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Established foothold for colonial expansion in Niger basin.
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Parliamentary select committee recommended withdrawing from West Africa due to high costs of maintaining administrations/trading posts. In the 1870s, attitudes began to shift, with a greater sense of national prestige/identity and strategic rivalries.
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George Goldie set up a palm oil business in the Niger basin. In 1879, joined 30 trading posts together to form the United African Company (refused a royal charter because of French influence in the region). Signed over 450 treaties with local leaders, helped assert right to protectorate in Nigeria at the Berlin Conference.
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Established in the Niger Delta in south-east Nigeria in 1884 to control the palm oil trade. Renamed the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1893. Administrated by consular districts, treaties with local rulers and occasional military action.
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Made a British Protectorate in 1896. Population was a mix of indigenous tribes and freed African American former slaves that had set up Freetown after the US War of Independence. Resistance began in 1898 after a House Tax was implemented.
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Demanded King Prempeh I turn over his territory as a protectorate. Prempeh defeated and exiled to Seychelles
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Oil River Protectorate was merged with Company territory to form the Southern Nigeria Protectorate on 1 Jan 1900. Northern Nigeria Protectorate formed at the same time. Previously, the Royal Niger Company had administered much of the territory under a royal charter (1886-1899).
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Indigenous uprising, led by Prempeh's mother. Finally defeated in 1901, city of Kumasi taken. Formally annexed in 1901 under the Ashanti Order in Council 25 Sept and set up a chief commissioner who reported to the governor of the Gold Coast. Incorporated into Gold Coast 1902.
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Incorporated into the Gold Coast in 1902 after British victory in the Anglo-Ashanti wars. Ashanti Order in Council 1901 formally annexed Ashanti territory on 25 Sept and set up a chief commissioner who reported to the governor of the Gold Coast. Asantehene Prempeh I and other leaders were exiled to Seychelles.
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At the urging of Governor Frederick Lugard, Northern and Southern Nigeria Protectorates were merged with the Lagos Colony to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. This was under a single Governor-General based in Lagos. Much of the north was ruled indirectly through traditional chiefs and customs, where more direct control was established in the south e.g. Christianity, English, Western education and legal systems, growth of cash crops.