Nigeria To Surrey: Lugard's Great Career

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 95, 23 April 1945, Page 4

Nigeria To Surrey: Lugard's Great Career

By CYRANO

"W HAT do you know of the ** work of Lord Lugard and Sir Hubert Murray?" If I had to set a general knowledge paper, I should ask this question, and if a candidate answered it well I should judge that he (or she) knew something, as he (or she) should, of recent British colonial history. Hubert Murray, Governor of Papua for many years, died a few years ago in his seventies, in harness. Frederick Lugard died at eighty-seven, in the week that we lost President Roosevelt, and what with this blow and the excitement of the war news, his passing may have passed unnoticed by many even among those who knew something of his career. Lugard and Murray were the two most distinguished colonial administrators of their time. They were noted for the enlightenment of their rule, and the breadth and depth of their .knowledge and sympathies. Lugard had been in retirement for a long while, but it was a very busy retirement. He was regarded as the leading elder statesman among authorities on colonial questions. A Turn of Fate I have previously touched on Lord Lugard's career and the importance of his policy of "indirect rule," that is, rule through native institutions, but his record is so interesting as a romance and so valuable for the light it throws on the whole problem of colonial government, that I make no apology for returning to it. Lugard got his opportunities when the world was wider, when Africa had not quite ceased to be the "Dark Continent." What we call chance gave the turn to hfs career which led him to the governorship of a great Crown Colony. At thirty he was an officer in the British Army with three campaigns on his tunic. Travelling for his health he called at Zanzibar. The Consul-General there had been a companion of Livingstone, and was naturally anxious about the suppression of the slave trade. The Navy was doing what it could, but slayeraiding was going on unchecked inland. News came that Arab slavetraders had attacked a small Scottish trading post on Lake Nyassa, after wiping out the adjoining native tribe. Having driven the surviving natives into a reedy swamp, the raiders burned them alive. • Lugard led a small mixed and apparently unprofessional force to the scene, but was not very successful and was wounded for his pains. However, the British Government sent some Indian troops, the raiders were defeated, and a British protectorate was declared. Slavery was put down in Uganda, as well, where Captain Lugard also found something to do. Trade and the Flag This suppression of slavery is important. It simply cannot be left out of the British record. I am not saying that the suppression was entirely disinterested, or that it was the only motive in extending African dominions. It certainly wasn't the only motive in taking over Uganda. It would be degrading cynicism, however, to say that Britain freed slaves for the sole purpose of making trade easier. It is possible to simplify the motives of imperialism to the point of nonsense. There was plenty of honest idealism in the putting down of slavery, and it is probably the greatest single benefit that Britain has conferred on African native peoples. European civilisation has often used native races selfishly and cruelly; on the other hand it has often protected them from age-old enemies. The worst of these has been the slavetrader. Some years later Lugard went to Nigeria. The extension of that colony well illustrates what may be called frontier compulsion. The Romans knew it well enough. You set up a province, and the tribes beyond gave trouble, so you extended* your frontier. The British went to the Nigerian coast to trade, as they and other peoples did in many parts of the world. You may say they shouldn't have gone there, but everybody was doing it, and how was it possible to stop everybody? Besides, would the nations care to do without tropical products? Would you like to be without soap and chocolate? To the scandal of British humanitarians and the loss of British traders, the slave trade went on. Warships could watch the coast, but inland Moslem Smirs annually raided the "pagan" tribes in the same ruthless way ns in Central Africa. The Niger Company did its best, but it couldn't protect its people properly. In 1900 Chamberlain took over the territory and sent Lugard out as Governor of Northern Nigeria. Africa in Surrey What followed was just like a boy's book of adventure. Lugard sent a note to the Sultan of Sokoto, courteously worded, insisting that raiding should stop. The Sultan replied with a choice of war, and a civil officer was murdered. With a few hundred troops Lugard defeated the Moslems almost bloodlessly, and slavery was put down. It was Lugard who raised or developed the West African Frontier Forces, and he lived to see native soldiers from Nigeria fight splendidly in Abyssinia and Burma. When Stanley Maxted went to interview Lord Lugard in his country home in Surrey for the 8.8.C. two years ago, he heard this story, which illustrates as well as anything Lugard's policy of order and sympathy. One night a number of Emirs debated whether they would talk with Lugard next day, or wipe him out. They decided to talk. The one dissentient became a reformer and a friend of Lugard's, and when he visited England used to go and see his old chief in that Surrey home and talk over old and present times. The Emir would break off the talk and say it was time for prayer. Lugard would get water in a teapot and pour it over the hands of the Emir and his attendants, and they would get out their prayer-rugs and say their prayers on the lawn. Their host saw to it that no prying eyes watched them. Lord Lugard told the story to illustrate the freedom of worship that was part of his policy. Lord Lugard's "indirect rule" has been widely studied. lie claimed that the people had been given a freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of religion, and that freedom from fear—fear of aggression, famine, disease, and witchcraft —was being progressively attained. But no one realised better than he the difficulty of governing a mixed and "backward" people like this in accordance with the ideals of Western democracy. Indeed he considered that the Western Parliamentary system was wholly unsuited to India or Africa, and that the Indian durbar and a similar institution in Africa were, perhaps, more truly democratic than ours. One of the most experienced, best informed, and most sympathetic of Crown Colony rulers has left us much to think about.