This book is necessarily complex. It tries to tell two big stories which unexpectedly became entangled in 1916. The better known one concerns British politics, specifically the upheaval which broke up the Asquith coalition and replaced it with one between Lloyd George and Bonar Law. This began with a stormy Commons debate on 8 November over who might be allowed to buy former German commercial properties in Nigeria. The lesser-known story concerns the readjustment in Nigeria’s external economy after war with Germany cut off the main market for palm kernels, its most important single export, and eliminated a large part of its expatriate commercial community. I have tried to place this in the context of the emergence of modern nationalist politics in Nigeria. Previously, different sets of scholars dealt with these topics separately. Those examining the origins of nationalism in West Africa have paid some attention to the grievances of merchants in Lagos. For students of Nigeria’s involvement in the world economy and the conglomerates which came to dominate its external trade, the issues which lay behind the Nigeria debate are part of the process which led eventually to the creation of Unilever. The debate itself is out of their range of vision. For students of British politics, the debate is an incident in the process which sidelined the Liberal Party and established the Conservatives as the main party of government. Most treat it as little more than a curiosity. Those who look at it more closely, link the debate with the politics of tariff reform, which had been so important before the war, depicting the Conservative leader, Andrew Bonar Law, as the unwilling defender of policies imposed on him by doctrinaire Liberals who dominated the coalition government, and therefore made him vulnerable to attack from the protectionist majority in his own party. This interpretation is misleading. Law, as Colonial Secretary, was advancing the policy of the Nigerian government, not the British. It was a policy he fully supported and had endorsed over the hesitations and reservations of his senior officials. He chose to fight, and risk defeat, because he agreed with the Lagos administration, and with the Colonial Office, that a “Ring” of large British companies must not be allowed to “squeeze the natives over palm kernels and other things”, 1 and that only the entry of foreign capital might prevent that. The big British firms pressing for the exclusion of neutral bidders were not industrialists seeking protection, but merchants looking for markets. While they wanted to stop the colonial government from using the auction to lure competing buyers into Nigeria, they were also free traders who did not want the imperial government to force them to sell only in Great Britain. In November 1916, Sir Edward Carson, the politician who took over their agitation, was not championing tariff reform, but attacking alleged enemy influence on the British government. The connection between the Nigerian and British stories was an accident of history. There was no deep reason why Carson used a Nigerian issue to attack the government. He could have taken up something else. Nevertheless, the opportunity was available, and he took it. If he had chosen a different issue and argued a better case, a majority of Unionists might have voted with him. With Carson that much stronger, and Law repudiated by his followers, the dynamics of the political crisis would have been different, as might have been the outcome. Writing many years later, Lord Crewe, a senior minister close to Asquith, judged that the fall of the coalition was by then inevitable, and that “no compromise which was possible at that moment could have stood the strain of events and … a renewed breach later on would have been more disastrous to the country than the one which actually occurred”. 2 I intend to look at the breach that did occur, and explain why a Nigerian question attracted the attention of British political leaders, and why, in the Debate, Bonar Law’s attack on the firms trumped Carson’s attack on the government.
Historians have to consider the interaction of deep causes and trivial events. Nigeria’s role in the world economy was shaped by global processes of concentration of trade and production, which eventually led to the creation of Unilever. Yet, the dispute over the former German properties broke up the existing combinations and created, at least for a time, a different dynamic, in which small African and European firms would proliferate and flourish. Throughout Europe, the Great War tested and transformed political systems. The men who had begun it in 1914 were forced out by those who promised more vigour and more ruthlessness in its prosecution. What happened in Great Britain at the end of 1916 fitted into that pattern. Carson wanted to bring down Asquith, and thereby change the nature of British politics. However, Law’s aim after winning the debate was not to displace the prime minister, but, rather, to get him to reassert his authority. History seldom follows the plans of those who think they are making it. Small things and minor actors may shape big processes. Readers who follow Pascal in measuring history by the length of Cleopatra’s nose, may delight in learning that the Nigerian issue became available to Carson partly because Thomas Burrowes, the Receiver of the liquidated enemy property in the colony, was on bad terms with the big British firms. He convinced the Governor, Sir Frederick Lugard, that he should break their “Ring” by bringing neutral capital into Nigeria to restore the competition which Germany had previously provided. Lugard in turn persuaded the Colonial Office to use the sale of enemy property as part of this policy. But even at this next stage a key decision was taken by a relatively junior official (George Grindle) who did not refer it to his superiors. As Lugard, the Office, and Bonar Law himself, strongly believed that it was their duty to govern Nigeria for the benefit, as they saw it, of its inhabitants rather than of the metropolis, their decisions might well have been the same in the end. Nevertheless, Burrowes’s feud with the firms and Grindle’s ignorance of West Africa were parts of the process. While historians should not be puckishly bemused by accidents, or play games with counterfactuals, we do have to be aware of possible alternative outcomes and of the entanglement of powerful forces with apparently chance events. A professed historical materialist has recently suggested the kind of history which needs to be written. It sets out “plausible causal stories” which address “many diverse elements” with results that are “contingent, possibly serendipitous”. Parts operate on different time scales with many points of change and unintended consequences. 3 The stories in this book are like that. They involve many kinds of people: British politicians and bureaucrats, colonial administrators, large, mainly Liverpool, firms which dominated Nigeria’s export economy, smaller British and African firms which challenged them, and an emerging Nigerian, mainly Lagosian, political elite. Divisions within these groups were as important as collision and co-operation between them. As these intertwining narratives are complicated, an exposition of the main themes may be helpful.
This book is about the involvement of Nigeria in the world economy in the first age of globalization and its unexpected political consequences in the middle of the Great War. For almost all Nigerians, production for the external market supplemented local production and trade. This “subsistence economy” will not be considered here. Instead, while providing an overview of Nigeria’s foreign trade, I concentrate on the two products of the oil palm which constituted some three quarters of the colony’s exports. Despite coming from the same tree, these were remarkably different. Palm oil was manufactured in Nigeria by peasant families. It was consumed locally as well as exported. The bulk of exports came from the area to the east of the lower Niger, which had no other cash crops. Almost all went to Great Britain, mainly for soap making. This was a chemical process with glycerine as a by-product, which was of little concern until the war. Palm kernels, by contrast, had few local uses. Their collection was left to women and children. In the Lagos hinterland to the west of the Niger, men were moving away from palm oil production into other cash crops such as cocoa, but women still collected kernels for export. These went to Germany as raw material for the manufacture of hard palm kernel oil. The solid residue was used for cattle-cake. The oil went to the Netherlands for making margarine, the first industrially produced foodstuff. Since no major chemical change was involved, glycerine was not a by-product.
Large British and German firms dominated the Nigerian export economy. Lagos, the main port for kernels, was linked to Hamburg rather than Liverpool. Its main firms were German, with the British distinctly in second place. African merchants had largely moved out of produce export, but remained important in the city’s commercial life. In addition to the businessmen, the Nigerian capital had an educated elite of lawyers, doctors, churchmen, and journalists. Many of these opposed the policies of Sir Frederick Lugard, the first governor-general of the newly amalgamated Nigeria. They saw him as authoritarian, racially prejudiced, and too eager to transform Yoruba societies which he did not understand and held in contempt. He linked progress with taxation. Spokesmen for the elite warned that imposing a rate for piped water, once works then under construction were completed, was likely to be strongly opposed.
The elimination of the German firms after the outbreak of the war was one of several factors that would destabilize Nigeria’s export economy. The extension of the railway to the north had just opened up a fresh zone of exports, especially of the new crop of groundnuts. Another railway was beginning to push into the eastern interior, redirecting long-established trade routes from the rivers to the new Port Harcourt. The German Woermann Linie had provided almost half of the tonnage serving Nigeria. Now the British firm Elder Dempster had an effective monopoly. Shipping would be a major constraint throughout the war. On land, three of the largest British firms, the Niger Company, Miller Brothers, and the African Association had a pooling agreement. This also involved a territorial division. The Niger Company operated in the north and along the thin strip of the lower Niger. The other two concentrated on the coast of the former Oil Rivers in the east. Negotiations for amalgamation had broken down in the summer of 1914, but were likely to resume. John Holt, the fourth major British firm, was the only one to do business in all parts of Nigeria, competing with the German firms in Lagos, with the Niger Company in the north, and with the coastal firms in the east. In Lagos there were many other British firms, the most important being MacIver, which was controlled by the soap makers Lever Brothers, and was rapidly expanding.
At first the war brought the British companies together. They agreed to continue buying produce, but at agreed low prices. This arrangement came to be called the “Combine”. In the capital it was known as the “Lagos Ring”. It linked the coastal companies with John Holt and the Lagos firms, which were beginning to follow the railway into the north, where they would compete with the Niger Company. Despite this, the negotiations for an amalgamation of the pool firms restarted, and by the autumn of 1916 seemed about to succeed. As the big firms tried to settle their relations, the growing differential between low Lagos and high Liverpool prices drew many small companies and individuals, both European and African, into the produce trade. This threatened the large firms, which pressed Elder Dempster to deny them shipping.
The colonial government worried that a combination of British firms now controlled Nigerian trade. While Lugard despised the educated African elite of Lagos, he was a strong free-trader who wanted to restore the competition which the German companies had provided. While these had been closed down, and the German merchants had been deported in November 1914, their properties had not been disposed of. In 1916, British policy changed. Throughout the empire, enemy commercial sites would now be sold. Lugard intended to use this opportunity to entice neutral (American and Dutch) capital into Nigeria. Although on bad terms with Lugard, whose administrative ability it questioned, the Colonial Office endorsed his policy. Especially in West Africa, which was not an area of European settlement, the C.O. saw itself as the protector of the interests of the colonized. In 1916, it engaged in several struggles with the firms and with other government departments, such as the newly formed Ministry of Munitions, which it considered overly deferential to the wishes of the Combine. It fought to ensure that small firms outside got a share of tonnage. After initial support, it quickly came to oppose the “glycerine conditions”, which required firms shipping oils and seeds from the colonies to non-U.K. destinations to sell glycerine to the Ministry of Munitions at a fraction of the world market price. The C.O. believed that this would stop Nigerian kernels from going to the U.S.A. just as America was turning to vegetable oils for margarine production. While the Office eventually managed to secure modifications in the conditions, this was too late. The United States would be supplied with copra from the Pacific without the conditions, while Nigerian oil and kernels would go almost entirely to the U.K.
At first, Great Britain lacked the machinery to crush hard materials such as kernels and copra. Crushers wanted an assurance that steps would be taken to ensure that the trade would not revert to Germany after the war. In 1915, the C.O. set up a committee of officials, experts, and businessmen. This recommended an export duty which would be remitted if the kernels were crushed in the U.K. Traders were poorly represented on this committee. Lukewarm about the duty, they more or less persuaded the Office to put it on hold during the war. The Dutch margarine manufacturers, Jurgens and Van Den Bergh, who were favoured by the British government and were increasing their majority share of the British market, also opposed the duty. As it could be presented as a protectionist measure which would harm indigenous producers, it provoked a vigorous parliamentary debate in August 1916. This gave kernels, and Nigeria, a certain political profile in Great Britain.
A second controversy soon followed, when the big firms realized that neutrals would be allowed to bid for the German properties in Nigeria. This united them in opposition to the government’s policy, but also created new divisions between them. Miller Bros. and the African Association wanted to form a new company to buy and run, or close down, the sites. They assured the Niger Company that together the Pool firms would dominate this company. The Niger Company was not convinced. It feared that it would bring its eastern partners closer to John Holt and the other Lagos firms. It would not agree to joint action before the fusion of the Pool firms was completed. While direct evidence is lacking, the chronology strongly suggests that this disagreement scuppered the amalgamation, which was about to be announced. When the others proposed an all-British company to take over the sites, the Niger Company openly dissociated itself from the proposal. Unity was possible only on insisting on excluding neutrals from the auction, which would be held in London. Although the small firms also agreed with this, their support was overshadowed by their opposition to the Ring over the allocation of shipping. Some of the Lagos merchants had already issued a manifesto, and sent a representative, Samuel Duncan, to press their case in England. Working with the small British firms which were also trying to break into the produce trade, and developing connections with the press, especially with the Daily Express, Duncan and his allies successfully painted a picture of a colony whose trade was being throttled by the combination of the shipping company and a ring of seven firms.
The nature of the Combine’s agitation changed when Sir Edward Carson took it over. He was looking for a cause over which he might attack the government not just for inefficiency but for susceptibility to enemy influence. The war had created the possibility of restructuring British politics. Peacetime issues and alignments lost relevance. The cohesion of the Conservative Party was threatened in the coalition which it had entered in May 1915. Asquith relegated Bonar Law to a secondary position, and dealt with his ministers individually. Therefore, Law had the title, but not the substance of party leadership. Ineffective in the War Committee, he was valued only for the control he might exercise over backbenchers. By the autumn of 1916 the overriding question was whether Great Britain would be defeated in the war. Lloyd George, the War Secretary, believed that his generals’ strategy was wrong. He tried, but would soon fail, to impose his views on them. Carson, the one significant oppositional politician, attacked instead the civilian leadership. In barring aliens from the Nigerian sales he found an issue far from the Western Front. It also engaged Law’s responsibility as the departmental minister. Carson intended to show that Unionist MPs looked to him rather than to Law for leadership. Law accepted the challenge and counterattacked. He was fully committed to the policy which Lugard had proposed, and had, indeed, overridden some of the reservations of his senior officials. He recognized that, in contrast to the August debate, no protectionist issue was involved. He would show that Carson was not a patriotic defender of the national interest in wartime, but the mouthpiece of a ring of greedy capitalists out to restrict competition and exploit the inhabitants of a colony for their own selfish ends.
By winning the debate, Law re-established his leadership of the Conservative Party, but it had been a close run thing. To keep his position he had now to be seen to use it to ensure a more vigorous and effective conduct of the war. As Asquith was unresponsive, Law turned to Carson and to Lloyd George, who was coming to terms with the failure of his attack on the generals. While they still saw him as a danger at the War Office, they came to believe that he was the man who might galvanize the civilian war effort. As Asquith still considered Law and Carson incompetent, and had learned to ignore Lloyd George’s threats of resignation, he did not take the “triumvirate” seriously until it was too late. However, this book will not go into the details of the political endgame in Great Britain.
Late 1916 was also a time of political crisis in Lagos. In retrospect this can be seen as an early stage of the nationalist movement which challenged and ultimately supplanted colonial rule in Nigeria. The merchants’ grievances might have been part of this, but they were not. The concerns of a small cosmopolitan élite were not those of ordinary Lagosians, who were moved by questions of chieftaincy, land rights, and taxation. Moreover, the smaller firms did not complain that indigenous producers were suffering from low prices. Instead, they wanted for themselves a larger share of the profits which the gap between Lagos and Liverpool was generating. While Duncan lobbied in England, riots against the now imposed water rate briefly erupted in Lagos. After these were easily suppressed, the government withdrew its recognition of the Ọba and most of the chiefs. Despite this, the “traditional” leaders retained the loyalty of most Lagosians, while the lawyers and doctors whose agitation had led to ...