Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain's Annexation of Lagos, 1861

The Journal of Economic History

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 1980, Pages 777-798

  Hopkins, Antony G ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84974273881     PISSN: 00220507     EISSN: 14716372     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S002205070010018X     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. Peter J. Cain and Antony G. Hopkins, “The Political Economy of British Expansion Overseas, 1750-1914,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 33 (Nov. 1980), 474–81.
2. Peter Cain, “Capitalism, War and Internationalism in the Thought of Richard Cobden,” British Journal of International Studies, 5 (1979), 229–47.
3. Robert J. Gavin, “Palmerston's Policy Towards East and West Africa, 1830-1865“ (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge Univ., 1958).
4. Crawford B. MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1962);
5. idem, ed., Property (Oxford, 1978);
6. John G.A. Pocock, “Virtue and Commerce in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 3 (Summer 1972), 119-34;
7. idem, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975);
8. Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests (Princeton, 1977);
9. Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics (Cambridge, 1978).
10. Lewis Morgan, quoted in Victor G, Kieman, “Private Property in History,” in Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and Edward P. Thompson, eds., Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–1800 (Cambridge, 1976), p. 376.
11. McCulloch, quoted in S. Ambirajan, Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India (Cambridge, 1978), p. 221.
12. See especially Robert S. Smith, The Lagos Consulate, 1851–1861 (London, 1978).
13. (Sir) Richard F. Burton, Wanderings in West Africa (London, 1863), pp. 216–17.
14. See especially Saburi O. Biobaku, The Egba and Their Neighbours (Oxford, 1957);
15. Gavin, “Palmerston's Policy”; Colin W. Newbury, The Western Slave Coast and Its Rulers (Oxford, 1961);
16. Jacob F. Ade Ajayi, “The British Occupation of Lagos, 1851-61: A Critical Review,” Nigeria Magazine, 69 (Aug. 1961), 96-105;
17. idem, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 1841–1891 (London, 1965);
18. Jean Herskovits Kopytoff, A Preface to Modern Nigeria: The ‘Sierra Leonians” in Yoruba, 1830–1890 (Madison, 1965);
19. Earl H. Phillips, “The Church Missionary Society, the Imperial Factor, and Yoruba Politics, 1842-1873” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Southern California, 1966)
20. Jane D. Matheson, “Lagoon Relations in the Era of Kosoko, 1845-1862: A Study of African Reaction to European Intervention” (Ph.D. diss., Boston Univ., 1974);
21. Martin R.S. Lynn, “John Beecroft and West Africa, 1829-54” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of London, 1978); and Smith, Lagos Consulate.
22. Smith, Lagos Consulate Quoted in Richard B. Sheridan, “ ‘Sweet Malefactor’: The Social Costs of Slavery and Sugar in Jamaica and Cuba, 1807-54,” Economic History Review, 29 (May 1976), 255.
23. There is now a voluminous literature on the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. For a recent survey see Howard Temperley, “Capitalism, Slavery and Ideology,” Past and Present, 75 (1977), 94–118.
24. Prince Metternich, no less. Quoted in Jack Gallagher, “Fowell Buxton and the New African Policy, 1838-1842,” Cambridge Historical Journal, 10 (1950), 50.
25. The major decisions are outlined in A. E. W. Park, “The Cession of Territory and Private Land Rights: A Reconsideration of the Tijani Case,” Nigerian Law Journal, 1 (Nov. 1964), 38–49.
26. Colin W. Newbury, “Credit and Debt in Early Nineteenth-Century West African Trade,” Journal of African History, 13 (1972), 92.
27. Newbury, The Western Slave Coast, p. 57.
28. Gavin, “Palmerston's Policy,” pp. 224–31.
29. Minute by Wylde, 14 Aug. 1860, on Hand to Russell, 8 July 1860, F.O. 84/1115. The reasons for the delay are discussed in Gavin, “Palmerston's Policy,” pp. 243–46
30. Smith, The Lagos Consulate, pp. 120–23.
31. The Treaty is reproduced in Smith, The Lagos Consulate, pp. 140–41.
32. See T. Olawale Elias, Nigerian Land Law and Custom (London, 1951), pp. 6-28;
33. G. B. A. Coker, Family Property among the Yorubas (London, 1958), pp. 187–97, and Park, “The Cession of Territory”
34. A sketch of Davies's career is given in Kopytoff, A Preface to Modern Nigeria, pp. 286–87.
35. Antony G. Hopkins, “Peter Thomas (1873-1947): un commerçant nigréian à l’épreuve d’une économie coloniale en crise,” in Charles-Andre Julien et al., eds., Les Africains, Vol. 9 (Paris, 1977), p. 310.
36. Antony G. Hopkins, “Innovation in a Colonial Context: African Origins of the Nigerian Cocoa-farming Industry, 1880-1920,” in Clive Dewey and Antony G. Hopkins, eds., The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India (London, 1978), pp. 83–96.
37. Gavin “Palmerston's Policy,” p. 40.
38. Buxton to Normanby, 20 April 1839, C.O. 2/21; quoted in Gallagher, “Fowell Buxton,” p. 45.
39. John J. Eddy, Britain and the Australian Colonies, 1818–1831 (Oxford, 1969), p. 218.
40. Keith Sinclair, The Origins of the Maori Wars (Wellington, 1957), p. 41. See also Peter Adams, Fatal Necessity: British Intervention in New Zealand, 1830–1847 (Auckland, 1977), chaps. 6–7.
41. John S. Galbraith, Reluctant Empire: British Policy on the South African Frontier, 1834–1854 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), pp. 84–94, 110, 118, 191, 212, 224–25, 237, 242–45, 271.
42. Peter Burroughs, The Canadian Crisis and British Colonial Policy, 1828–1841 (London, 1972), pp. 11, 33–34, 63, 103.
43. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959);
44. William J. Barber, British Economic Thought and India, 1600-1858: A Study in the History of Development Economics (Oxford, 1975), pp. 148–49, 166, 201;
45. Ambirajan, Classical Political Economy, pp. 144–45, 153, 159, 171–72. ‘ “Modernization” was tempered, however, by the skill of the recipients in adapting policy to their own ends, and by the inclination of officials to prefer political stability to economic change.
46. Chnstine S. Nicholls, The Swahili Coast: Politics; Diplomacy and Trade on the East African Littoral, 1798–1856 (London, 1971), pp. 251–52, 284–86, 347. However, Say’Id's death in 1856 was followed by political instability, and led to British intervention in 1859, partly to safeguard the “life and property” of British Indian traders.
47. Harry S. Ferns, “Latin America and Industrial Capitalism: The First Phase,” Sociological Review Monograph, 11 (1967), 5-22;
48. Richard Graham, Britain and the Onset of Modernization in Brazil, 1850–1914 (Cambridge, 1968).
49. Sketched in Antony G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), chap. 4.