NOTES

FOREWORD

1. 1A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 168–69.
2. 2See, for example, Thurstan Shaw, Igbo Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria, 2 vols. (London, [1970], M. A. Onwuejogwu, “The Dawn of Igbo Civilization,” Odinani [1971]).
3. 3Victor Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 22.
4. 4G. I. Jones, The Trading States of the Oil Rivers [1963], 13.
5. 5Robert Stevenson, Population and Political Systems in Tropical Africa [1968], 190.
6. 6Ibid., 192.
7. 7Korieh, “Introduction,” 2.
8. 8Ibid., 13.

INTRODUCTION: PERSPECTIVES, SETTING, SOURCES

1. 1Interview with Grace Chidomere, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
2. 2Interview with Chief Francis Enweremadu, Mbutu, Mbaise, 2 January 2000.
3. 3Interview with Comfort Anabalam, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
4. 4National Archive of Nigeria, Enugu (NAE), ABADIST, 14/1/873, “A. Jamola, to the District Officer, Aba,” 21 July 1943.
5. 5Cited in Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Nigeria (London: Longman Group, 1983), 400.
6. 6For an analysis of the oil palm trade in Nigeria, see, for example, Eno J. Usoro, The Nigerian Oil Palm Industry: Government Policy and Export Production, 1906–1965 (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1974); and O. N. Njoku, “Trading with the Metropolis: An Unequal Exchange,” in Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development, ed. Toyin Falola, 124–41 (London: Zed Books, 1987).
7. 7Igbo culture and ecological areas can be broadly categorized as follows: Western or Delta Igbo (Asaba, Ika, Ndokwa); Northwestern (north and south Niger flood plain: Onitsha, Idemili, Aguata, Nri, Awka [Anambra]; Northern [Awgu, Enugu, Nsukka, Abakaliki: Enugu State and part of Ebonyi State]; Central [Orlu, Owerri, Nkwere, Ideato, and Mbano, Mbaise, Etiti, Okigwe: Imo State]; Southwest [Ohaji, Egbema, Oguta, Ndoni, and Ikwerre: part of Imo and Rivers States]: South [Ngwa, Asa, Etche, Ukwa: Abia State]; and Eastern [Umuahia-Ikwuano, Bende, Ohafia, Afikpo, Aro: part of Abia and Ebonyi States]). Taken from Ogbu U. Kalu, “Osondu: Patterns of Igbo Quest for Jesus Power,” unpublished paper.
8. 8In the settler colonies of southern and eastern Africa, where Africans competed with capitalist agriculture, the labour of African men and the subsistence production of African women also helped to subsidize the state, capitalist agriculture, mining, and industry. See, for example, Colin Bundy, The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
9. 9However, the pace of agricultural transformation varied widely from the cash crop producing regions of West Africa to southern and eastern African societies, where farmers faced more direct demands on their lands and labour from European settlers. The different colonial experiences account for the varied nature of African agricultural transformation, the farmers’ responses, and the effects of the decline in the agricultural economy. For an account of the process of agricultural change in Africa, see, for example, H. J. W. Mutsaers, Peasants, Farmers and Scientists: A Chronicle of Tropical Agricultural Science in the Twentieth Century New York: Springer, 2007); W. J. Barber, “The Movement into the World Economy,” in Economic Transition in Africa, ed. M. J. Herskovits and M. Harwitz, 299–29 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964); Sara Berry, No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); W. R. Duggan, An Economic Analysis of Southern African Agriculture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1986); Anthony G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973); Martin A. Klein, ed., Peasants in Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (London: Sage, 1980); David Siddle and Kenneth Swindell, Rural Change in Tropical Africa: From Colonies to Nation States (Cambridge, MA: B. Blackwell, 1990); J. Tosh, “The Cash Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An Agricultural Reappraisal,” African Affairs 79 (1980): 79–94.
10. 10In 1985, for example, an estimated 10 million Africans left their homes and fields because they were unable to support themselves. An additional 20 million were reported to be at risk of debilitating hunger. See Lloyd Timberlake, Africa in Crisis: The Causes, the Cures of Environmental Bankruptcy (London: Earthscan, 1985). Numerous World Bank reports since 1981 have indicated an overall pattern of severe economic deterioration and stagnation manifested in food security problems and low levels of growth in the agricultural subsector. See especially World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1981); Towards Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Joint Program of Action (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1984); Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Development (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1989). Studies of agricultural sustainability include Abe Goldman, “Threats to Sustainability in African Agriculture: Searching for Appropriate Paradigms,” Human Ecology 23, no. 3 (1995): 291–334. See also G. K. Douglass, “The Meaning of Agricultural Sustainability,” in Agricultural Sustainability in a Changing World Order, ed. G. K. Douglas, 3–29 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994); George J. S. Dei, “Sustainable Development in the African Context: Revisiting Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues,” African Development 18, no. 2 (1993): 97–110; and C. K. Eicher, Sustainable Institutions for African Agricultural Development, International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR), Working Paper no. 19 (The Hague: ISNAR, 1989).
11. 11Studies of agricultural change in Nigeria have focused on how state actions transformed rural agricultural economies and threatened agricultural sustainability. See, for example, Jerome C. Wells, Agricultural Policy and Economic Growth in Nigeria, 1962–1968 (Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford University Press, 1974); Food and Agricultural Organisation, Agricultural Development in Nigeria, 1965–1980 (Rome: FAO, 1966).
12. 12There is also an argument that the economic reforms driven by the IMF and the World Bank in Africa over the last decades have exacerbated the pace of agricultural and economic decline. For the implications of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) on African agriculture, see S. Commander, ed., SAP and Agriculture: Theory and Practice in Africa and Latin America (London: Overseas Development Institute, 1989). See also Christina H. Gladwin, ed., Structural Adjustment and African Women Farmers (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991); and Commonwealth Secretariat, Engendering Adjustment for the 1990s: Report of a Commonwealth Expert Group on Structural Adjustment (London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 1989).
13. 13There appears to be a consensus on the decline in the level of agricultural production, although there is less agreement on exactly what are the causes and what should be the remedies. Furthermore, critics seeking general explanatory models of the nature of agricultural crisis have reproduced this error. The current ubiquitous use of the word “crisis” in explaining the decline in African agriculture is not without uses, but it needs the addition of specific local details to avoid over-generalization. The general “crisis” thesis has led to distortions in the description of the nature of the agrarian crisis and sustainability because the discourse has not been adequately grounded in the social structures and everyday life of the studied societies. An in-depth understanding of the varied nature of the African agricultural crisis calls for an exploration of regional variations and experiences. For a general review of the literature on the African agricultural crisis, see Sara Berry, “The Food Crisis and Agrarian Change in Africa: A Review Essay,” African Studies Review 27, no. 2 (1984): 59.
14. 14See Berry, “The Food Crisis.” Berry extends her argument for a need to reconceptualise African agrarian discourse in No Condition is Permanent, especially, 10–16. See also M. F. Lofchie and S. K. Commins, “Food Deficit and Agricultural Policies in Tropical Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies 20, no. 1 (1982): 1–25. See also M. F. Lofchie, “The Decline of African Agriculture,” in Drought and Hunger in Africa: Denying Famine a Future, ed. Michael H. Glantz, 85–110 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); J. Hinderink and J. J. Sterkenburg, “Agricultural Policy and Production in Africa: The Aims, the Methods, and the Means,” Journal of Modern African Studies 21, no. 1 (1983): 1–23; Michael Watts and Thomas Bassett, “Crisis and Change in African Agriculture: A Comparative Study of the Ivory Coast and Nigeria,” African Studies Review 28, no. 4 (December, 1986):3–27; R. Baker, “Linking and Sinking: Economic Externalities and the Persistence of Destitution and Famine in Africa,” in Drought and Hunger in Africa, ed. M. H. Glantz, 149–70 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). See also Ray Bush, “The Politics of Food and Starvation,” Review of African Political Economy 68 (1996): 169–95.
15. 15See, for example, FAO, Regional Food Plan for Africa (Rome: FAO, 1980); World Bank, World Development Report (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1978); and World Bank, World Development Report (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1980).
16. 16For more on this debate, see Berry, “The Food Crisis,” No Condition Is Permanent, 10–6; Lofchie and Commins, “Food Deficit and Agricultural Policies in Tropical Africa,” 1–25.
17. 17See, for example, Bade Onimode, Imperialism and Underdevelopment in Nigeria: The Dialectics of Mass Poverty (London: Zed Books, 1982). On agriculture and commodity production, see, for example, A. Faloyan, Agriculture and Economic Development in Nigeria: A Prescription for the Nigerian Green Revolution (New York: Vantage Press, 1983); J. O. Ahazuem and Toyin Falola, “Production for the Metropolis: Agriculture and Forest Products,” in Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development, ed. Toyin Falola, 80–90 (London: Zed Books, 1987); Bade Onimode, Imperialism and Underdevelopment in Nigeria: The Dialectics of Mass Poverty (London: Zed Books, 1982). See also O. N. Njoku, “Trading with the Metropolis”; Hopkins, Economic History; Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; E. A. Brett, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: The Politics of Economic Change (London: Heinemann, 1974); G. Kay, The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); I. W. Zartman, ed., The Political Economy of Nigeria (New York: Praeger, 1983). For the relationship between peasant agriculture and the government at federal and state levels during the colonial era and the first four years of independence, see Gerald Helleiner, Peasant Agriculture, Government and Economic Growth in Nigeria (Homewood, IL: R. D. Irwin, 1966). See also D. Rimmer, “The Economic Imprint of Colonialism and Domestic Food Supplies in British Tropical Africa,” in Imperialism, Colonialism and Hunger: East and Central Africa, ed. Robert I. Rotberg, 141–65 (Lanham: MD: Lexington Books, 1984).
18. 18Cited in Huss-Ashmore, “Perspectives in African Food Crisis,” 12.
19. 19Levi and Havinden, Economics of African Agriculture, 129–30. See also Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Faulkner ‘Blueprint’ and the Evolution of Agricultural Policy in Inter-War Colonial Nigeria,” in The Foundations of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola, ed. Adebayo Oyebade, 403–22 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003).
20. 20Michael Watts, Sillent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), xxiii.
21. 21Sara Berry, “The Food Crisis and Agrarian Change in Africa: A Review Essay,” African Studies Review 27, no. 2 (1984), 61.
22. 22Robert E. Clute, “The Role of Agriculture in African Development,” African Studies Review 25, no. 4 (December 1982): 3. See also Chima J. Korieh, “Food Production and the Food Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa,” in Africa, Vol. 5: Contemporary Africa, ed. Toyin Falola, 391–416 (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003); Chima J. Korieh, “Agriculture,” in Africa, Vol. 5: Contemporary Africa, ed. Toyin Falola, 417–36 (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2003).
23. 23Clute, “The Role of Agriculture,” 2–3.
24. 24Ibid.
25. 25Ester Boserup, Women’s Role in Economic Development (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970).
26. 26The discussion should (arguably) centre on gender because its relational nature would lead to a critical examination of economic, social, and political processes. This is crucial in examining agricultural change, since men and women are defined in terms of one another in the organization of production. For a clear articulation of this position, see Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” in Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). See also Marnie Hughes-Warrington’s fine articulation of Scott’s ideas on gender in Fifty Key Thinkers on History (London: Routledge, 2000), 279–80.
27. 27See A. V. Chayanov, The Theory of Peasant Economy (Homewood, IL: R.D. Irwin, 1966). On the evolution of peasant societies in parts of Europe, see, for example, Peter Hoppenbrouwers, Jan Luiten van Zanden, and J. Luiten van Zanden, ed., Peasants into Farmers? The Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages–19th Century) in Light of the Brenner Debate (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001).
28. 28See Sara Berry, Cocoa, Custom and Socio-Economic Change in Rural Western Nigeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975).
29. 29See Polly Hill, The Migrant Cocoa-farmers of Southern Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism (Hamburg: LIT, James Currey with the IAI, 1997).
30. 30See Johannes Lagemann, Traditional Farming Systems in Eastern Nigeria (Munich and New York: Weltforum Verlag Humanities Press, 1977). For other differentiations, see Onigu Christine Okali and C. Otite, ed., Readings in Nigerian Rural Society and Rural Economy (Ibadan, Nigeria: Heinemann Educational Books, 1990); and D. W. Norman, Economic Analysis of Agricultural Production and Labor Utilization among the Hausa in the North of Nigeria, African Rural Employment Paper no. 4 (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1973).
31. 31See Martin, Palm Oil and Protest.
32. 32For a general discussion of the development of agriculture in the post-colonial era, see Jerome C. Wells, Agricultural Policy and Economic Growth in Nigeria, 1962–1968 (Ibadan, Nigeria: Oxford University Press, 1974); and Tom Forrest, “Agricultural Policies in Nigeria, 1970–78,” in Rural Development in Tropical Africa, ed. J. Heyer, P. Roberts, and G. Williams, 222–58 (London: Macmillan, 1981).
33. 33For a social history of the civil war, see Axel Harneit-Sievers, Jones O. Ahazuem, and Sydney Emezue, A Social History of the Nigeria Civil War: Perspectives from Below (Enugu, Nigeria: Jemezie Associates, 1997).
34. 34By a “food-reserve-deficit” area, I mean an area without the capacity to produce enough for reserve during one farming season. Parts of Igboland, which were food-reserve-deficit areas, depended largely on food produced in other regions.
35. 35On the development of the palm oil industry, see Eno J. Usoro, The Nigerian Oil Palm Industry: Government Policy and Export Production, 1906–1965 (Ibadan, Nigeria: University of Ibadan Press, 1974). For developments in the period after the abolition of the slave trade, see Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa: The Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Susan Martin, Palm Oil and Protest: An Economic History of the Ngwa Region, South-Eastern Nigeria, 1800–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Allister E. Hinds, “Government Policy and the Nigerian Palm Oil Export Industry, 1939–49,” Journal of African History 38 (1997): 459–78.
36. 36For a good introduction to feminist analyses, see Rosemarie Tong, Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). For studies of gender in the context of colonialism and imperialism, see, for example, Elizabeth Schmidt, Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1870–1939 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1992); Nancy J. Hafkin and Edna Bay, Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976); and Chima J. Korieh, “The Invisible Farmer? Women, Gender, and Colonial Agricultural Policy in the Igbo Region of Nigeria, c. 1913–1954,” African Economic History 29 (2001): 117–62.
37. 37See the following works by Jane I. Guyer: Family and Farm in Southern Cameroon (Boston: Boston University Africa Studies Centre, 1984); “Naturalism in Models of African Production,” Man 19 (1984): 355–73; “Multiplication of Labor: Historical Methods in the Study of Gender and Agricultural Change in Modern Africa,” Current Anthropology 29 (1988): 247–72; and “Female Farming in Anthropology and African History,” in Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Postmodern Era, ed. M. di Leonardo, 257–77 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
38. 38Oyeronke Oyewumi, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 121. See also Helen Callaway, Gender, Culture and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, ed., Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); and Malia B. Formes, “Beyond Complicity versus Resistance: Recent Work on Gender and European Imperialism,” Journal of Social History (Spring 1995): 629–41.
39. 39See, for example, Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi, ed., Women in African Colonial Histories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002); Margot Lovett, “Gender Relations, Class Formation and the Colonial State in Africa,” in Women and the State in Africa, ed. Jane Parpart and Kathleen Staudt, 23–46 (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989); and Mona Etienne, “Women and Men, Cloth and Colonization: The Transformation of Production-Distribution Relations among the Baule (Ivory Coast),” Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines 17 (1977): 41–63.
40. 40See Northcote. W. Thomas, Anthropological Report on the Ibo Speaking Peoples of Nigeria, Vol. 1 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1913–1914), 97. See also Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (London: Macmillan, 1976), 27, 79; John Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 92.
41. 41Barry Floyd, Eastern Nigeria: A Geographical Review (London: MacMillan, 1969), 57.
42. 42For a description of rural poverty among the Igbo by the late nineteenth century, see Iliffe, The African Poor, 82–94.
43. 43See George, Journal, 21 January 1866, CMS CA3/O. 18/23; F. M. Denis, Journal, 17 November 1908, CMS: UP 4/F2; T. J. Dennis, Journal, March 1907, CMS: UP 89/F1, cited in Iliffe, African Poor, 82.
44. 44See Anthony O’Connor, Poverty in Africa: A Geographical Approach (London: Pinter, 1991), 4. See also Goldman, “Population Growth.”
45. 45G.E.K. Ofomata, ed., A Survey of the Igbo Nation (Onitsha, Nigeria: Africana First Publishers, 2002), especially Part 2.
46. 46Usoro, The Nigerian Oil Palm Industry.
47. 47Susan M. Martin, “Farming, Cooking, and Palm Processing in the Ngwa Region of Southeastern Nigeria, 1900–1930,” Journal of African History 25, no. 4 (1984): 411–27.
48. 48Gloria Chuku, Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, 1900–1960 (New York: Routledge, 2005).
49. 49Nwando Achebe, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900–1960 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005).
50. 50For dependency theory, see, for example, Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington DC: Howard University Press, 1984); Giovanni Arrighi and John S. Sane, Essays on the Political Economy of Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); and Emmanuel Arghiri, Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade, trans. B. Pearce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972). For Nigeria, see Bade Onimode, Imperialism and Underdevelopment in Nigeria: The Dialectics of Mass Poverty (London: Zed Books, 1982); A. Faloyan, Agriculture and Economic Development in Nigeria: A Prescription for the Nigerian Green Revolution (New York: Vantage Press, 1983); and J. O. Ahazuem and Toyin Falola, “Production for the Metropolis: Agriculture and Forest Products,” in Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development, ed. Toyin Falola, 80–90 (London: Zed Books, 1987). For similar analysis of other parts of Africa, see E. A. Brett, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: The Politics of Economic Change (London: Heinemann, 1974); and G. Kay, The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). On the relationship between peasants and the government, see Gerald Helleiner, Peasant Agriculture, Government and Economic Growth in Nigeria (Homewood, IL: R. D. Irwin, 1966). See also D. Rimmer, “The Economic Imprint of Colonialism and Domestic Food Supplies in British Tropical Africa,” in Imperialism, Colonialism and Hunger: East and Central Africa, ed. Robert I. Rotberg, 141–65 (MA: Lexington Books, 1984).
51. 51See T. Shanin, Peasants and Peasant Societies (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1976); Bundy, Rise and Fall, 4; and Deborah Bryceson, Chrstobal Kay, and Jos Mooji, ed. Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labor in Africa, Asia and Latin America (London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 2000). See also L. A. Fallers, “Are African Cultivators to be called ‘Peasants’?” Current Anthropology 2, no. 2 (1961): 108–10; and John S. Saul and Roger Woods, “African Peasantries,” in Peasants and Peasant Societies, ed. Theodor Shanin, 103–14 (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1971). See also Terence Ranger, “Growing from the Roots: Reflections on Peasant Research in Central and Southern Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 5, no. 1 (1978): 99–133; and Martin A. Klein, ed. Peasants in Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1980), 9–14.
52. 52See Paul Thompson, “Historians and Oral History,” in The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Reproduced in The Oral History Reader, ed. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, 21–28 (London: Routledge, 1998).
53. 53For the use of life histories and oral narratives, see Susan Geiger, Tanu Women: Gender and Culture in the Making of Tanganyika Nationalism, 1955–1965 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann; Oxford: James Currey, 1997), 15–19. For the connections between fieldwork experience and the resulting ethnography, see Judith Okely, “Anthropology and Autobiography: Participatory Experience and Embodied Knowledge,” in Anthropology and Autobiography, ed. Judith Okely and Helen Callaway, ASA Monographs 29, 1–28 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). See also Juliana Flinn, Leslie Marshall, and Jocelyn Armstrong, ed., Fieldwork and Families: Constructing New Models for Ethnographic Research (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1998), 5–6. See George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer, Anthropology and Cultural Critique: An Experimental Movement in the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), for a discussion of ethnography’s alliance of observation with involvement in the daily life and experiences of local people.
54. 54For the use of life histories in historical reconstruction and the problems of interpretation and representation, see Geiger, Tanu Women, 16. See also Kathleen Barry, “Biography and the Search for Women’s Subjectivity,” Women’s Studies International Forum 12, no. 6 (1989): 561–77.
55. 55Studying one’s own society has been an issue elaborately discussed by anthropologists. See, for example, Donald Messerschmidt, Anthropologist at Home in North America: Methods and Issues in the Study of One’s Own Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Akemi Kikumura, “Family Life Histories: A Collaborative Venture,” in The Oral History Reader, ed. Perks and Thomson, 140–44; and R. Merton, “Insiders and Outsiders: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (1972): 9–47. For support of insider research, see Victor Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965); and G. K. Nukunya, Kinship and Marriage among the Anlo Ewe (New York: Humanities Press, 1969).
56. 56For a discussion of this, see Enya P. Flores-Meiser, “Field Experience in Three Societies,” in Fieldwork: The Human Experience, ed. Robert Lawless et al., 49–61 (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1983).
57. 57Ndaywel E. Nziem, “African Historians and Africanist Historians,” in Profile of a Historiography, B. Jewsiewicki and D. Newbury, ed., 20–27 (Boulder, CO: Sage, 1986). While this view assumes the unity of African perspective, the fundamental problem of academic literature, Jewsiewicki argues, however, lies in the question of where and by whom it is produced as well as where and by whom it is read. See Bogumil Jewsiewicki, “African Historical Studies, Academic Knowledge as ‘Usable Past’: A Radical Scholarship,” African Studies Review 32, no. 3 (1989): 9.
58. 58Richard Wright, “Introduction: Blueprint for Negro Writing,” in The Black Aesthetics, ed. Addison Gayle, Jr., 315–26 (New York: Doubleday, 1972).
59. 59Obioma Nnaemeka, ed., “Introduction,” in Sisterhood, Feminisms and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora, ed. Obioma Nnaemeka, 2 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998).
60. 60Samuel Raphael, “Introduction,” in Village Life and Labour (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975).
61. 61For useful comments on credibility of oral accounts, see Jan M. Vansina, Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, trans. H. M. Wright (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1961), first published in 1961 as De la tradition orale: Essai de méthode historique and Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
62. 62Hoopes, Oral History, 15. For comments on the problematic nature of text and archived materials, see also Ruth Finnegan, Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts: A Guide to Research Practice (London: Routledge, 1992), 82.
63. 63John Rae, “Commentary,” 175. Quoted in Hoopes, Oral History, 15.
64. 64Thomas Spear, Mountain Farmers: Moral Economies of Land and Agricultural Development in Arusha and Meru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 11.

1“WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FARMERS”: SOCIETY AND ECONOMY AT THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

1. 1M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, eds., African Political Systems (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 5–6.
2. 2M. G. Smith, “On Segmentary Lineage Systems,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 86, part 2 (July–Dec., 1956): 39–80. See also Aidan W. Southall, Alur Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956); and Paula Brown, “Patterns of Authority in West Africa,” Africa 21, no. 4 (October 1951): 261–78.
3. 3See A. E. Afigbo, “The Indigenous Political Systems of the Igbo,” Tarikh 4, no. 2 (1973): 12–23; M. A. Onwuejeogwu, “Evolutionary Trends in the History of the Development of the Igbo Civilization in the Culture Theater of Igboland in Southern Nigeria” (1987 Ahiajoku Lecture) Owerri, Nigeria: Ministry of Information and Culture, 1987).
4. 4Afigbo, “The Indigenous,” 15. See also Raphael C. Njoku, “Neoliberal Globalism in Microcosm: A Study of the Precolonial Igbo of Eastern Nigeria,” Mbari: The International Journal of Igbo Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 46–68; Simon Ottenberg, Leadership and Authority in an African Society: The Afikpo Village Groups (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971); G. I. Jones, “Ibo Age Organization, with Special Reference to the Cross River and North-Eastern Ibo,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 92, part 1 and 2 (1962): 191–21; and Richard N. Henderson, The King in Every Man: Evolutionary Trends in Onitsha Ibo Society and Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972).
5. 5NAE, ONPROF, 8/1/4702, “Anthropological Report on Onitsha Province,” by C. K. Meek, 1931. See also Ikenna Nzimiro, Studies in Igbo Political Systems: Chieftaincy and Politics in Four Niger States (London: Frank Cass, 1972).
6. 6Unlike grains, tubers left no archaeological evidence. For an excellent analysis of plant and crop domestication in Igboland, see Okigbo, Plant and Food. See also John E. Njoku, The Igbos of Nigeria: Ancient Rites, Change and Survival (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). For more analysis on the evolution of Igbo agriculture, see L. C. Okere, The Anthropology of Food in Rural Igboland, Nigeria: Socioeconomic and Cultural Aspects of Food and Food Habit in Rural Igboland (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 29–50.
7. 7See Bede N. Okigbo, Plants and Food in Igbo Culture and Civilization: 1980 Ahiajoku Lecture (Owerri: Ministry of Information and Culture, 1980), 11.
8. 8Okigbo, Plants and Food. See also Echeruo, “Aro and Nri: Lessons,” 206.
9. 9This is confirmed in a 1966 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) study. See Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agricultural Development in Nigeria, 1965–1980 (Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1966), 397. For more on Igbo food habits and caloric intakes, see Anita Whitney, Marketing of Staple Foods in Eastern Nigeria (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1968).
10. 10W. B. Morgan, “The Influence of European Contacts on the Landscape of Southern Nigeria,” Geographical Journal 125, no. 1 (1959): 53.
11. 11See Adiele Afigbo, Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture (Ibadan, Nigeria: University Press in Association with Oxford University Press, 1981), 126.
12. 12Ibid., 126.
13. 13Ibid., 125–26. See also J. E. Flint, Nigeria and Ghana (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966), 63.
14. 14Cocoyam, known as a woman’s crop, is ritualized as yam and controlled by similar taboos.
15. 15Interview with Nwanyiafo Obasi, Umunomo, Mbaise, 25 July 1999.
16. 16See W. B. Morgan, “Farming Practice, Settlement Pattern and Population Density in Eastern Nigeria,” Geographical Journal 121, no. 3 (September 1955): 330.
17. 17G. I. Jones, From Slaves to Palm Oil: Slave Trade and Palm Oil Trade in the Bight of Biafra (Cambridge: African Studies Center, 1989), 1.
18. 18Ibid., 3.
19. 19On indigenous trading networks, see David Northrup, Trade Without Rulers: Precolonial Economic Development in Southeastern Nigeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).
20. 20Duarte Pacheco Pereira, cited in David Northrup, “The Growth of Trade among the Igbo before 1800,” Journal of African History 13, no. 2 (1972): 220.
21. 21For pre-colonial exchange relations, see Northrup, Trade Without Rulers. See also Northrup, “The Growth of Trade,” 217–36. See also Hermann Koler, Einige Notizen über Bonny (Göttingen, 1840), trans. Uche Isichei, in Igbo Worlds: An Anthology of Oral Histories and Historical Descriptions, ed. Elizabeth Isichei, 14–17 (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1978).
22. 22“Mr. John Grazilhier’s voyage from Bandy to New Calabar,” in John Barbot, A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (Vol. V in Churchill’s Voyages and Travels) (London, 1746), 380–81. Cited in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 10.
23. 23According to his autobiography, written in 1789, Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745–1797) was born in Igboland. He was kidnapped and sold into slavery when he was eleven years old. His involvement in the movement to abolish the slave trade led him to write and publish The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789). There is heated debate today over Equiano’s nativity raised by Vincent Carretta in Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (University of Georgia Press, 2005). For a contrary view see, Chima J. Korieh, ed., “Introduction,” in Olaudah Equiano and the Igbo World: History, Society, and Atlantic Diaspora Connections, 1–20 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008).
24. 24Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, 39.
25. 25Archibald John Monteith’s memoir was written by Reverend Joseph Horsfield Kummer in 1853. Kummer served the Moravian Mission in Jamaica and this account was edited by Vernon H. Nelson from the manuscript in the Archives of the Moravian Church, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. See “Archibald John Monteith: Native Helper and Assistant in the Jamaica Mission at New Carmel,” Transactions of the Monrovian Historical Society 21, no. 1 (1966): 30. See also Maureen Warner-Lewis, Archibald Monteath: Igbo, Jamaican, Moravian, Jamaican, Moravian (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2007).
26. 26Extracts from Koler, Einige Notizen über Bonny, in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 14–17. Yam is the common name applied to about 500 species of the genus Dioscorea of the Dioscoreaceae family. Tubers vary in size and shape, averaging 3–8 lb., but sometimes reaching more than 60 lb.
27. 27C.M.S Archives, CA3/010, W. E. Carew, Journal, January 1866. Cited in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 210.
28. 28F.O. 403/233, Harcourt, Report on the Aquette Expedition, 29 February 1896–29 March 1896, cited in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 211.
29. 29S. R. Smith, “Journey to Nsugbe and Nteje, 1897,” Niger and Yoruba Notes (1898), 82–83, cited in Isichie, Igbo Worlds, 202.
30. 30Onwuka Njoku, Economic History of Nigeria: 19th and 20th Centuries (Enugu, Nigeria: Magnet, 2001), 9.
31. 31C.O. 520/31, “Political Report on the Eza Patrol,” encl. in Egerton to Lyttelton, 16 July 1905, cited in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 242.
32. 32Western Equatorial Africa Diocesan Magazine, 1904, 29ff., cited in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 207–8. Cassava is a perennial woody shrub with an edible root, which grows in tropical and subtropical environment.
33. 33Morgan, “The Influence,” 52.
34. 34Allison, The Interesting Narrative, 39.
35. 35Victor Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 30.
36. 36Morgan, “The Influence,” 49.
37. 37See Barry Floyd, Eastern Nigeria: A Geographical Review. New York: Frederick C. Prager, 1969.
38. 38Morgan, “The Influence,” 52. Population pressure and land scarcity have fundamentally influenced Igbo agriculture where the characteristically poor soil continued to deteriorate rapidly with frequent cultivation. For the impact of soil type on agricultural productivity in Eastern Nigeria, see, for example, G. Lekwa, “The Characteristics and Classification of Genetic Sequences of Soil in the Coastal Plain Sands of Eastern Nigeria” (PhD dissertation, Michigan State University, 1979). See also R. K. Udo, “Pattern of Population Distribution and Settlement in Eastern Nigeria,” Nigerian Geographical Journal 6, no. 1 (1963): 75.
39. 39Morgan, “The Influence,” 53.
40. 40The Biafra hinterland was a major source of slaves during the Atlantic trade. For an analysis of Igbo participation in the slave trade see, for example, Ugo Nwokeji, “The Biafran Frontier: Trade, Slaves and Aro Society, c.1750–1905,” (PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1998). On the transition from slave trade to commodity trade, see Robin Law, From Slavery to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth century West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa: The Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). For an analysis of the gender implication of the transitions, see, for example, Martin, “Slaves, Igbo Women.”
41. 41ONPROF, 7/15/135, “World Agricultural Census,” Resident, Onitsha to District Officer Awgu, 16 January 1929.
42. 42See the works of Margaret M. Green, Land Tenure in an Ibo Village in South-Eastern Nigeria. Monographs on Social Anthropology (London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology no. 6) (London: Berg, 1941); and J. Harris, “Human Relationships to the Land in Southern Nigeria,” Rural Sociology 7 (1942): 89–92. See also Abe Goldman, “Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Imo State, South-eastern Nigeria,” in Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa, ed. B. L. Turner II, R. Kates, and G. Hyden, 250–301 (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1993).
43. 43David R. Smock and Audrey C. Smock, Cultural and Political Aspects of Rural Transformation: A Case Study of Eastern Nigeria (New York: Praeger, 1972), 21. This high population density is reflected in the 1991 population census. An important demographic characteristic is the high female population ration in the region, which is on the average 10,000 more than the male population in most areas. The demographic composition has gender and development implications including access to resources and contribution to agricultural production. See Federal Office of Statistics “1991 Population of States by Local Government Areas,” Digest of Statistics, December 1994.
44. 44Rhodes House Oxford (hereafter RH), Mss. Afr. s. 823 (1), J. R. Mackie Papers on Nigerian Agriculture.
45. 45W. B. Morgan and J. C. Pugh, West Africa (London: Methuen, 1969), 322–23.
46. 46Ibid.
47. 47Sylvia Leith-Ross, African Women: A Study of the Igbo of Nigeria (London: Faber and Faber, 1939), 48.
48. 48William Allan distinguishes between obligatory and voluntary shifting cultivation. Voluntary shifting cultivation is found where land is plentiful in relation to population. Here populations could move to new areas without the restrictions imposed by the need to allow cultivated land to regenerate. See William Allan, The African Husbandman (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965), 6–7.
49. 49See Morgan and Pugh, West Africa, 322.
50. 50Shifting cultivators could also rate the fertility of a piece of land and its suitability for a particular crop by the vegetation that covers it and by the physical characteristics of the soil. For a discussion of the ecological basis of soil and agricultural systems, see Allan, The African Husbandman, 3–19.
51. 51Interview with Mbagwu Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 18 December 1998.
52. 52For a study of the impact of fallow on the soil, see B. T. Kang, G.F. Wilson, and T. L. Lawson, Alley Cropping: A Stable Alternative to Shifting Cultivation (Ibadan, Nigeria: International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, 1984), 22. See also O. A. Opara-Nadi, “Soil Management Practices and Agricultural Sustainability in Traditional Farming Systems,” in Agriculture and Modernity in Nigeria: A Historical and Contemporary Survey of the Igbo Experience, ed. Jude C. Aguwa and U.D. Anyanwu, 86–104 (New York: Triantlantic Books, 1998).
53. 53B. N. Okigbo, “Plant and Agroforestry in Land Use Systems of West Africa,” in Plant Research in Agroforestry, ed. P. A. Huxley, 25–41 (Nairobi: International Council for Research in Agroforestry, 1993).
54. 54It is likely that by the end of the eighteenth century most parts of Igboland and neighbouring areas were so well inhabited that founding new communities became nearly impossible. The development of a more permanent agricultural practice, therefore, became inevitable.
55. 55J. W. Wallace “Agriculture in Abakaliki and Afikpo,” Farm and Forest 2 (1941): 89–95, cited in Morgan and Pugh, West Africa, 69; Forde and Jones, The Ibo and Ibibio, 14.
56. 56Anthony G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman, 1973), 38.
57. 57Ibid., 35.
58. 58See, for example, C. Meillassoux, “Essai d’interpretation du phénomène économique dans les sociétés tradinonelles d’auto-subsistence,” Cahiers d’études africaines 4 (1960): 38–67. See also Emmanuel Terray “L’Organisation sociale des Dida de Côte-d’Ivoire,” Annales de l’Université d’Abidjan, Serie F, vol. I, part 2.
59. 59On patriarchal mode of production and its relevance in stateless societies in pre-colonial Africa, see Jeanne Koopman Henn, “The Material Basis of Sexism: A Mode of Production Analysis with African Examples” (Boston University Working papers/ African Studies Center, no. 119, Boston, MA: African Studies Center, 1986).
60. 60For more on African modes of production, see Wim van Binsbergen and Peter Geschiere, eds., Old Modes of Production and Capitalist Encroachment: Anthropological Explorations in Africa (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985).
61. 61For the classification of land among the Igbo, see S.N.C. Obi, The Ibo Law of Property (London: Butterworth, 1963).
62. 62In reality, the notion of individual ownership is quite alien to Igbo indigenous culture. Land is assumed to belong to the community, lineage, the ancestors and the generations yet unborn. For the models of communal tenure, see, for example, John M. Cohen, “Land Tenure and Rural Development in Africa,” in Agricultural Development in Africa, ed. R. H. Bates and M. F. Lofchie, 349–99 (New York: Preager, 1980); Horoshi Akabane, “Traditional Patterns of Land Occupancy in Black Africa,” Developing Economies 8 (1970): 161–79; William Allan, The African Husbandman (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965), 360–74; and Frank Mifsud, Customary Land Law in Africa (Rome: Food and Agricultural Organization, 1967).
63. 63NAE, OWDIST, 9/15/2, file no. 4/29, “Rural Land Policy,” District Officer, Owerri to Resident, Owerri Province, Port Harcourt, May 1929.
64. 64NAE, CALPROF, 14/7/1698, file no. E/2994/12 “Land Tenure in the Aba District” District Commissioner, Aba District to the Provincial Commissioner, Eastern Province, October 1912. See also NAE, CALPROF, 14/7/1698, file no. E/2994/12 “Report on Land Tenure” Acting District Commissioner, Orlu to H.P.C Calabar, November, 1912.
65. 65W. B. Morgan, “Farming Practice, Settlement Pattern and Population Density in Eastern Nigeria,” Geographical Journal 121, no. 3 (1955): 326.
66. 66The importance of age in determining gender and social relations is important in many Nigerian communities. For the case of the Yoruba of southeastern Nigeria, see Oyeronke Oyewumi, “Mothers Not Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse” (PhD dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1993), 2. See also Onaiwu Ogbomo, When Men and Women Mattered: A History of Gender Relations among the Owan of Nigeria (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 2–6; and Karen Sacks, Sisters and Wives: The Past and Future of Sexual Equality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982).
67. 67The patrilineal systems of many Igbo communities allowed men a high degree of authority in decision-making about land, but not necessarily in agricultural production. For an assessment of the impact of patriarchy on land ownership, see, for example, Uchendu, The Igbo, 22; Thomas, Ibo, vol. 1, chap. 10, cited in Iliffe, African Poor, 92. On gender relations and land in African agriculture, see Jean Davison, “Land and Women and Agricultural Production: The Context,” in Agriculture, Women and Land: The African Experience, ed. Jean Davison, 1–32 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988). See also Simi Afonja, “Changing Mode of Production and the Sexual Division of Labour among the Yoruba,” in Women’s Work, ed. Eleanor Leacock and Helen I. Safa, 122–35 (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1986). For an analysis of gender differences in control over resources and labour at the household level, see Ann Whitehead, “‘I’m Hungry, Mum’: The Politics of Domestic Budgeting,” in Of Marriage and the Market, ed. K. Young, C. Wolkowitz and R. McCullagh, 88–111 (London: CSE Books, 1981).
68. 68Davison, “Land, Women and Agricultural Production,” 2. Chubb described land among the Igbo as the fons et erigo (fountain and origin) of human morality, productivity, and fertility and therefore, to that extent, the principal legal sanction. See Chubb, Ibo Land Tenure, 6–7. See also Uchendu, The Igbo, 22.
69. 69In traditional Igbo society, a variety of factors including initiation into adulthood, age, and marriage determined one’s status as an adult, but they also determined when one became economically independent.
70. 70Interview with Mbagwu Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 18 December 1998.
71. 71The Igbo week calendar is made up of eight days. The major market days in the week are Orie, Afo, Nkwo, and Eke with four minor market days on the same nomenclature.
72. 72The Ofo is the symbol of authority in Igbo society and each lineage head remained the custodian of the Ofo until he died. See Anyanwu, “Igbo Family Life,” 147–48.
73. 73Interview with Eleazer Ihediwa, Owerrinta, Isiala Ngwa, 24 July 1998. See also John Oriji, History of the Ngwa People, 64–67.
74. 74Interview with Comfort Anabalam, Umuchieze, Mbaise 13 December 1998. On Isusu in Igbo socio-political economy, see Anthony I. Nwabughuoghu, “The Isusu: An Institution for Capital Formation among the Ngwo Igbo: Its Origins and Development,” Africa 54 (1984): 46-58.
75. 75Interview with Ugwuanya Nwosu, Owerri, 20 December 1998.
76. 76See Don C. Ohadike, Anioma: A Social History of the Western Igbo People, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1994) and ‘“When Slaves Left, Owners Wept’: Entrepreneurs and Emancipation among the Igbo People,” in Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa: Studies in Slave and Post-Slave Societies and Cultures, ed. Suzanne Miers and Martin A. Klein, 189–207 (London: Routledge, 1999). See also Carolyn Brown, “Testing the Boundaries of Marginality: Twentieth-Century Slavery and Emancipation Struggles in Nkanu, Northern Igboland 1920–29,” Journal of African History 37, no. 11 (1996): 51–80.
77. 77See Afigbo, Ropes of Sand, 130.
78. 78Interview with Ugwuanya Nwosu, Owerri, 20 December 1998.
79. 79David van Nyendael, “A Description of Rio Formosa, or the River of Benin,” cited in G. Ugo Nwokeji, “African Conceptions of Gender and the Slave Traffic,” William and Mary Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2001): 15.
80. 80William Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), 344.
81. 81Denis de Cardi, “A Voyage to Congo,” A Collection of Voyages and Travels, 4 vols. (London, 1704), 1–622, 629, 630–31.
82. 82Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 103.
83. 83Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, African Women: A Modern History, translated by Beth Gillian Raps (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 11–12.
84. 84Hopkins, An Economic History, 21.
85. 85On African farming systems and division of labour, see Baumann, “The Division of Work,” 328.
86. 86Allison, The Interesting Narrative, 39.
87. 87Basden, Niger Ibos, 93.
88. 88Interview with Chief Theophilus Onyema, Umuorlu, Isu, 5 January 2000.
89. 89Interview with Luke Osunwoke, Umuorlu, Isu, 5 January 2000.
90. 90Harris, “Paper on Economic,” 12, Anyanwu, Igbo Family Life, 137.
91. 91Chuku, “Igbo Women,” 39.
92. 92Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London, 1788), 21.
93. 93Cited in Onwuejeogwu, “Evolutionary Trends,” 59.
94. 94Basden, Niger Ibos, 389–90, 394.
95. 95The Church Missionary Intelligencer, August 1891, 573, cited in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 256.
96. 96Interview with Linus Anabalam, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 and 14 December 1998.
97. 97Emmanuel Nlenanya Onwu, “Ụzo Ndu an Eziokwu: Towards an Understanding of Igbo Traditional Religious Life and Philosophy,” 2002 Ahiajoku Lecture (Owerri, Nigeria: Ministry of Information, 2002).
98. 98RH, Mss. Afr. s. 1000, Extract from Edward Morris Falk Papers.
99. 99M. Angulu Onwuejeogwu, Afa Symbolism and Phenomenology in Nri Kingdom and Hegemony: An African Philosophy of Social Action (Benin City: Ethiope Publishing Corporation, 1997), 7–9.
100. 100Kenneth O. Dike and Felicia Ekejiuba, The Aro of Southeastern Nigeria, 1650–1980: A Study of Socio-economic Formation and Transformation in Nigeria (Ibadan, Nigeria: University Press Limited, 1990), 109.
101. 101Echeruo, “Aro and Nri: Lessons,” 200–1.
102. 102Ibid.
103. 103Interview with Agu Elija Ukaeme, Umunomo Mbaise, 3 August 1999.
104. 104Interview with Nze James Eboh, Obowo, Etiti, 2 January 2000.
105. 105Telephone interview with Johnston Njoku, Glassboro, New Jersey, 2 February 2007. See also Johnston Njoku, “Transformations in Marriage, Gender, and Class System Resulting from Atlantic Trades and Colonialism in the Bight of Biafra,” paper presented at the 4th International Conference of the Igbo Studies Association, Howard University, 31 March to 1 April 2006.
106. 106See Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Anchor, 1994).
107. 107Ibid., 28.
108. 108Ibid.
109. 109Phanuel Egejuru, The Seed Yams Have Been Eaten (Ibadan, Nigeria: Heinemann, 1993).
110. 110Ibid., 74.
111. 111For more analysis, see Obioma Nnaemeka, “Fighting on All Fronts: Gendered Spaces, Ethnic Boundaries, and the Nigeria Civil War,” Dialectical Anthropology 22 (1997): 247–48.
112. 112Achebe, Things Fall Apart, 16, 33–34.
113. 113NAE, OWDIST, 4/13/70, file no. 91/27, “Cultivation of Crops, Owerri District,” District Officer to Resident Owerri Province, June 1928.
114. 114Onwuejeogwu, “Evolutionary Trends,” 60.
115. 115Basden, Niger Ibos, 389–94.
116. 116During my field interviews, people talked about the growing of yams as if it were synonymous with farming.
117. 117Morgan, “The Influence,” 52.
118. 118Basden, Niger Ibos, 389.
119. 119Onwuejeogwu, “Evolutionary Trends,” 58.
120. 120Cited in Onwu, Ụzo Ndu.
121. 121Onwuejeogwu, “Evolutionary Trends,” 59.
122. 122Interview with Chief Theophilus Onyema, Umuorlu, Isu, 5 January 2000.
123. 123Isichei, A History of the Igbo, 10.
124. 124Adiele E. Afigbo, “Trade and Trade Routes in Nineteenth Century Nsukka,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 7, no. 1 (1973): 77–90; Adiele E. Afigbo, “The Nineteenth Century Crisis of the Aro Slaving Oligarchy of Southeastern Nigeria,” Nigeria Magazine 110–12 (1974): 66–73; G. I. Jones, “Who are the Aro?”, The Nigerian Field 8, no. 3 (1939): 100–3; and G. I. Jones “Native and Trade Currencies in Southern Nigeria during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Africa 28, 1 (1958): 43–54.
125. 125Ukwu I. Ukwu, “The Development of Trade and Marketing in Iboland,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3, no. 4 (1967): 650.
126. 126On Nri civilization, see Thurstan Shaw, Igbo-Ukwu: An Account of Archeological Discoveries in Eastern Nigeria, vol. 1 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 268–84; and Onwuejeogwu, Afa Symbolism. On the Aro, see Dike and Ekejiuba, The Aro.
127. 127Ukwu, “The Development of Trade,” 650.
128. 128Ibid.
129. 129Ibid., 651–55. See also Dike and Ekejiuba, The Aro.
130. 130Ibid.
131. 131See Eltis and Richardson, “West Africa,” 16–35.
132. 132See David Eltis et al., eds. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-ROM (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
133. 133Ibid.
134. 134David Eltis and David Richardson estimated that about one in seven Africans shipped to the New World during the whole era of the transatlantic slave trade originated from the Bight of Biafra. See David Eltis and David Richardson, “West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade: New Evidence on Long Run Trends,” Slavery and Abolition 18, no. 1 (1997): 16–35. See Douglas B. Chambers, ‘“My Own Nation’: Igbo Exiles in the Diaspora,” Slavery and Abolition 18, no. 1 (1997): 72–97. For African export figures for 1470s–1699, see Paul E. Lovejoy, “The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Synthesis,” Journal of African History 23 (1982): 478–81. For 1700–1809, see David Richardson, “Slave Exports from West and West-Central Africa, 1700–1810: New Estimates of Volume and Distribution,” Journal of African History 30, no. 1 (1989): 1–22.
135. 135Chambers, ‘“My Own Nation,” 75–7.
136. 136Birgit Muller, “Commodities as Currencies: The Integration of Overseas Trade into the Internal Trading Structure of the Igbo of South-East Nigeria,” Cahiers d’études africaines 97, 25, no. 1 (1985): 65.
137. 137Morgan, “The Influence,” 53.
138. 138For the link between the slave trade and the local agrarian economy, see, for example, Martin, “Slaves, Igbo Women and Oil Palm.”
139. 139John Barbot, A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea (London, 1746), 465, cited in Jones, From Slaves, 39.
140. 140Jones, From Slaves, 41.
141. 141Calculated from Eltis et al., eds. The TransAtlantic Slave Trade.
142. 142Alexander Falconbridge, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London, 1788), 21.
143. 143Barbot, A Description, 379–80.
144. 144Ibid., 465.
145. 145Jones, From Slaves, 40.
146. 146Okigbo, “Towards a Reconstruction,” 10.
147. 147See Robin Law, “The Historiography of the Commercial Transition in Nineteenth Century West Africa,” in African Historiography: Essays in Honour of Jacob Ade Ajayi, ed. Toyin Falola, 91–115 (Hawlow, 1993); Martin A. Klein, “Social and Economic Factors in the Muslim Revolution in Senegambia,” Journal of African History 13 (1972): 414–41; David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); and Ralph A. Austen, “The Abolition of the Overseas Slave Trade: A Distorted Theme in West African History,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 5, no. 2 (1970): 257–74. See also Chima J. Korieh, “The Nineteenth Century Commercial Transition in West Africa: The Case of the Biafra Hinterland,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, no. 3 (2000): 588–615.
148. 148Morgan, “The Influence,” 53.
149. 149See, for example, Anyanwu, “Igbo Family Life,” 260; Dike, Trade and Politics, 49; and A. J. Latham, Old Calabar 1600–1891: The Impact of the International Economy upon a Traditional Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973).
150. 150American Memory, “Evidence of Capt, the Hon J. Denman, to the Select Committee on West Coast of Africa, 1942,” http://memory.loc.gov/ll/llst/014/0100/01780107.gif, [accessed 19 February 2006].
151. 151Law, “The Historiography,” 91–115.
152. 152Jones, From Slaves, 50.
153. 153Parliamentary papers 1842 XI pt. 1, appendix and index no. 7, 232, cited in Anyanwu, “Igbo Family Life,” 260.
154. 154Kathleen M. Baker, Agricultural Change in Nigeria: Case Studies in the Developing World (London: John Murray, 1989), 3.
155. 155Dike, Trade and Politics, 101.
156. 156Walter I. Ofonagoro, Trade and Imperialism in Southern Nigeria 1881–1889 (New York: Nok Publishers, 1979), 319.
157. 157H. L. Gallwey, “Journeys in the Benin Country, West Africa,” Geographical Journal 1, no. 2 (1893): 122–30.
158. 158New York Times, 29 March 1863, 8.
159. 159Isichei, The Ibo People, 67; Anyanwu, “Igbo Family Life,” 260.
160. 160Jones, From Slaves, 53.
161. 161Echeruo, “Aro and Nri: Lessons,” 207–8.
162. 162Ibid., 206–7.
163. 163Dike and Ekejiuba, The Aro, 3. See also Michael J. C. Echeruo, “Aro and Nri: Lessons of Nineteenth Century Igbo History,” in The Aftermath of Slavery: Transitions and Transformations in Southeastern Nigeria, ed. Chima J. Korieh and Femi J. Kolapo, 228–47 (Trenton: African World Press, 2007).
164. 164Waibinte Wariboko, “New Calabar Middlemen, Her Majesty’s Consuls, and British Traders in the Niger Delta During the Era of New Imperialism,” in Aftermath of Slavery: Transitions and Transformations in Southeastern Nigeria, ed. Chima J. Korieh and Femi J. Kolapo, 17–40 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007).
165. 165See Hopkins, An Economic History, 216. For more analysis, see Law, From Slave Trade, 1995; and Lovejoy and Richardson, “Initial Crisis of Adaptation,” in Law, From Slave Trade, 1995. See also Martin A. Klein, “The Development of Slavery in West Africa,” paper delivered at the Harriet Tubman Seminar, York University, 1996.
166. 166Martin, “Slaves, Igbo Women,” 182.
167. 167Ibid.
168. 168Ibid.
169. 169See Stone, “Women, Work and Marriage,” 16.
170. 170Morgan, “The Influence,” 48.
171. 171Adolphe Burdo, The Niger and the Benueh: Travels in Central Africa (London: Richard Bentley and Sons, 1880), 134.
172. 172Cited in Mba, Nigeria Women, 48.
173. 173Raymond Gore Clough, Oil Rivers Trader (London: C. Hurst, 1972), 41–42.
174. 174Ibid., 41–42.
175. 175Henderson, The King, 230–43. See also Mba, Nigeria Women, 49.
176. 176Mba, Nigeria Women, 32.
177. 177Ibid., 48.
178. 178NAE, RIPROOF, 8/5/661, file no. OWN 630/17, “Trade Prices at up Country Markets,” D. O. Okigwi to Resident Owerri Province, Port Harcourt, 29 November 1917.

2PAX BRITANNICA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURE

1. 1New York Times, 12 April 1903.
2. 2Ibid.
3. 3For new perspectives on British imperialism, see P. J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000, 2nd ed. (Harlow, England: Longman, 2001).
4. 4Report by The Hon. W.G.A. Ormsby-Gore (Parliamentary Under-Secretary for State for the Colonies) on his Visit to West Africa during the year 1926 (London: HMO, 1926), 77.
5. 5The works of Robinson and Gallagher have given prominence to the notion of formal and informal empire. See J. Gallagher and R. E. Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History Review 6, no. 1(1953): 1–15. See also C. R. Fay, Imperial Economy and its Place in the Foundation of Economic Doctrine, 1600–1932 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934).
6. 6RH, Mss Afr. s. 1873, Robert B. Broocks Papers.
7. 7London Gazette 5 June 1885, 2581. Cited in J. C. Anene, “The Foundation of British Rule in Nigeria (1885–1891),” Journal of Historical Society of Nigeria 1, no. 4 (1959): 253–62. Named after palm oil, the major export product from the region, the protectorate originally also included territories like Benin and Itsekiri, which later became part of Western Nigeria.
8. 8See U.O.A. Esse, “Introduction,” Catalogue of the Correspondence and Papers of the Niger Coast Protectorate (CSO 3/1/1–3/5/1, 1894–1999) (Enugu: National Archives of Nigeria, 1988).
9. 9On the political and economic developments in this period, see J. E. Flint, Sir George Goldie and the Making of Nigeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1960); E. J. Alagoa, The Small Brave City State: A History of Nembe-Brass (Ibadan, Nigeria: University of Ibadan Press, 1964); S.J.S. Cookey, King Jaja of the Niger Delta: His Life and Times 1829–1889 (New York: Nok Publishers, 1974); Walter I. Ofonagoro, Trade and Imperialism in Southern Nigeria 1881–1889 (New York: Nok Publishers, 1979); Obare Ikime, The Fall of Nigeria: The British Conquest (Ibadan, Nigeria: Heinemann, 1982); J. C. Anene, Southern Nigeria in Transition 1885–1906 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); J.U.J. Asiegbu, Nigeria and its British Invaders 1851–1920 (New York: Nok Publishers, 1984); H. Galway, “The Rising of the Brassmen,” Journal of African Society 34 (1935): 144–62; C. Gertzel, “Relations between Africans and European Traders in the Niger Delta, 1880–1896,” Journal of African History 3 (1962): 361–66; J.U.J. Asiegbu, “Some Notes on Afro-European Relations and British Consular Roles in the Niger Delta in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Niger Delta Studies 1, no. 2 (1971): 101–16; and Waibinte Wariboko, “New Calabar Middlemen, Her Majesty’s Consuls, and British Traders in the Niger Delta during the Era of New Imperialism,” in The Aftermath of Slavery: Transitions and Transformations in Southeastern Nigeria, ed. Chima J. Korieh and Femi J. Kolapo, 17–40 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006).
10. 10Wariboko, “New Calabar Middlemen,” 28.
11. 11Ibid., 33.
12. 12Alagoa, The Small Brave, 116.
13. 13Ukwu, “The Development of Trade,” 656.
14. 14In this period eight British commercial companies, British & Continental African Company Limited, Couper Johnstone & Company, Hatton & Cookson, John Holt & Company, Liverpool African Company, Richard & William King, Smith & Douglas Limited, Taylor Laughland & Company, and Thomas Harrison & Company united in 1889 to form the African Association Limited, but their claim to charter similar to the Royal Niger Company charter to administer the Oil Rivers was refused.
15. 15Other military expeditions include the Douglas Expedition (ogu Douglas), Ahiara Expedition, 1905.
16. 16On Aro commercial activities, see, for example, Adiele Afigbo, “The Eclipse of the Aro Trading Oligarchy of Southeastern Nigeria, 1901–1927,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4, no. 1 (1971): 3–24; and Adiele Afigbo, “The Aro Expedition of 1901–1902: An Episode in the British Occupation of Iboland,” ODU: A Journal of West African Studies 7 (1972): 3–25.
17. 17Don C. Ohadike’s The Ekumeku Movement: Western Igbo Resistance to the British Conquest of Nigeria, 1883–1914 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1991). See also Don C. Ohadike, Sacred Drums of Liberation: Religions and Music of Resistance in Africa and the Diaspora (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007) for resistance movements from in Africa and the African Diaspora through religion and music.
18. 18See Ohadike, The Ekumeku Movement.
19. 19See Felix K. Ekechi, “Portrait of a Colonizer: H. M. Douglas in Colonial Nigeria, 1897–1920,” African Studies Review 26, no. 1 (March 1983): 25–50. See also Felix K. Ekechi, “Episodes of Igbo Resistance to European Imperialism, 1860–1960,” in Olaudah Equiano and the Igbo World: History, Society, and Atlantic Diaspora Connections, ed. Chima J. Korieh, 229–53 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2009).
20. 20The term “indirect rule” is a misnomer. The formulation of policy and its implementation were vested on the few British personnel in the territories. For the application of “indirect rule” system in Eastern Nigeria, see Adiele E. Afigbo, Warrant Chiefs: Indirect Rule in Southeastern Nigeria, 1891–1929 (New York: Humanities Press, 1972). See also Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa (London: W. Blackwood, 1926), for the articulation of the indirect rule policy. See also Michael Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968); and Michael Crowder, Colonial West Africa: Collected Essays (London: Frank Cass, 1978).
21. 21Lugard, Dual Mandate, 193.
22. 22RH, Mss Afr. s. 1073, “Extract from a circular from the secretary, Northern Provinces Kaduna, to all Residents, Northern Provinces,” 23 November 1928.
23. 23Ibid.
24. 24Ibid.
25. 25Chima J. Korieh, “Islam and Politics in Nigeria: Historical Perspectives,” in Religion, History and Politics in Nigeria: Essays in Honour of Ogbu U. Kalu, ed. Chima J. Korieh and G. Ugo Nwokeji, 109–24 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005).
26. 26Although some Muslim intellectuals like Aminu Kano served as a voice of dissent and dissatisfaction with the Anglo-Fulani hegemonic collaboration, the ruling class collaborated with the British largely to preserve their own authority and privileges.
27. 27RH, Mss Afr. s. 1073, “Extract from a circular from the secretary.”
28. 28Ibid.
29. 29For an analysis of indirect rule in Western Nigeria, see, J. A. Atanda, The New Oyo Empire: Indirect Rule and Change in Western Nigeria 1894–1934 (New York: Humanities Press, 1973).
30. 30RH, Mss Afr. s. 1073, “Extract from a circular from the secretary.”
31. 31RH, Mss Afr. s. 1551, J.G.C. Allen Papers, “Nigerian Panorama, 1926–1966.”
32. 32Lugard, Dual Mandate, 193.
33. 33Lugard was also committed to containing the expansion of Islam to non-Muslim groups. Lugard did not want non-Muslim groups to be forcibly placed “under Moslem rule (which in practice means their conversion to the Moslem faith) even though that rule may be more advanced and intelligent than anything they are as yet capable of evolving themselves.” See Muhammad S. Umar, Islam and Colonialism: Intellectual Responses of Muslims of Northern Nigeria to British Colonial Rule (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 34.
34. 34Walter Elliot, “The Parliamentary Visit to Nigeria,” Journal of the Royal African Society 27, no. 107 (1928): 215–16. Based on an address delivered by Major Walter Eliot, M.C., M.P. (Under- Secretary of State for Scotland; Chairman of the Research Grants Committee of the Empire Marketing Board and Chairman of the Delegation of the Empire Parliamentary Association which visited Nigeria 1927– 28), at a Dinner of the African Society on 13 March 1928.
35. 35R H, Mss Afr. s. 1551, J.G.C. Allen Papers.
36. 36On the policy of indirect rule in Eastern Nigeria, see Adiele Afigbo, The Warrant Chiefs: Indirect Rule in Eastern Nigeria 1891–1929 (Ibadan, Nigeria: Longman, 1972).
37. 37RH, Mss Afr. s. 2288/2, Alex J. Braham papers.
38. 38Report by The Hon. W. G. A. Ormsby-Gore, 115.
39. 39Ibid.
40. 40RH, Mss Afr. s. 1000 (1), Edward Morris Falk papers.
41. 41RH, Mss Afr. s. 1873, Robert B. Broocks, papers.
42. 42Ibid.
43. 43Ibid.
44. 44RH, Mss Afr. s. 1551, J.G.C. Allen Papers.
45. 45RH, Mss Afr. s. 1881. A.F. B. Bridges papers.
46. 46RH, Mss Afr. s. 1551, J.G.C. Allen Papers.
47. 47See also Enyeribe Onuoha, The Land and People of Umuchieze (Owerri, Nigeria: Augustus Publishers, 2003), 17–21.
48. 48RH, Mss Afr. s. 1551, J.G.C. Allen Papers.
49. 49Ibid.
50. 50Ibid.
51. 51Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Ihitteafoukwu, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
52. 52RH, Mss Afr. s. 546, “Reminiscences of Sir F. Bernard Carr—Administrative Officer, Nigeria 1919–1949,” Carr Frederick Bernard papers.
53. 53RH, Mss Afr. s. 1924, A.E. Cooks papers.
54. 54RH, Mss Afr. s. 1000 (1), Edward Morris Falk papers.
55. 55RH, MSS Afr. s. 1551, J.G.C. Allen Papers.
56. 56RH, Mss Afr. s. 1873, Robert B. Broocks papers.
57. 57RH, Mss Afr. s. 1551, J.G.C. Allen Papers.
58. 58RH, Mss Afr. s. 1520, Sylvia Leith–Ross papers.
59. 59RH, Mss Afr. s. 1873, Robert B. Broocks papers
60. 60Ibid.
61. 61Ibid.
62. 62C.O. 520/26, Egerton to C.O. (Confidential), November 5, 1904.
63. 63C.O. 520/14, Moor to C.O. No. 183, April 17, 1902.
64. 64Kannan K. Nair, Politics and Society in South Eastern Nigeria, 1841–1906: A Study of Power, Diplomacy, and Commerce in Old Calabar (London: Frank Cass, 1972), 39.
65. 65See Kenneth O. Dike, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–1885 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 4.
66. 66On agricultural change in Africa, see, for example, W. J. Barber, “The Movement into the World Economy,” in Economic Transition in Africa, ed. M. J. Herskovits and M. Harwitz, 299–329 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1961); Sara Berry, No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Sahara Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); Hopkins, An Economic History; Martin A. Klein, ed., Peasants in Africa: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (London: Sage, 1980); J. Tosh, “The Cash Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An Agricultural Appraisal,” African Affairs 79, no. 314 (1980): 79–94.
67. 67Several attempts were made to introduce the production of cotton in the region. Such attempts were frustrated by a combination of factors, including the lack of interest on the part of farmers, and the unsatisfactory soil conditions in many parts of Igboland.
68. 68W. B. Morgan, “Farming Practice, Settlement Pattern and Population Density in Eastern Nigeria,” Geographical Journal 121, no. 3 (1955): 331.
69. 69R. E. Dennett, “Agricultural Progress in Nigeria,” Journal of the Royal African Society 18, no. 72 (1919): 266.
70. 70Dennett, “Agricultural Progress,” 267.
71. 71Fredrick. D. Lugard, The Rise of our East African Empire, Vol. 1.1, The Years of Adventure 1858–1898 (London: Collins, 1893), 381.
72. 72Ekechi, “Portrait of a Colonizer,” 40.
73. 73CO 520/31, W. Egerton, “Overland journey – Lagos to Calabar, via Ibadan, March 9–April 18, 1905,” 29.
74. 74NAE, OWDIST 6/2/6, “Report on the Export Products of Owerri Province, Nigeria,” 3/11/14.
75. 75Address by Governor Hugh Clifford, to the Nigerian Council (Lagos, December, 1920), cited in Usoro, The Nigeria Oil Palm Industry, 186–7. See also Fredrick Lugard, “British Policy in Nigeria,” Africa 10, no. 4 (1937): 385. Lugard discussed the difficulty of acquiring land for plantation development because of the Igbo land tenure system. See also Usoro, The Nigeria Oil Palm Industry, 390.
76. 76For the attempts by Lever to establish plantations in West Africa, see David Meredith, “Government and the Decline of the Nigerian Oil-Palm Export Industry, 1919–1939,” Journal of African History 25 (1984): 311–29. See also Nworah K. Dike, “The Politics of Lever’s West African Concession, 1907–13,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 5 (1972): 248–64.
77. 77West Africa, 26 July 1924.
78. 78Ibid.
79. 79Ibid.
80. 80See Fredrick Lugard, “British Policy in Nigeria,” Africa 11, no. 4 (1937): 384; K. M. Buchanan and J. C. Pugh, Land and People in Nigeria (London: University of London Press, 1958), 103. See also NAE, CSE 1/861102. Smith Buchannan, Commissioner of Lands, Lagos. Memorandum on the existing methods of Government control of Crown and other lands in Southern Nigeria for the W & ALC. 1892: 11; NAE, CSE 6607/Cv. Lt. Col. Roweg, “Confidential Report on Land Questions in Southern Nigeria: NAE, CSO 583/146. File no. 6990 and 6991: “West African Lands Committee Question.” See also: Alan Pim, Colonial Agricultural Production: The Contribution Made by Native Peasants and by Foreign Enterprise (London: Oxford University Press, 1946), 133; and O. N. Njoku, “Oil Palm Syndrome in Nigeria: Government Policy and Indigenous Response, 1918–1939,” Calabar Historical Journal 2, no. 1 (1978): 84.
81. 81Nigeria, Annual Report on the Agricultural Department, 1932, 29.
82. 82Report by The Hon. W.G.A. Ormsby-Gore, 107.
83. 83See Meredith, “Government and the Decline,” 311. See also Hopkins, An Economic History, 210–16; Usoro, The Nigeria Oil Palm Industry, 36–40; D. K. Fliedhouse, Unilever Overseas (London: Croom Helm, 1978), ch. 9; and Berry, Fathers Work, 23.
84. 84F. M. Dyke was struck by the high degree of skill and knowledge shown by the native farmers in the care of their palm. See Report on the Oil Palm Industry in British West Africa, cited in Usoro, The Nigeria Oil Palm Industry, 37.
85. 85For example, in 1910, W. H. Johnson, Director, Department of Agriculture, Southern Nigeria described the methods employed by the native agriculturalists as “extremely crude,” employing only “a short-handled hoe and the cutlass.” For the analysis of the production systems in Eastern Nigeria, see Usoro, The Nigeria Oil Palm Industry; Susan Martin, “Igbo Women and Palm Oil”; and John Oriji, “A Study of the Slave Trade and Palm Produce among the Ngwa Igbo of Southeastern Nigeria,” Cahiers d’études africanes 91(1983): 311–28.
86. 86RH, Mss. Afr. s. 823 (4), J. R. Mackie Papers.
87. 87Elliot, “The Parliamentary Visit,” 205–18.
88. 88Ibid., 216–17.
89. 89The Nigeria Handbook (Lagos: Government Printer, 1927), 255–56.
90. 90Nigeria, The Nigeria Handbook, 1929, 246.
91. 91See J. E. Gray, “Native Methods of Preparing Palm Oil,” in Second Annual Bulletin of the Agricultural Department for 1923/1924 (Lagos: Government Printer, 1925), 29. See also Helleiner, Peasant Agriculture, 5.
92. 92Ibid.
93. 93I.E.S. Amdii, “Revenue Generating Capacity of the Nigerian Customs and Excise: 1875–1960,” in 100 Years of the Nigerian Customs and Excise: 1891–1991, ed. I.E.S. Amdii, 12–47 (Zaria, Nigeria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1991).
94. 94See Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria, 26.
95. 95Ibid.
96. 96See, for example, J. E. Gray, “Native Methods of Preparing Palm Oil,” First Annual Bulletin of the Agricultural Department (Lagos, 1922); and O. T. Faulker and C. J. Lewis, “Native Methods of Preparing Palm Oil – II,” Second Annual Bulletin of the Agricultural Department (Lagos, 1923), 6–10.
97. 97Usoro, The Nigeria Oil Palm Industry.
98. 98Interview with Christina Marizu, Nguru, 25 December 1999.
99. 99Clough, Oil Rivers Trader, 38.
100. 100RH, Mss Afr. s. 1000, Edward Morris Falk papers.
101. 101Clough, Oil Rivers Trader, 51–52.
102. 102Echeruo, “Aro and Nri,” 240.
103. 103RH, Mss Afr. s. 1924, A. E. Cooks papers.
104. 104Ibid.
105. 105Interview with Eugenia Otuonye, Umuchieze, 23 December 1998.
106. 106RH, Mss Afr. s. 1924, A. E. Cooks papers.
107. 107Isichei, A History of the Ibo People, 67.
108. 108Gerald D. Hursh et al., ed., Innovation in Eastern Nigeria: Success and Failure of Agricultural Programs in 71 Villages of Eastern Nigeria (East Lansing: Michigan State University, 1968), 193–94.
109. 109CO 583/193/8, ‘Palm Oil Industry.’
110. 110Nigeria, Annual Report on the Agricultural Department, 1932, 22.
111. 111RH, Mss Afr. s. 546, Frederick Bernard Carr paper.
112. 112Interview with F. Enweremadu, Mbutu Mbaise, 2 January 2000.
113. 113Nigeria, Report on the Agricultural Department, 1912, 23.
114. 114RH, Mss Afr. s. 546, Frederick Bernard Carr paper.
115. 115Ibid.
116. 116W. B. Morgan, “Farming Practice, Settlement Pattern and Population Density in Eastern Nigeria,” Geographical Journal 121, no. 3 (1955): 332.
117. 117CO 583/193/8, “Palm oil Industry.”
118. 118Ibid.
119. 119Spear, Mountain Farmers, 1997.
120. 120Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
121. 121RH, Mss Afr. s. 1873, Robert Bernard Broocks Papers.
122. 122RH, Mss Afr. s. 1000, Edward Morris Falk papers.
123. 123Ibid.
124. 124Ikem Stanley Okoye, “‘Biafran’ Historicity: Ife, Okrika, and Architectural Representation,” in The Aftermath of Slavery, ed. Chima J. Korieh and F. J. Kolapo, 158–96 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007).
125. 125Nigeria, Report in the Agricultural Department, 1912, 23–24.
126. 126RH, Mss Afr. s. 1000, Edward Morris Falk papers.
127. 127Nigeria, First Annual Bulletin of the Agricultural Department (Lagos: Government Printer, 1922), 11.
128. 128Report by The Hon. W.G.A. Ormsby-Gore, 77.
129. 129The Nigeria Handbook (Lagos: Government Printer, 1927), 140.
130. 130Nigeria, Annual Report in the Agriculture Department: Southern Provinces for the Year, 1918 (1919), 20.
131. 131Ibid., 20.
132. 132Nigeria, Annual Report in the Agriculture Department: Southern Provinces for the Year, 1919, 18.
133. 133See NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/397, file nos. 851; NAE, AHODIST, 14/1/465, relating to pawning of persons as security for debts.
134. 134Interview with Linus Anabalam, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
135. 135Iliffe, The African Poor, 92.
136. 136See J. S. Harris, “Some Aspects of the Economics of Sixteen Ibo Individuals,” Africa 14 (1943–4): 302–35.
137. 137S. N. Nwabara, Iboland: A Century of Contact with Britain, 1860–1960 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978), 15. See also C. K. Meek, Land and Authority in a Nigeria Tribe: A Study in Indirect Rule (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970), 1.
138. 138Meek, Land and Authority, 15–16.
139. 139Green, Ibo Village Affairs, 43.
140. 140Takes, “Socio-Economic Factors,” 6.
141. 141Udo, Geographical Regions, 83. See also W. B. Morgan and J. C. Pugh, West Africa (London: Methuen, 1969), 9.
142. 142Udo, Geographical Regions, 83.
143. 143Philip Raikes, “Modernisation and Adjustment in African Peasant Agriculture,” in Disappearing Peasantries? Rural Labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America, ed. Deborah Bryceson, Cristobal Kay, and Jos Mooij, 79 (London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 2000).
144. 144Jones, From Slaves, 1.
145. 145Freund, The Making of Modern Africa, 98.
146. 146Interview with Eleazer Ihediwa. See also J. Tosh, “The Cash Crop Revolution in Tropical Africa: An Agricultural Reappraisal,” African Affairs 79, no. 314 (1980): 79–94; and J. Heyer, P. Roberts, and G. Williams, ed., Rural Development in Tropical Africa (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 168–92.
147. 147Some scholars see the capitalist transformation of African colonial economies as clearly determined by the colonizing power rather than “natural” developments within indigenous communities. See Clive Y. Thomas, The Rise of the Authoritarian State in Peripheral Societies (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984), 10–19.
148. 148Geoffrey B. Kay, The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana: A Collection of Documents and Statistics 1900–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 331. See also Berry, No Condition is Permanent, 1993.
149. 149Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Washington: Howard University Press, 1974).
150. 150Barron S. Hal, Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870–1930 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 15.

3GENDER AND COLONIAL AGRICULTURAL POLICY

1. 1See Adiele E. Afigbo, The Warrant Chiefs: Indirect Rule in Southeastern Nigeria, 1891–1929 (London: Longman, 1972). See also C. K. Meek, Law and Authority in a Nigerian Tribe: A Study in Indirect Rule (London: Oxford University Press, 1937). On the decline in the status of women in Africa under colonialism, see, for example, Jane Parpart, “Women and the State in Africa,” in The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa, ed. Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan, 208–15 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988); Jane Parpart and Kathleen A. Staudt, eds., Women and the State in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner Publishers, 1989); Hafkin and Bay, eds., Women in Africa; and Claire Robertson and Iris Berger, Women and Class in Africa (New York: Africana Publishing, 1986). For the case of Igboland, see Nina Mba’s Nigerian Women Mobilized.
2. 2The recognition of difference and diversity is a common trend running through the writings of African feminist scholars. See, for example, Obioma Nnaemeka, ed., Sisterhood, Feminism and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998). For the work of a culturally sensitive writer, see, for example, Chilla Bulbeck, Re-orientating Western Feminism: Women’s Diversity in a Postcolonial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
3. 3See Igor Kopytoff, “Women’s Roles and Existential Identities,” in African Gender Studies: A Reader, ed. Oyeronke Oyewumi, 127–44 (New York: Palgave Macmillan, 2005).
4. 4See, for example, NAE, OWDIST, 4/13/70, file no. 91/27, “Cultivation of Crops, Owerri District,” District Officer to Resident Owerri Province, June 1928. The District Officer acknowledged that statistics were not available for women’s crops.
5. 5Cited in Dennett, “Agricultural Progress,” 266–67.
6. 6See NAE, CALPROF, 14/8/712, file no. E/1019/13, “Report on travelling and agricultural instructional work,” Superintendent of Agriculture, Eastern Province, Calabar, 1913.
7. 7NAE, CALPROF, 14/8/711, file no. 1018/13, The Quarterly Report of the Agricultural Department, 1918. See also Superintendent of Agriculture, Eastern Province, “Report on the Progress of Pupils attached to the Agricultural Department.”
8. 8Nigeria, First Annual Bulletin of the Agricultural Department (Lagos: Government Printer, 1922), 17.
9. 9Chuku, “The Changing Role,” 150.
10. 10NAE, ONDIST, 12/1/578, “Instruction for Farmers’ Sons,” H. G. Poynter to superintendents of agriculture, 14 December 1933.
11. 11Nigeria, Report on the Agricultural Department, 1934 (Lagos: Government Printer, 1935), 26.
12. 12NAE, ONDIST, 12/1/578, “Instruction for Farmers’ Sons.” District officer, Nsukka Division to Resident, Onitsha Province, 3 February 1934.
13. 13NAE, ONDIST, 12/1/578, “Instruction for Farmers’ Sons,” B. C. Stone, District officer, Onitsha to Superintendent of Agriculture, Onitsha, 13 February 1934.
14. 14NAE, ONDIST, 12/1/578, “Instruction for Farmers’ Sons,” B. W. Walter, District officer, Udi Division to Superintendent of Agriculture, Onitsha, 6 February 1934.
15. 15RH, Mss Afr. s. 1779. Norman Herington papers.
16. 16Ibid.
17. 17Ibid.
18. 18Ibid.
19. 19NAE, EKETDIST, 1/2/50, file no. 499, “Co-operative Agricultural Settlements for Nigeria, Registrar of Co-operative Societies to the Chief Secretary to the Government,” Lagos, April 1940.
20. 20NAE, EKETDIST, 1/2/50, “Cooperative Agricultural Settlements.”
21. 21Interview with Eneremadu, Mbutu, 2 January 2000.
22. 22NAE, EKETDIST, 1/2/50, “Cooperative Agricultural Settlements.”
23. 23NAE, RIVPROF, 8/5/661, “Cooperative Agricultural Settlements for Nigeria,” Registrar of Cooperatives Societies to Chief Secretary to the Government, Lagos, 1940.
24. 24NAE, RIVPROF, 8/5/661, “Cooperative Agricultural Settlements.”
25. 25Ibid.
26. 26Ibid.
27. 27Ibid.
28. 28Ibid.
29. 29Ibid.
30. 30RH, Mss Afr. s. 1975, Michael Mann, “Community Development in Okigwi Division,” n.d., c. 1950–53.
31. 31Ibid.
32. 32Ibid.
33. 33Ibid.
34. 34Ibid.
35. 35Eastern Region, Annual Report on the Department of Agriculture (Eastern Region), 1952/53, 2.
36. 36Ibid.
37. 37Ibid.
38. 38Ibid.
39. 39RH, Mss Afr. s. 1779, Norman Herington papers.
40. 40Ibid.
41. 41This was the situation in most of the colonial territories. See, for example, Janice Jiggins, Gender-Related Impacts and the Work of the International Agricultural Centres, CGIAR Study Paper 17 (1986), 1–2.
42. 42RH, Mss Afr. s. 862 Swaisland H. Eastern Nigeria papers.
43. 43Ibid.
44. 44See Richard Goodridge, “Women and Plantation in Western Cameroon Since 1900,” in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Verene Shepherd, Bridget Brereton, and Barbara Bailey, 394 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995).
45. 45Eastern Region, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department, 1952–53, 1.
46. 46Eastern Region, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department, 1956–57, 3.
47. 47See Eastern Region, Annual Report, Agriculture Division, 1958/59.
48. 48NAE, ARODIV, 19/1/18, “Quarterly Reports, Aro District,” Agricultural Station Arochukwu to Agricultural Officer, Abak, 19 December 1952.
49. 49For report from various agricultural divisions, see NAE, LD 51-ESIALA, 27/1/53, “Matter relating to agricultural loans.”
50. 50Ibid.
51. 51See C. K. Laurent, Investment in Nigerian Tree Crops: Smallholder Production (Ibadan: NISER, University of Ibadan, 1968), 2 and 11, Rigobert Oladiran Ladipo, “Nigeria and Ivory Coast: Commercial and Export Crops since 1960,” in African Agriculture: The Critical Choice: Studies in African Political Economy, ed. Hamid Ait Amara and Bernard Founou-Tchuigoua, 101–20 (London: Zed Books, 1990).
52. 52Allan McPhee, The Economic Revolution in British West Africa (London: Frank Cass), 8.
53. 53Ibid. See also NAE, ONPROF, 1-1-111144, “Report on Oil Palm Survey, Ibo, Ibibio and Cross River Areas,” by A.F.B. Bridges, 1938; Imperial Institute Handbook, The Agricultural and Forest Products of British West Africa (London, 1922).
54. 54Nigeria, Second Annual Bulletin of the Agricultural Department, 1923. See also Gray, “Native Methods of Preparing Palm Oil,” 29.
55. 55See Lugard, The Dual Mandate, 268–69.
56. 56Kathleen M. Baker, Agricultural Change in Nigeria: Case Studies in the Developing World (London: John Murray, 1989), 49.
57. 57Baker, Agricultural Change, 22.
58. 58See George Dei, “Sustainable Development in the African Context: Revisiting Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues,” African Development 18, no. 2 (1993), 97–110.
59. 59Nigeria, Annual Report on the Agricultural Department 1938, 27–30.
60. 60See Anyanwu, The Igbo Family Life, 200.
61. 61A.F.B. Bridges, “Reports on Oil Palm Survey, Ibo, Ibibio and Cross River Areas,” 1938.
62. 62Usoro, The Nigerian Oil Palm Industry, 93.
63. 63Morgan, “Farming Practice,” 332.
64. 64Ibid.
65. 65Ibid., 330.
66. 66Ibid., 331.
67. 67Eastern Nigeria, Agricultural Division Annual Report, 1959/1960 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1961), 41–42.
68. 68Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 75.
69. 69Martin, Palm Oil and Protest, 1988. See also Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized.
70. 70See Ukaegbu, “Production,” 233. See also Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 106.
71. 71NAE, CALPROF 7/1/2339, file no. 4577, “Restlessness among the Annang Women.” District Officer Opobo to The Senior Resident, Calabar Province, 27 February 1952. For the threat on the traditional rights of women with the introduction of new technology, see Margery Perham, ed., Native Economies of Nigeria (London: Faber and Faber, 1946), 229.
72. 72NAE, CALPROF, 7/1/2339, file no. 4577, “Agenda from Annag Women Association to be discussed with ADO, Opobo, 2 September, 1952,” E. S. James, Assistant District Officer to the District Officer, 10 February 1952.
73. 73Margaret M. Green, Igbo Village Affairs: Chiefly with Reference to the Village of Umueke Agbaja (London: Frank Cass, 1964).
74. 74Interview with Christopher Chidomere, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
75. 75Susan Martin, “Slaves, Igbo Women and Oil Palm,” in From Slavery to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth Century West Africa, ed. Robin Law, 182 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
76. 76For a useful critique of the broad and generalized framework on understanding the role of gender in economic change, see Margaret P. Stone, “Women, Work and Marriage: A Restudy of the Nigerian Kofyar” (PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona, 1988), 16.
77. 77See, for example, Ukaegbu, “Production in the Nigerian,” 31–36. Susan Martin extended Ukaegbu’s argument in the following articles, “Gender and Innovation,” 411–22, and “Igbo Women and Palm oil,” 180.
78. 78Ukaegbu, “Production in the Nigerian,” 31–36.
79. 79Sara Berry, Cocoa, Custom, and Socio-economic Change in Rural Western Nigeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Polly Hill’s study of the development of rural capitalism in Ghana may also be noted. These changes in the direction of capitalist societies were largely driven by the market rather than ideology, although they ultimately transformed social structures including gender. See also Polly Hill, The Migrant Cocoa-farmers of Southern Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism (Hamburg: LIT, James Currey with the IAI, 1997).
80. 80NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/175-EP 8840a, “Intelligence Report on Ekwereazu and Ahiara Clans,” 24.
81. 81A. M. Iheaturu, interview with Andrew Anyanwu, aged 80, Ogbe Ahiara, 30 August 1972 and 16 December 1972, transcribed in Isichei, Igbo Worlds, 81.
82. 82NAE, RIVPROF, 8/5/661, file no. OW 630/17, “Trade Prices at Up Country Markets, 1917,” D. O. Okigwe to Resident Owerri Province, Port Harcourt.
83. 83See Felicia Ekejuba’s biographical sketch of Omu Okwei, “Omu Okwei – The Merchant Queen of Ossomari: A Biographical Sketch,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3, no. 4 (1967): 633–46. See Leith Ross, African Woman, wherein Ruth is described as “the veritable Amazon among traders,” 343.
84. 84Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 47.
85. 85Ibid.
86. 86Interview with Eliazer Ihediwa, Owerrenta, 24 July 1999.
87. 87Interview with Linus Anabalam, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
88. 88Interview with Nwanyiafo Obasi, Umunomo, Mbaise, 25 July 1999.
89. 89Interview with E. Ihediwa, Owerrenta, 24 July 1999.
90. 90Interview with Serah Emenike, Owerri, 22 December 1999.
91. 91Interview with Francis Eneremadu, 31 December 1999.
92. 92Interview with Christiana Marizu, Nguru Mbaise, 25 December 1999.
93. 93Women in various parts of the Eastern Region protested men’s participation in what they regarded as women’s spheres and often asked colonial officials to intervene on their behalf.
94. 94Klein, Peasants in Africa, 20.
95. 95Hart, The Political Economy, 97–98.
96. 96W. B. Morgan, “Farming Practice, Settlement Pattern and Population Density in Eastern Nigeria,” Geographical Journal 121, no. 3 (Sept. 1955): 330.
97. 97See Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 112–14.
98. 98See Eastern Region: Annual Report for the Department of Agriculture for 1953/54.
99. 99Federation of Nigeria, Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1960 (Lagos: Federal Government Printer, 1960), 4. See also H. I. Ajaegbu, Urban and Rural Development in Nigeria (London: Heinemann, 1976), 32.

4PEASANTS, DEPRESSION, AND RURAL REVOLTS

1. 1James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), xvii.
2. 2Ibid.
3. 3James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).
4. 4Goran Hyden, No Shortcut to Progress: African Development Management in Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 128.
5. 5Paul Richards, “To Fight or to Farm? Agrarian Dimensions of the Mano River Conflicts (Liberia and Sierra Leone),” African Affairs 104, no. 417 (2005): 571–90.
6. 6Osumaka Likaka, “Rural Protest: The Mbole against the Belgian Rule, 1894–1959,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 27, no. 3 (1994): 589–617.
7. 7On the emergence of “peasant intellectuals,” to use Feierman’s phrase, see Steven Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 18.
8. 8On social movements and the link to economic crisis in rural Africa, see for, example, David M. Rosen, “The Peasant Context of Feminist Revolt in West Africa,” Anthropological Quarterly 56, no. 1 (Jan. 1983): 35–43.
9. 9NAE, UMPROF, 1/5/2, file no. C.53/929, vol. I, part 2, Resident Owerri to Secretary Southern Provinces, March 1930.
10. 10Ibid.
11. 11This was often carried out on a man who abuses his wife or commits other serious offences against the women of a village of the community. See Judith Van Allen, “‘Aba Riots’ or ‘Igbo Women’s War’? Ideology, Stratification, and Invisibility of Women,” in The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, ed. F.C. Steady, 60 (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1981); and “Sitting on a Man: Colonialism and the Lost Political Institutions of the Igbo,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 6, no. 11 (1972): 178.
12. 12Commission of Inquiry, 96.
13. 13Leith-Ross, African Women.
14. 14See, for example, Margery Perham, Native Administration in Nigeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 214; Harry A. Gailey, The Road to Aba: A Study of British Administrative Policy in Eastern Nigeria (London: University of London Press, 1970); James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960); and U. C. Onwuteaka, “The Aba Riot of 1929 and its Relation to the System of ‘Indirect Rule,’” Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies 7 (1965): 273–82. For a general anthropological overview of Igbo Women, see Sylvia Leith-Ross, African Women (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965).
15. 15For feminist perspectives, see, for example, Susan Rogers, “Anti-Colonial Protest in Africa: A Female Strategy Reconsidered,” Heresies 9, no. 3 (1980): 22–25. See also Hanna Judith Lynne, “Dance, Protest, and Women’s Wars: Cases from Nigeria and the United States,” in Women and Social Protest, ed. Guida West and Rhoda Lois Blumberg, 333–45 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). For more feminist perspectives and analysis of the 1929 women’s protest, see Caroline Ifeka-Moller, “Female Militancy and Colonial Revolt,” 127–57; Shirley Ardener, “Sexual Insult and Female Militancy,” Man 8 (1973): 422–40; and Sylvia Tamale, “Taking the Beast by its Horns: Formal Resistance to Women’s Oppression in Africa,” African Development 21, no. 4 (1996): 5–21.
16. 16See Van Allen, “Sitting on a Man,” for further explanation of the act of “sitting on a man.” See also Judith Van Allen, “‘Aba Riots’ or Igbo ‘Women’s War’? Ideology, Stratification, and Invisibility of Women,” in Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, ed. Nancy Hafkin and Edna Bay, 59–86 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976); Caroline Ifeka-Moller, “Female Militancy and Colonial Revolt: The Women’s War of 1929, Eastern Nigeria” in Perceiving Women, ed. Shirley Ardener, 128–32 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975); and Nina Mba, “Heroines of the Women’s War,” in Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective, ed. B. Awe, 75–88 (Ibadan: Sankore/Bookcraft 1992).
17. 17Nkiru Nzegwu, “Confronting Racism: Toward the Formation of a Female-Identified Consciousness,” Canadian Journal for Women and the Law 7, no. 1 (1994): 30.
18. 18Ibid., 20. See also Ifeka-Moller, “Female Militancy and Colonial Revolt,” 128–32.
19. 19Aba Commission of Inquiry, 19.
20. 20NAE, AWDIST, 2/1/57, file no. 62/1925, “Anti-Government Propaganda in Abakiliki,” District Officer Awgu to Senior Resident, Onithsa, 12 March 1926. See also NAE, ONPROF, 7/12/92, file no. 391/1925, J. C. Iwenofu to District Officer, Awgu, 3 November 1925.
21. 21See NAE, AWDIST, 2/1/57, file no. 62/1925 and NAE, OMPROF, 7/12/92, file no. 391/1925, “Reports on Women’s Disturbances.” See also Report of the Aba Commission of Inquiry, “Memorandum as to the Origins and Causes of the Recent Disturbances in the Owerri and Calabar Provinces,” Appendix III (1), 11–12.
22. 22Aba Commission of Inquiry, 19.
23. 23NAE, ONPROF, 7/12/92, file no. 391/1925, “Bands of Women Dancers Preaching Ideas of Desirable Reforms,” Senior Resident, Onitsha Province to District Officer, Awka, 9 November 1925.
24. 24See NAE, CSE, 3.17.15, file no. B 1544, (1925–1926), AW 80 Q, AW 2/1/57., Anti-Government Propaganda Women Dancers (1925). See also AWDIST, 2/1/56, AW 80, (1919–1920).
25. 25NAE, OWDIST, 4/13/70, file no. 91/27, “Assessment Report, 1927.” “Assessment Report,” District Officer Owerri to the Resident Owerri Province June 1928.
26. 26NAE, UMUPROF, 1/5/2, file no. C53/929, vol. 1, part 2, “Women’s Movements – Aba Patrol.”
27. 27See Commission of Inquiry Notes of Evidence, and Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 74.
28. 28Commission of Inquiry, 33.
29. 29Ibid., 54.
30. 30Interview with Eleazer Ihediwa, Owerrenta, 24 July 1999.
31. 31See, for example, I. D. Talbott, Agricultural Innovation in Colonial Africa: Kenya and the Great Depression (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990).
32. 32Raymond Gore Clough, Oil Rivers Trader (London: C. Hurst, 1972), 97.
33. 33Ibid.
34. 34This is usually a piece of paper issued to oil sellers, which they used to exchange their oil for various goods in European trading factories. Clough, Oil Rivers, 99.
35. 35Ibid.
36. 36For example, the United States Department of Agriculture created the Farm Security Administration (FSA) in 1937. The FSA and its predecessor, the Resettlement Administration (RA) were New Deal programs designed to assist poor farmers who suffered from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.
37. 37For more details, see Morgan, “Farming Practice,” 332.
38. 38Basden, Niger Ibos, 337.
39. 39Ibid.
40. 40Interview with Linus Anabalam, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
41. 41See Commission of Inquiry, Appendix III (1), 37. Figures obtained from the Supervising agent of the United African Company, Limited (Opobo).
42. 42Clough, Oil Rivers Trader, 98.
43. 43NAE, UMUPROF, 1/5/5, file no. C53/1929, “Women Movement Aba, Bende,” E. S. Wright to District Officer, Umuahia, 2 January 1930. NB: Mbawsi price 1d per measure more than Umuahia; Uzuakoli price – 1 pence per measure less than Umuahia.
44. 44See Notes of Evidence.
45. 45NAE, UMPROF, 1/5/3, cited in Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 75.
46. 46NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/175-EP 8840A, “Intelligence Report on Ekwerazu and Ahiara Clans, Owerri Division,” by G. I. Stockley, Assistant District Officer.
47. 47NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/215, file no. EP 10595A, “Intelligence Report on Obowo and Ihitte Clans.”
48. 48NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/175-EP 8840A, “Intelligence Report.”
49. 49NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/215-EP 10595A, “Intelligence Report on the Obowo and Ihitte Clans,” by N.A.P.G. MacKenzie, 1933.
50. 50Claude Ake, A Political Economy of Africa (Essex, England: Longman Press, 1981), 333–34; Rodney, How Europe, 165. On the French experience, see Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, “French Colonization in Africa to 1920: Administration and Economic Development,” in Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1914, vol. 1: The History and Politics of Colonialism, 1870–1914, ed. L. H. Gann and P. Duignan, 170–71 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
51. 51Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 144.
52. 52RH, Mss Afr. s. 16, S. M. Jacob, “Report on the Taxation and Economics of Nigeria 1934.”
53. 53Taxation was often seen as the only method of compelling Africans to enter the cash economy through employment or producing for the market. See Leslie Raymond Buell, The Native Problem in Africa, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1928), 331. Cited in Mathew Forstater, “Taxation: A Secret of Colonial Capitalist (So-Called) Primitive Accumulation” (Center for Full Employment and Price Stability Working Paper No. 25, May 2003), 8–9.
54. 54F. D. Lugard, “Lugards Political Memoranda: Taxation, Memo No. 5” [1906, 1918], in The Principles of Native Administration in Nigeria: Selected Documents, 1900–1947, ed. A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, 118, 132 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).
55. 55F. D. Lugard, “Lugard’s Political Testimony,” [1922], in The Principles of Native Administration in Nigeria: Selected Documents, 1900–1947, ed. A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, 129–30 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965b).
56. 56Ibid.
57. 57Ibid., 173.
58. 58Report by The Hon. W.G.A. Ormsby-Gore, 115.
59. 59See Commission of Inquiry, 193.
60. 60PRO, CO, 583/159/12, “Introduction of Direct Taxation in Southern Provinces – Petition Regarding.”
61. 61Ibid.
62. 62Ibid.
63. 63PRO, CO, 589/159/12, “Deputy Governor Baddeley to CMS Amery, Secretary of State for Colonies,” 16 April 1928.
64. 64PRO, CO, 589/159/12, “Native Revenue Amendment Ordinance,” W. Buchanan Smith, Resident Onitsha Province to Secretary of Southern Provinces, 20 January 1928.
65. 65Ibid.
66. 66PRO, CO, 589/159/12, W. Buchanan Smith, Resident Onitsha Province to Secretary of Southern Provinces, 20 January 1928.
67. 67PRO, CO, 589/159/12, Resident, Ogoja Province to Secretary Southern Provinces.
68. 68PRO, CO, 589/159/12, “Petition by Ezzi Chiefs Against taxation,” R.H.J. Sasse to Secretary, Southern Provinces, Lagos, 11 March 1928.
69. 69Ibid.
70. 70PRO, CO, 583/159/12, “Introduction of Direct Taxation.”
71. 71RH, Mss Afr. S. 1924, “District Officer: Memoir,” A. E. Cooks papers.
72. 72PRO, CO, 589/159/12, “Native Revenue Amendment Ordinance,” W. Buchanan Smith, Resident Onitsha Province to Secretary of Southern Provinces, 20 January 1928.
73. 73See Commission of Inquiry, 4.
74. 74Ibid., 8.
75. 75During the 1926 tax assessment, the people of Oloko and Ayabe had been told that the counting of persons was simply part of the census. Then taxation was introduced in 1928. On this occasion, the women felt that the authorities could not be trusted. See Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 76.
76. 76The Commission of Inquiry acknowledged this view. See Commission of Inquiry, 96.
77. 77Morgan, “Farming Practice,” 331.
78. 78NAE, OWDIST, 4/13/70, file no. 91/27, “Cultivation of Crops, Owerri District,” District Officer to Resident Owerri Province, June 1928.
79. 79Commission of Inquiry, 93.
80. 80Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 76.
81. 81Commission of Inquiry, 12.
82. 82Interview with Nwanyiafo Obasi, Umunomo, Mbaise, 30 July 1999.
83. 83Notes of Evidence, 13.
84. 84Adiele Afigbo, “Revolution and Reaction in Eastern Nigeria, 1900–1929,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3, no. 3 (1966): 553.
85. 85Ibid.
86. 86PRO, CO, 583/176, “Native Unrest.”
87. 87RH, Mss Afr. s. 16, S. M. Jacob, “Report on the Taxation and Economics of Nigeria 1934.”
88. 88Ibid.
89. 89West Africa, “The Disturbances in S. E. Nigeria,” 11 October 1930.
90. 90On Ghana, see, for example, Stanley Shaloff, “The Income Tax, Indirect Rule, and the Depression: The Gold Coast Riots of 1931,” Cahiers d’études africaines 14, no. 54 (1974): 359–75. See also B. Jewsiewicki, “The Great Depression and the Making of the Colonial Economic System in the Belgian Congo,” African Economic History 4 (Autumn, 1977): 153–76.
91. 91See Commission of Inquiry, 103.
92. 92Ibid., Appendix III (1), 32.
93. 93Nwanyeruwa of Oloko, Notes of Evidence, 24–30.
94. 94Ibid.
95. 95Onuoha, The Land and People, 18.
96. 96Notes of Evidence, 114.
97. 97NAE, UMUPROF, 1/5/11, file no. C. 53/1929/vol. X, “Assault on Customary heads and Court members during recent disturbances,” the Resident, Owerri Province to the Honourable, the Secretary, Southern Provinces, 12 February 1930.
98. 98Ibid.
99. 99Notes of Evidence, 98.
100. 100Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals, 103.
101. 101Notes of Evidence, 57. The evidence by administrative officers, police officers, missionaries, and others of many years’ experience in the area indicates that local officials were very corrupt. This was not an issue for women alone. Many male witnesses strongly raised the issue of corruption by the native courts and warrant chiefs.
102. 102PRO, CO, 583/176, “Native Unrest,” Correspondence arising out of the Report of the Aba Commission.
103. 103RH, Mss Afr. s. 1000, Edward Morris Falk Papers,
104. 104NAE, UMPROF, 1/5/1, “Women’s Movement, Aba.”
105. 105NAE, UMUPROF, 1/5/2, file no. C. 53/929, vol. 1, part 2, “Women’s Movement – Aba Patrol.” J. Cook. A.D.O., Bende to the Resident Owerri Province, 28 November 1929.
106. 106Clough, Oil Rivers, 110–11.
107. 107Van Allen, “Sitting on a Man,” 174.
108. 108NAE UMPROF, 1/5/21, file no. C.53/929, vol. XXI. “Women’s Movement.”
109. 109Ibid.
110. 110PRO, CO, 583/176/9 “Native Unrest in Calabar and Owerri Provinces: Correspondence Arising from, 1930.”
111. 111Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals, 3.
112. 112Notes of Evidence, 57.
113. 113NAE, UMUPROF, 1/5/11, file no. C. 53/1929, vol. X, “Disturbances – South Eastern Province,” The District Officer, Owerri to the Resident, Owerri Province, 21 February 1930.
114. 114Commission of Inquiry, 260.
115. 115PRO, CO, 583/176, “Native Unrest.”
116. 116Commission of Inquiry, 19.
117. 117Interview with Onyegbule Korieh. Ihitteafoukwu, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
118. 118Clifton E. Marsh, “A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Labor Revolt of 1878 in the Danish West Indies,” Phylon 42, no. 4 (1981): 335–45.
119. 119See Report of the Commission of enquiry appointed to inquire into the disturbance in the Calabar and Owerri Provinces, December 1929 (Sessional Paper No. 28), hereafter (Commission of Inquiry). See also Notes of Evidence Taken in the Calabar and Owerri Provinces on the Disturbance 1930, 8 vols. Minutes of Evidence Taken at Owerri 1930, Minutes of Evidence Taken at Opobo 1930.
120. 120NAE, UMUPROF, 1/5/11, file no. C.53/1929/vol. X, “List of Chiefs suspended during the recent Disturbances,” District Officer Owerri to The Resident, Owerri Province, 24 April 1930.
121. 121Ibid.
122. 122Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 96.
123. 123Oriji, “Igbo Women.”
124. 124RH, Mss Afr. s. 546, F.B Carr papers.
125. 125Ibid.
126. 126Ibid.
127. 127NAE, UMPROF, 1/5/24, file no. C. 53/1929, vol. 26, “Situation: Owerri Province,” C. H. Ward, A.C.P, Okpala, 22 January 1931.
128. 128RH, Mss Afr. s. 546, F. B. Carr papers.
129. 129Ibid.
130. 130Ibid.
131. 131See NAE, UMUPROF, 1/5/4, file no. C 53/1929/vol. 26, Women Movement, Aba Patrol Report to SSP Part II 1/3/30, Resident Owerri to Secretary, Southern Provinces, 14 November 1930. The residents report were based on confidential memos from reports on the recent unrest in the Orlu District of the Okigwi Division by the District Officer, Mr. Homfray; by the acting Resident, Mr. Cochrane; by the Deputy Superintending Inspector of Produce Mr. Sabiston.
132. 132Ibid.
133. 133Ibid.
134. 134Ibid.
135. 135PRO, CO, 583/193/8, “Palm Oil Industry,” E. Beddington to Governor of Nigeria, 17 May 1933.
136. 136PRO, CO, 583/242/22, “Disturbance in Okigwi,” Colonial Governor to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 26 January 1939.
137. 137PRO, CO, 583/242/22, “Disturbance in Okigwi.”
138. 138Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 98.
139. 139Ibid., 99.
140. 140Ibid., 107.
141. 141Interview with Chief Francis Eneremadu.
142. 142NAE, UMUPROF, 1/5/4, file no. C 53/1929/ vol. 26.

5THE SECOND WORLD WAR, THE RURAL ECONOMY, AND AFRICANS

1. 1RH, Mss Afr. s. 546, F. B. Carr papers.
2. 2Ibid.
3. 3Ibid.
4. 4See NAE, OP 122II-ONDIST, 12/1/90, Matters relating to the effects and implications of war conditions on Nigeria. See also Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department, especially 1939/1940.
5. 5Nigeria, Annual Report on the Agricultural Department, 1938.
6. 6RH, Afr. s. 546, F. B Carr papers.
7. 7See NAE, ABADIST, 1/2/908, file no. 1642/11, “Memos by D.O. Aba to Ngwa Native Authority, 1940–44,” Sir F. Stockdale, Report of the Mission Appointed to Enquire into the Production and Transport of Vegetable Oils and Oil Seeds Produced in the West African Colonies (London: H.M.S.O., 1947), Appendix X and XI. See also Michael Crowder, West Africa Under Colonial Rule (London: Hutchinson, 1973), 490–98.
8. 8NAE, EKETDIST, 1/2/50, file no. 499, “Food Production in Nigeria, 1935–1951,” 7.
9. 9Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department, 1938.
10. 10RH, Afr. s. 546, F. B. Carr papers.
11. 11Nwabughuogu, “British War-Time Demands,” 8–9.
12. 12NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/907, file no. 1642, “Palm Produce Production,” Chief Secretary to the Government.
13. 13Ibid.
14. 14Ibid.
15. 15NAE, CSE, 1/85/9929, file no. 19947, “Conference of Production Drive Team,” L. T. Chubb to Deputy Controller of Palm Produce, Umuahia, 17 October 1943.
16. 16RH, Afr. s. 546, F. B. Carr papers.
17. 17Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department Report, 1938, 2.
18. 18Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department Report, 1941, 1.
19. 19FAO, Year Book of Agriculture Statistics, Trade, vol. VII, part 2, 1954 (Rome, 1955), 170–71.
20. 20See K. Brandt, The German Fats Plan and the Economic Setting (Food Research Institute: Stanford University, 1938), 221–71. See also Nzeribe, Economic Development, 44.
21. 21Nzeribe, Economic Development, 44–54.
22. 22Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department Report, 1940, 2.
23. 23Ibid.
24. 24Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department Report, 1941, 2.
25. 25RH, Mss. Afr. s. 823 (4), J. R. Mackie Papers.
26. 26NAE, CSE, 1/85/8621, file no. 18038/70, vol. II, “Production, Onitsha Province,” Kernels Production Officer to Deputy Controller of Kernels, Eastern Zone, 14 June 1943.
27. 27Interview with Eleazer Ihediwa Owerrenta, 24 July 1999, aged c. 71.
28. 28NAE, ONDIST, 12.1/104, file no. OP 130, “Palm oil Production,” Resident Onitsha Province to The Secretary, Eastern Provinces, Enugu, 25 November 1939.
29. 29Ibid.
30. 30David Anderson and David Throup, “Africans and Agricultural Production in Colonial Kenya: The Myth of the War as a Watershed,” Journal of African History 26 (1985): 327. I have addressed aspects of the impact of the war on Nigerian urban population. See Chima J. Korieh, “Urban Food Supply and Vulnerability in Nigeria during the Second World War,” in Nigeria Cities, ed. Toyin Falola and Steven J. Salm, 127–52 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003).
31. 31NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/907, file no. 1642, “Palm Produce Production,” and P. L. Allpress to Resident, Owerri Province, 4 October 1945.
32. 32Legislative Council Debates, 13 March 1944, 89, cited in Esse, “The Second World War,” 176.
33. 33See NAE, OBUDIST, 4/1/309, file no. OB 699/vol. II, “Produce Drive: Kernel and Rubber Return Prosecutions.”
34. 34NAE, OBUDIST, 4/1/309, file no. OB 699/ vol. II, “Prosecution under palm kernels and rubber Regulation.” The cases here were from December 1943 to July 1944.
35. 35West African Pilot, “Our War Production,” 23 February 1942.
36. 36Deborah Bryceson, “Household, Hoe and Nation: Development Politics of the Nyerere Era,” in Tanzania after Nyerere, ed. Michael Hodd, 39 (London and New York: Pinter, 1989).
37. 37Nigeria, Annual Report on the Agricultural Department, 1939–40, 1.
38. 38NAE, ONDIST, 12/1/90, file no. OP 122 II, and Nigeria, Report of the Agricultural Department, 1939–1940, 1. See also Bernard Bourdillon, Legislative Council Debate, 4 December 1939 (Lagos: Government Printer, 1940), 4–13. See also Legislative Council Debates, 17 March 1941, 11.
39. 39NAE, EKETDIST, 1/2/50, “Food Production in Nigeria, 1935–1951.”
40. 40NAE, RIVPROF, 8/5/430, “Policy of the Agricultural Department,” Circular Memo D. A. 14/252, J.R. Mackie to the Chief Secretary to the Government, 26 October 1939.
41. 41Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department, 1938. See also Bernard Bourdillon, “Legislative Council Debate, 4 Dec. 1939” (Lagos, 1940), 4–13, “Legislative Council Debates, 17 March 1941,” (Lagos, 1942), 11. See also Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Faulkner ‘Blueprint’ and the Evolution of Agricultural Policy in Inter-War Colonial Nigeria,” in The Foundations of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola, ed. Adebayo Oyebade, 403–22 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003).
42. 42NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/907, file no. 1642, “Palm Produce Production,” J.A.G. McCall, Controller of Oil Palm Production, Owerri Province to District Officers, Owerri Province, 3/2/44; Ogoja Province: Annual Report, 1943, 8.
43. 43Esse, “The Second World War,” 157–58.
44. 44Nigeria, Annual Reports on the Agricultural Department, 1940, 1, 46–47.
45. 45RH, Mss Afr. s. 1779, Norman Herington papers.
46. 46Esse, “The Second World War,” 175.
47. 47Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department, 1942, 2.
48. 48NAE, EKETDIST, 1/2/50, file no. 499, “Food Production,” Memo: Agricultural Officer Abak to D.O. Calabar, 12 July 1940.
49. 49NAE, ONDIST, 42/1/1264, file no. OP. 1865/vol. VI, “Annual Report, Onitsha Province,” 1943, 65.
50. 50J. S. Harris, “Some Aspects of the Economics of Sixteen Ibo Individuals,” Africa 14 (1944): 303.
51. 51NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/872 file no. 1647.
52. 52NAE, ONDIST, 12//92, file OP IV, “Food Control,” S.A.S. Leslie, Nigerian Secretariat, Lagos, 22 April 1941.
53. 53Ibid.
54. 54NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/958, J.V. Dewhurst to the Resident, Owerri Province, Port Harcourt, 12 August 1943.
55. 55NAE, AIDIST, 2/1/433, file no. IK: 401/18, “Food Control,” The Acting District Officer, Ikom to the District Officer, Abakiliki, 18 June 1945.
56. 56NAE, AIDIST, 2/1/433, file no. AB: 1373/11, “Memo” to District Officer, Abakiliki Division to C. N. C. Igbeagu, 1945.
57. 57NAE AIDIST, 2/1/433, file no. OG: 2920/140, “Food Control,” P. M. Riley, Resident Ogoja Province to District Officers.
58. 58NAE, AIDIST, 2/1/433, “Nigerian General Defence regulation Order: gari and Yams,” Resident Onitsha Province to District Officer and other Competent Authorities, 16 May 1945.
59. 59NAE, AIDIST, 2/1/433, “Nigerian General Defence.” For cassava restrictions, see also NAE, AID 2/1/433, OG: 2513/1265, “Nigeria General Defence Regulations: Order,” P. M. Riley, Resident Ogoja Province to District Officers, 26 June 1945.
60. 60West African Pilot, 23 February 1944.
61. 61NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/875, file no. 1646, vol. IV, “gari Control,” The Nigerian Police, Aba to District Officer, Aba, 13 May 1944.
62. 62National Archives Ibadan (hereafter NAI) CSO, 26, file no. 36378. Cited in Wale Oyemakinde, “The Pullen Marketing Scheme: A Trial in Food Price Control in Nigeria, 1941–1947,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 6, no. 4 (1973): 413.
63. 63For more on food control during the Second World War, see Akanmu Adebayo, “The Fulani, Dairy Resources, and Colonial Animal Products Development Programs,” in Nigeria in the Twentieth Century, ed. Toyin Falola, 201–24 (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2002); and Toyin Falola, “‘Salt is Gold’: The Management of Salt Scarcity in Nigeria During World War II,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 26, no. 3 (1992): 417.
64. 64Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Department Report, 1940, 2.
65. 65NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/875, file no. 1646, vol. IV, Clerk of Omuma Native Court to District Officer Aba Division, 11 November 1944.
66. 66Calabar Provincial Office: 7/1/1329, “Unrest among the Women of Ikot Ekpene,” cited in Mba, Nigeria Women Mobilized, 103.
67. 67NAE, ONDIST, 13/1/2, file no. EP OPC 122, vol. VII, “Food Control,” Onitsha Rice and gari Traders to Resident Onitsha Province, 1 July 1942.
68. 68NAE, ONDIST, 13/1/2, file no. EP OPC 122, vol. VII, “Doninic Ezenwa and 20 others representing garri market traders to Resident Onitsha Province,” 17 July 1942.
69. 69See, for example, Michael Crowder, “World War II and Africa: Introduction,” Journal of African History 26 (1985): 287–88; Killingray and Rathbone, ed., Africa and the Second World War. For Nigeria, see Toyin Falola, “Cassava Starch for Export in Nigeria during the Second World War,” Journal of African Economic History 18 (1989): 73–98; Falola, “Salt is Gold,” 417; and A. Olorunfemi, “Effects of War-Time Trade Control on Nigerian Cocoa Traders and Producers, 1939–1945: A Case Study of the Hazards of a Dependent Economy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 13, no. 4 (1980): 672–87.
70. 70Many aspects of the Second World War as a potent force for economic, social, and political change in Africa have been the subject of detailed monographs and articles. See, for example, Michael Crowder, “World War II and Africa: Introduction,” Journal of African History 26 (1985): 287–88; David Killingray and Richard Rathbone, ed., Africa and the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 1986). Most of the early literature, however, focused on the impact of the war on nationalism, as well as local contribution of personnel to the war effort. See, for example, F.A.S. Clark, “The Development of the West African Forces in the Second World War,” Army Quarterly (1947): 58–72; Michael Crowder, “The Second World War: Prelude to Decolonization in Africa,” in History of West Africa, II, ed. J. F. Ade Ajayi and M. Crowder (London: Longman, 1974); Trevor R. Kerslake, Time and the Hour: Nigeria, East Africa, and the Second World War (London: Radcliffe Press, 1997); and G. O. Olusanya, The Second World War and Politics in Nigeria, 1939–1945 (Lagos: University of Lagos Press, 1973). Exceptions include Toyin Falola’s detailed account of the salt crisis during World War II and the response of the colonial authorities in Nigeria to what they saw a potential source of discontent and anti-colonial sentiment. See Toyin Falola, “Cassava Starch for Export in Nigeria during the Second World War,” Journal of African Economic History 18 (1989): 73–98; and A. Olorunfemi, “Effects of War-Time Trade Control on Nigerian Cocoa Traders and Producers, 1939–1945: A Case Study of the Hazards of a Dependent Economy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 13, no. 4 (1980): 672–87.
71. 71NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/872, file no. 1646, “gari Control,” O. O. Muoma to District Officer, Aba, 1 July 1943.
72. 72Ibid., J. O. Okorocha to District Officer, Aba, 7 July 1943.
73. 73NAE, AIDIST, 2/1/433, 450, “G. I. Udeh to District Officer, Abakiliki,” 19 May 1945.
74. 74Ibid.
75. 75NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/958, file no. 668, J. E. Akajiofo to District Officer, Aba, 1 September 1943.
76. 76NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/958, file no. 668, “Application for Grant Export of Yams under Permit,” E. M. Eze, Trader to District Officer Aba, 13 August 1943.
77. 77Ibid.
78. 78NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/873, file no 1646, “gari Control,” A. Jamola to D.O., Aba District, 21 July 1943.
79. 79NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/872, file no. 1646, “gari: Control” David H. Kubiri to D.O., Aba, 5 July 1943.
80. 80The League represented the majority of unions, ethnic groups and communities in Aba Township. See NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/958, file no. 668, “Foodstuffs: Yams, Plantains, Cocoyams, etc, Requested Prohibition of Railment or Exportation of in Future,” Honorary Secretary, Aba Community League to the District Officer, Aba, 2 August 1943.
81. 81On employment and average rates of wages for various districts in Eastern Nigeria, see, for example, NAE, RIVPROF 9/1/135, “Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Nigeria,” for various years.
82. 82NAE, RIVPROF, 9/1/135, file no. Ow: 1636, “Annual Report on the Social and Economic Progress of the People of Nigeria for the Year 1933,” District Officer, Okigwi to Resident, Owerri Province, 5 December 1933.
83. 83NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/873, file no. 1646, “A Resolution,” gari Traders association, Aba to the Resident, Owerri Province, 29 July 1943.
84. 84Ibid.
85. 85Ibid.
86. 86NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/958, file no. 668, “Unauthorised Markets outside the Township,” Secretary Aba Community League to District Officer, Aba, 2 August 1943.
87. 87NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/875, file no. 1646, vol. IV, “Export of gari to the North by gari traders will stop on 1 September,” Nigerian Eastern Mail Press Representative to the District Officer, Aba, 29 August 1944.
88. 88Harris, “Some Aspects of the Economics,” 303.
89. 89Ibid.
90. 90NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/875, file no. 1646, vol. IV, “gari Control,” District Traffic Superintendent, Port Harcourt to the Local Authority, Aba, 15 July 1944.
91. 91Ibid.
92. 92See NAE, AIDIST, 2/1/433, “Food Control.”
93. 93NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/875, file no. 1646 vol. IV, “gari Control,” H.L.M. Butcher to The Councils and Court Clerks, Aba Division, 2 September, 1944.
94. 94Ibid.
95. 95NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/874, file no. 1646 vol. IV, “gari Control.”
96. 96NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/875, file no. 1646 vol. IV, “gari Control.”
97. 97NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/872, file no. 1646, “gari: Control of,” S.O. Enyiomah and others to District Officer, Aba, 28 June 1943.
98. 98Ibid.
99. 99NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/872, file no. 1646, “gari: Control of,” Agnes Garuba to District Officer Aba, 22 July 1943.
100. 100NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/872, file no. 1646, “gari: Control of,” C. O. Muoma to District Officer, Aba, 11 July 1943.
101. 101See, for instance, British Central Office of Information, Constitutional Development in the Commonwealth: United Kingdom Dependencies (London: British Central Office of Information, 1955), Part 1.
102. 102See Shenton, “Nigerian Agriculture,” 48.
103. 103On British policy in the post-war period, see, for example, S.A.H. Haqqi, The Colonial Policy of the Labor Government, 1945–51 (Aligarh: Muslim University, 1960), 128; and David Goldsworthy, Colonial Issues in British Politics 1945–1961 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 12.
104. 104NAE, ONDIST, 12/1/1737, file no. OP 2611, “Credit Facilities for farmers, peasant industries and demobilized soldiers,” L. T. Chubb, to the Chief Secretary to the Government, Lagos, 12 October 1945.
105. 105See NAE, C.S.E., 1/85/8584, file no. 18038/38, vol. VII, “Secretary, Eastern Provinces to Deputy Controller of Motor Transport, Aba,” October, 1946.
106. 106There was the 1929 Women’s War in Eastern Nigeria, the West African cocoa holdups and riots in the West Indies. See Rod Alence, “Colonial Government, Social Conflict and State Involvement in Africa’s Open Economies: The Origins of the Ghana Cocoa Marketing Boards, 1939–46,” Journal of African History 42 (2001): 398.
107. 107Ibid. See also J. M. Lee and Martin Petter, The Colonial Office, War and Development Planning: Organisation and the Planning of a Metropolitan Initiative, 1939–45 (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1982); and D. J. Morgan, The Official History of Colonial Development, vol. 1: The Origins of British Aid Policy, 1924–45 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980).
108. 108Alence, “Colonial Government,” 398. See also David Meredith, “The Colonial Office, British Business Interests and the Reform of Cocoa Marketing in West Africa, 1937– 45,” Journal of African History 29 (1988): 285–300; David Fieldhouse, “War and the Origin of the Gold Coast Cocoa Marketing Board, 1939–40,” in Imperialism, the State and the Third World, ed. Michael Twaddle, 153–82 (London: British Academic Press, 1992); and David Fieldhouse, Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonisation: The United African Company, 1929–87 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
109. 109For studies of the Marketing Boards, see, for example, H.M.A. Onitiri and D. Olatunbosun, ed., The Marketing Board System: Proceedings of an International Conference (Ibadan, Nigeria: Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1974); P. T. Bauer, “Statistics of Statutory Marketing in West Africa, 1939–51,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 117 (1954): 1–30; and G. K. Helleiner, “The Fiscal Role of the Marketing Boards in Nigerian Economic Development, 1947–61,” Economic Journal 74 (1964): 582–610.
110. 110See Laws of Nigeria, 1948–9 (Supplement), 237–86, cited in H. A. Oluwasanmi, Agriculture and Nigerian Economic Development (Ibadan and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 160.
111. 111On the role of the Marketing Boards, see Nigeria, Handbook of Commerce and Industry in Nigeria (Lagos, n.d.), 112.
112. 112For the conditions for approval as a buying agent, see, for example, Nigeria Cocoa Marketing Board, Annual Report, 1947–48 (Lagos, 1949) 30; Eastern Regional Marketing Board, Annual Report, 1958, 93–5; Nigeria Groundnut Marketing Board, Annual Report, 1949–50, 29; and Northern Regional Marketing Board, Annual Report, 1954–55, 86–87.
113. 113NAE, ABADIST, 1/26/908, file no. 1642/ vol. II, “Secretary, Eastern Province to Resident, Owerri Province,” 17 October 1945.
114. 114Oluwasanmi, Agriculture and Nigerian Economic Development, 163.
115. 115Ibid., 164.
116. 116See Eastern Nigeria, Eastern Nigeria Marketing Board Annual Report, 1960, 18. See also Oluwasanmi, Agriculture and Nigerian Economic Development, 166.
117. 117Wells, Agricultural Policy, 40, Note 5. See also Statement of Future Marketing of West African Cocoa (London, 1946), 8. See also Oil Palm Produce Marketing Board, “Statement of the Policy Proposed for the Future Marketing of Nigerian Oils, Oil seeds and Cotton,” Sessional Paper, No. 18 of 1948 and Nigeria Oil Palm Produce Marketing Board, First Annual Report 1949 (Lagos, 1950), 5.
118. 118See P. T. Bauer, “Origins of the Statutory Export Monopolies of British West Africa,” The Business History Review (September, 1954): 197-213. See also Usoro, The Nigerian Oil Palm Industry, 111.
119. 119See Usoro, The Nigerian Oil Palm Industry, 74.
120. 120See, for example, C.E.F. Beer, The Politics of Peasant Groups in Western Nigeria (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1976), chap. 2; Nigeria, Annual Report of the Registrar of Co-operative Societies, 1950/51 (Lagos: Government Printer, 1952), 3–4.
121. 121Interview with Gilbert Uzor, Umunomo, Mbaise, 22 July 2000.
122. 122Interview with Linus Anabalam, umuchieze. Mbaise, 14 December 1998.
123. 123See also NAE, MINLOC, 6/1/215, file no. EP 10595A. N.A.P.G. MacKenzie ADO, “Intelligence Report of Obowo and Ihitte Clans, Okigwe Division, Owerri Province.”
124. 124Interview with Anex Ibeh, Umunomo, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
125. 125Interview with Michael Iheaguta, umuchieze, Mbaise, 2 August 1998.
126. 126Throughout African, the populations of major cities increased substantially. Freund, The Making of Contemporary Africa, 169–170. See also Marvin Miracle, Maize in Tropical Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 34–35.
127. 127NAE, C.S.E., 1/85/8584, fine no. 18038/38, vol. VII, Resident, Onitsha Province to The Secretary, Eastern Provinces, 18 November 1945.
128. 128Interview with Chief Francis Eneremadu, Mbutu, Mbaise, 2 January 2000.
129. 129For the study of rate of migration in Igboland, see, for example, Ikenna Nzimiro, “A Study of Mobility among the Ibos of Southern Nigeria,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 6, no. 1 (1965): 117–30.
130. 130Interview with Serah Emenike, Owerri, 22 December 1998.
131. 131Interview with Christina Marizu, Nguru, Mbaise, 25 December 1999.
132. 132Interview with Chief Francis Eneremadu, Mbutu, Mbaise, 2 January 2000.

6THE AFRICAN ELITE, AGRARIAN REVOLUTION, AND SOCIO-POLITICAL CHANGE, 1954–80

1. 1The 1954 Lyttelton Constitution introduced a federal system of government in Nigeria. On the role of the Eastern Region government in agriculture from this period, see Nigeria, Annual Report on the Department of Agriculture (Central), 1953–1954 (Lagos: Government Printer), 1. See also Eastern Region, Annual Report: Department of Agriculture, 1954–55 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1955), 1.
2. 2Food and Agricultural Organization, Agricultural Development in Nigeria, 3.
3. 3For the implementation of this policy in the Eastern Region, see Annual Report of Agriculture, 1954–55. See also Eastern Nigeria, Development Programme, 1958–1962, Official Document No. 2 of 1959 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1959); and Report of the Economic Mission, 1961: Led by Dr. the Hon. M. I. Okpara, Premier, Eastern Nigeria, Official Document No. 5 of 1962 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1962), 3–8.
4. 4The ERDB replaced the Eastern Regional Production Development Board (ERPDB), which had coordinated the production and marketing of palm produce since 1949. For the operation of the ERPDB, see Nigeria Oil Palm Produce Marketing Ordinance (No. 12 of 1949), revised in 1954. See also Toyin Falola, Economic Reforms and Modernization in Nigeria (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2004), 122.
5. 5Eastern Region, Annual Report on the Department of Agriculture, 1952–53, 2.
6. 6Ibid., 1.
7. 7Eastern Region, Annual Report for the Department of Agriculture, 1954–55, 8.
8. 8Usoro, The Nigerian Oil Palm Industry, 88, 90.
9. 9Uchendu, The Igbo, and Mba, Nigeria Women, 75.
10. 10Eastern Nigeria, Agricultural Division Annual Report, 1959/1960, 41–42.
11. 11Usoro, The Nigeria Oil Palm, 88.
12. 12Eastern Region, Fifth Annual Report of the Eastern Regional Production Board 1953/54 (Enugu, 1954), Appendix III.
13. 13The Eastern Outlook and Cameroon Star, “Oil Mill Production Reaches All-time High,” 18 February 1954.
14. 14Eastern Region, Annual Report, Agriculture Division, 1956–59, 11–12.
15. 15Eastern Region, Annual Report of the Eastern Regional Production Development Boards, 1949/50, 4; Eastern Region, Annual Report of the Eastern Regional Production Development Boards, 1951/52, Part 1, 13–15; Eastern Region, Annual Report of the Eastern Regional Production Development Boards, 1952/53, 4; and Eastern Region, Annual Report of the Eastern Regional Production Development Boards, 1953/54, 13.
16. 16See, for example, A. I. Nwabughuogu, “Oil Mills Riots in Eastern Nigeria, 148–51: A Study in Indigenous Reaction to Technological Innovation,” African Development: A Quarterly Journal of the Council for the Development of Economic and Social Research in Africa 7, no. 4 (1982): 66–84.
17. 17See Martin, “Gender, Oil palm and Protest.”
18. 18Mba, Nigeria Women Mobilized, 106.
19. 19Interview with Chief Eneremadu.
20. 20A. Martin, The Oil Palm Economy of the Ibibio Farmer (Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1956), 12.
21. 21S. I. Orewa, “Designing Agricultural Development Projects for the Small Scale Farmers: Some Lessons from the World Bank Assistance Small Holder Oil Palm Development Scheme in Nigeria,” Journal of Applied Sciences 8, no. 2 (2008): 295.
22. 22Nigeria, National Development Plan: Progress Report 1964 (Lagos, 1964), 63. See also Malcolm J. Purvis, Report on a Survey of the Oil Palm Rehabilitation Scheme in Eastern Nigeria – 1967 (CSNRD, Report No. 10, 1968), 2, for a review of the agricultural programs in the region.
23. 23See Eastern Nigeria, Eastern Nigeria Development Plan, 1962–1968: Official Document No. 8 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1962).
24. 24Purvis, Report on a Survey, 2.
25. 25Hursh et al., Innovation in Eastern Nigeria, 22.
26. 26Interview with Philip S. Njoku, Nguru, Mbaise, 12 January 2000.
27. 27See Eastern Nigeria, Eastern Nigeria Development Plan, 1962–1968 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1962), 2. See also Eastern Nigeria, Development Programme, 1958–1962: Eastern Region Official Document No. 2 of 1959 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1959), 12. See also Purvis, Report on a Survey, 16.
28. 28The Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation (ENDC) managed many commercial enterprises, such as cold stores, a soft drink factory, the Obudu cattle ranch, the state owned Progress Hotels, in addition to the government’s large agricultural projects. See Eastern Nigeria, The E.N.D.C. in the First Decade, 1955–1964 (Enugu: ENPC), n.d.
29. 29Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 219.
30. 30Ibid.
31. 31For the location of different plantations, their sizes and labourers, see ibid., 219–20.
32. 32See, for example, Gyasi “State Expropriation.”
33. 33Interview with former employee of the Emeabiam Rubber Estate.
34. 34Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 221–222.
35. 35Ibid.
36. 36See M. K. Mba, The First Three Years: A Report of the Eastern Nigeria Six-Year Development Plan (Enugu: Government Printer 1965), 9. Cited in Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 223.
37. 37Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 219.
38. 38NAE, RIVPROF, 8/5/661, Registrar of Cooperatives Societies to Chief Secretary.
39. 39D. Elson, ed., Male Bias in the Development Process (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), 9.
40. 40Interview with Zebulon Ofurum, aged 68 years, Emeabiam, 28 May 2001.
41. 41Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 216.
42. 42Ibid.
43. 43Ibid.
44. 44Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 216–17.
45. 45Ibid., 213. For a historical analysis of the development of plantation in the region, see R. K. Udo, “Sixty Years of Plantation Agriculture in Southern Nigeria, 1902–1962,” Economic Geography 12 (1965): 356–68.
46. 46See “The Agricultural Sample Survey for 1963–1964,” cited in Hursh et al., Innovation, 19.
47. 47Purvis, Report on a Survey, 24.
48. 48Ibid.
49. 49Interview with Philip Njoku, Nguru, 12 January 2000.
50. 50Eastern Nigeria, Report of the Economic Mission, 1.
51. 51Government Press Conference, ENIS Bulletin No. E2,200 (Enugu, January, 1961). Cited in Barry Floyd and Monica Adinde, “Farm Settlements in Eastern Nigeria: A Geographical Appraisal,” Economic Geography 43, no. 3 (1967): 189–230.
52. 52See, Nigerian Spokesman, 10 April 1964.
53. 53Eastern Nigeria, Agricultural Extension Newsletter (Enugu: Government Printer, 1963).
54. 54Eastern Nigeria, Report of the Economic Mission, 6.
55. 55Ibid.
56. 56For the Israeli model, see, for example, T. C. Yusev, The Economics of Farm Settlements in Israel (New York: Express Printers, 1963); and F. C. Gorman, Social Relations in Israeli Farm Settlements (Tel-Aviv: Zester and Rox, 1957).
57. 57Similar schemes had been established in the Western Region in 1959 to demonstrate that by careful planning, farms could be operated by young people to provide a comfortable standard of living comparable with or even higher than that gained by persons of the same status in other forms of employment. For a review of the Western Nigeria experiment, see O. Okediji, “Some Socio-cultural Problems in the Western Nigeria land Settlement Scheme: A Case Study,” Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies (1966): 301–10; W. Roider, Farm Settlements for Socio-Economic Development: The Western Nigeria Case (Munich: Weltforum, 1971); and O. F. Ayadi and C. O. Falusi, “The Social and Financial Implications of Farm Settlements in Nigeria,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 31, nos. 3–4 (1994): 191–206.
58. 58For some of the foreign interests and international bodies, including the Food and Agricultural Organization, interested in the agricultural development of the Eastern Region, see Eastern Nigeria, Annual Report of the Agricultural Division, 1960–1962, 3.
59. 59The USAID provided a heavy equipment advisor; the U.K. also provided technical assistance in the form of soil surveyor and an analytical chemist. Japan also provided such technical support. See Eastern Nigeria, Annual Report, Agricultural Division, 1963–1964, Official Document No. 2 of 1966 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1966), 1–2. See also Eastern Nigeria, The First Three Years: A Report of the Eastern Nigeria Six-Year Development Plan (Enugu: Government Printer, 1965); and First Progress Report, Eastern Nigeria Development Plan, Ministry of Planning Official Document No. 15 of 1964 (Enugu, Nigeria: Government Printer, 1964).
60. 60On Israeli technical assistance, see Moshe Schwartz and A. Paul Hare, Foreign Experts and Unsustainable Development: Transferring Israeli Technology to Zambia, Nigeria and Nepal (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).
61. 61Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 219. For details of acreage planted and locations, see NAE, ESIALA, 64/1/1, “Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation Agricultural and Plantations Division Situation Report,” 1963.
62. 62Eastern Nigeria, Development of Agriculture in Eastern Nigeria (Enugu: Eastern Nigeria Printing Corporation, 1965), 5. For details of the crops grown in each settlement and the number of settlers, see H. I. Ajaegbu, Urban and Rural Development in Nigeria (London: Heinemann, 1976), 65.
63. 63Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 219.
64. 64See Eastern Nigeria, The First Three Years: A Report of the Eastern Nigeria Six-Year Development Plan (Enugu: Government Printer, 1965),
65. 65See, for example, T. C. Yusev, The Economics of Farm Settlements in Israel (New York: Express Printers Inc., 1963); and F. C. Gorman, Social Relations in Israeli Farm Settlements (Tel-Aviv: Zester and Rox, 1957). See also Schwartz and Hare, Foreign Experts and Unsustainable Development, 6.
66. 66NAE, ESIALA, 64/1/1, “Eastern Nigeria Development Corporation,” 196. Major critics of the settlement scheme included the opposition party in the Eastern Nigeria House of Assembly (The Action Group). See Daily Express, 10 November 1962.
67. 67The change of environment imposed a lot of psychological strain on the settlers. J.C.U. Eme, “Sociological Problems Connected with Farm Settlement Schemes”, Technical Bulletin, No. 4 (1963): 61. See also Njaka Imelda, “Socio-Psychological Problems in the Farm Settlements” (paper presented at the Conference of Agricultural Officers, Abakiliki, 8 September 1964), 6–9, See Floyd and Adinde, “Farm Settlements,” 223.
68. 68Caleb O. Okoro, “The Uzouwani Farm Settlement and Socio-Economic Development in the Anambra Basin, 1961–1971,”(M.A. thesis, Department of History, University of Nigeria, 1986), 44.
69. 69Floyd and Adinde, “Farm Settlements,” 223.
70. 70Okoro, “The Uzouwani Farm Settlement,” 45.
71. 71Ibid., 4.
72. 72Eugene Nwana, “Ohaji Farm Settlement: A Flash in the Pan,” in Schwartz and Hare, Foreign Experts, 115.
73. 73Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 233.
74. 74Ibid.
75. 75Floyd and Adinde, “Farm Settlements,” 193.
76. 76Okoro, “The Uzouwani Farm Settlement,” 29.
77. 77See “Eastern Nigeria Farm Settlement Scheme,” Agricultural Bulletin No. 2 (n.d.), 10.
78. 78Ibid., 3.
79. 79Nwana, “Ohaji Farm Settlement,” 110.
80. 80Okoro, “The Uzouwani Farm Settlement,” 43.
81. 81H. I. Ajaegbu, Urban and Rural Development in Nigeria (London: Heinemann, 1976), 65.
82. 82For estimates of percentages of population and area experiencing pressure on land, see ibid., 15.
83. 83Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 163.
84. 84Okoro, “The Uzouwani Farm Settlement,” 11.
85. 85See NAE, ESIALA, 64/1/1 for details of these amenities completed by December 1963.
86. 86Floyd and Adinde, “Farm Settlements,” 193.
87. 87Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 232.
88. 88For discussion on mode of production in the African context, see, for example, Bowlig Simon, Peasant Production and Market Relations: A Case Study of Western Ghana (Copenhagen: Third World Observer, 1993), 7.
89. 89Eastern Nigeria, Annual Report, Agricultural Division, 1963–1964, 2.
90. 90A. Kolawole, “Agricultural Stagnation, Food Crisis and Rural Poverty in Nigeria” (paper presented at the Ahmadu Bello University seminar series, 1984).
91. 91On the role of the marketing board, see Nigeria, Handbook of Commerce and Industry in Nigeria (Lagos, [not dated]), 122; Gerald K. Helleiner, “The Fiscal Role of the Marketing Boards in Nigerian Economic Development, 1947–61,” Economic Journal 74, no. 295 (1964): 582–610; and H.M.A. Onitiri and D. Olatunbosun, ed., The Marketing Board System: Proceedings of an International Conference (Ibadan, Nigeria: Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1974). See also Martin, Palm oil and Protest, 124.
92. 92See Eastern Nigeria, Eastern Nigeria Development Plan, 1962–1968: Official Document No. 8 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1962).
93. 93Purvis, Report on a Survey, 34.
94. 94Eastern Nigeria, Annual Report, Agriculture Division, 1963–64. Official Document No. 2, 1966 (Enugu: Government Printer 1966), 10.
95. 95Eastern Nigeria, Annual Report, Agriculture Division, 1963–64. See Table 3, 11.
96. 96Hursh, Innovation, 213.
97. 97Eastern Nigeria, Annual Report, Agriculture Division, 1963–64, 13.
98. 98Ibid.
99. 99For the quantity of gari export to Northern Nigeria between 1959 and 1963, see Eastern Nigeria, Annual Report, Agriculture Division, 1963–64, Table 5, 13.
100. 100Interview with Sarah Emenike, Owerri, 22 December 1998.
101. 101Eastern Nigeria, Programme of Work, 59.
102. 102Eastern Nigeria, “Programme of Work,” Technical Bulletin 12 (Enugu: Agriculture Division, Ministry of Agriculture, 1966), 59.
103. 103Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
104. 104Purvis, Report on a Survey, 16.
105. 105Interview with Sybilia Nwosu, c. 85 years, Nguru, Mbaise, 12 December 1998.
106. 106On agricultural policy, see Jerome C. Wells, Agricultural Policy and Growth in Nigeria, 1962–1968 (Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1974). On economic planning, see Peter B. Clark, “Economic Planning for a Country in Transition: Nigeria,” in Planning Economic Development, ed. Everett E. Hagen, 252-93 (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, 1963).
107. 107Interview with Amarahiaugwu Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
108. 108Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
109. 109Interview with Alpelda Korie, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 23 December 1998.
110. 110Interview with Grace Chidomere, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
111. 111Interview with Susan Iwuagwu, Umunomo, Mbaise, 31 July 1999.
112. 112For historical studies of the Biafra-Nigeria Civil War, see Mok Chiu Yu and Lynn Arnold, ed., Nigeria-Biafra: A Reading into the Problems and Peculiarities of the Conflict (Adelaide: Adelaide University Quaker Society, 1968); Frederick Forsyth, The Making of an African Legend: The Biafra Story (New York: Penguin Books, 1977); and Herbert Gold, Biafra Goodbye (San Francisco: Twowindows Press 1970).
113. 113W. T. Morrill, “Immigrants and Associations: The Ibo in the Twentieth Century Calabar,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5, no. 4 (July 1963): 425.
114. 114NAE, OWDIST, 4/13/70, file no. 91/27, “Cultivation of Crops, Owerri District,” District Officer to Resident Owerri Province, June 1928.
115. 115Globe and Mail, 2 October 1968.
116. 116PRO, FCO, 65/384, “Intelligence Memorandum,” CIA Food Crisis in Eastern Nigeria.
117. 117Ibid.
118. 118See Reuben N. Ogbudinkpa, The Economics of the Nigeria Civil War and its Prospects for National Development (Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension, 2002), 58. See also Zdenek Cervenka, The Nigerian Civil War 1969–70 (Frankfurt am Main: Bernard and Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, 1971), 73.
119. 119Time, 23 August, 1968.
120. 120Ibid.
121. 121The Committee for Peace in Nigeria (CPN) was established because of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70). The Committee, which acted as an independent body and was headed by Lord Fenner Brockway, was active from 1968. Members included leading political figures in Britain, representatives from the missionary societies working in Nigeria, former members of the Colonial Service in Nigeria, business representatives, and Africans from both the federal and the Biafran sides of the conflict.
122. 122PRO, FCO, 65/384, “Intelligence Memorandum.”
123. 123Ibid.
124. 124Ibid.
125. 125Ibid.
126. 126Globe and Mail, 2 October 1968.
127. 127PRO, FCO, 65/384, “Memorandum.”
128. 128Martin A. Klein, correspondence, 28 December 2006.
129. 129American Jewish Committee Archive, “Biafran Issues and Background for July 25 Meeting,” Marc H. Tanenbaum to Morris B. Abram, 22 July 1968, http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJCArchive/DigitalArchive.aspx, accessed 28 June 2006.
130. 130American Jewish Committee, “Biafran Issues.”
131. 131PRO, FCO, 65/384, “Memorandum.”
132. 132Interview with Mbagwu Korieh, 18 December 1998.
133. 133Interview with Jonah Okere, Umuekwune, Ngor Okpala, 12 December 1999.
134. 134Interview with Francis Ihuoma, aged 78, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
135. 135E. Wayne Nafziger, “The Economic Impact of the Nigerian Civil War,” Journal of Modern African Studies 10, no. 2 (1972): 241.
136. 136Ibid., 240.
137. 137Ibid., 241. See also Nigeria, Annual Abstract of Statistics 1967, 3.
138. 138Hursh et al., Innovation in Eastern Nigeria, 213.
139. 139PRO, FCO, 65/384, “Intelligence Memorandum.”
140. 140Ibid.
141. 141Ibid.
142. 142Interview with Iwuagwu, Chilaka, Umunomo, Mbaise, 31 July 1999.
143. 143PRO, FCO, 65/384.
144. 144For government priority in agriculture before the war, see Eastern Nigeria Economic Development Plan 1962–1968, Official Document No. 8 (Enugu: Government Printer, 1962), 8.
145. 145For the activities of the BDC, see NAE, ESIALA, 63/1/70-SEC/217, vol. 1, “Emergency Food Production,” Director, Food Production Directorate to the Chairman, BDC, 5 February 1968.
146. 146NAE, ESIALA, 63/1/70, file no. SEC/217, vol. 1, “Emergency Food Production.”
147. 147Interview with Maria Gold Egbunike, 65 years, transcribed in Azuka Nzegwu, “These Women are Brave: Biafra War/Nigeria Civil War, 1967–1970.” http://www.westafricareview.com/war/vol2.2/biafra/student.htm, accessed 31 January 2003.
148. 148Interview with Ezenwanyi Anichebe, Eziowelle town Anambra State, 22 October 2007, transcribed in Chimee N. Ihediwa, “The Role of Women in Post War Economic Transformation of Igboland, 1970–1985,” (unpublished paper).
149. 149PRO, FCO, 65/384, “Memorandum.”
150. 150Ibid.
151. 151Interview with Amarahiaugwu Korieh, 65 year, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
152. 152Oruene Taiwo Olaleye, Nation Builders: Women of Nigeria (London: International Report, Women and Society, 1985), 5.
153. 153Interview with Comfort Anabalam, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
154. 154Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
155. 155Interview with Nwadinma Agwu at Ishiagu, 29 October 2007, transcribed in Ihediwa, “The Role of Women.”
156. 156Interview with Edna Okoye, Akanogu Umudunu Village Abagana, 26 June 2006, transcribed in Ihediwa, “The Role of Women.”
157. 157Interview with Margaret Nwanevu, Amumara Mbaise, 30 October 2007, transcribed in Ihediwa, “The Role of Women.”
158. 158Interview with Chinyere Iroha, Uvuru, Mbaise, 30 October 2007, transcribed in Ihediwa, “The Role of Women.”
159. 159Iyegha, Agricultural Crisis, 35. See also Federal Office of Statistics, Review of External Trade (Lagos, 1979), 83.
160. 160Peter Kilby, “What Oil Wealth Did to Nigeria,” Wall Street Journal, 25 November 1981.
161. 161Central Intelligence Agency, “Intelligence Memorandum,” and “Nigeria: The War’s Economic Legacy,” 10 May 1971.
162. 162Central Intelligence Agency, “Intelligence Memorandum,” 10.
163. 163Andrew Okolie, “Oil Revenues, International Credits and Food in Nigeria, 1970–1992,” (PhD thesis, Sociology Department, University of Toronto, 1995), 98. See also Watts and Lubeck, “The Popular Classes,” 107–8.
164. 164Joyce Kolko, Restructuring the World Economy (New York: Pantheon, 1988), 37.
165. 165The estimates of oil revenue have not been consistent from different sources. This is a problem associated with much of the official data from Nigeria. On petroleum production and revenue from 1973 to 1979, see International Financial Statistics 33, no. 12 (1980): 288. See also Myer, “This Is Not Your Land,” note 4, 136.
166. 166Peter Kilby, “What Oil Wealth Did to Nigeria,” Wall Street Journal, 25 November 1981.
167. 167Watts and Lubeck, “The Popular Classes,” 108.
168. 168Ibid.
169. 169Myers, “This Is Not Your Land,” 94.
170. 170For further discussion, see, for example, Siyanbola, Structure of the Nigeria Economy (London, 1979), 27. See also Angaye Gesiye, “Petroleum and the Political Economy of Nigeria,” in The Nigerian Economy: A Political Economy Approach, Nigerian Economic Society (London: Longman, 1986), 50–69.
171. 171Berry, No Condition, 77.
172. 172Julius O. Ihonvbere and Timothy M. Shaw, Towards a Political Economy of Nigeria: Petroleum Policy at the (Semi)-Periphery (Aldershot: Avebury, 1982), 7.
173. 173On the paradox of poverty amidst plenty, see Nicholas Shaxson, Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). See also Hans-Otto Sano, The Political Economy of Food in Nigeria, 1960–1982: A Discussion on Peasants, State, and World Economy (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1983), 2.
174. 174See Andrew C. Okolie, “Oil Revenues, International Credits and Food in Nigeria, 1970–1992” (PhD thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 1995). On food out and imports between 1970 and 1977, see various issues of Nigeria Quarterly Economic Review published by the Federal Office of Statistics. On food output from 1971–79, see Federal Office of Statistics, Nigeria Quarterly Economic Review (Lagos: FOS, 1980). See also T. Forrest, “Agricultural Policies in Nigeria 1900–1978,” in Rural Development in Tropical Africa, ed. G. Williams et al., 222–58 (London: Macmillan, 1981); and Siyanbola, Structure, 27.
175. 175Iyegha, Agricultural Crisis, 37; O. Awoyemi, “Character of Nigerian Agriculture,” Central Bank Bullion 6, no. 4 (1983): 2, cited in T. S. B. Aribisala, “Nigeria’s Green Revolution: Achievements, Problem and Prospects,” NISER Distinguished Lecture Series, 8.
176. 176Nigeria, The Shagari Administration, 7.
177. 177See Morgan and Solarz, “Agricultural Crisis,” 59.
178. 178See Government of East Central State of Nigeria, Report of Rural Economic Survey of the East Central State of Nigeria (Enugu: Government Printer, 1977), 41.
179. 179Watts, Silent Violence, 467.
180. 180Federal Office of Statistics, Annual Abstract of Statistics (Lagos, 1986), 15.
181. 181Discussion with Alban Onyesoh, aged c. 39, Umuchieze, Mbaise, December 1998.
182. 182Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
183. 183Watts, Silent Violence, 467, 486.
184. 184There emerged absentee farmers, who hired labour to work on rented farms.
185. 185Federal Office of Statistics, Annual Abstract of Statistics (Lagos 1961), 141.
186. 186Ibid., 20.
187. 187Interview with Uzodinma Ibekwe, Nguru, Mbaise, 25 December 1998.
188. 188Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
189. 189For some treatment of the boom and bust period in Nigeria and the impact on farmers, see, for example, Michael Watts, ed., State, Oil and Agriculture in Nigeria (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California), 19.
190. 190Watts, Silent Violence, 483.
191. 191See Nigeria, Third National Development Plan.
192. 192This argument is borne out in my research and oral interviews with rural farmers. Many rural farmers consistently argued that political officials who were not farmers often controlled the sale and distribution of fertilizers.
193. 193See Oguntoyinbo, “The Changing Trends,” 9.
194. 194On the Land Use Act, see, for example, Myers, “This Is Not Your Land,” 29; Ega L. Alegwu, “Implications of the 1978 Land Use Act for Agricultural Development in Nigeria,” Issues in Development 1, no. 2 (1985): 40–50; and Fabiyi Yakubu, “Land Tenure Reform in Nigeria: Implications of the Land Use Decree (Act) for Agricultural Development,” Ife Journal of Agriculture 1, no. 2 (1979): 235–57.
195. 195The Land Use Decree gave the federal and state governments power to take over any land within their jurisdiction without compensation. The decree has been extensively used to alienate land in areas close to the urban centres.
196. 196See Myers, “This Is Not Your Land,” 29. In this period, there was interest in agricultural investment by foreign capital. In 1978, the federal commissioner for agriculture informed a Dutch delegation that the Land Use Decree would help the government to acquire land for foreign investors. See Watts and Lubeck, “The Popular Classes,” 123.
197. 197Imo State, Briefs on Imo State (Owerri, Nigeria: Government Printer, 1984), 13.
198. 198Imo State, Government White paper on the Report of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into the ADC, Owerri (Owerri: Government Printer, 1980), 17.
199. 199Gavin Williams, “The World Bank and the Peasant Problems,” in Rural Development in Tropical Africa, ed. Judith Heyer, Pepe Roberts, and Gavin Williams, 25 (London, 1981).
200. 200Imo State of Nigeria, Government White Paper, 23.
201. 201Ibid., 24.
202. 202Ibid.
203. 203On the Green Revolution, see Adekunle Folayan, Agriculture and Economic Development in Nigeria: A Prescription for the Nigerian Green Revolution (New York: Vantage Press, 1983); and Peter Lawrence, “The Political Economy of the ‘Green Revolution’ in Africa,” Review of African Political Economy 15, no. 42 (1988): 59–75.
204. 204See Federal Republic of Nigeria, Fourth National Development Plan, 1981–1985, 88.
205. 205E. A. Bamisaiye, “Solving the Food Crisis in Africa: The Role of Higher Education,” Journal of African Studies 11, no. 4 (1985): 182–88.
206. 206See Berry, No Condition is Permanent, 182.
207. 207Gains were limited. For a review of irrigated rice farming schemes in five West African countries, see, for example, Robin Palmer and Neil Parsons, ed., The Root of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa (London, 1981), 412–13.
208. 208See Nigeria, Third National Development Plan, 1975–80.
209. 209Imo State of Nigeria, ISADAP after Three Years. Information Bulletin No. 4 (n.d.), 2.

7ON THE BRINK: AGRICULTURAL CRISIS AND RURAL SURVIVAL

1. 1Some studies on agricultural sustainability include, Abe Goldman, “Threats to Sustainability in African Agriculture: Searching for Appropriate Paradigms,” Human Ecology 23, 3 (1995): 291–334. See also G. K. Douglass, “The Meaning of Agricultural Sustainability,” in Agricultural Sustainability in a Changing World Order, ed. G. K. Douglass, 3–29 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994); George J. S. Dei, “Sustainable Development in the African Context: Revisiting Some Theoretical and Methodological Issues,” African Development 18, no. 2 (1993): 97–110, and C. K. Eicher, Sustainable Institutions for African Agricultural Development, International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR), Working Paper No. 19 (The Hague, 1989).
2. 2The term agricultural crisis is used here to describe the manifestation of low agricultural productivity, food insecurity and a decreasing farming population as experiences in central Igboland. The term is useful in explaining trends in the agricultural history of the region in terms of productivity and farming population. For a review of the literature seeking to establish the causes and potential remedies for agricultural decline, see Sara Berry, “The Food Crisis and Agrarian Change in Africa: A Review Essay,” African Studies Review 27, no. 2 (1984): 59–112. On internal-external factors of African agrarian problems, see M. F. Lofchie and S. K. Commins, “Food Deficit and Agricultural Policies in Tropical Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies 20, no. 1 (1982): 1–25. See also M. F. Lofchie, “The Decline of African Agriculture,” in Drought and Hunger in Africa: Denying Famine a Future, ed. Michael H. Glantz, 85–110 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). For a Nigerian case study, see Iyegha, Agricultural Crisis in Africa, 1988. See also Ray Bush, “The Politics of Food and Starvation,” Review of African Political Economy 68 (1996): 169–95.
3. 3See Brad David Jokisch, “Landscape of Remittance: Migration and Agricultural Change in the Highlands of south-central Ecuador” (PhD dissertation, Clark University, 1998), 100.
4. 4Federal Office of Statistics, Poverty and Agricultural Sector in Nigeria (Abuja, Nigeria: Federal Office of Statistics, 1999).
5. 5Ibid., 7.
6. 6Raluca Iorgulescu Polimeni and John M. Polimeni, “Structural Adjustment and the Igbo Extended Family,” International Journal of the Humanities 5, no. 5 (n.d.): 77–82.
7. 7Interview with Eugenia Otuonye, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 23 December 1998.
8. 8Interview with Isidore Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 5 May 2008.
9. 9Imo State of Nigeria, ISADAP After Three Years. Information Bulletin No. 4 (n.d.), 1.
10. 10Ibid., 2–3.
11. 11Ibid.
12. 12Ibid., 2.
13. 13Ibid., 3–5.
14. 14See, Ngobiri C. Chioma, “The Problems and Prospects of Women in Agriculture: A Case Study of Women farmers in Orlu Local Government Area,” (Research Project PGD, Agricultural Economics and Extension, Imo State University, 1998).
15. 15See Government of East Central State of Nigeria, “Report of Rural Economic Survey of the East Central State of Nigeria,” (Enugu, Nigeria: Government Printer, 1977), 41.
16. 16For further discussion, see, for example, F. A. Olaloku, Structure of the Nigeria Economy (London: Macmillan, 1979), 27. See also Angaye Gesiye, “Petroleum and the Political Economy of Nigeria,” in The Nigerian Economy: A Political Economy Approach, ed. J. A. Ajayi et al., 50–69 (London: Longman, 1986).
17. 17Bongo Adi, “Determinants of Agricultural and non-Agricultural Livelihood Strategies in Rural Communities: Evidence from Eastern Nigeria,” Project Muse 93, 93–109, accessed 30 January 2008.
18. 18Interview with Nwanyiafo Obasi, Umunomo, Mbaise.
19. 19Adi, “Determinants,” 95.
20. 20Interview with Eugenia Otuonye, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 23 December 1998.
21. 21For more on the spread and impact of cassava, see, for example, H. Rosling, Cassava Toxicity and Food Security: A Review of Health Effects of Cyanide Exposure from Cassava and of Ways to Prevent the Effects (Ibadan, Nigeria: IITA-UNICEF Program on Household Food Security and Nutrition, 1987), 29. See also: E. O. Onabanjo, A Selected Bibliography on Cassava (Lagos: Institute of Industrial Research, 1979); S. A. Agboola, “Introduction and Spread of Cassava in Western Nigeria,” Nigeria Journal of Economic and Social Studies 10, no. 3 (1968): 369–85; and E. C. Anumihe, “The Role of Cassava in Ensuring Small Farm Household Food Security in Imo State.” (PhD thesis, Imo State University, 1998), 7.
22. 22Ottenberg, Farmers and Townspeople, 162–63.
23. 23Martin, Palm Oil and Protest.
24. 24Njoku, Economic History of Nigeria, 13.
25. 25George, Journal, 11 March 1863, CMS C.A3/O.18/20, cited in Iliffe, The African Poor, 92.
26. 26Interview with Ugwuanya Nwosu, Owerri, 22 December 2000.
27. 27Don C. Ohadike, “The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 and “The Spread of Cassava Cultivation on the Lower Niger: A Case Study of Historical Linkages,” Journal of African History 22 (1981): 379–91. See also Ohadike, Anioma: A Social History of the Western Igbo People (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1994), 198–207.
28. 28W.G.A. Ormsby-Gore, “Some Contrasts in Nigeria,” Geographical Journal 69, no. 6 (1927): 504.
29. 29NAE, OWDIST, 4/13/70, file no. 91/27, “Cultivation of Crops, Owerri District,” District Officer to Resident Owerri Province, June 1928.
30. 30Interview with Luke Osunwoke, Umuorlu, Isu, 7 January 2000.
31. 31Morgan, “Farming Practice,” 331.
32. 32For quantity of gari export to northern Nigeria, see NAE, ABADIST, 14/1/875, file no. 1646, vol. IV, “gari Control,” District Officer Aba, to the Senior Resident, Port Harcourt, 20 July 1942.
33. 33Simon Ottenberg, Farmers and Townspeople in a Changing Nigeria: Abakiliki during Colonial Times (1905–1960) (Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 2005), 162–63.
34. 34Morgan, “Farming Practice,” 331.
35. 35Phoebe V. Ottenberg, “The Changing Economic Position of Women Among the Afikpo Ibo,” in Continuity and Change in African Cultures, ed. William Russell Bascom and Melvin J. Herskovits (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 214.
36. 36Ibid., 215.
37. 37Ibid.
38. 38NAE, CSE, 3.17.15., B 1544, (1925–1926); NAE, AW 80 Q, AW 2/1/57, Anti-Government Propaganda Women Dancers (1925).
39. 39Interview with Robert Ibeh, Umucieze Mbaise, 28 July 1999.
40. 40Interview with Linus Anabalam, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
41. 41W. P. Falcon, W. O. Jones, and S. R. Pearson, The Cassava Economy of Java (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984), 20.
42. 42Morgan, “Farming Practice,” 331.
43. 43Ibid.
44. 44See particularly the works of M. M. Green, Land Tenure in an Ibo Village in Southeastern Nigeria. Monographs on Social Anthropology 6 (London: LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology, 1941); and J. Harris, “Human Relationships to the Land in Southern Nigeria,” Rural Sociology 7 (1942): 89–92.
45. 45See Abe Goldman, “Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Imo State, Southeastern Nigeria,” in Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa, ed. B. L. Turner II, Goran Hyden, and Robert W. Kates, 250–301 (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1993). For contemporary population estimates, see Government of Nigeria, “1991 Population Census” (Lagos: National Population Commission, 1991).
46. 46See George, Journal, 21 January 1866, CMS CA3/O, 18/23; F. M. Denis, Journal, 17 November 1908, CMS: UP 4/F2; T. J. Dennis, Journal, March 1907, CMS: UP 89/F1, cited in Iliffe, African Poor, 82.
47. 47See N. W. Thomas, Anthropological Report on the Ibo Speaking Peoples of Nigeria, vol. 1 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1913–14), 97; Elizabeth Isichei, A History of the Igbo People (London: Macmillan, 1976), 27, 79; and Iliffe, African Poor, 92.
48. 48Dike, Trade and Politics, 28.
49. 49Simon Ottenberg, “Ibo Receptivity to Change,” in Continuity and Change in African Cultures, ed. William R. Bascom and Melville J. Herskovitz, 140 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959). See also Dmitri Van Den Barsselaar, “Imagining Home: Migration and the Igbo Village in Colonial Nigeria,” Journal of African History 46 (2005): 57.
50. 50R. K. Udo, “The Migrant Tenant Farmer of Eastern Nigeria,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 34, no. 4 (Oct. 1964): 326–39.
51. 51Mss. Afr. s. 1520, Sylvia Leith-Ross papers.
52. 52Interviews with Oboko Ude of Amata, aged c. 80 years, 20 August 1977; Ezenta Okpo of Ezioha, aged c. 90 years, 26 August 1977, transcribed in Ude Emmanuel N. “Agriculture and Trade in Mgbowo, 1850–1950” (B.A. History project, University of Nigeria, 1978), 3–4.
53. 53Nzimiro, “A Study of Mobility,” 124.
54. 54For the early kinds of migration in response to population pressures, see John N. Oriji, Traditions of Igbo Origin: A Study of Pre-Colonial Population Movements in Africa (New York: Peter Lang, 1990).
55. 55See, Davidson, West Africa, 125–26; and Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 253.
56. 56Huss-Ashmore, Perspectives, 11.
57. 57Floyd, Eastern Nigeria, 57.
58. 58Official provincial estimates per square mile recorded by Forde and Jones were as follows: Onitsha (1921) 306, (1931) 224; Owerri (1921) 268, (1931) 154. It is obvious that these official figures are unreliable. The population dynamics would suggest that the population density for 1931 would have been relatively higher than the density for 1921. Despite this negative growth, which cannot be explained, contemporary estimates suggest that most of the Igbo territory experienced very high densities. See Daryll Forde and G. I. Jones, The Ibo and Ibibio Speaking Peoples of Southeastern Nigeria (London: International African Institute, 1950), 10–13.
59. 59See Onwuejeogwu, Evolutionary Trends, 21.
60. 60David R. Smock and Audrey C. Smock, Cultural and Political Aspects of Rural Transformation: A Case Study of Eastern Nigeria (New York: Praeger, 1972), 21.
61. 61For current population estimates, see Nigeria: 1991 Population of States by Local Government Areas (Lagos: Federal Office of Statistics, 1994).
62. 62See Charles A. P. Takes, “Socio-Economic Factors Affecting the Productivity of Agriculture in Okigwi Division (Eastern Nigeria): Preliminary Report” (Ibadan, Nigeria: Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1963), 6.
63. 63Interviews with Theophilus Onyema, Umuorlu, Isu, 5 January 2000, and Luke Osunwoke, Umuorlu, Isu, 7 January 2000.
64. 64R. K. Udo, “Influence of Migrations on the Changing Cultural Map of West Africa,” Ikenga: A Journal of African Studies 1, no. 29 (1972): 50.
65. 65Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Nigeria (London: Longman, 1983).
66. 66Azuka A. Dike, “Urban Migrants and Rural Development,” African Studies Review 25, no. 4 (1982): 86.
67. 67See Goldman, “Population Growth.”
68. 68Stanley Diamond, Nigeria: Model of a Colonial Failure (New York, 1967), 44.
69. 69See Nigeria, Official Gazette (FGP 71/52007/2,500(OL24): 2006 National Population census.
70. 70Ikenna Nzimiro, “A Study of Mobility among the Ibos of Southern Nigeria,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 6, no. 1 (1965): 123–24.
71. 71Walter Ofonagoro, Trade and Imperialism in Southern Nigeria, 1881–1960 (New York: Nok, 1979), 109.
72. 72See, for example, Eicher and Liedholm, Growth and Development, 78.
73. 73Hogendorn, Nigerian Groundnut Export, 18–21.
74. 74G. I. Jones, From Slaves to Palm Oil: Slave Trade and Palm Oil Trade in the Bight of Biafra (Cambridge: African Studies Center, 1989), 104–5.
75. 75Jones, From Slaves to Palm Oil, 104.
76. 76RH, Mss Afr s 1520, Sylvia Leith-Ross papers.
77. 77Harris, “Some Aspects of the Economics of 16 Ibo individuals,” Africa 14 (1944): 302–35.
78. 78Interview with Linus Anabalam, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 12 December 1999.
79. 79RH, Mss. Afr. S. 1428, 16. Transcript of interview with J. B. Davies, CMB OBE of the United African Company, on 9 March 1971, interviewed by Dr. Collin Newbury, University Lecturer in Commonwealth Studies at Oxford University.
80. 80Van Den Barsselaar, “Imagining Home,” 58. See also G.E.K. Ofomata, Nigeria in Maps: Eastern States (Benin City: Ethiope, 1975), 64–6.
81. 81See Isichei, A History of the Igbo People, 210.
82. 82The region was a former German colony until World War I. On 4 February 1916, the English and the French shared the Cameroon territory that they had just forcefully gained from the Germans.
83. 83Interview with Linus Anabalam, 12 December 1999.
84. 84NAE, CADIST, 3/3/840, Denis Ugwu and others to the Senior District Officer, Calabar, 4 June 1949.
85. 85NAE, CADIST, 3/3/686, I. Uchendu and others to District Officer, Calabar, 17 February 1949.
86. 86Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Affairs (Appointment and Promotion) of the Formers ENDC Plantations from May 1967 to 5 November 1968 (Calabar: Ministry of Home Affairs and Information, 1969), 6.
87. 87Ibid.
88. 88Van Den Barsselaar, “Imagining Home,” 58. See also Ofomata, Nigeria in Maps, 64–66.
89. 89Gerald K. Kleis, “Confrontation and Incorporation: Igbo Ethnicity in Cameroon,” African Studies Review 23, no. 3 (1980): 91.
90. 90On the labour migration to Fernando Po, see, for example, PRO, CO 554/127/5, “Labour for Fernado Po.”
91. 91See Nigeria, Annual Report of the Department of Labor for the Year 1944.
92. 92See Anthony Oham, “Labor Migration from Southeastern Nigeria to Spanish Fernando Po, 1900–1968,” (MA thesis, Department of History, Central Michigan University, 2007).
93. 93RH, Mss. Afr. s. 2033 (1) Robinson, W. A. Lt.-Col, Memoir, 20.
94. 94See Oham, “Labor Migration,” 33.
95. 95Loise, interviewed by Anthony Ohams, 30 December 2005.
96. 96Interview with Alban Onyesoh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 18 December 1998.
97. 97Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
98. 98Interview with Alban Eluwa, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 18 December 1998.
99. 99The expression ‘dry’ means lack of resources. Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
100. 100RH, Mss. Afr. s. 1428, 17, transcript of interview with J. B. Davies, CMB OBE of the United African Company on 9 March 1971; interviewed by Dr Collin Newbury, University Lecturer in Commonwealth Studies at Oxford University.
101. 101Victor Bong Amaazee, “The ‘Igbo Scare’ in British Cameroons,” Journal of African History 30 (1990): 281.
102. 102“Inside Contemporary Cameroon Politics,” available from avadocs.indymedia.org/pub/Main/JusticeMbuh/ICCPC1.doc. [accessed 16 February 2008].
103. 103RH, Mss. Afr. s. 2033, W. A. Robinson papers.
104. 104Jones, From Slaves to Palm Oil, 107.
105. 105U. D. Anyanwu, “The Aftermath of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Two Settlement Patterns in Southeastern Nigeria,” in The Aftermath of Slavery: Transitions and Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, ed. Chima J. Korieh and Femi J. Kolapo, 59–74 (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2007).
106. 106Interview with Jane Elizabeth Obasi, Umunomo, Mbaise, 30 July 1999.
107. 107Egejuru, The Seed Yams, 219.
108. 108Interview with Linus Anabalam, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
109. 109For the role of female income and wage work in household sustainability, see Janice Jiggins, Gender-Related Impacts and the Work of the International Agricultural Research Centers. CGIAR Study Paper No. 17 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1986), 51; and FAO, “Special Problems of Female Heads of Households in Agriculture and Rural Development in Asia and the Pacific,” (Bangkok: FAO, 1985).
110. 110Interview with Jonas Onwukwe, aged c. 70, Umunkwo-Emeabiam, May 2001.
111. 111Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
112. 112Interview with Linus Anabalam, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 13 December 1998.
113. 113Interview with Eugenia Otuonye, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 23 December 1998.
114. 114Interview with Onyegbule Korieh, Umuchieze, Mbaise, 17 December 1998.
115. 115Uchendu, The Igbo, 30.