Category: History – Civilization
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Benin Expedition of 1897 was the punitive action of the British against Benin following the massacre of unwelcome advancing party led by Acting Consul J.R. Phillips to the Benin palace one month before. Although the killing of Phillips and his men by Benin chiefs was the direct cause of the Benin Expedition, it is recognized mostly…
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J.B. Wood was the 19th Century Anglican Missionary to Nigeria and author of works on Yoruba grammar and literature whose History of Lagos up to 1861 was the first roundly chronicled story of the Nigerian coastal state. J.B. Wood, born in Yorkshire was posted as a missionary of the Church Mission Society to Abeokuta in…
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Eyo Honesty II was the king of Creek Town, one of the Southern Nigerian towns of the Efik people who presently constitute the chief population of Calabar. Eyo is remembered in history for his modernizing effort, and for being an instrument by which British rule became enacted in the Niger Delta. His name, Honesty had…
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Royal Niger Company was the entity which served essentially as precursor for the Nigerian state; the mercantile establishment which evolved from British trading firms granted royal charters in West Africa by Queen Elizabeth, whose activities, commencing in 1662 was under the name “Company of Royal Adventures.” In 1662, this name was changed to the “Royal…
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Charles Phillips was the 19th Century Head of the Church Missionary Society in Ondo, whose parents were Yoruba Sierra Leonean returnee. At Ijaiye Charles’s father, known by same name, was a church catechist. Charles Phillip, born in 1847 to Egba parents is remembered for his effort in negotiating a truce as an emissary of the…
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William Dappa Pepple was the king of Bonny, between 1835 and 1866, who called the Christian faith in 1864 to Bonny, thereby pioneering the Niger Delta pastorate of the Anglican Church. Born in 1817 in a long lineage of Bonny kings, in a dynasty that was started in the late 17th Century by Perekule, a…
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Aro War describes the series of battles between December 1901 and March 1902 in which the Aro tribe of the Igbo nation in eastern Nigeria were subdued by imperial British power. Aro people were in the mid 19th Century known as middle men who carried large quantities of trade goods from Old Calabar to the…
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Nri Civilization occasioned a medieval Igbo institution, located in the colonial Awka division. The town of Nri was hypothesized by A.G. Leonard, British royal officer in 1902 as the fountainhead from which all the other clans of Igbo, eastern Nigeria’s tribe of the greatest number, sprung. The culture of Nri, as stated by Onwuejeogwu in…