Lagos Colony
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 Akintoye, who was more amenable. Lagos was annexed as a Crown 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.
Oil Rivers Protectorate
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”.
Royal Niger Company
Ensign of the Royal Niger Company (1888-1899)
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:
We, the undersigned King and Chiefs…with the view to the bettering of the condition of our country and people, do this day cede to the National Africa Company (Limited), their heirs and assigns, forever, the whole of our territory…We also give the said National African Company (Limited) full power to settle all native disputes arising from any cause whatever, and we pledge ourselves not to enter into any war with other tribes without the sanction of the said National Africa Company (Limited).
We also understand that the said National African Company (limited) have full power to mine, farm, and build in any portion of our territory. We bind ourselves not to have any intercourse with any strangers or foreigners except through the said national African Company (Limited), and we give the said National African Company (Limited) full power to exclude all other strangers and foreigners from their territory at their discretion.
In consideration of the foregoing, the said National African Company (Limited) bind themselves not to interfere with any of the native laws or customs of the country, consistently with the maintenance of order and good government…[and] agree to pay native owners of land a reasonable amount for any portion they may require.
The said National African Company (Limited) bind themselves to protect the said King and Chiefs from the attacks of any neighboring tribes.
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 aroyal 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 retaliatory 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 customs duties.
Military conquest
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.
King Koko in His War Canoe, London Daily Graphic, March 30, 1895; depicting King Frederick William Koko—onetime antagonist to the Royal Niger Company
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 drove Ovonramwen, 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:
The Fulani in old times . . . conquered this country. They took the right to rule over it, to levy taxes, to depose kings and to create kings. They in turn have by defeat lost their rule which has come into the hands of the British. All these things which I have said the Fulani by conquest took the right to do now pass to the British. Every Sultan and Emir and the principal officers of state will be appointed by the high Commissioner throughout all this country. The High Commissioner will be guided by all the usual laws of succession and the wishes of the people and chief, but will set them aside if he desires for good cause to do so. The Emirs and chiefs who are appointed will rule over the people as of old time and take such taxes as are approved by the High Commissioner, but they will obey the laws of the Governor and will act in accordance with the advice of the Resident.
Transition to Crown rule
Concrete plans for transition to Crown rule—direct control by the British government—apparently began in 1897. In May of this year, Herbert J. Read published a Memorandum on British possessions in West Africa, which remarked upon the “inconvenient and unscientific boundaries” between Lagos Colony, the Niger Coast Protectorate, and the Royal Niger Company. Read suggested they be merged, and more use made of Nigeria’s natural resources. In the same year, the British created the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF or WAFF), under the leadership of Colonel Frederick Lugard. In one year, Lugard recruited 2600 troops, evenly split between Hausa and Yoruba. The officers of the RWAFF were British. The operations of this force are still not fully known due to a policy of strict secrecy mandated by the British government.
Guidelines for running the Nigerian colony were established in 1898 by the Niger Committee, chaired by the Earl of Selborne, in 1898. The British finalized the border between Nigeria and French West Africa with the Anglo-French Convention of 1898.
The territory of the Royal Niger Company became the Northern Nigeria Protectorate, and the Company itself became a private corporation which continued to do business in Nigeria. The Company received £865,000 compensation for the loss of its Charter. It continued to enjoy special privileges and maintained a de facto monopoly over commerce. Under Lugard from 1900–1906, the Protectorate consolidated political control over the area through military conquest and initiated the use of British currency in substitute for barter.
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