Hopkins on Economic Imperialism in West Africa

Abstract

R HOPKINS is right in emphasizing that economic factors were important in British expansion into the hinterland of Lagos. He is by no means the first person have pointed this out. Nor has he really answered the question which Robinson and Gallagher and others studying imperialism from the European end are trying tackle, viz.: why did these economic factors which failed move the British inland in the I 850's or I 86o's have so much success in the I 88o's and I89o's? Dr Hopkins replies that there was trade depression in Lagos in the I 88o's, that this depression, apart from heightening competition among traders of different nationalities, was the cause, not the result, of the wars in the Yoruba hinterland; that the wars in turn provoked the imposition of a British settlement aimed at improving Lagos trade; and that the Lagos merchants in period of depression had the influence in London, which they did not have before, move the British government action. This series of paradoxes deserves closer scrutiny. Whatever the origins of the Yoruba Wars, he says, their continuation in the second half of the nineteenth century was very largely the product of a of adaptation which faced African producers as a result of the decline of the Atlantic slave trade... of adaptation had no precedents. He suggests four aspects of this crisis of adaptation. (a) Yoruba rulers who had risen power on the profits of the Atlantic slave trade found that they were driven become specialized producers in a field where there was now a high degree of atomistic competition... Dependent as they were on earnings from foreign trade for a significant part of total incomes, they viewed new position with considerable misgivings. (b) They tried to maintain the level of previous incomes, and hence current political power, by taxing the new wealth of the numerous small producers. This they did mainly by imposing taxes on trade. (c) They therefore resented the British presence in Lagos and particularly the anti-slave trade blockade. (d) military leaders in particular attempted bolster declining fortunes by plundering. The warriors had been forced embrace legitimate commerce, but because the new trade was less profitable than the old they sought at the same time carry on, anachronistically, as freebooters in the modern world of international capitalism. Unfortunately, Dr Hopkins gives precious little evidence support these theories, and he shows very little knowledge of Yoruba history or society, and

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