some quarters?

If Calabar is "Old" and Kalabari is "New", how come the earliest appearance of "Old Calabar" in the records was in the 17th century, but Portuguese travellers were already talking about a 'Calabar' in the Rio Real region (i.e., Kalabari/Ibani area) by the second decade of the 16th century? Doesn't if follow that Kalabari should then be the 'Old' and modern Calabar should be the 'New'?
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In the last couple of days, while investigating Igbo/Coastal Peoples relations in precolonial times, the Old Calabar/New Calabar Puzzle was constantly in my face; and I think the answer to it might be really simple and right there in plain sight.

That answer: Bonny.

I'll explain.

In a previous discussion, I highlighted Professor Alan Ryder's periodization of the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, with respect to Nigeria. Ryder recognized (if I remember correctly because I am writing from memory) three periods:

1. The First Period, c. 1480 to c. 1520: When slaves came largely from the Western Delta, and a little from the Rio Real (i.e., the combined Kalabari/Bonny estuary).

2. The Second Period, c. 1520 to about the last quarter of the 17th century: When Benin's trade policies pushed the epicenter of the trade away from the Western Delta to the Eastern Delta, and especially to the Rio Real, which in this time was dominated by Elem Kalabari (Bonny having apparently been bypassed.)

3. The Third Period, the 18th century to the end of the traffic, more or less: The era of Bonny ascendancy.
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Now we know that during the First Period (1480 to 1520), some trade was carried on at the Rio Real, but we don't know exactly whether the polity that was involved in this trade was Ibani or Kalabari. Pacheco Pereira who left us the earliest account of trade in this region (c. 1500) told us that the polity the Portuguese traded with was near the mouth of the Rio Real, and on the east bank. Kalabari doesn't fit the geography, but Bonny does. So we can say with some certainty that this large village of some 2000 inhabitants that Pacheco saw near the mouth of the Rio Real was Bonny. Bonny (or an early society to which Bonny is direct heir) was trading with the Portuguese by 1500.

Less than two decades later, in 1517, another traveller, Alessandro Zorzi, an Italian who travelled on Portuguese ships, left us a description of the same area. He also mentioned a large village of about 2000 inhabitants involved in trade with the Portuguese. This time Zorzi left us the name of the village. It was Calabar.

The historian John Thornton, on the basis of the name supplied by Zorzi concludes that both Pereira and Zorzi were describing Elem Kalabari (New Calabar). The geographic detail apparently meant little to Thornton; the name was enough for him.

I disagree with Thornton. And I postulate that Zorzi's 'Calabar' was in fact, Bonny; and that in the earliest times (early 16th century) before the name Calabar was applied to Elem Kalabari and modern Calabar, it derived from a name that the people of Bonny called themselves.

That name is Okoloba or Okuloba. In a few European records it appeared as Kuleba . I am not quite sure what relationship Okoloba bears to Okoloma, but it seems to me that a strong case could be made for Calabar and Kuleba being corruptions of the name Bonny people and some of their neighbours called their town.
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So how did this 'Calabar' end up as the name of Bonny's neighbours to the west (Kalabari) and east (modern Calabar)?

The answer is probably in the events of the Second Slave Trade Period, c. 1520 to last quarter of the 17th century. In this period (as has been said) the trade shifted decisively from the Western Delta to the Eastern Delta and the Rio Real. Whereas in the First Period, the trade in the Rio Real had been sporadic (since most of it was in the Western Delta) , now the demands were becoming steadier. It must have quickly become apparent how unfit 16th-century Bonny was to handle a steady trade in slaves. Yes, it was much more easily accessible to European ships than Kalabari or Okrika, for example; but compared to them, it was quite far from the chief markets for slaves in the Igbo country. We have come to think of the Ndoki markets along the Imo River as being traditionally Bonny's markets. But in the 16th century, Bonny would not have had an easy time reaching its Imo River markets. Reason: Andoni. Andoni controlled the Imo River highway to Ndoki land. And being a society with its own interest in the trade [Pacheco recorded some trade going on there by 1500], one will understand why Andoni wouldn't have readily given Bonny access to ply the river up to Ndoki. It wasn't until the time of Perekule I (early 18th century) that Bonny decisively defeated Andoni in a war said to have lasted for the proverbial 7 years and gained control of the Imo highway. But back in the 16th century, Bonny was in a fix. Hence, it was soon bypassed (as Ryder wrote) for the city-state of Owame (Elem Kalabari) , which though farther inland than Bonny, was one short canoe ride away from its Obiatubo markets in Ikwerre, and could thus readily furnish the slave ships. Owame became the New Okoloba (New Bonny), a.k.a., New Calabar of the European records, and the original Okoloba all but disappeared from the records and fell into obscurity.

By the beginning of the 17th century, Dutch cartographers were calling another slave port farther east than Bonny, 'Old Calabar'. The best explanation is that this was in error. Some mapmaker or sailor mistook this cluster of Efik settlements on the banks of the Cross River for the Bonny of the 16th century, the original Calabar (Okoloba). And the misnomer stuck.
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AN ADDENDUM: A Little Reconsideration of the Dating of Asimini, First King of Bonny....

In the course of the 17th century, the first Calabar/Okoloba (we should probably stick to calling it Bonny from this time), slowly emerged from obscurity. Ryder gave as the reason for this (re-)emergence as the growing reluctance of European sailors to go up the unhealthy narrow creek to Elem Kalabari; they preferred to anchor off the river mouth close to Bonny which was wider, closer to the sea, and relatively free of the pestilential mosquitoes. Another author (whose name I can't readily recollect) has also suggested that 17th-century ships were bigger than the ships the Europeans had in the previous centuries; and the bigger the ships, the harder it was to manoveure upcreek to Elem Kalabari. Ship captains now preferred Bonny. But Bonny still had no slave markets close by. And Andoni still controlled the Imo highway. What probably happened at first was that Kalabari, (and probably Okrika and Andoni) traders began to take some of their cargoes to sell at Bonny. This is perhaps the context within which to understand the tradition about the early 17th-century Kalabari King Owerri Daba "introducing the slave trade to Bonny". A 1620 Portuguese source (Branco) refers to the king of the Rio Real and the king of Calabar as friends who both traded with the Portuguese. Thornton and other historians identify these two kings as the kings of Kalabari and Ibani. They might very well be Owerri Daba and his counterpart in Bonny.

Traditions identify Owerri Daba's counterpart in Bonny with Asimini, the first proper king of Bonny. Asimini, tradition goes, was the first leader in Bonny to meet and open trade with the Portuguese. Kalabari tradition adds that Owerri Daba did the introductions for him.

Placing Asimini in the same time period as Owerri Daba will mean removing him from the late 15th century (where he has traditionally been placed) and pushing him forward to the early 17th century. This discussion has demonstrated that the Portuguese were trading in Bonny by 1500. That could be enough ground to argue that if Asimini introduced trade with the Portuguese, then he belonged to the decades that encircled the late 15th and the early 16th centuries.

However, to accept this is to reject that he was involved a 17th century deal with Owerri Daba of Kalabari as other traditions maintain.

This is easily reconcilable. Asimini's introduction of Portuguese trade could be a re-introduction, after a century of not being in the game (and probably forgetting that they were once in the game.)

The Bonny that Pacheco met was probably far less centralized than it became from the time of Asimini. Pacheco's Bonny was probably the Bonny of proto-kingly legendary figures like Alagbariye and Opuamakuba and Asikunuma. Blocked from the Imo by Andoni, this Bonny essentially went to sleep. The Bonny of the Asiminis and later the Perekules (centralized Bonny) took a different path.

ChinenyeN, this might interest you.

Good

Amazing work

Highly informative

AjaanaOka:
ChinenyeN, this might interest you.

I’m coming back for this. I definitely have some things I want to say (some of which have been on my mind for some time now).

ChinenyeN:


I’m coming back for this. I definitely have some things I want to say (some of which have been on my mind for some time now).

I'll wait.

Actually, you know what. Thinking about it now, I'm tempted (just out of curiosity) to revisit "Old Calabar" in the Cross Rivers axis. If Kalabari migration was westward, then from how far east did they actually come? Were they actually an Ijaw group or did they acculturate? I've always dismissed the Old Calabar/Duke Town, because Kalabari is so obviously Ijaw, but what if? I mean after all, Tombia and Finima are supposedly related to Andoni. The Abua, Odual, Obulom, etc made it all the way into Central Delta. Who's to say those were the only Delta Cross migrations?

As always, I appreciate the responses, ChinenyeN. I have to say you've been a good sounding board for my 'non-mainstream' theories.

Initially, the "clincher" for me that (original) Calabar = Bonny, was Thornton's identification of Zorzi's Calabar with Pereira's unnamed "large village" . Your argument is strong enough for me to take another look at my hypothesis.

I have tried to track down Alessandro Zorzi's account online, or at least find copious excerpts from it, but have come up with practically nothing, save for Thornton's very brief tantalizing reference to it.

After carefully looking at Thornton's statement again, I don't think I really see any reason why Zorzi's Calabar should be identified with Pereira's large village. Unless there is something else Zorzi wrote that Thornton didn't tell us about. There are no specifications about geography or anything in Thornton's reference to Zorzi's account.

Zorzi and Pereira could very well have been talking about two different places. I am now leaning heavily on them actually writing about two different places, with Zorzi's Calabar being Kalabari and Pereira's 'large village' being some place on the Bonny (eastern) side of the estuary. Two places are suggested in most of the literature - Bonny Town or the site of modern Finima (Juju Town).

Something strikes me now about what Pereira wrote about his 'large village' that I hadn't particularly noticed before: it doesn't seem this village undertook voyages inland to purchase merchandise. The village was primarily focused on the production of salt from seawater, which it sold to some inland people who themselves made the voyage downriver in large canoes that could take up to 80 men each, bringing yams, slaves, cows, goats and sheep to sell to the people of the "large village" (and probably to the Portuguese, too).

It is almost certain that these inland people in large canoes who brought merchandise down to the large village were Ijaw-speaking. I draw this conclusion from their word for sheep, which Pereira told us was 'bozy'. 'Bozy' is very likely to be Pereira's rendition of 'obori' (or whatever variant of obori was in use at the turn of 16th century.) Even though most modern Ijaw dialects use obori for goat and a different word for sheep, both species are closely related enough for a name switch to be very plausible. (In addition, Ijaws of the 16th century could very well have known sheep by a *-bo-ri- word, given that in Berbice Creole Dutch, a language with a large Eastern Ijaw vocabulary (38% Eastern Ijaw words, against 57% from Dutch) , which has been isolated from the Ijaw homeland since the 1700s, sheep is obulu.)

These "inland people" , it seems, were Kalabari or Okrika (could easily have been both) coming down with goods purchased in markets farther to the hinterland (Ikwerre, Ndoki, etc.) to trade them at the site of modern-day Finima (which may or may not have still been occupied by the Andoni at this time) or Bonny.

Some decades later, by the time Alessandro Zorzi showed up, the centre of this exchange, following these "inland people" who brought down the goods, had shifted to "Calabar" (wherever 16th-century Kalabari was located.)

ChinenyeN:
Actually, you know what. Thinking about it now, I'm tempted (just out of curiosity) to revisit "Old Calabar" in the Cross Rivers axis. If Kalabari migration was westward, then from how far east did they actually come? Were they actually an Ijaw group or did they acculturate? I've always dismissed the Old Calabar/Duke Town, because Kalabari is so obviously Ijaw, but what if? I mean after all, Tombia and Finima are supposedly related to Andoni. The Abua, Odual, Obulom, etc made it all the way into Central Delta. Who's to say those were the only Delta Cross migrations?

Hmmm. I am aware of traditions that derive a section of the Kalabari (Koroame? Will have to check) from the Calabar on the Cross River. But I don't know. Something about it always appeared contrived to me. Like, it was invented after the fact, to explain how they both ended up with the same name.

Chineye, Finima and Tombia people are not related to Andoni in any way.

During the course of their migration form the Central Delta Ijaw, Tombia and Finima people met at Iyankpo before a devastating landslide they later divided, Finima people went Eastward while Tombia people went further Westward. No meeting between the Tombia and Finima people on their migrations.