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1886 Royal Niger Company Chief Agreement

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1886 Royal Niger Company Chief Agreement

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Royal Niger Company, commissioned by the British government to administer and develop the Niger River delta and surrounding areas, standard form signed by multiple African rulers, 1886.

We, the undersigned Chiefs of _______, with the view to the bettering of our country and people, do this day cede to the Royal Niger Company, forever, the whole of our territory extending _______.

We pledge ourselves not to enter into any war with other tribes without the sanction of the said Royal Niger Company. . . . The said Royal Niger Company bind themselves not to interfere with any of the native laws or customs of the country, consistently with the maintenance of order and good government.

The said Royal Niger Company agree to pay native owners of land a reasonable amount for any portion they may require. . . . and to pay the said Chiefs measures native value.

The chiefs . . . affixed their marks of their own free will and consent. . . . Done in triplicate at _______, this _______ day of _______, 188__.

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The mixture of global events in southeastern Nigeria in the late 1920s gave rise to women’s dissatisfaction and ultimate action. A worldwide economic depression caused a reduction in the price of palm oil (a chief export of the Nigerian economy), rising unemployment, and increased school fees and prices for goods. The never-ending British demand for forced labor, increased taxation on the local population, corruption by local administrators, trade restrictions, and newly assessed levies and other fees on women, without corresponding benefits, gave rise to frustration and hostility among women’s groups. Having no place within the colonial structure to air their grievances, they took to the roads, utilizing precolonial practices and political structures to demand a hearing before a colonial administration that ignored them…

In 1928, amidst colonial promises to improve roads, schools, and court buildings and to end forced labor practices, taxes were collectedbamong the Ibibio, Ibo, and Delta peoples of southeastern Nigeria. In 1929 when it was realized that tax collection was to be continuous and that women and their personal property were to be counted and taxed, violent protest erupted…

On November 23, 1929, after months of preparations and discussion women mobilized against dehumanizing and humiliating behavior enacted upon them by colonial representatives. Women protested by blockading the road from Ikot Abasi Township to Aba. They knocked down telegraph polls and severed wires. Women leaders met with local administrators but when these talks failed, women attacked the Essene Native Court, releasing prisoners detained there.  Calling upon the traditional practice of women’s protest, all women in the local area participated.  Before long, rumors of British taxation of women and protests against it had spread to surrounding towns and countryside.

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1900 Yaa Asantewaa, Ghana's Warrior Queen

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1900 Yaa Asantewaa, Ghana's Warrior Queen

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Yaa Asantewa, Ashanti queen mother, speech to chiefs, West Africa, 1900:

"Now I have seen that some of you fear to go forward and fight for our King. If it were in the brave days of old, chiefs would not sit down to see their King taken away without

firing a shot. No White man could have dared to speak to chiefs of the Ashanti in the way the British governor spoke to you chiefs this morning. Is it true that the bravery of the Ashanti is no more? I cannot believe it. Yea, it cannot be! I must say this; if you the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women will. I shall call upon my fellow women. We will fight the White men. We will fight until the last of us falls on the battlefields."

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German military officer, account of the 1905 Maji Maji Rebellion in German East Africa, German military weekly newspaper, 1906:

"The chiefs spread it among their people that a spirit, living in the form of a snake,

had given a magic medicine to a medicine man. The medicine guaranteed a good harvest, so that in future people would no more need to perform wage labor for foreigners in order to obtain accustomed luxuries. The medicine would also give invulnerability, acting in such a way that enemy bullets would fall from their targets like raindrops from a greased body. It would strengthen women and children for the flight customary in wartime, with the associated hardships and privations, and protect them from being seized by the victorious attackers, who were accustomed to taking women and children with them as war prizes. The medicine consisted of water, maize, and sorghum grains. The water was applied by pouring it over the head and by drinking."

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Mojimba, African chief, describing a battle in 1877 on the Congo River against British and African mercenaries, as told to a German Catholic missionary in 1907:

"And still those bangs went on; the long sticks spat fire, pieces of iron whistled around us, fell into the water with a hissing sound, and our brothers continued to fall. We ran into our village and they ran after us. We fled into the forest and flung ourselves on the ground.

When we returned that evening our eyes beheld fearful things: our brothers, dead, bleeding, our village plundered and burned, and the river full of dead bodies.

You call us wicked men, but you White men are much more wicked! You think because you have guns you can take away our land and our possessions. You have sickness in your heads, for this is not justice."