Colonial Nigeria refers to the area of West Africa.
Colonial Nigeria refers to the area of West Africa, which became the modern day Nigeria, during the time British rule in the 19th and 20th centuries. British influence began with prohibition of slave trade to
British subjects in 1807. The resulting collapse ofAfrican slave trade led to the decline and eventual collapse of the Edo Empire. Britain annexed Lagos in 1861 and established theOil River Protectorate in 1884. British influence in the Niger area increased gradually over the 19th century, but Britain did not effectively occupy the area until 1885. Other European powers acknowledged Britain's power over the area in the 1885 Berlin Conference.
From 1886-1899, much of the country was ruled by Royal Niger Company, authorized by charter, and governed by George Taubman Goldie. In 1900, the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern Nigeria Protectorate passed from company hands to the Crown. At the urging of governor Frederick Lugard, the two territories were amalgamated as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria,
while maintaining considerable regional autonomy among the three major regions. Progressive constitutions after World War II provided for increasing representation and electoral government by Nigerians. The colonial period proper in Nigeria lasted from 1900 to 1960, after which Nigeria gained its independence
Through a progressive sequence of regimes, the British imposed autocratic rule on the area of West Africa which came to
be known as Nigeria. Administration and military control of the territory was done primarily by white Britishers,
both in London and in Nigeria.
Following military conquest, the British imposed an economic system designed to profit from African
labour. The essential basis of this system was money-specifically, British money-which could be demanded through taxation, paid to cooperative natives, and levied as a fine.
The amalgamation of different ethnic and religious groups into one federation created internal tension
which persists in Nigeria to the present day.
In the 1700s, the British Empire and other European powers had settlements and forts in West Africa but had not yet established the full-scale plantation colonies which existed in Americas. Adam
Smith wrote in 1776 that the African societies were better established and more populous than those of the Americas, thus creating a more formidable barrier to European expansion.
Earlier elements related to this were its founding of the colony at Sierra Leone in 1787 as a refuge
for freed slaves, the independentmissionary movement intended to bring Christianity to
Edo Empire, and programs of exploration sponsored by learned societies and scientific groups, such as the London-based African Association.
Local leaders, cognizant of the situation in the West Indies, India, and elsewhere, recognized the
risks of British expansion. A chief of Bonny in 1860 explained that he refused a British treaty due to the tendency to "induce the Chiefs to sign a treaty whose meaning they did not understand, and then seize upon the country."
European slave trading from West Africa began before 1650, with people taken at a rate of about 3,000
per year. This rate rose to 20,000 per year in the last quarter of the century. The slave trade was heaviest in the period 1700-1850, with an average of 76,000 people taken from Africa each year between 1783 and 1792. At first, the trade centered around West Central Africa, now the Congo. But in the 1700s, the Bight
of Benin (also known as the Slave Coast) became the next most important hub. Ouidah (now part of Benin) and Lagos were the major ports in Biafra. From 1790-1807, predominantly British slave traders purchased 1000-2000 slaves each year in Lagos alone. The trade subsequently continued under the Portuguese. In the Bight of Biafra,
the major ports were Old Calabar (Akwa Akpa), Bonny, andNew Calabar. Starting in 1740, the British were the primary European slave trafficker from this area. In 1767, British traders facilitated a notorious massacre hundreds of people at Calabar after inviting them onto their ships, ostensibly to settle a local dispute.
In 1807 the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted the Slave Trade Act, prohibiting British subjects from participating in the slave trade. Britain
subsequently lobbied other European powers to stop the slave trade as well. It made anti-slavery treaties with West African powers, which it enforced militarily. Some of the treaties contained prohibitions on diplomacy conducted without British permission, or other promises to abide by British rule. This scenario provided an opportunity for naval expeditions and reconnaissance throughout the region. Britain also annexed Freetownin Sierra
Leone, declaring it a Crown Colony in 1808.
The decrease in trade indirectly led to the collapse of Edo Empire. Britain withdrew from the slave trade when it was the major transporter of slaves to the Americas. The French had abolished slavery following the French Revolution, although it briefly re-established it in its Caribbean colonies under Napoleon. France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803, the same year that it gave up on trying to
regain Saint-Dominque. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it ended slavery in its possessions. Between them, the French and the British had purchased a majority of the slaves sold from the ports of Edo. The economy suffered from the decline in the slave trade, although considerable smuggling of slaves to the
Americans continued for years.
Lagos became a major slave port in the late 1700s and into the 1850s. Much of the human trafficking
which occurred there was nominally illegal, and records from this time and place are not comprehensive. According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Voyage Database, 308,800 were sold across the Atlantic from Lagos in 1776-1850. British and French traders did a large share of this business until 1807, when they were replaced by Portuguese and Spanish. By 1826-1850 the British navy was interfering significantly with Lagos slave exports.
Whether British conquest of Nigeria resulted from a benevolent motive to end slavery, or more instrumental
motives of wealth and power, remains a topic of dispute between African and European historians. Many locals
remained unconvinced of the Crown's authority to completely reverse the legal and moral attributes of a social institution through fiat. Regardless,
slavery had decimated the population and fueled militarization and chaos, thereby paving the way for more aggressive colonisation.
Portuguese Roman Catholic priests who accompanied traders and officials to the West African coast
introduced Christianity to Edo, Benin Empire in the fifteenth century. Several churches were built to serve the Edo community and a small number of African converts. When direct Portuguese contacts in the region were withdrawn, however, the influence of the Catholic missionaries waned. By the eighteenth century, evidence of Christianity had disappeared.
Although churchmen in Britain had been influential in the drive to abolish the slave trade, significant
missionary activity for Africa did not develop until the 1840s. For some time, missionaries operated in the area between Lagos and Ibadan. The first missions were opened by the Church of England's Church Missionary Society (CMS). Other Protestant denominations from Britain, Canada, and the United States also opened missions and, in the 1860s, Roman Catholic religious orders established missions. Protestant missionaries tended to divide the country into spheres of activity to avoid competition with each other, and Catholic missions
similarly avoided duplication of effort among the several religious orders working there. Catholic missionaries were particularly active among the Igbo; the CMS worked among the Yoruba.
The CMS initially promoted Africans to responsible positions in the mission field; for instance, they
appointed Samuel Ajayi Crowther as the first Anglican bishop of the Niger. Crowther, a liberated Yoruba slave, had been educated in Sierra Leone and in Britain, where he was ordained before returning to his homeland with the first group of CMS missionaries. The Anglicans and other religious groups had a conscious "native church" policy to develop indigenous ecclesiastical institutions to become independent of Europeans. Crowther was succeeded as bishop by a British cleric. In the long term, the acceptance of Christianity
by large numbers of Nigerians depended on the various denominations adapting to local conditions. They selected an increasingly high proportion of African clergy for the missions.
In large measure, European missionaries assumed the value of colonial rule in terms of promoting education,
health and welfare measures, so they effectively reinforced colonial policy. Some African Christian communities formed their own independent churches.
(Note: All of this section to this point is from Nigeria:
A Country Study (1991) prepared by staff of the Library of Congress of the United States.
The missionaries gained in power throughout the 1800s. They caused major transformations in traditional
society as they eroded the religious institutions such as human sacrifice, infanticide, and secret societies, which had formerly played a role in political authority and community life.
The principal commodities of legitimate trade were palm oil and palm kernels, which were used in Europe
to make soap and as lubricants for machinery, before petroleum products were developed for that purpose. Although this trade grew to significant proportions-palm oil exports alone were worth (one)1 billion pound a year by 1840-it was concentrated near the coast, where palm trees grew in abundance. Gradually, however, the trade forced major economic and social changes in the interior, although it hardly undermined slavery and the slave trade. The incidence of slavery in local societies increased.
Initially most palm oil (and later kernels) came from Igboland, where palm trees formed a canopy over the densely inhabited areas of the Ngwa, Nri Kingdom, Awka, and other Igbo peoples. Palm oil was used locally for cooking, the kernels were a source for food, trees were tapped for palm wine, and the fronds were used for building material. It was a relatively simple adjustment for many Igbo families to transport the oil to rivers and streams that led to the Niger Delta for sale to European merchants. The rapid expansion in exports,
especially after 1830, occurred precisely at the time slave exports collapsed. The Igbo redirected slaves into the domestic economy, especially to grow the staple food crop, yams, in northern Igboland for marketing throughout the palm-tree belt. As before, Aro merchants dominated trade in the hinterland, including
palm products to the coast and the sale of slaves within Igboland.
From 1815-1840, palm oil exports increased by a factor of 25, from 800 to 20,000 tons per year. British
merchants led the trade in palm oil, while the Portuguese and others continued the slave trade. Much
of this oil was sold elsewhere in the British Empire. To produce all this oil, the economy
of the southern region crossed over from mostlysubsistence to the production of palm oil as a cash crop.
The Niger Delta and Calabar, which once had been known for the export of slaves, became notable for the export of palm oil. The Delta streams were called "oil rivers." The basic economic units in each town were "houses,"family-operated entities that engendered loyalty for its employees. A "house" included the extended family of the trader, including retainers and slaves. As its head, the master trader taxed
other traders who were members of his "house," he maintained a war vessel, a large dugout canoe that could hold several tons of cargo and dozens of crew, for the defense of the harbor. Whenever a trader had become successful enough to keep a war canoe, he was expected to form his own "house". Economic competition among these "houses" was so fierce that trade often erupted into armed battle between the crews of the large canoes.
Because of the hazards of climate and tropical diseases for Europeans and the absence of any centralized
authorities on the mainland responsive to their interests, European merchants moored their ships outside harbours or in the delta, and used the ships as trading stations and warehouses. In time they built depots onshore and eventually moved up the Niger River to establish stations in the interior. An example was that at Onitsha, where they could bargain directly with local suppliers and purchase products likely to turn a profit.
Some European traders switched to legitimate business only when the commerce in slaves became too
hazardous. The traders suffered from the risks of their position and believed they were at the mercy of the coastal rulers, whom they considered unpredictable. Accordingly, as the volume of trade increased, merchants requested that the British government appoint a consul to cover the region. Consequently, in 1849, John
Beecroft was accredited as consul for the bights of Benin and Biafra, a jurisdiction stretching fromDahomey to Cameroon. Beecroft was the British representative to Fernando Po, where the prevention squadron of the British Royal Navy was stationed.
In 1850, the British created a "Court of Equity" at Bonny, overseen by Beecroft, which would
deal with trade disputes. Another court was established in 1856 at Calabar, based on an agreement with local Efik traders which prohibited them from interfering with British merchants. These courts contained majorities British members and represented a new level of presumptive
British sovereignty in the Bight of Biafra.
West Africa also bought British exports, supplying 30-40% of the demand for British cotton during
the Industrial Revolution of 1750-1790.
At the same time, the British scientists were interested in exploring the course and related settlements
along the Niger River. The delta masked the mouth of the great river, and for centuries Nigerians chose not to tell Europeans the secrets of the interior. In 1794 the African Association in Great Britain commissioned Mungo Park, an intrepid Scottish physician and naturalist, to search for the headwaters
of the Niger and follow the river downstream. Park reached the upper Niger the next year by traveling inland from the Gambia River. Although he reported on the eastward flow of the Niger, he was forced to turn back when his equipment was lost to Muslim Arab slave traders. In 1805 he set out on a second expedition, sponsored by the British government, to follow the Niger to the sea. His mission failed, but Park and his party covered more than 1,500 kilometers, passing through the western portions of the Sokoto
Caliphate, before drowning when their boats overturned in rapids near Bussa.
On a subsequent expedition to the Sokoto Caliphate, Hugh Clapperton learned about the mouth of the Niger River, where it reached the sea, but he died before confirming it. His servant, Richard Lander, and Lander's brother John were the ones to demonstrate that the Niger flowed into the sea. The Lander brothers were seized by slave traders in the interior and sold down the river to a waiting European ship.
Initial British attempts to open trade with the interior by way of the Niger could not overcome climate
and diseases such as malaria. A third of the people associated with an 1842 riverine expedition died. In the 1850s, the benefits of quinine had been found to combat malaria, and aided by the medicine, a Liverpool merchant, Macgregor Laird, opened the river. Laird's efforts were stimulated by the detailed reports of a pioneer German explorer, Heinrich Barth, who traveled through much of Borno and the Sokoto Caliphate, where he recorded information about the region's geography, economy, and inhabitants.
As part of an anti-slavery campaign and a pretext for making inroads into Lagos, Britain bombarded Lagos in November
1851, ousted the pro-slavery Oba Kosoko and established a treaty with the newly installed Oba Akitoye who was more amenable. Lagos was annexed as aCrown Colony in 1861 via the Lagos Treaty of Cession.
British expansion accelerated in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The early history of Lagos Colony was one of repeated attempts to end the Yoruba wars. In the face of threats to the divided Yoruba states from Dahomey and the Sokoto Caliphate, as represented by the emirate of Ilorin, the British governor-assisted by the CMS-succeeded in imposing peace settlements on the interior.
Colonial Lagos was a busy, cosmopolitan port. Its architecture was in both Victorian and Brazilian style, as many of the black elite were English-speakers from Sierra Leone and freedmen repatriated from Brazil and Cuba. Its residents were employed in official capacities and were active in business. Africans also were represented on the Lagos Legislative Council, a largely appointed assembly. The Colony was ultimately governed
by the BritishColonial Office in London.
Captain John Glover, the colony's administrator, created a militia of Hausa troops in 1861. This became the Lagos Constabulary, and subsequently the Nigerian Police Force.
In 1880, the British government and traders demonetized the Maria Theresa dollar, to the considerable dismay of its local holders, in favor of the pound. In 1891, the African Banking Corporation founded the Bank of British West Africa in Lagos.
After the Berlin Conference of 1884, Britain announced formation of the Oil Rivers Protectorate, which included the Niger Delta and
extended eastward to Calabar, where the British consulate general was relocated from Fernando Po. The protectorate was organized to control and develop trade coming down the Niger. Vice consuls were assigned to ports that already had concluded treaties of cooperation with the Foreign Office. Local rulers continued to administer their territories, but consular authorities assumed jurisdiction for the equity courts established earlier by the foreign mercantile communities. A constabulary force was raised and used
to pacify the coastal area.
In 1894 the territory was redesignated the Niger Coast Protectorate and was expanded to include the region from Calabar to Lagos Colony and Protectorate, including the hinterland, and northward up the Niger River as far as Lokoja, the headquarters of the Royal Niger Company. As a protectorate, it did not have the status of a colony, so its officials were appointed by the Foreign Office and not by
the Colonial Office.
In 1891, the Consulate established the Niger Coast Protectorate Force or "Oil Rivers Irregulars".
The legitimate trade in commodities attracted a number of rough-hewn British merchants to the Niger River, as well as some men who had been formerly engaged in the slave trade but who now changed their line of wares. The large companies that subsequently opened depots in the delta cities and in Lagos were as ruthlessly competitive as the delta towns themselves and frequently used force to compel potential suppliers to agree to contracts and to meet their demands.
To some extent, competition amongst these companies undermined their collective position vis-a-vis local merchants.
In the 1870s, therefore, George Taubman Goldie began amalgamating companies into the United African Company, soon renamed the National African Company.
The Royal Niger Company established its headquarters far inland at Lokoja, which was the main trading port of the company, from where it pretended to assume responsibility for the administration of areas along the Niger and Benue rivers where it maintained depots. It soon gained a virtual monopoly over trade along the River
The company interfered in the territory along the Niger and the Benue, sometimes becoming embroiled in serious
conflicts when its British-led native constabulary intercepted slave raids or attempted to protect trade routes. The company negotiated treaties with Sokoto, Gwandu, and Nupe that were interpreted as guaranteeing exclusive access to trade in return for the payment of annual tribute. Officials of the Sokoto Caliphate considered these treaties quite differently; from their perspective, the British were granted only extraterritorial rights that did not prevent similar arrangements with the Germans and the French and certainly did not surrender sovereignty.
Even before gaining its charter, the Company signed treaties with local leaders which granted it broad sovereign
powers. One 1885 treaty read:
The Company considered itself the sole legitimate government of the area, with executive, legislative, and judicial
powers all subordinate to the rule of a Council created by the Company Board of Directors in London. The Council was headed by a Governor. The Deputy Governor served as Political Administrator for company's territory, and appointed three officials in Nigeria to carry out the work of administration. These were the Agent General, the Senior Judicial Officer, and the Commandant of the Constabulary. However, the Company did accept that local emirs could act as partners in governance and trade. It therefore hired native intermediaries who could conduct diplomacy, trade, and intelligence work in the local area.
The Company, as was common among European businesses in Africa, paid its native workers in barter. At the turn
of the century, top wages were four bags of salt (company retail price, 3s 9d) for a month of work. Trade
was also conducted through a mechanism of barter and credit. Goods were made available on credit to African middlemen, who were expected to trade them at a pre-arranged price and deliver the proceeds to the Company. The Company's major imports to the area included gin and low-quality firearms.
By the 1880s, the National African Company became the dominant commercial power, increasing from 19 to 39 stations
between 1882 and 1993. In 1886, Taubman secured a Royal Charter and his company became the Royal Niger Company. The Charter allowed the Company to collect customs and make treaties with local leaders.
Under Goldie's direction, the Royal Niger Company was instrumental in depriving France and Germany of access to the region. Consequently, he may well deserve the epithet "father of Nigeria" which historians accorded him. He definitely laid the basis for British claims.
The Royal Niger Company had its own armed forces. This included a river fleet which it used for retalitatory attacked on uncooperative villages.
Britain's imperialistic posture became more aggressive towards the end of the century. The appointment of Joseph Chamberlain as Colonial Secretary in 1895 especially marked a shift towards new territorial ambitions of the British Empire. Economically, local colonial administrators also pushed for the imposition of British colonial rule, believing that trade and taxation conducted in British pounds would prove far more lucrative than a barter trade which yielded only inconsistent
The British led a series of military campaigns to enlarge its sphere of influence and expand its commercial opportunities.
Most of the fighting was done by Hausa soldiers, recruited to fight against other groups. The superior weapons, tactics, and political unity of the British are commonly given as reasons for their decisive ultimate victory.
In 1892 the British forces set out to fight the Ijebu Kingdom, which had resisted missionaries and foreign traders. The legal justification for this campaign was a treaty signed in 1886, when the British had interceded as peacemakers to end the Ekitiparapo war, which imposed free trade requirements and mandated that all parties continue to use British channels for diplomacy. Although the Ijebu had some weapons they were wiped out by British machine guns called Maxim guns. With this victory, the British went on to conquer the rest of Yorubaland, which had also been weakened by sixteen years of civil war. By 1893, most of the other political entities in Yorubaland recognized the practical necessity signing another treaty with the British, this one explicitly joining them with the protectorate of Lagos.
In 1896-1897 the forces of the Niger Coast Protectorate fought with the remnants of the Benin Empire. Following
the defeat of an unsuccessful foray by Consul General James R. Phillips, a larger retaliatory force captured Benin City and droveOvonramwen, the Oba of Benin, into exile.
The British had difficulty conquering Igboland, which lacked central political organization. In the name of liberating
the Igbos from the Aro Confederacy, the British launched the Anglo-Aro War of 1901-1902. Despite conquering villages by burning houses and crops, continual political control over the Igbo remained elusive. The British forces began annual pacification missions to convince the locals of British supremacy.
A campaign against the Sokoto Caliphate began in 1900 with the creation of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, under the direction of Governor Lugard. The British captured Kano in
1903. Deadly battles broke out sporadically through 1906.Lugard was slow to describe these excursions to the Colonial Office, which apparently learned of preparations
to attack Kano from the newspapers in December 1902. Not wishing to appear out of control or weak, they approved the expedition (two days after it began) on January 19, 1903. In general the Colonial Office allowed Lugard's expeditions to continue because they were framed as retaliatory and, as Olivier commented in 1906, "If the millions of people [in Nigeria] who do not want us there once get the notion that our people can be killed with impunity they will not be slow to attempt it."
Lugard informed the leaders of conquered Sokoto: