Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression

2. The Depression and the Colonial Encounter in Northern Nigeria

46 2 w The Depression and the Colonial Encounter in Northern Nigeria The crises set off by the state’s pursuit of revenue at the Northern Nigerian grass roots, as well as the unintended consequences of economic recovery policies, undermined the administrative system of indirect rule in a region that scholars regard as its cradle and laboratory. This weakening of indirect rule was particularly harsh on its most important legitimizing institution—chiefs and their traditional legitimacy. The economic crisis and British responses to it transformed the exercise of colonial power in Northern Nigeria. The increasing impatience of British colonial interlocutors in the maintenance of solvency and economic order made indirect rule more direct. In charting a course to economic recovery, British officials undermined—rhetorically and practically— the main thrust of the indirect rule system, which was central to British claims to legitimacy and power: respect for indigenous political institutions. The maintenance of economic austerity and the aggressive pursuit of revenue came with a social cost, too: it generated enormous tension between local rulers—whose powers were reinforced to enhance their new role in the state’s emergency revenue schemes—and their subjects. These tensions sometimes erupted into violence and, as a result, colonial authorities also found themselves trying to maintain social order. The chiefs’ alleged misuse of the new powers given to them for revenue generation purposes compounded the state’s problem. While strengthening the hands of local rulers and seemingly reinforcing indirect rule, the economic recovery regime actually dealt a blow to that system of rule, and to the power and prestige of chiefs. That outcome is similar to what James Genova argues for French West Africa during the Depression . The transition from “traditional chieftaincy” to an “administrative,” revenue-generating, and fiscally obligated chieftaincy led to revolts against The Depression and the Colonial Encounter in Northern Nigeria w 47 the chiefs’ colonially sanctioned exactions as well as to their imprisonment, public humiliation, and replacement by colonial authorities.1 In Northern Nigeria chiefs who refused to wholeheartedly commit themselves to the new revenue generation campaign were subjected to unprecedented official scrutiny and punitive measures. Conversely, those who demonstrated loyalty to the government’s emergency revenue drive lost legitimacy in the eyes of their suffering subjects. Both cases undermined what the British had taken for granted as a necessary condition for indirect rule: the loyalty and traditional legitimacy of chiefs. The implementation of the revenue generation component of the economic recovery policy also caused enormous social and economic dislocation. It displaced African commodity traders and caused widespread famines, food shortages, and jurisdictional squabbles among chiefs. Additionally, it elicited antitax protests and innovative tax-evading techniques like strategic nomadic mobility, intraregional migrations, and the hiding of children from tax assessors . These volatile outcomes resulted from the inability of the Northern Nigerian Colonial Northern Nigeria 48 w฀ Colonial Meltdown colonial authorities to continue to extract surpluses and profits from peasants without disrupting their lives and violating their already limited freedoms. The resulting rural exaction generated tense encounters in Northern Nigeria’s colonial grass roots. In the end, the myth of British colonial control and paternal economic altruism became the main casualty. The desperate and ad hoc nature of British colonial actions in this period underscored this new reality. situating northern nigeria’s vu lnerabi li ty Northern Nigeria’s geographical position rendered it vulnerable to the effects of the Depression. As an inland colony with no direct access to the coast, Northern Nigeria sustained a minimal, informal, and loosely unregulated inThe colonial administrative hierarchy in Northern Nigeria The Depression and the Colonial Encounter in Northern Nigeria w 49 ternal trade. Apart from tin mining on the Jos Plateau, the colony’s economy depended on the exportation of agricultural products, which required transportation to the coast for shipment to Europe. When tin prices collapsed in early 1930, leading to the closure of most of the mines on the Jos Plateau and the retrenchment of most of the mine labor, the region relied even more heavily on its agriculture trade. This process of disruption came to a head in 1931, when Nigeria joined the international tin agreement—designed to stabilize prices by restricting the country’s output of tin.2 This agreement led to further mine closures, retrenchments, and immense income loss for many Northern Nigerian districts that subsisted on labor migration or food exports to the mines. The Depression exacerbated dependence on...