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Change at Belingwe

Great Depressions of the late nineteenth century, and of the 1930s, are barely mentioned. No reason is thus advanced for the merchants' desire to expand into the eastern hinterland in the 1890s, rather than at any other time. This is capitalism seen without its crises; traders seen without their industrial customers. Meanwhile, on the African front, precolonial rulers are depicted as conducting or restricting trade, and villagers bravely resist British punitive expeditions; but they then subside into passivity as victims of colonial and mercantile exploitation. In an early chapter, the author makes enterprising use of the oral evidence of an Igbo member of staff at the British Public Record Office, in describing the organization of precolonial Igbo trade; but no other aspects of African entrepreneurship are touched on directly, whether in the field of production or trade. In Dr Ofonagoro's praiseworthy attempt to restore the European element to African history, the African element has itself been neglected. Thus, the basic supply conditions with which European traders had to deal remain obscure. More seriously, the author's generalizations about the long-term economic effects of imperialism in this region remain, necessarily, unproven. Several key questions are raised, but answered only by assertion: for example, the extent to which exploitation of producers was intensified, and African inland middlemen replaced by Europeans during the colonial period; and the extent to which colonial rule actually 'opened up ' previously isolated areas to international trade, rather than simply stimulating changes in trading methods and personnel. As a study of imperialist motivation, Ofonagoro's study suffers, again, from its concentration on merchants' minds and records. On the one hand, the pressuregroup activities of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce are well described, and the pro-merchant bias of much colonial legislation is effectively revealed. However, there is no discussion of alternative influences on the 'official mind', and little use of official sources to check government reactions to mercantile pressure. Dr Ofonagoro's vivid description of the violent punitive expeditions into Eastern Nigeria is derived from official sources, but Chamberlain's motives for sanctioning these costly ventures are examined only through the eyes of traders, and of Mary Kingsley. Thus, although Dr Ofonagoro has given us a vivid traders'-eye view of the imposition and consolidation of colonial rule in Southern Nigeria, his economic version of the 'turbulent frontier' theory of imperialism leaves many key questions unanswered.