Perspectives
Apongo was a rebel leader in Jamaica – a diary entry sheds light on his west African origins
In this article, Devin Leigh of University of California, Berkeley sheds light on a newly highlighted diary entry from the 18th century that offers rare insight into the life and origins of Apongo, a key rebel leader in one of the Caribbean’s most significant insurrections against British colonial rule.
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For over three centuries, between 1526 and 1866, at least 10.5 million Africans were forcibly trafficked to the Americas in the transatlantic slave trade. Over half of them (with known places of departure) left from a 3,000km stretch of the west African coast between what are today Senegal and Gabon.
Scholars trying to uncover the lives of these diasporic Africans are forced to work with historical records produced by their European and American enslavers. These writers mostly ignored Africans’ individual identities. They gave them western names and wrote about them as products belonging to a set of supposedly distinct “ethnic” brands.
Now, however, the curious biography of an 18th-century Jamaican rebel confounds this inherited language. The rebel in question is Apongo, also known as Wager. His biography is a 134-word handwritten passage in the diary of an 18th-century enslaver named Thomas Thistlewood.
As a historian of the Atlantic World in the 1700s, I use the life stories and archives of British enslavers to better understand these times.
My recent study uses Thistlewood’s biography of Apongo as a window into the origins of enslaved west Africans, particularly those from what are today the nations of Ghana and Benin.
Apongo’s story offers an opportunity to better understand the complexities of west African identity and to put a more human face on those enslaved.
Who was Apongo, aka Wager?
Like many enslaved Africans, Apongo had two names. Unfortunately, neither of them completely unlocks his backstory. “Apongo” is probably the rendering of his African name into English script according to how it sounded to his enslavers’ ears. “Wager” is a name Apongo was given by his white “master”. It had nothing to do with his African origins. In fact, it was the name of his enslaver’s ship.
Thistlewood was an English migrant to Jamaica who thought of himself as a gentleman scholar. According to one of his diary entries, Apongo led an extraordinary life defined by twists of fate. He was the prince of a west African state that paid tribute to a larger kingdom called “Dorme”. After subjugating the peoples around him, the king of Dorme seems to have sent Apongo on a diplomatic mission to Cape Coast Castle in what is today Ghana. At the time it was the headquarters of Great Britain’s trading operations on the African coast.
While there, Apongo was apparently surprised, enslaved, and trafficked to Jamaica. At the time, Jamaica was the British Empire’s most profitable colony. This was due to its sugar plantation complex based on racial slavery.
Once in Jamaica, Apongo reunited with the governor he had visited at Cape Coast. He tried to obtain his freedom but, after failing for a number of years, led and died in an uprising called Tacky’s Revolt.
Unfolding over 18 months from 1760 and named after another one of its leaders, Tacky’s Revolt left 60 Whites and over 500 Blacks dead. Another 500 Blacks were deported from the island. It was arguably the largest slave insurrection in the British Empire before the 19th century.
The mystery in the diary
To appreciate why Thistlewood’s diary entry is so valuable, we must know something about the lack of biographical information on enslaved Africans. Almost all came from societies with oral rather than literary traditions. They were then almost universally prohibited from learning to read and write by their European and American “masters”.
Enslavers almost never recorded enslaved people’s birth names. Instead, they gave them numbers for the transatlantic passage and westernised names after they arrived. Rather than recording the specific places they came from, they lumped them together into groups based on broad zones of provenance. For example, the British tended to call Africans who came from today’s Ghana “Coromatees”. Those from today’s Republic of Benin were known as “Popo”. So, despite being just one paragraph long, Thistlewood’s diary entry on Apongo is among the most detailed biographical sketches historians have of a diasporic African in the 1700s.
But it also contains a mystery. The word Thistlewood used to describe Apongo’s origins, “Dorme” or perhaps “Dome”, is unfamiliar. Since 1989, when historian Douglas Hall first wrote about Apongo, scholars have assumed it was a reference to Dahomey. This was a militarised west African kingdom in the southern part of today’s Benin.
Yet scholars never defended that assumption. Recently, it was called into question by historian Vincent Brown in Tacky’s Revolt, the first book-length study of the slave uprising Apongo helped lead. Enslaved people from what is today Ghana have a well-documented history of leading slave revolts in the Americas, particularly in British Jamaica. Brown suggested that it made more sense if “Dorme” referred to an unidentified state in that region.
Now, in my study, I have built on this work to make two related arguments. Uncovering three contemporary texts that use variant spellings of the word “Dorme” to refer to Dahomey, I argue that Thistlewood’s term was, indeed, a contemporary word for “Dahomey” in 18th-century Jamaica and that Dahomey was almost certainly the kingdom he had in mind. Moreover, I demonstrate that it was both possible and reasonable for a diplomatic mission to have taken place between Dahomey and Cape Coast in Apongo’s time. In fact, such a mission actually did take place in 1779, when King Kpengla of Dahomey sent one of his linguists to Cape Coast as an emissary.
But none of this resolves the central question. The evidence of “Coromantee” involvement in Tacky’s Revolt and other Jamaican slave rebellions – including the presence of Ghanaian names among rebels and the statements of historians at the time – is overwhelming. Additionally, although Africans from Dahomey made the trip to Cape Coast Castle during the 18th century, visitors from states in today’s Ghana were certainly much more common.
Ultimately, to argue that Apongo had origins in Dahomey, one must explain how a subject of that kingdom came to be a general in a rebellion largely characterised by Ghanaian leadership.
A question of origins
What are we to make of Apongo’s origins? One answer is that Thistlewood was wrong. Apongo was “Coromantee” and we should think of him as Ghanaian. Thistlewood merely associated him with Dahomey because that was the militarised African kingdom best known to Europeans at the time.
Another possibility is that Thistlewood was correct. Apongo was “Popo” and so we should write about him as Beninese. Thistlewood simply relayed a fact of Apongo’s life and was unconcerned with questions that now preoccupy us, such as how Apongo came to lead a rebellion that appears characterised by “Coromantee” leadership.
A third answer is that Apongo’s identity was more complex than this inherited “ethnic” language allows. Perhaps he was someone who traversed and was fluent in the cultural and political worlds of both Ghana and Benin. If that’s the case, then perhaps his story reminds us that at least these two adjacent regions were not as distinct as early-modern writers claimed and later colonial and national borders supposed.
The search for Apongo is just a small part of historians’ larger, ongoing, and collaborative work to recreate the lives of Africans taken in the transatlantic slave trade.
While asking these questions requires us to work with sources written by enslavers, we do so in the hope that we can ultimately see beyond them. Our reward is better understanding how Africans’ forgotten perspectives shaped the history of our world.
Devin Leigh, Lecturer, Global Studies, University of California, Berkeley
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
In this open letter to the European Union Ambassador to Ghana, policy analyst Seth Kwame Awuku condemns the EU’s abstention from UNGA Resolution A/80/L.48—a Ghana-led resolution naming the transatlantic slave trade a crime against humanity. Awuku argues that Europe’s silence, masked by legal technicalities, constitutes a moral evasion that wounds the possibility of true partnership.
To the EU Ambassador: The Triple Wound of Silence
By Seth Kwame Awuku
Ghana speaks from the depths of ancestral memory – will Europe answer with the poetry of conscience, or the cold prose of abstention?
To: His Excellency, Ambassador of the European Union to Ghana
Subject: Ghana’s Leadership on Reparative Justice and the EU’s Abstention on UNGA Resolution A/80/L.48
Your Excellency,
History does not forget. It merely waits – patient as the Atlantic, restless as the spirits of the Middle Passage – for the silenced to reclaim their voice.
On 25 March 2026, even as Ghana and the European Union formalized a new pact of cooperation, the United Nations became a theatre of reckoning. Ghana, carrying the scars and the soul of a continent, led Resolution A/80/L.48. It passed with 123 votes in favor, only three against, and 52 abstentions – the entire European Union among them.
The resolution does not invent new truths. It simply names what was long softened by euphemism: the transatlantic trafficking in human beings and the racialized chattel enslavement of millions as among the gravest crimes against humanity – a profound violation of jus cogens, those peremptory norms that no civilization may forever evade.
And yet Europe abstained.
How does one reconcile this? A Europe that adorns itself in the robes of enlightenment, human rights, and moral universality suddenly finds its voice faltering when confronted with the chains it once forged, the ships it once commanded, and the fortunes it once harvested from African blood and bone.
President John Dramani Mahama cut through the veils with piercing clarity:
“Truth begins with language. There was no such thing as a slave , there were human beings who were trafficked and enslaved.”
Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa reminded the world that this was no solitary lament, but the collective heartbeat of Africa.
The response was telling. The African Union and CARICOM stood united. Arab and Muslim-majority nations lent their voices. Even Russia added its weight. Most strikingly, the two most populous nations on earth – China and India – stood firmly in favor, joining the global majority that now numbers well over half of humanity.
Europe, meanwhile, retreated behind the familiar shield of legal technicalities – non-retroactivity, hierarchies of suffering, the comforting arithmetic of intertemporal law.
Yet some wounds run too deep for procedural salve. When millions were reduced to cargo across the bitter sea, when entire societies were bled to fuel another continent’s ascent, morality does not dissolve merely because the laws of that era looked the other way. Silence, in the face of such a triple wound – capture, crossing, and commodification – is not neutrality. It is an echo of the old evasion.
Ghana seeks no vengeance cloaked in justice. We extend an open hand: for honest dialogue on apology, for the restitution of stolen cultural souls, for guarantees that yesterday’s dehumanization finds no new masks in our time.
This is the triple heritage we bear: Africa’s ancient resilience, the open wound of yesterday, and the shared moral burden for tomorrow.
Your Excellency, true partnership between Europe and Africa cannot take root in the barren soil of selective amnesia. It must be nourished by truth, watered by memory, and protected by the courage to face history without flinching.
Will Europe persist in the comfort of abstention, or will it rise to the higher poetry of genuine engagement?
The eyes of Africa, the restless spirits of the ancestors, the billions represented by China and India, and generations yet unborn are watching.
The choice, as ever, rests with Europe.
Yours in the restless pursuit of a more honest humanity,
Seth K. Awuku.
About Seth K. Awuku
Policy analyst, writer, poet, and former immigration and refugee law practitioner in Canada; He writes on law, governance, diplomacy and international relations. He is Principal, Sovereign Advisory Ltd, Takoradi.
Email: sethawuku.sa@gmail.com
Tel: 0243022027
In this thoughtful opinion piece, Seth Kwame Awuku reflects on Ghana’s leadership in the recent UN resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity. He responds to Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin’s remarks highlighting African complicity in the trade, arguing that while internal agency must be acknowledged, it should not overshadow the industrial scale, systematic brutality, and long-term dehumanisation driven primarily by European powers.
Between Memory and Partnership: Ghana’s Moral Test on Reparatory Justice
By Seth Kwame Awuku
There are moments in a nation’s life that call less for outrage than for honest reflection.
The recent remarks by Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin on reparatory justice offer precisely such a moment. Measured in tone yet unflinching in substance, his intervention deserves careful consideration as Ghana weighs its relationship with history, memory, and international diplomacy.
In Parliament, Afenyo-Markin posed a pointed question: “Somebody parks a vessel at Cape Coast, and you go to the North, to Brong, Ashanti, Assin… [and apprehend the strongest among your own people]. Then, after 100 years, you say you should be compensated – who should compensate whom?” He added that “we maltreated our own and told the white man that he must also maltreat our own.”
The latter claim somewhat overstates the case – Ghanaians did not “tell” Europeans to maltreat their kin – but his broader point highlights an uncomfortable complexity: African agency and complicity in the capture and sale of fellow Africans. Acknowledging this reality does not negate the case for reparations, nor does it justify Western reluctance to confront their role.
However, overemphasizing internal complicity risks obscuring the scale and character of the transatlantic slave trade.
To his credit, Afenyo-Markin explicitly condemned “the inhumane treatment – the humiliation, injustice, marginalisation, and abuse of our ancestors who became victims of the slave trade.”
This tension, moral recognition without a corresponding commitment to meaningful redress, lies at the heart of the current debate, particularly in the wake of Ghana’s leadership at the United Nations.
Recognizing the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity is, at its core, about establishing historical and moral truth. Yes, some African actors participated in the trade.
But the enterprise was externally driven, massively scaled, and ruthlessly industrialized by European powers. What began as localized capture and sale evolved into a vast system of chattel slavery, sustained by the horrors of the Middle Passage and generations of hereditary bondage. The vivid brutality portrayed in Roots, through the story of Kunta Kinte, stripped of name, culture, and dignity, captures not merely forced labor, but a deliberate and enduring project of dehumanization.
Ghana, as custodian of these painful memories, carries a unique symbolic weight. Its coastal slave forts- Cape Coast Castle, Elmina, and others- stand as solemn reminders of both unimaginable suffering and the uneasy partnerships that enabled it. Reparatory justice therefore demands moral consistency: does acknowledgment alone suffice, or must it extend to material and structural redress for the enduring legacies of slavery and colonialism?
The Minority Leader’s emphasis on practical national interests is understandable. Ghana must sustain strong diplomatic and economic partnerships with Western nations. Yet an overemphasis on African complicity can inadvertently weaken the moral claim, allowing historical accountability to give way to diplomatic convenience.
Serious advocates of reparatory justice do not deny African agency; rather, they situate it within its proper historical context. While some local actors profited from the sale of captives, it was Europe that industrialized the trade, accumulated immense wealth from it, and later entrenched colonial systems whose effects persist.
Ghana’s challenge, then, is to strike a careful balance: pragmatic diplomacy on one hand, and Pan-African ethical conviction on the other. This balance is most credible when grounded in historical clarity and moral courage, the kind embodied by thinkers such as Kwame Nkrumah and Ali Mazrui.
Ghana must now choose with clarity and conviction. Pragmatic partnerships need not come at the expense of historical justice. True leadership demands confronting the full truth of the slave trade, both the painful African role and the overwhelming European responsibility, without allowing discomfort to dilute moral purpose.
At this quiet crossroads, Ghana should lead not by equivocation, but by insisting that reparatory justice is not an act of charity, but a rightful claim grounded in truth, dignity, and the unfinished business of history. Only by upholding principle alongside partnership can we honour our ancestors and secure a future rooted in genuine equity.
About the Author
Seth Kwame Awuku is a Ghanaian writer and policy commentator with a background in law, political science, and international relations. He writes on governance, diplomacy, and questions of historical justice in Africa.
Principal, Sovereign Advisory Ltd
Takoradi, Ghana
Email: sethawuku.sa@gmail.com
Tel: +233 24 302 2027
Opinion
Why Ghanaian Officials Must Know About and Prepare for the Hidden Risks of a Mass Black American Return to Ghana
Ghana has, in recent years, positioned itself as a spiritual and cultural home for the global African diaspora. From the Year of Return to sustained “Beyond the Return” campaigns, the country has actively invited Black Americans and others in the diaspora to reconnect, invest, and, in some cases, resettle.
The vision is powerful: a historic reconnection, economic collaboration, and a reimagining of Pan-African unity. But if that return becomes mass and sustained, it will not unfold in a vacuum. It will bring with it a complex set of cultural, political, and economic tensions that—if unaddressed—could strain the very unity it seeks to build.
The question is not whether return is desirable. It is whether Ghana is prepared for the social consequences of return at scale.
Belonging vs Reality: Who Gets to Be “Home”?
At the heart of the return movement lies a deeply emotional idea: that Ghana is “home” for descendants of the transatlantic slave trade. Scholars in Diaspora Studies, including Paul Gilroy, have long described this as a form of symbolic belonging—rooted in history, identity, and shared ancestry.
But symbolic belonging does not always translate into lived belonging.
For many Ghanaians, “home” is not an abstract idea—it is a lived reality shaped by language, social norms, and everyday struggles. A large influx of returnees may therefore create friction around identity: Who is considered Ghanaian? Who has the right to shape its culture?
These tensions have surfaced in other return contexts across West Africa, where diaspora communities were at times viewed as culturally distant or economically privileged outsiders. In Liberia, a long-standing and rigid class structure between diasporans returning home and locals contributed in no small way to a debilitating civil war that the country is still reeling from. While the “return home” situations in Liberia were somewhat different from Ghana’s current situation, the same socioeconomic disparities that broke the country could happen here in Ghana.
If unmanaged, the emotional promise of “return” could give way to questions of legitimacy and belonging.
When Value Systems Collide
Perhaps the most sensitive fault line lies in values.
Many Black American returnees come from societies where liberal individual rights—particularly around gender, sexuality, and self-expression—are more publicly accepted. In contrast, Ghana’s social fabric is deeply influenced by religion and tradition
This disparity in values creates a potential clash not just of opinions, but of moral frameworks.
Debates around LGBTQ rights, for example, are not merely political in Ghana—they are often framed as spiritual and communal concerns. Public advocacy or visibility by returnees could therefore be interpreted not as personal expression, but as cultural imposition.
Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has argued for a cosmopolitan approach that allows for moral dialogue across cultures. But dialogue requires mutual recognition. Without it, value differences can quickly harden into cultural conflict. Beyond simply informing diasporan returnees about the legal and social realities surrounding LGBTQ+ issues in Ghana, there must also be a deliberate effort to foster understanding of prevailing Ghanaian cultural norms—even as space remains for respectful dialogue and coexistence.
The Economics of Return: Opportunity or Displacement?
Return is not just cultural—it is economic.
Diaspora communities often arrive with stronger currencies, access to capital, and global networks. In cities like Accra, this can accelerate investment in real estate, hospitality, and the creative economy.
But economic inflows can also produce unintended consequences.
Urban scholars studying Gentrification warn that capital-driven development often raises property values, pricing out local residents. Already, parts of Accra have seen rising rents and the emergence of lifestyle enclaves catering to affluent newcomers.
At the same time, returnees may enter sectors—media, tech, tourism—where young Ghanaians are also seeking opportunity, creating perceptions of competition rather than collaboration.
If the benefits of return are not broadly distributed, economic optimism could quickly give way to resentment. This is the moment for the Parliament of Ghana to draft—or strengthen—legislation governing diaspora return, land access, and economic participation. Beyond lawmaking, sustained public engagement will be essential: structured forums, community workshops, and targeted media campaigns aimed at educating both returnees and local communities.
Politics and the Question of Influence
As return deepens, so too will questions of political voice.
Should returnees have voting rights? Should they influence public policy? How much say should non-resident or newly resident citizens have in shaping national debates?
These are not abstract questions. They sit at the intersection of sovereignty and identity, long examined within Political Sociology and Transnationalism. Man is a political animal!
A politically active diaspora can bring fresh ideas, advocacy, and global attention. But it can also trigger suspicion—particularly if local populations perceive external influence as overriding domestic priorities.
In a polarized global environment, even well-intentioned activism can be recast as interference. Ghana needs to tap into extant best practices and either adopt them or adapt them to the Ghanaian situation.
Class, Perception, and the Risk of Social Distance
Not all tensions are ideological. Some are simply about perception. Different forms of capital—economic, cultural, social—shape power and status.
Returnees may possess global cultural capital (education, accent, networks) that elevates their social standing, even when their actual wealth varies.
This can create social distance.
Exclusive neighborhoods, curated social spaces, and “diaspora bubbles” risk reinforcing a divide between locals and returnees. Over time, stereotypes can take hold on both sides—of entitlement, of exclusion, of misunderstanding.
And once social distance sets in, even minor disagreements can escalate into broader tensions.
Building Harmony Is Not Automatic
None of these tensions are inevitable. But neither are they imaginary.
If Ghana is to sustain a large-scale return movement, it must move beyond celebration to preparation.
That means:
– Structured cultural orientation for returnees
– Policies that encourage joint economic participation, not displacement
– Clear legal frameworks around rights and responsibilities
– Public dialogue platforms involving religious leaders, scholars, and civil society
– Media narratives that humanize both locals and returnees
Above all, it requires a shift in mindset: from assuming unity to actively building it.
A Shared Future, If Carefully Built
The return of the diaspora is one of the most compelling stories of the 21st century—a chance to reconnect history with possibility.
But unity cannot be based on sentiment alone.
It must be negotiated across differences in culture, values, and power. It must recognize that “home” is not just a place of origin, but a living society with its own rhythms and realities.
If Ghana can navigate these complexities, it has the opportunity to model a new kind of global belonging—one that is honest about its tensions, and deliberate about its harmony.
If not, the promise of return could become a source of division rather than renewal.
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