Property Rights and Empire Building: Britain's Annexation of Lagos, 1861

Abstract

Britain's acquisiton of Lagos has already attracted considerable historical research, but it is examined here from a new perspective and with the help of unused sources. Three conclusions are drawn. First, the episode itself is reinterpreted to give prominence to changing property rights as both a cause and a consequence of annexation. Second, it is argued that the Lagos case can be placed in a broader framework of imperial expansion in which institutional change formed the centerpiece of a nineteenth-century development drive. Third, it is suggested that the study of African history might benefit from assigning higher priority to the analysis of property rights other than those embodied in slave-holding.