Colonial Nigeria
Explore Nigeria’s colonial era (c. 1861–1960), from the annexation of Lagos and the Royal Niger Company to the 1914 amalgamation and the road to independence. This category examines British administration, missionary education, commerce and railways, taxation and labor, cultural change and urban life, and the rise of nationalist movements, including women’s protests, unions, and political parties. Discover biographies, key events, and documents that reveal resistance, collaboration, and everyday experiences across Nigeria’s regions.
The Making of Nigeria Under British Rule
Nigeria’s emergence as a single political entity was a long historical process shaped by commerce, diplomacy, rivalry, and military expansion. Long before Britain ruled...
Colonial Rule in Nigeria, Economic Extraction, Political Exclusion, and the Rise of Nationalism
British colonial rule in the territory that became Nigeria developed through conquest, treaties, and administrative consolidation. In 1914, the British government amalgamated the Northern...
The 1929 Women’s War That Shook Colonial Nigeria
In late 1929, women across Eastern Nigeria launched one of the most formidable mass protests in West African colonial history. Commonly known as the...
Sir George Goldie and the Corporate Conquest of the Niger
Sir George Dashwood Taubman Goldie, 1846 to 1925, stands among the most influential figures in the making of colonial Nigeria. He was neither an...
The £865,000 Transfer That Ended Corporate Rule in the Niger Territories
At the close of the nineteenth century, control of vast stretches of the Niger basin shifted from a private company to the British Crown....
The Birth of the NUT and the Nigerian Youth Movement in the 1930s
Colonial Lagos in the early 1930s was a city of classrooms, newspapers, courtrooms, and crowded wharves. It was also a city of ambition and...
Sofolahan Josiah Sawyerr and the Saro World That Shaped Colonial Lagos
Sofolahan Josiah Sawyerr is a name that appears most often in Lagos family remembrance and community recollection, especially in conversations about the Saro presence...
British Conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate, 1897 to 1903
The Protectorate of Northern Nigeria emerged from calculated imperial expansion, not administrative routine. Between 1897 and 1903, British commercial ambition, geopolitical rivalry, and military...
The Aro Expedition, Britain’s Pacification War That Broke Arochukwu’s Power in Eastern Nigeria
At the turn of the twentieth century, Arochukwu was more than a settlement in the forested interior of southeastern Nigeria. It was the centre...
From Lagos 1912 to National Reform, The Birth of Nigeria’s Civil Service Union Tradition
On Monday, 19 August 1912, a group of African civil servants gathered in Lagos to form what became known as the Southern Nigeria Civil...