Red palm oil trade of the Niger Delta
Comercio del aceite de palma roja del delta del Níger
- Date
- c. 1810 · confidence medium
- Place
- Bonny, Rivers, Nigeria
- Credited to
- Niger Delta traders, Igbo producers and British firms
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
After the British ban on the slave trade, oil from the Elaeis guineensis palm became the Niger Delta's main export. It was extracted by boiling and pressing the fruits and fed Europe's soap and lubricant industries.
The oil palm had been exploited in West Africa for millennia; the novelty is its large-scale transoceanic commercialisation in the early 19th century.
What it led to
- 'legitimate commerce' after the abolition of the slave trade
- 19th-century European industrial soaps and margarines
- oil palm plantations in South-East Asia from 1911