Abstract
This thesis is a case study of Great Britain's colonisation of a few indigenous, contiguous peoples of the Western Lower Niger from 1884 to 1914. These are the Itsekiri, the Western Ijo, the Urhobo, the Isoko and the Ukwuani of present-day Delta State of Southern Nigeria. These case studies were used to ascertain whether, between treaty diplomacy and conquest, which was the central means employed by Great Britain in the colonisation process. The existing standard historiography of Great Britain's expansion in Nigeria had often emphasised the theme of violence in Great Britain's relations with indigenous peoples, leaving out totally or paying scant attention to instances of treaty-making. This dissertation challenged this long-held narrative of force as a general means of empire-building by Great Britain in Nigeria. This gap in the standard historiography engendered an understanding of the legal background of European colonialism, bringing out the influence of legal Positivism, the creation of hierarchies of sovereignties, of civilized and uncivilized societies, and how these concepts were used by Europeans to justify empire-building. The practicalities of Great Britain's use of treaties for colonisation in other areas before the Scramble were highlighted, to indicate, the deployment of legal tools for territorial acquisition and colonisation. The combination of treaty-making, the role of men on the spot, driving the colonial process, and indigenous conditions were reflected on within the context of this dissertation to argue, in the face of the available evidence that, Great Britain's colonisation of the case study areas was mainly through treaty diplomacy and not by military conquest as was the case with some other Nigerian groups. This research adds to recent historiography that explored previously under-investigated aspects of the age of empire; that in some cases in the course of expansion, the use of force was not a first step choice for the imperial power. Onajite Edna Oghoghorie Ariye (wife) Annabel Asenoguan (foster daughter) Okubotin Ariye (son) Ebilabo Ariye (daughter) 1 Available from https://www.activityvillage.co.uk/nigeria Introduction Nigerian historians pay little or no attention to the important and extensive use of treatymaking used during Britain's colonization of Nigeria. Instead, the depiction of the encounters between Great Britain and the various indigenous peoples and polities of Nigeria is depicted as a violent process in which the imperial power imposed its will on indigenous societies through force of arms or threat of its use. The dominant scholarly narrative is often a tale of British aggression and the dogged resistance by local people to alien domination. 2 However, historical records for this region of Nigeria indicate otherwise. There is evidence that officials of Great Britain often resorted to negotiating treaties of protection, containing capitulation clauses, specifically as a way of achieving a non-military form of imperial penetration and hegemony. Furthermore, many indigenous groups, for a variety of reasons outlined in the ensuing chapters, actively embraced such treaties. While such treaties, once concluded, served as tools in a first step towards colonizing indigenous groups, the use of treaties was often a very successful form of non-violent colonisation. By examining the treaty content and what is known about the negotiations surrounding these treaties, scholars gain a much better insight into the ways Africans and British participants engaged with the process and with each other, offering a much more complex depiction of power relations, especially in the early period, than current scholarship allows. Africans cannot be seen encroachment into the hinterlands in the wake of the Scramble for Africa. 7 Historians of the British colonisation of India have long recognized the ways that such men (they were almost always men) documented the ethnography and geography of indigenous areas as part of a form of peaceful empire-building, one which hinged on imperial imaginations and quest to know more about the cultural basis of the indigenous peoples and societies. Such knowledge gathering was firmly part of the British imperial enterprise in Nigeria as well, but an enterprise which, while not entirely peaceful, deviates considerably from the current Nigerian scholarship of violent conquest. 8 Moreover, the factor of indigenous agency in the European-African encounter has also been downplayed. The narrative is often one of the colonized as passive participants in the process, even though in some instances, as was the case with some of the study groups, the people openly welcomed British officials to their domains. This reinforces views by some scholars that local conditions in the peripheries and indigenous collaboration also engendered colonialism. 9 this vein, this study challenges the dominant view by historians of Nigeria which places premium on a few instances of Great Britain's use of military conquest as a blanket ascription for British expansion in Nigeria in general. Employing a distinctive case study approach, and grounded in primary sources, this research addresses the gap inherent in the historiography of the place of treaty-making, knowledge gathering and indigenous agency in 7 K. O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta 1830-1885: An Introduction to the Economic and Political History of Nigeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956); Obaro Ikime, Niger Delta Rivalry: Itsekiri-Urhobo Relations and the European Presence 1884-1936 (London: Longmans, 1969). 8 James Hevia, The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia (Cambridge: University Press, 2015); Tony Ballantyne, 'Colonial Knowledge,' in Sarah Stockwell (Ed), The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008); Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996). 9 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004); R. Robinson and J. Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London: MacMillan, 1961). the process of Great Britain's colonisation of the Itsekiri, the Western Ijo, the Urhobo, the Isoko, and the Ukwuani indigenous groups [see, figure 2] of the Western Lower Niger of Nigeria from 1884-1914. These case study groups of Nigeria are geographically contiguous in the Western Niger Delta, and shared many cultural and political connections, but were also largely politically independent, and somewhat viewed by the British ambiguously. Thus, this study is essentially an enquiry into the encounters and interactions between formal and informal imperial agents of Great Britain and indigenous populations in the case study groups during the Scramble for Africa. Between 1880 and 1914, the whole of West Africa barring Liberia fell under European domination, and existing African polities lost their sovereignty, independence and territories. More importantly, at the end of the process, European political, economic and religious influences permeated and became permanent features in indigenous societies. In the Scramble for Africa, European powers adopted two main methods, namely, conquest and diplomacy. In the classical case of the annexation of Lagos in 1851, Great Britain employed 'Gunboat diplomacy' as a first step but still resorted to a treaty with the King of Lagos to concretise colonisation. This combination of show of force and treatymaking was also the norm in earlier subjugation of other indigenous groups in the Eastern Delta long before the onset of the general Scramble of 1884/85. 11 As M'Baye and Adu Boahen have noted, this earlier phase of European encroachment into Africa generally relied on a combination of treaty-making, military invasions and occupations. 12 Notwithstanding this notion, Nigerian historiography has largely ignored the role of treaty-diplomacy by the British in its expansionary enterprise. The regions under review have also been largely absent from the grand narratives of conquest in the Lower Niger. Lacking the larger ethnic groups to the North and East, the Western Delta of the Niger River has been described as, a shatter region ostensibly on account of its ethnic diversity, political plurality and linguistic and cultural differences of its constituent indigenous groups. 13 By 1914 when Great Britain amalgamated the two Protectorates of southern and northern Nigeria into a single Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, and subsequently created the Warri Province, the five indigenous focus groups of this study, namely the Itsekiri, the Western Ijo, the Urhobo, the Isoko, and the Ukwuani 11 The British annexation of Lagos in 1861 after concluding a treaty with King Dosunmu represents the first acquisition of Nigerian territory by Great Britain. A. G. Hopkins, 'Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain's Annexation of Lagos, 1861,' The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 40, No. 4, 1980. Robert S. Smith, 'The Lagos Consulate, 1851-1861: An Outline,' Journal of African History, Vol. XV, No. 3, 1974. 1 A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on European Colonialism (New York: Diasporic African Press, 2011); M'Baye Gueye and A. Adu Boahen, 'African initiatives and resistance in West Africa, 1880-1914,'UNESCO General History of Africa. VII Africa Under Colonial Domination 1800-1935 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 13 Kalu N. Kalu, State Power, Autarchy, and Political Conquest in Nigerian Federalism (New York: Lexington Books, 2008).Olav Stokke, Nigeria: An Introduction to the Politics, Economy and Social Setting of Modern Nigeria (Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1970). became part of the new Warri Province. 14 Scholarship often lumps these groups in with each other, and with neighbouring conquests, such as in Benin. 15 This dissertation, in contrast, focuses in depth on the region of the Western Lower Niger which hydrologically remains part of a maze of river systems forming the delta of the great Niger River, with its streams and creeks, radiating out of the main Niger at a point some 200 miles below the confluence and about 120 miles from the sea [see figure 2 ]. 16 At this point, the Niger bifurcates into its two principal branches, the one to the east, which empties itself over a shallow bar at Akassa, called the Nun, and the western branch, that joins the Warri stream, below Burutu, entering the Atlantic as the Forcados. 17 This western branch of the Niger, including the Atlantic coastline and its hinterlands defines the Western Lower Niger. The events identified, discussed and analysed in this research are about the various peoples that occupied the Western portion of the Niger Delta, and their relationship with the Europeans, particularly with Great Britain, before and during the Scramble for Africa.
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