An analysis of how traditional power structures in Nigeria have survived the forces of colonialism and the modernization processes of postcolonial regimes. This book analyzes how indigenous political power structures in Nigeria survived both the constricting forces of colonialism and the modernization programs of postcolonial regimes. With twenty detailed case studies on colonial andpostcolonial Nigerian history, the complex interactions between chieftaincy structures and the rapidly shifting sociopolitical and economic conditions of the twentieth century become evident. Drawing on the interactions between the state and chieftaincy, this study goes beyond earlier Africanist scholarship that attributes the resilience of these indigenous structures to their enduring normative and utilitarian qualities. Linked to externally-derived forces, and legitimated by neotraditional themes, chieftaincy structures were distorted by the indirect rule system, transformed by competing communal claims, and legitimated a dominant ethno-regional power configuration. Olufemi Vaughan is Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of History, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Winner of the 2001 Cecil B. Currey Book-length Award from the Association ofThird World Studies.

This important work, originally published in 1963, examines the social bases, strategies and structures of Nigerian political parties during the final phase of British colonial rule. As Professor Sklar explains in a new introduction for this edition, the defining characteristics of political parties today have been shaped by the intellectual origins of the independence era parties. This seminal volume is an essential tool for understanding the political and social reality of contemporary Nigeria.

The Untold Story of a Nigerian Royal Family presents the story of the Urhobo ruling family of Okpe Kingdom and its political power in Nigeria. It traces the origins and history of the Okpe people and their social and political organization. Topics include: - The Okpe revolution of the sixteenth century and the assassination of Esezi I - British Colonial rule of the kingdom, late 1800s-1960 - Civil war between the Okpe and Olomu of Itsekiri and the palm oil trade rivalry - Urhobo-Itsekiri collaboration in the slave trade, and slavery in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Okpe. - The political role played by traditional chiefs - Feminists who campaigned for women's rights to participate in the council of elders - The effort by HRH Esezi II to promote the democratic system of government within the Okpe council. - The story of the uncrowned king of Okpe Kingdom, including a brief history of the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70 - The reign of HRH Orhoro I. - The story of the author's candidacy for Okpe King after the death of Orhoro I - Nigeria oil policy - Muslim-Christian strife and human rights abuses

Periodic cycles and waves are characteristics of global capitalism. The contraction in world trade during the Great Depression of the 1930s stands out as the strongest adverse shock to international trade in modern history. This book uses the Nigerian cocoa industry’s encounter with the world economy of the 1930s to knit together a gamut of themes ranging from the social formations of production to the forces of demand and supply, and price fluctuations and stabilization, as well as the protest movements against monopoly capitalism. It examines the Nigerian cocoa industry within the international economy of the inter-war years, in order to demonstrate how the dynamics of the international capitalism of the 1930s such as the Great Depression and the fluctuations in commodity prices affected the cocoa industry and the peasant cocoa producers in colonial Nigeria. It provides an interesting case study of the impact of international capitalism on the periphery economy, as well as the consequences of economic dependence on the external market. This book will be an indispensable resource for historians, economists, anthropologists and the general reader with an interest in the areas of international political economy, depression economics, world commodity trade, and agriculture and its related industries.

The book traces the history of writing about Nigeria since the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the rise of nationalist historiography and the leading themes. The second half of the twentieth century saw the publication of massive amounts of literature on Nigeria by Nigerian and non-Nigerian historians. This volume reflects on that literature, focusing on those works by Nigerians in thecontext of the rise and decline of African nationalist historiography. Given the diminishing share in the global output of literature on Africa by African historians, it has become crucial to reintroduce Africans into historicalwriting about Africa. As the authors attempt here to rescue older voices, they also rehabilitate a stale historiography by revisiting the issues, ideas, and moments that produced it. This revivalism also challenges Nigerian historians of the twenty-first century to study the nation in new ways, to comprehend its modernity, and to frame a new set of questions on Nigeria's future and globalization. In spite of current problems in Nigeria and its universities, that historical scholarship on Nigeria (and by extension, Africa) has come of age is indisputable. From a country that struggled for Western academic recognition in the 1950s to one that by the 1980s had emerged as one of the most studied countries in Africa, Nigeria is not only one of the early birthplaces of modern African history, but has also produced members of the first generation of African historians whose contributions to the development and expansion of modern African history is undeniable. Like their counterparts working on other parts of the world, these scholars have been sensitive to the need to explore virtually all aspects of Nigerian history. The book highlights the careers of some of Nigeria's notable historians of the first and second generation. Toyin Falola is Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Saheed Aderinto is Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University.

In the wake of the Great Depression, economic recovery and nutritional improvement in Britain simultaneously occurred with their decline in British Africa. While histories of science, medicine and British Empire have provided fertile analytical ground for decades, the field of nutrition science has received comparatively little attention. Widespread malnutrition between the World Wars called into question the role of the British state in preserving the welfare of both its citizens and its subjects, especially women, given their role in feeding their families. International organizations such as the League of Nations, empire- wide projects such as nutrition surveys conducted by the Committee for Nutrition in the Colonial Empire (CNCE), sub-imperial networks of medical and teaching professionals, and individuals on-the-spot wove a dense web of ideas on nutrition. Women, especially of the working class, bore the brunt of the struggle to access nutritious food as a wave of interest in the new science of nutrition swept the globe between the wars, with imperial Britain in the lead. The British state buoyed the economic slump of the Great Depression in the metropole by importing more colonial goods more cheaply, feeding metropolitan Brits on the back of the colonial empire, particularly in Africa. This book stands apart for the way it places nutrition science in both Britain and Africa under a single analytic lens of economics, gender and empire, contributing to research on British and African history, British Empire, women’s history and the history of science, medicine and health.

First published in 1984. This work is an attempt to look into the structure of local government and the working of local administration in Nigeria in four broad eras. The periods considered are the pre-colonial, the colonial, the self- governing and the military era.