What Britain Did to Nigeria

Most accounts of Britain's rule over Nigeria were written by British officials who presented colonialism as a civilising mission to rid Africans of barbaric superstition and corrupt tribal leadership; to educate them and convert them to Christianity. Yet--strangely for a colonised people openly described this way by their oppressors--many Nigerians today still view their country's time in the Empire through rose-tinted glasses. Max Siollun offers a bold rethink: a clear-eyed, unromanticised history of colonial Nigeria. He argues compellingly that colonialism was not a system with benevolent intentions. It may have ended practices such as slavery and human sacrifice, but those who resisted were violently repressed; Britain's disruption and forceful remoulding of longstanding customs permanently altered the belief systems, culture and internal politics of indigenous Nigerian communities. The aftershocks of this British interference have been felt for decades since independence, as the country continues to suffer from economic and political turmoil that Britain has laid at the doorstep of Nigeria's own leaders. This book is a definitive, head-on confrontation with Nigeria's experience under British rule, deftly showing how the country was forever changed by colonialism-perhaps cataclysmically.