The Two Princes of Calabar tells the story of two "princes" who were abducted from their African slave-trading family and sold in to slavery several times. Their adventure is an unbelievable story of privilege, abduction, bondage, escape, and jurisprudence told across the Atlantic Ocean and three continents. The book is based on their letters, and in that way is similar to my microhistory based on a former slave's memoir.
In the beginning, Sparks clearly shows how European intervention changed African society, particularly for the Efik traders and the leaders of New Town and Old Town. The slave trade expanded to such a grand size, once Europeans got involved, that the culture changed from small household groups to a system of centralized power under a "king." The king being the head of the family that accumulated the most wealth and power with the European traders.
The book explores the diplomacy and rules between the Europeans and the Africans. Those networks reached far. Not just on the ships and canoes near Old Town. They reached into the English court system. As with The Diligent, this book uses the brothers story to tell a larger story of a complex, dynamic system.
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