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Rotgut and Revenue: Fiscal Aspects of the Liquor Trade in Southern Nigeria, 1890–1919*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Ayodeji Olukoju
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Extract

Once recommended by A.G. Hopkins as a ‘profitable subject of future research’, the European liquor trade in West Africa has since then received considerable attention from scholars. While Lynn Pan examined the region in a broad survey of the African liquor trade, other scholars have focused on more specific aspects of the topic. To be sure, much of the literature has concentrated on the ideological controversy between the defenders and opponents of the European liquor traffic. Other aspects of the subject, however, such as the significance of the liquor traffic in the Anglo-German commercial rivalry in West Africa liquor prohibition as colonial policy in largely-Muslim territories, and the fiscal importance of liquor – both spirits and beer – in the colonial and post-independence states, have been examined in various studies.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , July 1997 , pp. 66 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1997

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References

Notes

1 Hopkins, A.G., An Economic History of West Africa (London 1973) 178, note 15.Google Scholar

2 Pan, Lynn, Alcohol in Colonial Africa (Helsinki 1975).Google Scholar

3 For the Gold Coast colony, see Dumett, Raymond, ‘The Social Impact of the European Liquor Trade on the Akan of Ghana (Gold Coast and Asante), 1875–1910’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History V (1974) 69–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Studies on Nigeria include: Ayandele, E.A., The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria, 1842–1914: A Political and Social Analysis (London 1979) 307–327;Google ScholarTanumo, T.N., The Evolution of the Nigerian State: The Southern Phase, 1898–1914 (Essex 1982) 289–303Google Scholar; and Olorunfemi, A., ‘The Liquor Traffic Dilemma in British West Africa: The Southern Nigerian Example, 1895–1918’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 17/2 (1984) 229–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Olorunfemi, ‘The Liquor Traffic Dilemma’, 233–235, makes a brief reference to this theme.

5 Olukoju, Ayodeji, ‘Prohibition and Paternalism: The State and the Clandestine Liquor Traffic in Northern Nigeria, 1898–1918’, International Journal of African Historical Studies 24/2 (1991) 349–368CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, ‘Race and Access to Liquor: Prohibition as Colonial Policy in Northern Nigeria, 1919–45’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 24/2 (1996) 218–243, provide to date the only studies of the liquor traffic in a Muslim territory.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Examples are: Tamuno, The Evolution of the Nigerian State, 293–303, passim; Olorunfemi, ‘The Liquor Traffic Dilemma’, 236–238; Olukoju, Ayodeji, ‘The Lugardian Concept of “Class Taxation” in Nigeria, c. 1900–1916’, OYE: Ogun Journal of Arts I (1988) 111–123Google Scholar, especially, 117–118; idem, ‘Prohibition and Paternalism’, 363; and for a neighbouring country, see Diduk, Susan, ‘European Alcohol, History and the State in Cameroon’, African Studies Revieio 34/1 (1993) 1–42.Google Scholar

7 For the ‘civilizing mission’, see Lugard, F.D, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh 1922)Google Scholar; and Ifemesia, C.C., ‘The “Civilizing Mission” of 1841’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 2/3 (December 1962) 291–310.Google Scholar

8 Ayandele, Missionary Impact, 308.

9 Nigeria Handbook (Lagos 1919) 28.Google Scholar

10 Nigeria, National Archives, Ibadan (hereafter, NAI) Chief/Colonial Secretary's Office (hereafter CSO) 1/1/51 274 of 30 August 1905.

11 Egerton to Crewe, 23 May 1910, NAI CSO 1/19/29 311.

12 Olorunfemi, ‘The Liquor Traffic Dilemma’, 230.

13 Hopkins, A.G., ‘An Economic History of Lagos, 1880–1914’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1964) 66.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 31.

15 NAI CE/C2 Cd.4906 Southern Nigeria: Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Liquor Trade in Southern Nigeria, October 1909, Part II: Minutes of Evidence, 57: Testimony of Matthew Brown, Chairman, Chamber of Commerce, Lagos.

16 Ibid., 59.

17 The subject has been studied at length in Ayandele, Missionary Impact, Tamuno, The Evolution of the Nigerian State, and Olorunfemi, ‘The Liquor Traffic Dilemma’.

18 For Goldie's liquor policy, see Ayandele, Missionary Impact, Flint, J.E., Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria (London 1960) 194, 302; and Olukoju, ‘Prohibition and Paternalism’, 363–364.Google Scholar

19 Lugard to Long, 8 April 1916, NAI CSO 1/34/6 Confidential.

20 The following account is based upon Ayandele, Missionary Impact, 307–327.

21 Ibid., 134.

22 Earl Henry Grey, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had stated in 1852 that ‘the surest test for the soundness of measures for the improvement of an uncivilised people is that they should be self-supporting’; cited in Hopkins, Economic. History of West Africa, 190. A definitive study of the financial administration of colonial Nigeria is Lawal, Adebayo A., ‘A History of the Financial Administration of Nigeria, 1900–1945’ (Ph.D. thesis. University of Lagos, 1981).Google Scholar

23 Hopkins, ‘Economic History of Lagos’, 137.

24 Ibid., 139.

25 Ibid.

26 Thorburn to Lyttelton, 9 September 1905, NAI CSO 1/1/51 289, encl.: Report on the Blue Book, 1904, by C. Birtwistle.

27 Ibid.

28 Hopkins, ‘Economic History of Lagos’, 154.

29 Nigeria Handbook (Lagos 1919) 23.Google Scholar

30 Burrowes to Colonial Secretary, Lagos, 21 February 1911, NAI CSO 1/19/37 enc. 2 in Despatch 98.

31 Egerton to Crewe, 5 May 1910, NAI CSO 1/19/29 257.

32 NAI CE/C2 Report of Inquiry, 18. The same conclusion was reached for Ghana in Dumett, ‘Social Impact’. See, also, Charles Ambler, ‘Alcohol and Disorder in Precolonial Africa’, Boston University, African Studies Center, Working Paper, No. 126, 1987.

33 See, Ayandele, Missionary Impact, 323.

34 Olorunfemi, ‘The Liquor Traffic Dilemma’, 240.

35 Egerton to Harcourt, 21 February 1911, NAI CSO 1/19/37 98, encl. II: Burrowes to Colonial Secretary, Lagos, Memo, dated 13 February 1911. The change from Sykes' hydrometer to Tralles' Alcoholometer is not explained in available sources. It seems reasonable to suggest, however, that this could have been necessitated by demand for greater precision in measuring the strength of imported spirits. It might also have been done in compliance with international conventions, that is, to achieve uniformity of standards with other nations.

36 NAI CSO 1/19/56/85 of 20 February 1913; CSO 1/32/6/205 of 4 March 1914; CSO 1/32/22/163 of 26 February 1916; Desp. 121 of 15 February 1917; and CSO 1/32/45/ 344 of 19 April 1919.

37 NAI CSO 1/19/37 98 of 21 February 1911, Burrowes' Memo.

38 See, Olukoju, Ayodeji, ‘Elder Dempster and the Shipping Trade of Nigeria during the First World War’, Journal of African History 33/2 (1992) 255–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Hopkins, ‘Economic History of Lagos’, 154.

40 Lugard to Law, 30 August 1916, NAI CSO 1/34/7 Confidential.

41 Lugard to Harcourt, 25 May 1914, NAI CSO 1/32/8 459.

42 Ibid.

43 On the imperial policy towards industrialization (or, perhaps de-industrialization) in the colonies, see Johnson, Marion, ‘Cotton Imperialism in West Africa’, African Affairs 73/291 (April 1974) 178–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Lugard to Law, 8 April 1916, NAI CSO 1/34/6 Confidential. Lugard's taxation policy has been studied in Olukoju, ‘Class Taxation’.

45 Ayandele, Missionary Impact, 324.

46 For details, see Osuntokun, Akinjide, Nigeria in the First World War (London 1979) 100–138;Google Scholar and Atanda, J.A., ‘The Iseyin-Okeiho Rising of 1916: An Example of Socio-Political Conflict in Colonial Nigeria’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4/4 (June 1969) 497–514.Google Scholar

47 Lawal, ‘Financial Administration’, 115.

48 Osuntokun, Nigeria in the First World War, 36.

49 Egerton to Crewe, 9 July 1908, NAI CSO 1/19/12 435.

50 Lugard to Law, 30 August 1916, NAI CSO 1/34/7 Confidential.

51 Olukoju, Ayodeji, ‘Anatomy of Business-Government Relations: Fiscal Policy and Mercantile Pressure Group Activity in Nigeria, 1916–1933”, African Studies Review 38/1 (1995) 23–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

52 NAI Cd. 468 (1919), Nigeria: Report on the Amalgamation of Northern and Southern Nigeria and Administration, 1912–1919, Part III. General Progress: Trade and Industry, 31.

53 Scott to Churchill, 16 September 1921, NA1 CSO 1/32/62 71, end. 1: Lagos Branch of the National Congress for British West Africa to Colonial Secretary, Lagos, 12 September 1921.

54 Clifford to Churchill, 11 February 1922, NAI CSO 1/34/18 Confidential.

55 Cmd 1600, Report of the Committee on Trade and Taxation for British West Africa, March 1922, 41.

56 Clifford to Churchill, 6 February 1922, NAI CSO 1/32/64 95: Draft Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure, 1922–1923.

57 Nigeria Handbook (Lagos 1919) 150; Annual Report Customs Department 1923, 3, for statistics.Google Scholar

58 NAI CSO 1/32/64 95 of 6 February 1922, Draft Estimates.

59 Clifford to Devonshire, 7 February 1923, NAI CSO 1/32/69 140: Draft Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure, 1923–1924.

60 Clifford to Churchill, 6 February 1922, NAI CSO 1/32/64 95.

61 For perceptive analyses of the colonial economy, see, Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa, chapters 5–7; and Falola, Toyin ed., Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development? (London 1987).Google Scholar