International records / Internet Archive

British Northern Nigeria

Patterns of Power: British Northern Nigeria is a rigorous institutional case study within the Patterns of Power series . Spanning the conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1903 to the post-independence collapse of the First Republic in 1966, this study examines how the British Empire conquered the largest slave-holding state in the world in the name of abolition, only to preserve its administrative apparatus, keep its slavery, and co-opt its aristocratic slaveholders to establish a remarkably cheap colonial hold . Applying the framework's primary diagnostic—the complexity variable —the study dem…