ancient cities

La g o s , Nigeria
The modern city of Lagos developed from a fishing
settlement originally founded in the fifteenth
century by the Awori-Yoruba. Although it ceased
to be the capital of Nigeria in 1991, Lagos remains
the commercial, industrial, and political nerve
center, and it was a critical factor in the development
of the country, as this entry discusses.
Early Incursions
The intrusion of the Benin kingdom from the seventeenth
century marked the first major external
stimulus that shaped the fortunes of a community
that rapidly developed into a melting pot of
African and European elements. The abolition of
the transatlantic slave trade and the establishment
of British rule, two major developments of the
first half of the nineteenth century, shaped the
later development of the settlement. Declared a
colony in 1861, it soon acquired the trappings of
an outpost of Victorian Britain. Modern architecture,
new food and dress styles, newspapers, the
British legal and political system, formal schools,
and Christian evangelization became the hallmarks
of an emergent colonial city. As the seat of
the nascent British administration, the missionary
gateway to a hinterland wracked by the Yoruba
civil wars and an increasingly important outlet for
the (postslavery) forest produce of the hinterland,
Lagos attracted voluntary and forced migrants
from various communities in its hinterland.
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Steady population growth was aided by an
influx of returnee ex-slaves and their descendants
from Brazil, Cuba, and Freetown (in Sierra Leone),
founded in 1792 by the British to resettle former
slaves. Many of the returnees, who still retained
emotional ties to their Yoruba homeland, found
refuge in Lagos. The émigrés brought various
skills and cultural practices to an emerging city
that welcomed and rapidly absorbed them. Lagos
thus became the staging post for the expansion of
British rule and values into the hinterland. Whereas
the returnees from Brazil and Cuba were mainly
artisans, those from Sierra Leone were essentially
clerical in orientation. They became cultural intermediaries
between the British and their indigenous
counterparts and were, indeed, the purveyors of
the British “civilizing mission.” It was through
them that Lagos pioneered the development of
Western formal and technical education, along
with a new urban lifestyle. The Brazilians, on the
other hand, introduced and popularized the now
famous Brazilian architecture that still adorns the
Portuguese/Brazilian quarter in the city.
British Rule
By the end of the nineteenth century, Lagos had
become the capital of the Lagos colony and the
chief port of Nigeria. The imposition of British
rule in the Yoruba hinterland was formalized in an
agreement of 1893. This facilitated the introduction
of modern economic, legal, and political systems
that underpinned the expanding British
administration. The British law and order regime,