Road to Amalgamation.

The death of Mungo Park near Bussa in 1806 to the end of the century, there had been continuing interest in Nigeria on the part of British explorers, anti-slavery activists, missionaries and traders.

In 1821 the British government sponsors an expedition south through the Sahara to reach the kingdom of Bornu. Its members became the first Europeans to reach Lake Chad, in 1823. One of the group, Hugh Clapperton, explored further west through Kano and the Hausa territory to reach Sokoto. Clapperton was only back in England for a few months, in 1825, before he sets off again for the Nigerian coast in Lagos.
 
On this expedition, with his servant Richard Lander, he travels on trade routes, north from the coast to Kano and then west again to Sokoto. Here Clapperton died. But Lander makes his way back to London, where he is commissioned by the government to explore the lower reaches of the Niger.

Accompanied in 1830 by his brother John, Lander makes his way north from the coast near Lagos to reach the great river at Bussa - the furthest point of Mungo Park's journey downstream. With considerable difficulty the brothers make a canoe trip downstream, among hostile Ibo tribesmen, to reach the sea at the Niger delta. This region has long been familiar to European traders, but its link to the interior is now charted. All seems set for serious trade.


SS Alburkah: 1832-1834

After Lander's second return to England a company is formed by a group of Liverpool merchants, including Macgregor Laird, to trade on the lower Niger. Laird was also a pioneer in the shipping industry. For the present purpose, an expedition to the Niger, he designed an iron paddle-steamer, the 55-tonAlburkah.

Laird himself led the expedition, with Richard Lander as his expert guide.


The Alburkahsteams south from Milford Haven in July 1832 with forty-eight on board. She reached the mouth of the Niger three months later, entering history as the first ocean-going iron ship.

After making her way up one of the many streams of the Niger delta, theAlburkah progresses upstream on the main river as far as Lokoja, the junction with the Benue. The expedition demonstrates that the Niger offers a highway into the continent for ocean vessels. And the performance of the iron steamer is a triumph. But medicine is not yet as far advanced as technology. When the Alburkah returned to Liverpool, in 1834, only nine of the original crew of forty-eight were alive. They include a much weakened Macgregor Laird.


Trade and anti-slavery: 1841-1900

The next British expedition to the Niger was almost equally disastrous in terms of loss of life. Four ships under naval command are sent out in 1841, with instructions to steam up the Niger and make treaties with local kings to prevent the slave trade. The enterprise was abandoned when 48 of the 145 Europeans in the crews die of fever.

Malaria is the cause of the trouble, but major progress is made when a doctor, William Baikie, led an expedition up the Niger in 1854. He administered quinine to his men and suffered no loss of life. Extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree, quinine has long been used in medicine. But its proven efficacy against malaria is a turning point in the European penetration of Africa.


The British anti-slavery policy in the region involved boosting the trade in palm oil (a valuable product which gives the name Oil Rivers to the Niger delta) to replace the dependence on income from the slave trade. It transpired later that this is somewhat counter-productive, causing the upriver chieftains to acquire more slaves to meet the increased demand for palm oil. But it is nevertheless the philanthropic principle behind much of the effort to set up trading stations.

At the same time the British navy patroled the coast to liberate captives from slave ships of other nations and to settle them atFreetown in Sierra Leone.


From 1849 the British government accepted a more direct involvement. A consul, based in Fernando Po, is appointed to take responsibility for the Bights of Biafra and Benin. He undertook direct negotiations with the king of Lagos, the principal port from which slaves are shipped. When these break down, in 1851, Lagos is attacked and captured by a British force.

Another member of the Lagos royal family is placed on the throne, after guaranteeing to put an end to the slave trade and to human sacrifice (a feature of this region). When he and his successor fail to fulfil these terms, Lagos is annexed in 1861 as a British colony.
 
During the remainder of the century the consolidation of British trade and British political control went hand in hand. In 1879 George Goldie persuaded the British trading enterprises on the Niger to merge their interests in a single United African Company, later granted a charter as the Royal Niger Company.

In 1893 the delta region was organized as the Niger Coast Protectorate. In 1897 the campaign against unacceptable local practices reached a climax in Benin - notorious by this time both for slave trading and for human sacrifice. The members of a British delegation to the oba of Benin are massacred in this year. In the reprisals Benin City is partly burnt by British troops.
 
The difficulty of administering the vast and complex region of Nigeria persuades the government that the upriver territories, thus far entrusted to the Royal Niger Company, also need to be brought under central control.

In 1900 the company's charter was revoked. Britain assumed direct responsibility for the region from the coast to Sokoto and Bornu in the north. Given the existing degree of British involvement, this entire area has been readily accepted at the Berlin conference in 1884 as falling to Britain in the scramble for Africa - though in the late 1890s there remains dangerous tension between Britain and France, the colonial power in neighbouringDahomey, over drawing Nigeria's western boundary.









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