Introduction

The economic relations between the British colony of Nigeria and the United States constitute a neglected theme in the literature. Until now, scholarly research has concentrated on political and social aspects of relations between Nigeria and the United States. To be sure, aspects of economic contact between Nigeria and the United States have been examined in some scholarly publications, but the present chapter sets out to examine some previously neglected but important aspects of the economic relations between Nigeria and the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, when the former was under British colonial rule.

The chapter focuses on maritime trade and shipping, agriculture, and transport within the framework of colonialism and globalization. The framework incorporates British colonial policies, especially in relation to foreign competition, and such issues as the vagaries of the global economy and the post–World War I global preeminence of the United States. The complementarity of the global and local—leading to the peculiarities of the Nigerian colonial political economy—provides the framework for this analysis of Nigerian-U.S. trade relations in the heyday of British colonial rule in Nigeria.

The Colonial and Global Contexts of a Peculiar Relationship

The 1890s, the convenient point of commencement of our discussion, were remarkable for the formal establishment of British colonial rule over much of Nigeria, though the process lingered on till the first decade of the twentieth century in certain parts of the country.