The Diary of Antera Duke, an Eighteenth-Century African Slave TraderIn his diary, Antera Duke (ca. 1735 ca. 1809) wrote the only surviving eyewitness account of the slave trade by an African merchant. A leader in late eighteenth century Old Calabar, a cluster of Efik speaking communities in the Cross River region, he resided in Duke Town, forty five miles from the Atlantic Ocean in what is now southeast Nigeria. His diary, written in trade English from 1785 to 1788, is a candid account of daily life in an African