Ụ̀kwà

"At the Akquete [Akwete] Market" by Jonathan Adagogo Green, an Ibani (Bonny) photographer, 1895-1905. British Museum. The Ndoki (which Akwete is a part), Asa, and Omuma area is collectively referred to as Ụ̀kwà, which apparently means wealth.

Before the 20th century, this area was a major market area including the Ohambele, Ohanku, Azumini, and Akwete markets that served as meeting points for Igbo groups and coastal middlemen, especially the Ubani or Ibani (of Bonny Island) who brought up European goods to be traded.

Jịọjị

Photo: Sinhalese people and an Ikwere Igbo boy photographed during a Rumuji Owu play by G. I. Jones, c. 1930s, MAA Cambridge.

Have you heard of the lungi? This plaid material commonly known as madras is a textile from India that has become ethnic wear in southeastern Nigeria, known as George (Jịọjị) by the Igbo and injiri by the Kalabari. This is a brief history.

The lungi has been worn in India for centuries particularly in the south, today in India the lungi is relatively cheap and widely made and is associated with the working class. With British colonialism, the lungi was exposed to empire.

Madras, now Chennai, was a British East India Company post centred on the Fort St. George factory in the 17th century. It became the principal weaving and distribution spot for the lungi when empire exponentially increased its amount of weavers, marketing the madras worldwide.

Textile Trading on the Atlantic

Internal trading, that is, trading among Africans, may also have brought about the distribution of [textiles]. [...]

Photo: Akwete (top) and Ijebu Ode (bottom) cloths compared. British Museum.

[...] One could navigate canoes from the Volta River as far east as the Calabar River in southeastern Nigeria. The Popos [Grand Popo and Aného in Togo] were transporting goods along this channel, at least as far as [...]

Photo: "Ferry at Grand-Popo. Dahomey." 1936, British Museum.

[...] Whydah (Kea 1969:39-40) and possibly to Lagos. From either of these two points, [...]

Image: "Canoe on the Yoruba River [sic]." [Ogun River] BMArchives.

[...] Ijebu Yoruba merchants would then have carried them by canoe to the eastern side of the delta, as the literature tells us they had done with other textiles.

— Lisa Aronson (1982), Popo Weaving.