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Subject Area: Political Theory
Topic: Progress

Lagos and Colonial Property Rights - Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty, Winter 1981, vol. 4, No. 4 [1981]

Edition used:

Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and later by the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio.

Part of: Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, 20 vols. 19781-982

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Lagos and Colonial Property Rights

Anthony G. Hopkins

  • University of Birmingham

“Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain's Annexation of Lagos, 1861.” Journal of Economic History 40(December 1980):777–798.

Britain's annexation of Lagos in 1861 has been accorded considerable importance in studies of West Africa's occupation by European powers in the second half of the nineteenth century. The annexation was central in accounts of Nigeria's formation, since Lagos became successively the colonial and federal capital, as well as the leading port of that country. Prof. Hopkins believes that the role of property in the acquisition of Lagos has not been sufficiently appreciated. Thus, with the aid of previously unused sources, he attempts a new interpretation of the question from the perspective of property rights as both a cause and consequence of annexation.

The principal sources concerning British policy towards tropical Africa in the mid-nineteenth century abound with references to property, usually along with two companion concepts—life and liberty. The abolition of the external slave trade in 1851 significantly changed property relations in West Africa. Property in human beings offended newly formulated beliefs in individual liberty and was also considered economically inefficient and socially retrogressive.

The abolition of the slave trade struck a blow to the power of the kings of Lagos. By privilege, this commerce had been reserved exclusively for them. The distribution of the resulting largess and jobs was essential to maintaining their political following. Efforts to substitute the palm-oil trade and taxes on it merely succeeded in impoverishing the kings and creating a powerful new merchant class. This class was largely comprised of Europeans, repatriated ex-slaves, and Sierra Leonean newcomers.

The rising merchant community in Lagos found it to its advantage to implant European notions of property, including rights of alienation and sale for a market price. Implanting such ideas presupposed the existence of a stable, civilized government which would protect and propagate them.

By the early 1860s, the British Foreign Office and Colonial Office grew increasingly receptive to European and Sierra Leonean demands to annex the territory of Lagos. “Most of them,” wrote British Consul McCoskry, “have reason to complain of the want of protection of property under the rule of (King) Docemo.”

A Treaty of Cession was, thus, forced on Docemo in August 1861. By the terms of the treaty, the system of land grants established during the consular period was confirmed, laying the foundations for a property-owning democracy. Land values jumped as soon as the treaty was approved. New settlers scrambled for unclaimed plots. Within 40 years, the new property institutions began to attract the natives of Lagos, who came to appreciate the idea of handing property over to their children without encumbering limitations.

Although African merchants ceased to compete with European firms soon after the turn of the century, they and their families clung tenaciously to landed property whenever possible. In becoming rentiers, the merchants retained their gentility and used income from this source to finance the education of their children. In this way, they helped generate new forms of property based on the service industries—notably the professions and, the greatest of all prizes, government employment.

Prof. Hopkins holds that the deep political and social changes wrought by property development in Lagos have their parallels in numerous areas on the African continent. The data strongly suggest, he asserts, that the study of African history would benefit from assigning higher priority to the analysis of property rights other than those embodied in slaveholding.