Until he stepped down as Governor-General in 1918, Lugard primarily was concerned with consolidating British sovereignty and with assuring local administration through traditional rulers. This scheme proved unpopular and confusing to many involved parties and was phased out. [46] 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. To reduce costs, Lagos was administered first from Freetown in Sierra Leone, along with Gold Coast forts such as Elmina, and later from Accra (in present-day Ghana); only in 1886 did Lagos become a separate colony. In addition, two other protectorates were declared, one over the Oil Rivers and the other over the hinterland of Lagos, to establish a claim that these areas were also British spheres of interest.. 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. [57], Egerton also supervised improvements to the Lagos harbour and extension of the local telegraph network. Nigeria (Sokoto Caliphate inclusive) fell prey to the attacks. The policy of indirect rule used in Northern Nigeria became a model for British colonies elsewhere in Africa. It assumed that comparable alterations would be made elsewhere, an attitude that won the party minority voting support in the other regions. A Summary of British Rule in India - ThoughtCo The National Youth Movement used nationalist rhetoric to agitate for improvements in education. He was contemptuous of the educated and Westernised African elite found more in the South, and he recommended transferring the capital from Lagos, the cosmopolitan city where the influence of these people was most pronounced, to Kaduna in the north. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991. [11], Britain's imperialistic posture became more aggressive towards the end of the century. These seven factors led to the development of the slave trade: The importance of the West Indian colonies The shortage of labour The. At the same time, George Dashwood Goldie, a British businessman, bought out all French rivals and created the Royal Niger Company (chartered 1886) in order to control trade on the Niger and administer the immense territories of the Sokoto caliphate and Borno. In the 1850s, quinine had been found to combat malaria, and aided by the medicine, a Liverpool merchant, Macgregor Laird, opened the river. In popular parlance, discussions of colonialism in Africa usually focus on the European conquests that resulted in the scramble for Africa after the Berlin Conference in the 19th century. African nationalism is a political movement for the unification of Africa (Pan-Africanism) and for national self-determination. Deadly battles broke out sporadically through 1906. The kingdom of Benin - BBC Bitesize Village Heads were paid 10 shillings for conscripts, and fined 50 if they failed to supply. Every Sultan and Emir and the principal officers of state will be appointed by the high Commissioner throughout all this country. [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. 1839 - The Opium Wars between China and Britain, resulting from the trade of opium leading to widespread addictions. The Delta streams were called "oil rivers". factors that led to the british conquest of nigeria. The British wanted products like palm oil and palm kernel and export trade in tin, cotton, cocoa, groundnuts, palm oil and so on (Graham, 2009). The emirs retained their caliphate titles but were responsible to British district officers, who had final authority. 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. Its activist membership was drawn from local government and emirate officials who had access to means of communication and to repressive traditional authority that could keep the opposition in line. Between them, the French and the British had purchased a majority of the slaves sold from the ports of Edo. During World War II, three battalions of the Nigeria Regiment fought against Fascist Italy in the Ethiopian campaign. The search for oil, begun in 1908 and abandoned a few years later, was revived in 1937 by Shell and British Petroleum. The cleavage between the Yoruba and the Igbo was accentuated by their competition for control of the political machinery. Vice consuls were assigned to ports that already had concluded treaties of cooperation with the Foreign Office. factors that led to the british conquest of nigeria The Southern Protectorate financed itself from the outset, with revenue increasing from 361,815 to 1,933,235 over the same period. Another court was established in 1856 at Calabar, based on an agreement with local Efik traders which prohibited them from interfering with British merchants. 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. by How Africa 6 years ago. European slave trading from West Africa began before 1650, with people taken at a rate of about 3,000 per year. [59], Lugard advocated constantly for the unification of the whole territory, and in August 1911 the Colonial Office asked Lugard to lead the amalgamated colony.[60]. The approaches of the two men to colonial development were diametrically opposed. The delta masked the mouth of the great river, and for centuries Nigerians chose not to tell Europeans the secrets of the interior. The proliferation of labour organisations fragmented the movement, and potential leaders lacked the experience and skill to draw workers together. Lagos was annexed as a Crown Colony in 1861 via the Lagos Treaty of Cession.[30]. Most internal problems were concealed, and open opposition to the domination of the Muslim aristocracy was not tolerated. factors that led to the british conquest of nigeria The most important innovations in the new charter reinforced the dual course of constitutional evolution, allowing for both regional autonomy and federal union. Regional administrations also varied widely in the quality of local personnel and in the scope of the operations they were willing to undertake. In time, they built depots onshore and eventually moved up the Niger River to establish stations in the interior. The incidence of slavery in local societies increased. Indeed it was these developments in the history of Kano that transformed the political outlook of the people. By 18261850, the British Royal Navy was intervening significantly with Lagos slave exports. Gradually, however, the trade forced major economic and social changes in the interior, although it hardly undermined slavery and the slave trade. Islam reached Nigeria through the Bornu Empire . Recovery came quickly and improvements in port facilities and the transportation infrastructure during World War I furthered economic development. Hon. Nigerian students abroad, particularly at British schools, joined those from other colonies in pan-African groups such as the West African Students Union, founded in London in 1925. In the Northern Cameroons, however, the largely Muslim electorate chose to merge with Nigeria's Northern Region. Lugard's campaign systematically subdued local resistance, using armed force when diplomatic measures failed. The British Conquest State (Chapter 3) - A History of Zimbabwe 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. God, Gold, and Glory. The Action Group consistently supported minority-group demands for autonomous states within a federal structure, as well as the severance of a midwest state from the Western Region. Doctrine of Lapse. Antrobus, Fiddes and Strachey in the Colonial Office promoted amalgamation, along with Lugard. 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). Instead, the companies had to be content with a monopoly of the export trade in these products. Even before gaining its charter, the Company signed treaties with local leaders which granted it broad sovereign powers. 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 neglect of traditional institutions. Summary of course material Economic freedom in Muslim countries an The nationalism that became a political factor in Nigeria during the interwar period derived both from an older political particularism and broad pan-Africanism, rather than from any sense among the people of a common Nigerian nationality. the British Government completed their assignment of conquest and came up with what they called the Amalgamation of Nigeria . Beecroft was the British representative to Fernando Po, where the African Slave Trade Patrol of the Royal Navy was stationed. Some of them began to migrate back from Sierra Leone in search of home and trade. Some European traders switched to legitimate business only when the commerce in slaves became too hazardous. [10], Following military conquest, the British imposed an economic system designed to profit from African labor. There were three main factors that contributed to the European colonization Africa which were, political, social, and economic. [53] The first five heads of the Nigeria Department (18981914) were Reginald Antrobus, William Mercer, William Baillie Hamilton, Sydney Olivier, and Charles Strachey. The Royal Niger Company had its own armed forces. He aroused political awareness through his newspaper, the Lagos Daily News. Azikiwe had less interest in purely Nigerian goals than did Davies, a student of Harold Laski at the London School of Economics, whose political orientation was considered left-wing. It soon gained a virtual monopoly over trade along the River[11]. In May of this year, Herbert J. Lugard's governmental model for Nigeria was unique and there was apparently not much planning for its future development.