That's human geography 101. Initial British attempts to open trade with the interior by way of the Niger could not overcome climate and diseases such as malaria. Crowther was succeeded as bishop by a British cleric. The early history of Lagos Colony was one of repeated attempts to end the Yoruba wars. But the war had more concrete consequences. All these things which I have said the Fulani by conquest took the right to do now pass to the British. His objective was to conquer the entire region and to obtain recognition of the British protectorate by its indigenous rulers, especially the Fulani emirs of the Sokoto Caliphate. The emirs gave support to limited modernization largely from fears of the unsettling presence of southerners in the north, and by observing the improvements in living conditions in the South. Aside from the possibility of treasure, the European governments aimed to find a passage through the Americas to Asia. In 1851 deposed king Akintoye of Lagos sought British help in restoring him to the throne. [11][12], The amalgamation of different ethnic and religious groups into one federation created internal tension which persists in Nigeria to the present day.[13]. Lugard's campaign systematically subdued local resistance, using armed force when diplomatic measures failed. [19] Although the Ijebu had some weapons they were wiped out by British Maxims, the earliest machine gun. Nigeria: A Country Study. The Action Group was largely the creation of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, General Secretary of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and leader of the Nigerian Produce Traders' Association. 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. Christian missionaries were barred, and the limited government efforts in education were harmonized with Islamic institutions.[67]. To start with, European nations were motivated by economic factors arising from the industrial revolution which started in Britain and extended to other European countries such as Belgium, France and Germany (Hochschild, 158).They wanted cheaper mineral resources for their home industries claiming that resources were abundant in Africa for In general, the regional constitutions followed the federal model, both structurally and functionally. Each was under a Lieutenant Governor and provided independent government services. Lugard's success in northern Nigeria has been attributed to his policy of indirect rule; that is, he governed the protectorate through the rulers defeated by the British. "Specifically, the Company sought to secure the cooperation of the traditional rulers in ensuring peaceful conditions for trade. [57], Egerton also supervised improvements to the Lagos harbour and extension of the local telegraph network. (This was also reflective of growing pan-Africanism among American activists of the time.) [] These intermediaries assisted government diplomacy and helped to establish and maintain relations between the company and the traditional rulers. The palm oil trade was also linked to the Sokoto jihad and the Yoruba wars, because many warriors recognized the importance of slaves not only as soldiers and producers of food to feed soldiers but additionally as producers of palm oil to trade for European dane guns and other goods. The NPC captured 142 seats in the new legislature. 1) Lack of British Personnel: Obviously Nigeria was not the only West African country colonized by the British, other countries like Ghana, Sierra-Leone and The Gambia were part of the British colonies. By the 1870s the Niger trade was becoming profitable, and a few French companies took notice. The company's major imports to the area included gin and low-quality firearms. [17] Much of this oil was sold elsewhere in the British Empire. In 1957, the Western and the Eastern regions became formally self-governing under the parliamentary system. In 1805, he set out on a second expedition, sponsored by the British Government, to follow the Niger to the sea. While they all shared a desire for wealth and power, their motivations for colonization differed somewhat, and thus the pattern and success of their colonies varied significantly. Lugard's governmental model for Nigeria was unique and there was apparently not much planning for its future development. The conquest was personal to William. Du Bois. From Lugard's point of view, clear-cut military victories were necessary because the surrenders of the defeated peoples weakened resistance elsewhere. Both claimed in 1908; territories formed in 1962 (British Antarctic Territory) and 1985 (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands). Durres Port. By an overwhelming majority, voters in the Southern Cameroons opted to join formerly French-administered Cameroon over integration with Nigeria as a separate federated region. Dike, K. O. [37] 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 customs duties. British expansion accelerated in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Most Europeans tended to overlook their own differences and were surprised and shocked that Nigerians wanted to develop new denominations independent of European control. The British Conquest of Nigeria From about the mid nineteenth century, the British began to alter the nature of their relationship between themselves and Nigerians. He said that he did "not consider that their past traditions and their present backward cultural conditions afford to any such experiment a reasonable chance of success". Europeans, with an eye to colonization and conquest, restricted the sale of the new weaponry to Africa maintaining military superiority. Offers a bold rethink: a clear-eyed, unromanticized history of colonial Nigeria written by a Nigerian. 1. The delta masked the mouth of the great river, and for centuries Nigerians chose not to tell Europeans the secrets of the interior. His mission failed, but Park and his party covered more than 1,500 kilometres (930mi), passing through the western portions of the Sokoto Caliphate, before drowning when their boats overturned in rapids near Bussa. The seven men who governed Northern Nigeria, Southern Nigeria and Lagos through 1914 were Henry McCallum, William MacGregor, Walter Egerton, Ralph Moor, Percy Girouard, Hesketh Bell and Frederick Lugard. By 1903 the conquest of the emirates was complete. To . [25][n 1], The missionaries gained in power throughout the 1800s. French Roman Catholic missionaries, established in Ouidah (Whydah), arrived in Lagos and considered missionary work on the Niger. Great Britain was the leaders at this time in colonizing the land filled with rich natural recourses. Borno capitulated without a fight, but in 1903 Lugard's RWAFF mounted assaults on Kano and Sokoto. During World War II, Awolowo reorganized it as a predominantly Yoruba political party, the Action Group. [35] However, the company did accept that local kings could act as partners in governance and trade. Several churches were built to serve the Edo community and a small number of African converts. [8] British influence in the region began with the prohibition of slave trade to British subjects in 1807. This page was last edited on 30 January 2023, at 05:21. It was also partly to protect the Egba that the British shelled Lagos in 1851, expelled Kosoko, the reigning oba, and restored his uncle, Akitoye, who appeared more willing to join in a campaign to abolish the slave trade. A people with no knowledge of their past would suffer from collective amnesia, groping blindly into the future without guide-posts of precedence to shape their course. The mud-walled city of Kano was captured in February, and, after a vigorous skirmish at Kotorkwashi, the sultans capital, Sokoto, fell the next month. [11], By the 1880s, the National African Company became the dominant commercial power, increasing from 19 to 39 stations between 1882 and 1893. Progressive constitutions after World War II provided for increasing representation and electoral government by Nigerians. Some European traders switched to legitimate business only when the commerce in slaves became too hazardous. [75] The colonial government was not equipped nor ready in general for such a situation. At first, the trade centered around West Central Africa, now the Congo. Ethnic and kinship organisations that often took the form of a tribal union also emerged in the 1920s. In the Eastern Region, appointed officials who were given "warrants" and hence called warrant chiefs, were strongly resisted by the people because they lacked traditional claims. The war was driven by the commercial and imperial rivalry between Britain and France, and by the antagonism between Prussia (allied to Britain) and Austria (allied to France). British colonialism created Nigeria, joining diverse peoples and regions in an artificial political entity along the Niger River. Three years later internal divisions arose that was dominated by major ethnic loyalties. However, in October 1929 in Oloko a census related to taxation was conducted, and the women in the area suspected that this was a prelude to the extension of direct taxation, which had been imposed on the men the previous year. They were the most politically conscious segment of the population and created the vanguard of the nationalist movement. factors that led to the british conquest of nigeria. The Norman conquest in 1066 was the last successful conquest of England. Its residents were employed in official capacities and were active in business. The Lander brothers were seized by slave traders in the interior and sold down the river to a waiting European ship. Although realistic in its assessment of the situation in Nigeria, the Richards Constitution undoubtedly intensified regionalism as an alternative to political unification. So, how did Europeans end up in Africa? [45], 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 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. [58], Some of these public work projects were accomplished with the help of forced labour from native black Africans, referred to as "Political Labour". [72] In the south, he saw the possibility of building an elite educated in schools modelled on a European method (and numerous elite children attended high-ranking colleges in Britain during the colonial years). It is not a unitary state with local government areas but with one Central Executive and one Legislature. 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. David Richardson, "Background to annexation: Anglo-African credit relations in the Bight of Biafra, 17001891"; in Ptr-Grenouilleau. Northern leaders committed to modernization were also firmly connected to the traditional power structure. The Deputy Governor served as political administrator for company territory and appointed three officials in Nigeria to carry out the work of administration. [73], Due to the failure of the sanitation officers in Lagos, the virus would continue to spread throughout the southern provinces throughout September and finally make its way into the hinterlands by October. [65], Half of all taxes went to the colonial government and half went to the Native Treasury. The yoruba-Igbo rivalry became increasingly important in Nigerian politics. Frederick Lugard, who was appointed as High Commissioner of the Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1900 and served until 1906 in his first term, often has been regarded by the British as their model colonial administrator. with the Norman Conquest led by William, the Duke of Normandy. [78], After establishing political control of the country, the British implemented a system of taxation in order to force the indigenous Africans to shift from subsistence farming to wage labour. Most of these came from military backgrounds. In contrast, the British pursued comparatively limited settlement and institutional transformation in the more populous and more politically and economically developed preco-lonial areas. The Governor-General represented the British monarch as head of state and was appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Nigerian prime minister in consultation with the regional premiers. The rapid expansion in exports, especially after 1830, occurred precisely at the time slave exports collapsed. France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803, the same year that it gave up on trying to regain Saint-Domingue from the Haitian Revolution. [11], The British led a series of military campaigns to enlarge its sphere of influence and expand its commercial opportunities. In time they captured Oba Ovonramwen and sent him into exile to Calabar, a town east of Benin. In pursuance of the above general principles the chief civil officers of the provinces are to be called Residents which implies one who carries on diplomatic relations rather than Commissioners or Administrators. Total revenues of central and regional governments nearly doubled in relation to the gross domestic product during the decade. [27] To produce all this oil, the economy of the southern region crossed over from mostly subsistence to the production of palm oil as a cash crop.[28]. As a practice, colonialism is traced to the1854 and 1855 conference at Berlin in Germany. Most accounts of Nigeria's colonisation were written by British officials, presenting it as a noble civilising mission to rid Africans of barbaric superstition and corrupt tribal leadership. Uneasy with the amount of latitude allowed traditional rulers under indirect rule, Clifford opposed further extension of the judicial authority held by the northern emirs. With this victory, the British went on to conquer the rest of Yorubaland, which had also been weakened by sixteen years of civil war. To raise additional revenues, Lugard took steps to institute a uniform tax structure patterned on the traditional system that he had adopted in the north during his tenure there. 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. The rapid growth of organised labour in the 1940s also brought new political forces into play. The conquest and colonization of the Nigerian territory stirring up nationalist sentiments among the few educated elements mostly foreign educated Africans and liberated slaves, and later African students in Britain. Spain was driven by three main motivations. Thanks to this skewed writing of history, many Nigerians today still have Empire nostalgia and view the colonial period through rose-tinted . Some of them also manned Company stations and served as District Agents.". Other European powers acknowledged Britain's dominance over the area in the 1885 Berlin Conference. A.J. During the war, union membership increased sixfold to 30,000. Unification meant only the loose affiliation of three distinct regional administrations into which Nigeria was subdividedNorthern, Western and Eastern regions. Although Azikiwe later came to be recognised as the leading spokesman for national unity, when he first returned from university training in the United States, his outlook was pan-African rather than nationalist, and emphasised the common African struggle against European colonialism. The first missions were opened by the Church of England's Church Missionary Society (CMS).

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