Islam and Colonial Rule in Lagos

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-80
Author(s):  
Olakunle A. Lawal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria ◽  
Urban Settlement ◽  
Islam And Politics ◽  
British Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
Process Of Urbanization

IntroductionThis essay provides an explanation of the dynamics of the interactionbetween Islam and politics by placing emphasis on the role played byMuslims in the collision of traditionalism and British rule as colonialismtook root in Lagos. The focus is on the development of a political schismwithin the nascent Muslim community of metropolitan Lagos at the startof the twentieth century up until the end of the 1940s. It highlights therole of Islam in an emerging urban settlement experiencing rapid transformationfrom a purely rural and traditional center into a colonial urbancenter. The essay is located within the broader issues of urban change andtransition in twentieth-century tropical Africa. Three major developments(viz: the central mosque crisis, the Eleko affair, and the Oluwa land case)are used as the vehicles through which the objectives of the essay areachieved.The introduction of Islam into Lagos has been studied by T. G. O.Gbadamosi as part of the history of Islam in southwestern Nigeria. Thisepic study does not pay specific attention to Lagos, devoted as it is to thegrowth of Islam in a far-flung territory like the whole of modem southwesternNigeria. His contribution to a collection of essays on the historyof Lagos curiously leaves out Islam’s phenomenal impact on Lagosianpolitics during the first half of the twentieth century. In an attempt to fillthis gap, Hakeem Danmole’s essay also stops short of appreciating the fundamentallink between the process of urbanization, symbolized in this caseby colonial rule, and the vanguard role played by Muslims in the inevitableclash of tradition and colonial rule in Lagos between 1900 and 1950.

The Shaping of a Nation: Palestinians in the Last Century of Ottoman Rule

1994 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 75-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel S. Migdal ◽  
Baruch Kimmerling
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
British Mandate ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
History Of

No period was more decisive in the modern history of Palestine than the British Mandate, which lasted from the end of World War I until 1948. Not only did British rule establish the political boundaries of Palestine, the new realities forced both Jews and Arabs in the country to redefine their social boundaries and self-identity. But the cataclysmic events that continued through 1948, with the creation of Israel and what Arabs called al-Nakba (the catastrophe of dispersal and exile), took shape in the wake of key changes stretching over the last century of Ottoman rule. What was to be Palestine after World War I became increasingly more integrated territorially during the nineteenth century. And Arab society in the last century of Ottoman rule underwent critical changes that paved the way for the emergence of a Palestinian people in the twentieth century.

scholarly journals “Imperium in Imperio”: The Corporation, Mining, and Governance in British Southeast Asia, 1900–1930

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
DAVID BAILLARGEON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
State Model ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Corporate Ventures

This article examines the history of mining in British Southeast Asia during the early twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the histories of the Burma Corporation and the Duff Development Company, which were located in British-occupied Burma and Malaya, respectively. It argues that despite being represented as “rogue” corporate ventures in areas under “indirect” colonial rule, the contrasting fates of each company—one successful, one not—reveal how foreign-owned businesses operating in the empire became increasingly beholden to British colonial state regulations during this period, marking a shift in policy from the “company-state” model that operated in prior centuries. The histories of these two firms ultimately demonstrate the continued significance of business in the making of empire during the late colonial period, bridging the divide between the age of company rule and the turn toward state-sponsored “development” that would occur in the mid-twentieth century.

scholarly journals Self-Help Criminality as Resistance?: Currency Counterfeiting in Colonial Nigeria

2000 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-407
Author(s):  
AYODEJI OLUKOJU
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Self Help ◽  
The Poor ◽  
British Rule ◽  
European Colonialism

This essay examines the counterfeiting and uttering of British Imperial coinage in interwar Nigeria, and the response of the colonial state. In particular, it establishes a connection between criminality and resistance to European colonialism in Africa. In this regard, it contextualizes the preponderant involvement in the counterfeiting saga of the Ijebu, a subgroup of the Yoruba nationality in southwestern Nigeria. Though other considerations were involved, the preponderance of the Ijebu in making what was called “Ijebu money” illustrates how self-help criminality was both a means of accumulation and a veritable form of resistance to colonial rule. Following their military defeat in 1892 and their subsequent alienation from British rule, this criminal activity represented resistance by other means. The point must be stressed, however, that not all Ijebu were counterfeiters, and all counterfeiters were not Ijebu, and that the counterfeiters were no “heroic criminals”, who shared their loot with the poor.

In Search of One Word's Meaning: Zaman in Early Twentieth-Century Kano

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 95-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Christelow
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Oral Discourse ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Do So

When Caliph Attahiru of Sokoto chose flight over submission to the British in March 1903, it was left to the blind and aging Waziri, Muhammad al-Bukhari, to provide those who remained behind with an explanation of how they could remain good Muslims while accepting infidel rule. Citing a text of the caliphate's founder, Shehu ʿUthman Dan Fodio, he argued that one could befriend the British with the tongue, without befriending them with the heart. It remained for others to develop the vocabulary that their tongues would need for this task.A particularly intriguing item in the vocabulary that emerged during the turbulent first decade of colonial rule was a new usage of zaman(time, era) that occurs in the records of the Emir of Kano's judicial council in such terms as hukm al-zaman (rule of the era) and ʿumur al-zaman (things of the era). It is worth noting that the judicial council did not keep written records before being instructed to do so by British Resident C.L. Temple in 1909, so the records might be seen as preserving what was essentially oral discourse—expressions of the tongue. These terms occur uniquely in relation to legal matters in which the British had intervened. Understanding them can shed new light on the religious and political adaptation of northern Nigerian Muslim leaders to life under British rule. To explore their meaning requires a threefold process of examining various usages and understandings of zaman in non-legal sources; describing how the judicial council used the word; and then analyzing how this usage may have been related to any of a number of influences, ranging from British officials to West African Islamic scholars to Western-educated North Africans passing through the region.

‘A Conglomeration of […] often Conflicting Ideas’: Resolving the ‘Native Question’ in Java and the Outer Islands in the Dutch East Indies, 1900-1925

Itinerario ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 160-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joost Coté
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Colonial Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
Dutch Colonial

This paper examines Dutch colonial discourse as it was developing at the beginning of the twentieth century. I argue that colonial circumstances were changing at the beginning of the twentieth century in many aspects - economic, political, social - and that these changes required new policy and administrative responses. I take as examples of these changing colonial conditions and responses, two episodes in the history of ‘the late colonial state’, which I argue are both representative of and formative in shaping, colonial policy in the last decades of Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia.

The Testamentary Waqf as an Instrument of Elite Consolidation in Early Twentieth-Century Massawa (Eritrea)

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 78-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Miran ◽  
Aharon Layish
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Red Sea ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Real Estate Assets ◽  
Annotated Translation

This study examines the testamentary waqf of Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Ghūl (1853-1919), a prominent merchant and communal leader in the cosmopolitan Red Sea port town of Massawa in Eritrea during the period of Italian colonial rule (1885-1941). We provide an annotated translation of the document and a detailed socio-legal analysis of its features. We argue that the testamentary waqf was a vehicle for ensuring the family’s integration in Eritrea in perpetuity. We also consider how the testamentary waqf was used as a strategy to sustain the al-Ghūl family as a corporate unit by preserving the integrity of its real estate assets and by upholding the family’s internal hierarchy of authority. Finally, by endowing properties to mosques and wells, the testator-founder sought to establish the family’s role as a patron of the Muslim community.


Hanbang Healing for the World: The Eastern Medicine Renaissance in 1930s Japan-ruled Korea

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Flowers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Western Medicine ◽  
Unusual Case ◽  
Effective Resistance ◽  
Colonial Medicine ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Medical Practices ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Colonial

Abstract The story of the 1930s Eastern Medicine Renaissance in Korea is an unusual case in the history of colonial medicine. Responding to Japanese colonial rule that began in the first decade of the twentieth century, a few thousand Korean physicians of Eastern medicine complied with the new registration requirements, but they turned that compliance into effective resistance. By organising conferences, publishing journals and books, and through the new medium of advertising, the physicians refuted Japanese official arguments of the superiority of Western medicine. The Koreans flipped on its head the Japanese rhetorical argument of Koreans and Japanese as one body (with the Japanese as ‘the head’) and persuaded the Japanese that they could learn from Korean medical practices. Flipping the Japanese trope of Korean weakness upside down, Koreans thereby used their version of Eastern medicine to demonstrate Korean strength.

Muslim Separatism in Post-Revolt India: A British Game of Divide et Impera?

2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-124
Author(s):  
Belkacem Belmekki
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
British India ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
The Many

The emergence of a separatist tendency among the majority of the Muslim community in British India in the wake of the happenings of 1857 has been a bone of contention among scholars concerned with the history of the Indian Subcontinent. In this regard, various theories and explanations have been put forward. While some claim that this separatism was in fact a ploy used by the elite of the Muslim community to safeguard their interests, others consider the fear of the overwhelming Hindu majority as a bona fide factor that triggered alienation with the latter, and still others evoke the many religious cum cultural divergences that exist between the Muslims and Hindus. Nevertheless, the present article seeks to set out another element of equal importance, namely British rule, whose role was to a large extent instrumental in polarizing the Indian society, dividing it into two main separate communities, Muslim and Hindu.

District Officers in Decline: The Erosion of British Authority in the Bombay Countryside, 1919 to 1947

1982 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 493-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Epstein
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Service ◽  
Steel Frame ◽  
The Political ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
The Core ◽  
British Rule ◽  
British Policy ◽  
History Of

The paradox of the authoritarian rule of the Indian Raj at the heart of Britain's liberal empire was one that ran continuously through the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century imperialism. Both as the unpaid arsenal of Eastern expansion and defence, and as the essential stop-gap to Britain's multilateral pattern of trade, India was the necessary if incongruous adjunct of Liberal England, supporting the doctrines of progress at home on the basis of the autocratic control of its British-born hierophants over the numberless ‘contented masses’ of the Indian countryside. The resulting contrast between the increasingly self-governing white dominions, and the Indian maverick upholding in chains the very fabric of the empire, was also reflected in the political thinking of the motherland itself, by way of the stresses and contradictions which the conditions of the Raj's existence served to create within the liberal framework of the Victorian intellectual world. At the core of the Victorian liberal empire stood the strictly paternalistic government of the Raj in India; at the centre of the ‘benevolent despotism’ that British rule in the subcontinent adopted stood the steel frame of the Indian Civil Service, ‘much more of a government corporation than of a purely civil service’ and the creator as much as the executor of British policy there.

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