Commerce, Christianity and the Origins of the ‘Creoles’ of Fernando Po
During the early and middle years of the nineteenth century a Creole elite emerged on the island of Fernando Po. The origins of this lay in the fact that for the thirty years after 1827 the island was at the centre of European political and economic interests in the Gulf of Guinea. The short-lived British occupation of Fernando Po, 1827–34, established the town of Clarence and brought to the island a number of settlers, and in particular ‘liberated Africans’, freed from slave ships captured by the Royal Navy. The situation they faced in Clarence and the treatment they received, not least once the British government withdrew and a succession of British traders attempted to run the town, led to the emergence of a homogeneous society out of the various ethnic groups they comprised. This society was to be transformed by the development of a palm oil trade on the island, particularly during the 1840s. This led to the emergence of a group of middlemen between the Bubi producers of the interior and the European traders who collected oil from Clarence, and concurrently, to the stratification of Clarence society into a trading elite and a group of labourers and servants. This trading elite was attracted to the work of the Baptist Mission in Clarence after 1841, and in particular saw the value of the Mission in giving itself a distinct identity. Over time this elite and the Baptists drew apart, but this was not before the interrelation of social stratification with the work of the Mission had produced a class of Creoles whose descendants – the Fernandinos – still survive as a distinct group in Equatorial Guinea today.
A Grammar of Pichi
Fulltext hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen: http://repository.ubn.ru.nl/handle/2066/79407
Hapten inhibition of passive antidextran dextran anaphylaxis in guinea pigs. Role of molecular size in anaphylactogenicity and precipitability of dextran fractions.
High titred antidextran antisera have been raised in rabbits by prolonged immunization with soluble conjugates between isomaltose oligosaccharides or dextran mw 4,400 and bovine serum albumin in complete Freund’s adjuvant. Guinea pigs sensitized with such antisera exhibited anaphylactic shock on i.v. challenge with fractions of hydrolyzed B512 dextran. The severity of anaphylaxis depended on the amount of sensitizing antibody and the dose and molecular size of the challenging dextran fraction. In maximally sensitized animals, fractions of mw 3,600 or larger were anaphylactogenic and smaller molecular size fractions were nonanaphylactogenic. In submaximally sensitized animals, dextran fractions of mw 10,500 or less were foundnonanaphylactogenic. In addition, nonanaphylactogenic dextran fractions produced desensitization, i.e. protection from anaphylaxis due to subsequent or simultaneous injection of more high molecular and anaphylactogenic dextran fractions. When the molar ratio in a mixture of nonanaphylactogenic/anaphylactogenic fractions was about 7.6, protection was complete with reduction of mortality from 100 to 0%. A molar ratio of 1.9, corresponding to a 13-percent by weight admixture of nonanaphylactogenic dextran, still significantly reduced mortality from 100 to 50%. From the ability to form precipitates with antidextrans and to elicit anaphylaxis in sensitized guinea pigs, and from the absence of these properties, the approximate molecular size range of bivalent and monovalent dextran B512 fractions was found to correspond to mw 3,600 and mw 1,430, respectively. The practical applicability of hapten inhibition is discussed.