The African World View and the Structure and Strategy of Traditional Business Enterprises: The Case of Kalabari of Southern Nigeria

The Kalabari of the Niger Delta (present-day Nigeria) were noted as great entrepreneurs and were pillars of the transatlantic trade from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. The world view and explanatory system of the Kalabari have been explored by Robin Horton in various papers in the 1960s. Using Horton’s framework of analysis supplemented with original insights, the present author examines the relationship between the Kalabari world view and the structure and strategy of the canoe house (‘wari’), ‘a compact and well-organized trading and fighting corporation, capable of manning and maintaining a war canoe’, the most characteristic political and social institution of the Eastern Niger Delta States of the time. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum.