Equal Justice Initiative
The kingdom, nicknamed by the Portuguese in honor of Saint Apollonia, is located in present-day Ghana and trafficked only 352 slaves. There are two main reasons behind his anti-slavery stance.
The transatlantic slave trade was a complex and widely traded global network that lasted from the early 16th century until the mid-19th century.
The events of this period are too complex to be summarized in a simplistic narrative of perpetrator and victim. Although trafficking has catastrophically dehumanized and commodified more than 12.5 million Africansit was not just an external achievement.
Europeans did not have the geographic knowledge, immunity to endemic tropical diseases, or military power necessary to venture deep into Africa. Like this, became dependent on African states and from merchant elites for the supply of captives.
By controlling coastal ports, regulating access to markets, and managing the internal trade routes that took captives to the coast, these African intermediaries enabled and shaped trade European human beings.
However, this internal participation was rarely uniform. While certain powerful African societies and groups obtained captives mainly from weaker communities through wars or raids, some centralized African states chose not to participate fully nor abstain completely from the slave trade.
One of these companies was the Kingdom of Apollonia (now known as Nzema State), in the southwest of the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). Over the four centuries of Atlantic slavery, Apollonia sold only 352 captiveswhile other Gold Coast cities such as Elmina and Cape Coast sent hundreds of thousands of enslaved people.
A recent one reveals that Apollonia was the only port region on the Gold Coast where the Atlantic slave trade did not prosper, although slavery of native Africans was practiced in the kingdom. Apollonia stands out as an atypical caseboth statistically and geographically, within the slave trade economy.
The story of Apollonia raises several crucial questions. Why did the kingdom trade so few enslaved people? Why is it important to study regions of Africa where the slave trade was less dominant? And what do atypical cases like Apolônia teach us about historical and reparatory justice?
Apollonia in historical context
Apollonia is an Akan society in southwestern Ghana, located on the border with Ivory Coast. You Portuguese gave the name Santa Apolônia to this region, an Egyptian Christian virgin, as they discovered the area on her feast day.
The region was made up of small villages that came together to establish the Apollonian Kingdom at the end of the 17th century. It was here that the first president of Ghana was bornKwame Nkrumah, em 1909.
The founding of the Apollonius Kingdom coincided with other major historical developments on the Gold Coast. These include the rise of the Ashanti Kingdom to superpower status and the transformation of the region into a center of the Atlantic slave trade.
These events inserted Apolônia into the broader Atlantic economy. However, Apolónia was probably the only society on the Gold Coast that effectively said “no” to trafficking Atlantic of slaves.
Saying “no” did not mean complete abstinence. The 352 enslaved individuals that the ship Apolonia transported represent 0.0028% of Africans transported across the Atlantic Ocean. The intention is not to reduce these precious lives to mere statistics, but to show that, in percentage terms, Apolónia’s involvement in trafficking was minimal.
What it means?
Why did Apollonia trade so few enslaved people? Using analyzes of demographic databases, European archival records and oral histories, the new investigation suggests two main reasons.
Firstly, Apollonia it was not a slave society. Its economy depended instead on the gold and ivory trade.
Secondly, the kingdom implemented policies, such as the amonle pactwhich prevented the sale of Apollonian subjects. Amunle was a sacred ritual that involved the human sacrifice of Apollonian royalty and the mixing of their blood with a special herbal potion. This potion was then ingested by both Apollonian rulers and migrants who settled in the kingdom.
This powerful ritual served as a binding oath against the sale of local inhabitants and refugees from Apollonia, cursing anyone who broke it. This policy undermined any internal slave production system within the kingdom for sale.
The issue of reparations
The story of Apollonia further complicates our understanding and approach to seeking historical justice and reparations for the slave trade. It is one thing for a known victim to demand justice and reparations from an identifiable perpetrator, whether through symbolic acts like an apologywhether through monetary compensation.
Another question is when the identities of the victim and perpetrator are unknown – or when the aggressor and the victim are the same person. Who grants reparations to whom?
In the case of Apollonia, we do not know the identity of the 352 victims exported, nor have scholars been able to trace these captives to a specific African homeland.
No historical records have been found that indicate that the people of Apolonia captured or purchased these individuals for resale. Given this context, would it be expected that Apolônia would offer reparations? If so, to whom?
On the other hand, would be ethically justifiable that Apollonia sought restorative justice from the unknown Europeans who bought the 352 captives?
Apolônia’s story complicates the call for restorative justice. However, it does not contradict the historic United Nations resolution of March 2026, which officially declared the transatlantic slave trade as the “most serious crime against humanity“For the slave trade is, in fact, the most violent and catastrophic of the many atrocities committed against Africans and people of African descent.
