Colonial Nigeria and the 1914 Amalgamation
The Lagos Colony, the Niger Coast and Southern Nigeria protectorates, the Royal Niger Company and the Northern protectorate, Lugard and amalgamation in 1914, the name "Nigeria", indirect rule through emirs, obas and warrant chiefs, the Aba Women's War of 1929, colonial economy (cash crops, railways, taxation), education gaps between north and south, and the colonial state's legacy.
One colony from many parts
The colonial economy was built around exports: cocoa from the south-west, palm produce from the south-east, groundnuts and cotton from the north, and tin from the Jos plateau, carried by railways built to the ports (Lagos to Kano by 1912). Taxation and forced labour were imposed to make the colony pay for itself.
The Aba Women's War (1929): rumours that women would be taxed led tens of thousands of Igbo and Ibibio women to protest against warrant chiefs in the south-east; colonial troops killed more than 50 women. The British called it the "Aba Riots"; Nigerian historians use the name Women's War, a choice of words that itself carries an interpretation.
Toyin Falola and Matthew Heaton (2008); Michael Crowder, The Story of Nigeria (1962); Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922), the colonial view in its own words; Judith Van Allen, "'Aba Riots' or Igbo 'Women's War'?" (1976).