Sanitation and street layout in early colonial Lagos: British and indigenous conceptions, 1851-1900

Planning Perspectives

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 247-269

  Bigon, Liora ^a  

^a NONE   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

PLANNING HISTORY; SANITATION; URBAN DESIGN;

AFRICA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; LAGOS [LAGOS (STT)]; LAGOS [NIGERIA]; NIGERIA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; WEST AFRICA; WORLD;

EID: 22144442470     PISSN: 02665433     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02665430500130175     Document Type: Review

References (120)

1. These studies emphasize Lugard's Township Ordinance of 1917, the creation of Lagos Executive and Development Board of 1928, and the slum clearance scheme of the mid-1950s. See, for example: R. K. Home, Town Planning, Segregation and Indirect Rule in Colonial Nigeria. Third World Planning Review 5 (1983) 165-75;
2. R. K. Home, Town Planning and Garden Cities in the British Colonial Empire 1910-1940. Planning Perspectives 5 (1990) 23-37;
3. P. Marris, Family and Social Change in an African City: A Study of Rehousing in Lagos. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961.
4. A. L. Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria. London: University of London Press, 1968, pp. 107, 144-5;
5. R. J. Harrison Church, West Africa: A Study of the Environment and of Man's Use of It. London: Longman, 1980 [1960], pp. 426, 430.
6. F. J. D. Lugard was the first High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria (1900-6) and Governor General of Northern and Southern Nigeria (1912-19). He fostered the 'indirect rule' doctrine, of colonial development of overseas territories with minimal interference in indigenous customs.
7. S. I. Abumere, Nigeria, in James D. Traver (ed.) Urbanization in Africa, A Handbook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994, pp. 265-7.
8. The following can serve as an example: 'Prior to this time, I had never been to Lagos but often marvelled at the exciting stories narrated either by my teachers or fellow pupils or read in books about the capital. To me, Lagos must be another heaven in...', C. S. Ola, One Child, One Woman: Memoirs of a Nigerian Professor. Sussex: The Book Guild, 1998, p. 9.
9. N. Nzegwa, Bypassing New York in Re-Presenting Eko, in A. D. King (ed.) Re-Presenting the City. London: McMillan Press, 1996, p. 133.
10. R. Robinson and J. Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism. London: Macmillan, 1967, pp. 379, 395.
11. F. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. Edinburgh and London: William Wood Black & Sons, 1922, p. 144.
12. A. L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997, p. 69.
13. 'Native towns' in other anglophone territories were criticized similarly by the colonizers. See, for example: F. Hasan, Indigenous Cooperation and the Birth of a Colonial City: Calcutta, c. 1698-1750. Modern Asian Studies 26 (1992) 65;
14. M. W. Swanson, The Sanitation Syndrome: Bubonic Plague and Urban Native Policy in the Cape Colony, 1900-1909. Journal of African History 18 (1977) 387.
15. 'Street morphology' means, in this context, the form and infrastructure of streets, including their course, shape and overall appearance, as were dictated by contemporary politics and policies. The planning and the consequent layout of the streets, as shall be seen, were equally carried out and maintained by the colonial authorities and by the Lagosian population.
16. R. K. Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities. London: Spon, 1997, pp. 2, 141.
17. Public Record Office, CO 150/4, Lagos Government Gazettes: Proclamation 29 December 1900, no. 58, 1900.
18. P. C. Wren, Beau Geste. London: John Murray, 1952 [1924], p. 10.
19. Two, almost arbitrary, examples are: T. J. Hutchinson, Impressions of Western Africa. London: Longman, 1858, p. 36;
20. P. Allison, Life in the White Man's Grave: A Pictorial Record of the British in West Africa. London: Penguin Books, 1988.
21. P. D. Curtin, Disease and Empire: The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 1.
22. A possible explanation is that if one remained healthy for ten or twenty years in the tropics, the economic rewards could be impressive, particularly since many high-ranking officers held multiple colonial posts at the same time. S. H. Brown, Colonialism on the Cheap: A Tale of Two English Army Surgeons in Lagos. The International Journal of African Historical Studies 27 (1994) 587.
23. P. D. Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe's Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 62.
24. Public Record Office, CO 147/164, Lagos, Original Correspondence, W. MacGregor, Lecture on Malaria, 28 November 1902, p.4.
25. A. F. Mockler-Ferryman, British West Africa. London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1900, p. 112.
26. I b i d.
27. These moves are attributed by recent historians to the seventeenth century; but dates in Lagos historiography are rather arbitrary if earlier than the 1780s, when documentation of European traders starts to supply more accurate dates. Yorubaland is situated in the south-western part of today's Nigeria. A.L. Mabogunje, op. cit. [2], pp. 238-9.
28. W. H. Clarke, Travels and Explorations in Yorubaland, 1854-1858, edited by J. A. Atanda. Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1972, pp. 235-6;
29. R. S. Smith (ed.), Memoirs of Giambattista Scala, Consul of His Italian Majesty in Lagos in Guinea, 1862, translated by Brenda Packman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p.13.
30. I b i d.
31. A. B. Aderibigbe, Early History of Lagos to About 1850, in A. B. Aderibigbe (ed.), Lagos: The Development of an African City. London: Longman, 1975, pp. 19-22.
32. I b i d.
33. T. J. Hutchinson, op. cit. [15], p. 75;
34. R. S. Smith (ed.), op. cit. [22], p. 13, respectively.
35. Compare, for example, A. F. Mockler-Ferryman's quotation (op. cit. [20], c. 1900) with a 1946 planning report that states that the 'higgledy-piggledy mass of Yoruba slum-houses' was 'a disgrace to Nigeria'.
36. Lagos Town Planning Commission, Report with Recommendation on the Planning and Development of Greater Lagos. Lagos: Government Printer, 1946, p. 17.
37. The French assimilationist approach to local infrastructures - its champions erased the latter in favour of star-like squares and grid-iron street layout, as in Algiers and Beirut - was never characteristic of the British colonial regime. In Lagos' environs, the introduction of European grid-iron order was possible only in small-scaled pre-planned settlements. It was, however, apparent in Ebute-Metta and the later reclaimed land of Ikoyi in the eastern part of the island, which were sparsely populated by fishermen and their families in few small pre-colonial villages.
38. The Mirror (February 25, 1888).
39. The Anglo-African (September 5, 1863).
40. J. A. O. Payne, Table of Principal Events in Yoruba History. Lagos: Andrew M. Thomas, 1893, p. 11;
41. F. B. Archer, Lagos Official Hand Book, 1897-1898. London: Waterlow and Sons, 1898, p. 17.
42. For example, A. G. Hopkins, Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain's Annexation of Lagos, 1861. Journal of Economic History 40 (1980) 777-798.
43. Public Record Office, CO 148/1: Lagos Acts, 1862-1874; 17 February 1869 and 3 August 1871.
44. Public Record Office, CO 148/1: Lagos Acts, 1862-1874: 8 August 1864: An Ordinance to Provide for the Laying of the Town of Lagos in Broad Streets, Roads, and Highways.
45. J. A. O. Payne, op. cit. [31], p. 8.
46. A. Moloney, Notes on Yoruba and the Colony and Protectorate of Lagos, West Africa. London: no pub., 1890, no pp.
47. The Anglo African (July 15, 1865);
48. Nigerian Pioneer (February 18, 1918);
49. and O. C. Nwanunobi, Incendiarism and Other Fires in Nineteenth Century Lagos (1863-88). Africa 60 (1990) 112-13, respectively.
50. The Lagos Times and Gold Coast Colony Adviser (March 28, 1883).
51. Public Record Office, CO 148/1: Lagos Acts, 1862-1874: 7 January 1865: An Ordinance for a Better Preservation of the Town of Lagos from Fire.
52. I b i d.
53. A. L. Mabogunje, op. cit. [2], p. 119.
54. Public Record Office, CO 148/1: Lagos Acts, 1862-1874: 2 July 1872.
55. B. S. A. Yeoh, Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 156-7.
56. P. H. Baker, Urbanization and Political Change: The Politics of Lagos, 1917-1967. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, pp. 22-3.
57. This is true although the construction of colonial ports in late nineteenth century was a most elaborated and consuming undertaking, in terms of engineering and economic investment. K. I. McPherson et al., Engineering and Empire: The Making of the Modern Indian Ocean Ports, in S. Chandra (ed.) The Indian Ocean. New Delhi: Sage, 1987, pp. 254-301.
58. See also R. K. Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities. London: Spon, 1997, ch. 3.
59. A. Vaughan-Richards, Le Nigeria, in Jacques Soulillou (ed.) Rives colonials. Paris: Orstom, 1993, pp. 271-2.
60. K. I. McPherson, A Wilderness of Marshes: The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai, 1843-1893. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 123, 265, 267.
61. F. B. Archer, Lagos Official Hand Book, 1897-1898. London: Waterlow and Sons, 1898, p. 17.
62. Lagos Weekly Record (February 3, 1900).
63. D. Prochaska, Fantasia of the pbotothèque: French Postcard Views of Colonial Senegal. African Arts 24 (1991) 44.
64. Public Record Office, CO/50/1, Lagos: Government Gazettes, 28 February 1882.
65. See, for example: F. G. Hopkins and H. B. Butler, Proposed Rules with Regard to Building, etc., in Lagos. Lagos: Government Printer, 1910, pp. 1-3;
66. F. G. Hopkins and H. B. Butler, Regulations with Regard to Buildings, etc., in Lagos. Lagos: Government Printer, 1911, pp. 1-2.
67. I. F. Nicolson, The Administration of Nigeria, 1900-1960: Men, Methods and Myths. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, p. 54.
68. I b i d.
69. The Mirror (Saturday, February 25, 1888).
70. Nigerian Pioneer (Friday, July 17, 1914).
71. The repeated requests by the Saros for more street lights, for instance, can testify that these requests were not met. See: Lagos Weekly Record (December 26, 1891); (October 21, 1893); (May 13, 1894); (July 27, 1895); (August 3, 1895); and so on.
72. As remarked by T. S. Gale, Lagos: the History of British Colonial Neglect of Traditional African Cities. African Urban Studies 5 (1979) 13.
73. As remarked by I. F. Nicolson, op. cit. [53], p. 64.
74. This terminology in this context was borrowed from R. K. Home, op. cit. [45], p. 65.
75. O. Adejuyigbe, Evolution of the Boundaries of Lagos. Nigeria Magazine, July-September (1969) 480-1.
76. P. H. Baker, Urbanization and Political Change: The Politics of Lagos, 1917-1967. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974, p. 33.
77. S. H. Brown, Public Health in US and West African Cities, 1870-1900, The Historian 56 (1994) 686.
78. Ibid., p. 697.
79. G. E. Cherry, Cities and Plans: The Shaping of Urban Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Edward Arnold, 1988, pp. 6, 16, 22-7, 55-6;
80. P. Rabinow, French Modern. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT, 1989, pp. 36-9.
81. B. Ladd, Urban Planning and Civic Order in Germany, 1860-1914. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1990, ch. 2;
82. B. Ladd, City Planning and Social Reform in Cologne, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, 1866-1914. PhD of Yale University, 1986, ch. 2.
83. A. L. Conklin, op. cit. [9], p. 68.
84. Johnson himself, a repatriate who settled in Abeokuta, one of the main Yoruba cities north of Lagos, stated: 'Educated natives of Yoruba are well acquainted with the history of England and with that of Rome and Greece, but of the history of their own country they know nothing whatever! This reproach it is one of the author's objects to remove.' Samuel Johnson, The History of the Yorubas: from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1921, p. vii.
85. Ibid., p. 92; note the attribute 'primitive' used by Johnson, which reflects the high hopes he had for himself, as an educated and progressive repatriate in the Victorian sense, and for Africa that he was going to 'civilise'.
86. S.O. Izomoh, Nigerian Traditional Architecture. Benin: Aka & Brothers Press, 1994, p. 182.
87. Ibid., p. 187.
88. O. Chadwick, Memorandum on the Sanitation of Lagos. London: Waterlow & Sons, 1897, p. 1.
89. Osbert Chadwick - the son of Sir Edwin Chadwick, who wrote several metropolitan reports on sanitary matters towards the middle of the nineteenth century - was appointed in 1896 a consultant on Lagos. T. S. Gale, op. cit. [58] 12, 15.
90. O. Chadwick, ibid, pp. 6, 11, 16.
91. For more details about the colonial administrators' disdain for technical branches of government, including town planning, see: R. K. Home, 'Town Planning, Segregation', op. cit. [1], p. 168;
92. and B. Niculescu, Colonial Planning: A Comparative Stud., London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958, pp. 38-40.
93. For the fierce opposition that would arise within few years, in 1908, concerning Lagos's Water Rate Levy, see: R. Okonkwo, Protest Movements in Lagos 1908-1930. Lewiston: Mellen Press, 1995, pp. 9-18.
94. O. Chadwick, ibid., pp. pp. 3-4.
95. S. H. Brown, op. cit [63] 339 (quoted in Colonial Reports, Lagos 1899).
96. I. F. Nicolson, op. cit. [53], p. 60.
97. See, for more: Papers Relating to the Investigation of Malaria and other tropical Diseases and the Establishment of Schools of Tropical Medicine (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1903), pp. 18-21 (enclosure no. 2 by J. W. W Stephens and S. R. Christophers);
98. P. D. Curtin, Medical Knowledge and Urban Planning in Tropical Africa. American Historical Review 90 (1985) 594-613.
99. For MacGregor's practical and propagandistic sanitary activities, see: R. B. Joyce, Sir William MacGregor. London: Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 235-7;
100. A. L. Mabogunje, op. cit. [2], p. 259.
101. See, for example, Public Record Office, CO 147/164: Lecture on Malaria by Sir William MacGregor, pp. 6-7, 9.
102. A. Macmillan, The Red Book of West Africa. London: Frank Cass, 1968 [1920], p. 61.
103. I. F. Nicolson, op. cit. [53], p. 101.
104. M. Perham, Lugard: The Years of Authority, 1898-1945. London: Collins, 1956, vol. 2, p. 420.
105. I. F. Nicolson, op. cit. [53], p. 63.
106. Rhodes House, Oxford, [Lugard] Mss. Brit. Emp. S.99 1, 1901-16: Revenues and expenditure, ff 238-49, 1913.
107. F. D. Lugard, Lugard and the Amalgamation of Nigeria: A documentary Record, a reprint of the: Report by Sir F. D. Lugard on the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria and Administration, 1912-19; compiled and introduced by A. H. M. Kirk-Greene. London: Frank Cass and Company, 1968, p. 91.
108. Ibid., p. 90. Lagos became the headquarters of the protectorate of Southern Nigeria in 1906.
109. Rhodes House, Oxford [Lugard] Mss. Brit. Emp. S.99 1, 1901-16: Papers (1914-16) about the removal of the capital of the Northern Province from Zungeru to Kaduna. Kaduna never achieved this distinction during colonial times. 1966 found Nigeria with one Federal and four Regional Capitals, and in 1967 twelve State Capitals were established in their stead.
110. A. J. Christopher, Urbanization and National Capitals in Africa, in James Traver (ed.) Urbanization in Africa: A Handbook. Westport, London: Greenwood Press, 1994, pp. 410, 418.
111. Ibid., p. 415. Though after the First World War the French, having taken control over part of Cameroon, placed their administrative centre back in Douala, they later moved it to Yaunde in the hinterland, which they considered more pleasant.
112. See R. F. Betts, The Establishment of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal, 1914. Africa, 2 (1971) 143-53.
113. N. Nzegwu, Bypassing New York in Re-Presenting Eko: Production of Space in a Nigerian City', in A. D. King (ed.) Re-Presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the 21st Century Metropolis. London: Macmillan Press, 1996, pp. 133-4.
114. N. Elleh, African Architecture: Evolution and Transformation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 318.
115. According to Gale, the most pressing reason for the transfer was not political, but a desire to escape from congested Lagos. T. S. Gale, op. cit. [58], p. 11.
116. For formal residential segregation in late nineteenth-century Ibadan, India, Algiers and Rabat, respectively, see: B. A. Chokor, External European Influences and Indigenous Social Values in Urban Development and Planning in the Third World: The Case of Ibadan, Nigeria. Planning Perspectives 8 (1993) 292;
117. A. D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment. London, Henley, Boston: Routledge, 1976, pp. 79, 97;
118. Z. Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers Under French Rule. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997;
119. J. L. Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
120. F. D. Lugard, op. cit. [85], p. 90.