Colonial Nigeria formed part of the British Empire from the mid-nineteenth century until 1 October 1960, when Nigeria achieved independence. Britain annexed Lagos in 1861 and established the Oil River Protectorate in 1884. British influence in the Niger area increased gradually in the course of the 19th century, but Britain did not effectively occupy the area until 1885. Other European powers acknowledged Britain's dominance over the area at the 1885 Berlin Conference.
From 1886 to 1899, much of the area was ruled by the Royal Niger Company, authorised 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 each of the three major regions (Northern protectorate, Southern protectorate and the Colony of Lagos) retained considerable regional autonomy. 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.
Overview Through a progressive sequence of regimes, the British imposed Crown Colony and protectorate government on parts of West Africa which came to be known as Nigeria, a form of rule which was both autocratic and bureaucratic. After initially adopting an indirect rule approach, in 1906 the British merged the small Lagos Colony and the Southern Nigeria Protectorate into a new Southern Nigeria Protectorate, and in 1914 that was combined with the Northern Nigeria Protectorate to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.John M. Carland, The Colonial Office and Nigeria (1985), pp. 1–2. "Crown Colony Government in Nigeria and elsewhere in the British Empire was an autocratic government. Officials at the Colonial Office and colonial governors in the field never pretended otherwise. In fact, autocratic, bureaucratic rule was the true legacy of British colonial government in Africa." Administration and military control of the territory was conducted primarily by white Britons, both in London and in Nigeria.Carland (1985), The Colonial Office and Nigeria, p. 48.
Following military conquest, the British imposed an economic system designed to profit from African labour. The essential basis of this system was a money economy—specifically the British pound sterling—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.
Origins of British influence
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 the 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. Though the Europeans possessed many considerable settlements both upon the coast of Africa and in the East Indies, they have not yet established in either of those regions such numerous and thriving colonies as those in the islands and continent of the America."
Earlier elements related to this were its founding of the Sierra Leone Colony in 1787 as a refuge for freed slaves, the independent missionary movement intended to bring Christianity to the Edo Kingdom, 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, recognised 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".Isichei, A History of Nigeria (1983), p. 362.
The Headquarters of Gombe emirate was Gombe-Abba until when the then Emir of Gombe, Umaru Kwairanga (1898–1922), was forced to move from Gombe-Abba, a town founded by his grandfather and the founder of Gombe Emirate, Modibbo Bubayero, to Nafada town in 1913, and then to the current Gombe in 1919, that was after Gombe Emirate was conquered by British colonialists in 1903.
Slave trade and abolition
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 on the coast. From 1790 to 1807, predominantly British slave traders purchased 1,000–2,000 slaves each year in Lagos alone. The trade subsequently continued under the Portuguese Empire. In the Bight of Biafra, the major ports were Old Calabar (Akwa Akpa), Bonny and New Calabar.David Ellis, "African and European relations in the last century of the transatlantic slave trade"; in Pétré-Grenouilleau, From Slave Trade to Empire (2004), pp. 21–46. Starting in 1740, the British were the primary European slave trafficker from this area.David Richardson, "Background to annexation: Anglo-African credit relations in the Bight of Biafra, 1700–1891"; in Pétré-Grenouilleau, From Slave Trade to Empire (2004), pp. 47–68. In 1767, British traders facilitated a notorious massacre of hundreds of people at Calabar after inviting them onto their ships, ostensibly to settle a local dispute.Randy J. Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar: An Eighteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey; Harvard University Press, 2004; ; Chapter 1: "A Very Bloody Transaction: Old Calabar and the Massacre of 1767".
In 1807, the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted the Slave Trade Act, prohibiting British subjects from participating in the Atlantic 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 with the blockade of Africa. Some of the treaties contained prohibitions on diplomacy conducted without British permission, or other promises to abide by British rule.Anietie A. Inyang & Manasseh Edidem Bassey, "Imperial Treaties and the Origins of British Colonial Rule in Southern Nigeria, 1860–1890", Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 5.20, September 2014. This scenario provided an opportunity for naval expeditions and reconnaissance throughout the region. Britain also annexed Freetown in Sierra Leone, declaring it a Crown Colony in 1808.Asiegbu, Nigeria and its British Invaders (1984), p. xxiii. "After the Abolition Act in 1807 made the trade in African slaves illegal for British subjects, Britain did not stop there: For the next quarter of a century successive British Governments embarked on a kind of aggressive diplomacy, bullying and bribing other European nations, especially Spain and Portugal, to toe the anti-slavery line with England. / On the West African Coast itself British anti-slavery policy became very evident. Freed slaves were resettled at Freetown, thus becoming British subjects. A detachment of the all-powerful British Navy, the West African naval squadron, was stationed in West African waters to patrol along the coastline and to intercept any slave ships or vessels equipped for the slave trade, and to bring slave vessels captured for trial before British controlled courts in Freetown. At the same time, Britain embarked on securing from African rulers, in consideration of payments to these rulers, what became known as anti-slave trade treaties. By these treaties, the rulers engaged to stop the traffic in slaves in their respective territories. In the process of enforcing these anti-slave trade policies on the west coast with its powerful navy, Britain discovered the military weakness or inferiority of the African states in relation to its own military power."
The decrease in trade indirectly led to the collapse of states like the 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 especially Martinique under Napoleon. France sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803, the same year that it gave up on trying to regain Saint-Domingue (Haiti) from the Haitian Revolution. 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 Americas continued for years afterward.
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 the Portuguese and the Spaniards. By 1826–1850, the British Royal Navy was intervening significantly with Lagos slave exports.Olatunji Ojo, "The Organization of the Atlantic Slave Trade in Yorubaland, ca.1777 to ca.1856", International Journal of African Historical Studies 41.1, 2008. "Slave production in the interior raised exports from Lagos tenfold, making it West Africa's leading slave port. The most accurate trade figures are found in the Trans-Atlantic slave voyage database (TSD), which put the number of slave exports between 1776 and 1850 at 308,800. Of that number, only 24,000 slaves were shipped before 1801, while 114,200 and 170,600 were sold during 1801–25 and 1826–50, respectively. Exports from Badagry lagged far behind, with about 37,400 slaves sold during 1776–1860."