Frederick Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Frederick John Dealtry Lugard

(born Jan. 22, 1858, Fort St. George, Madras, India — died April 11, 1945, Abinger, Surrey, Eng.) British colonial administrator. In Nigeria he served as high commissioner (1900 – 06) and governor and governor-general (1912 – 19). He fought as an officer in British campaigns in Asia and North Africa before accepting posts with the British East Africa Company, the Royal Niger Company, and other private enterprises. He succeeded, in advance of the French, in establishing trade routes centred at Buganda, the Middle Niger, and Bechuanaland. As the chief government administrator in Nigeria, he united the disparate northern and southern districts and greatly influenced British colonial policy by exercising control centrally through native rulers and respecting native legal systems and customs.

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Frederick John Dealtry Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard (1858-1945), was a British imperialist and colonial administrator in Africa. He made significant contributions to the theory and practice of the British colonial policy of indirect rule.

Frederick Lugard was born on Jan. 22, 1858, of missionary parents in India. He attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, England. He obtained a commission in 1878 and returned to India, where he participated in the Afghan War of 1879-1880. In 1885 he accompanied the Indian contingent to the Sudan, joining the Suakin campaign to relieve Khartoum; in 1886 he joined military operations in Burma.

Stationed in East Africa

In 1887 Lugard returned to England, but unable to resume his commission for medical reasons and despairing over an unhappy love affair, he set out for the east coast of Africa. In 1888 he arrived in Mozambique, where he entered the employ of the African Lakes Company, for whom he commanded a mission to Lake Nyasa to relieve a trading station besieged by Arab slave traders.

In 1890 he went to Mombasa, where he was employed by the Imperial British East Africa Company to open a trade route to Buganda. Lugard remained in the interior of East Africa for 2 years, where, through a combination of diplomatic skill and military force, he established the suzerainty of the company over the region of present-day Uganda. During this time the company decided to withdraw from Buganda, a decision Lugard chose to ignore. He returned to England and launched a political campaign designed to convince the government to annex Uganda. In England, Lugard was criticized for his activities in Buganda, particularly for his treatment of French missionaries. Therefore, in defense of himself and in advocacy of his imperial vision, he published his first book, The Rise of Our East African Empire (1893), an autobiographical account of his activities in Nyasaland and Uganda.

Creation of Nigeria

In 1894 Lugard visited West Africa for the first time. Employed by the Royal Niger Company, he led an expedition to forestall a French effort to establish a position on the lower Niger River. After a brief tour to Bechuanaland for the British West Charterland Company, he returned to the Niger in 1897 as commissioner for the hinterland of Nigeria and commander of the West African Frontier Force, a military contingent designed to aid the Royal Niger Company in defending its territorial claims.

When the charter of the Royal Niger Company was revoked in 1900, the British government assumed administrative responsibility for former territories of the company, and Lugard became high commissioner for Northern Nigeria. At that time, Northern Nigeria existed in name only, since the company had never extended any form of administration beyond the banks of the Niger. During his tenure Lugard laid the foundations of British rule in the North, first establishing British sovereignty by conquest of the Moslem states which had resisted alien domination and then by developing the forms of administration whereby the British would rule.

In 1906 Lugard resigned as high commissioner and the following year accepted an appointment as governor of Hong Kong, where he remained until 1911. Then, in 1912, he returned to Nigeria as governor of both the Northern and Southern protectorates, charged with amalgamating the two territories into a single unit.

Lugard's plans for amalgamation provided for the extension into the Southern Protectorate of the policy of indirect rule which he had developed in the North. Indirect rule was designed to allow for the administration of colonized peoples through the agency of indigenous institutions. Although indirect rule was not uniformly effective among peoples of very diverse traditional institutions, Lugard pushed hard for its adoption and as a guide published his Political Memoranda, earlier directives he had circulated in establishing the Northern administration. By 1919, when Lugard retired as governor general, Nigeria had been set well on its way to becoming a unified territory administratively.

Upon his return to England, Lugard set to work on his second book, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922). In this book he set out in detail his conceptions of indirect rule and expressed his belief that Britain as an imperial power was responsible for aiding in the social, political, and economic development of its African dependencies. The book was hailed as an authoritative statement of British policy and became a guide to the administration of British dependencies.

Lugard never resumed his service abroad but remained an active public figure until his death in 1945. He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1920 and was a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations from 1922 to 1936; he also served on several other national and international commissions dealing with Africa. In 1928 he was raised to the peerage. His wife, the former Flora Shaw, was the author of A Tropical Dependency, a history of Nigeria.

The Right Honourable Frederick John Dealtry Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard GCMG CB, DSO PC

14^th Governor of Hong Kong
In office 29 July 1907 – 16 March 1912
Preceded by	Sir Matthew Nathan
Succeeded by	Sir Francis Henry May

Born	22 January 1858(1858-01-22) Madras, India
Died	11 April 1945 (aged 87) Dorking, Surrey, England, UK
Spouse(s)	Flora Shaw
Alma mater	Royal Military College, Sandhurst
Profession	Soldier, explorer, colonial administrator

Early life and education

Lugard was born in Madras (now Chennai) in India, but was raised in Worcester, England. He was the son of the Reverend F. G. Lugard, a British Army Chaplain at Madras, and Mary Howard (1819–1865), the youngest daughter of Reverend John Garton Howard (1786–1862), a younger son of Yorkshire landed gentry. Lugard was educated at Rossall School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

Military career

Lugard was commissioned into the 9th Foot (East Norfolk Regiment) in 1878, joining the second battalion in India, and serving in the following campaigns:

Afghan War (1879–1880)
Sudan campaign (1884–1885)
Third Burmese War (1886–1887)

In May 1888, Lugard took command of an expedition organized by the British settlers in Nyasaland against Arab slave traders on Lake Nyasa, and was severely wounded.

Post-military career

After he left Nyasaland in April 1889, Lugard joined the Imperial British East Africa Company. In their service, he explored the Sabaki river and the neighbouring region, in addition to elaborating a scheme for the emancipation of the slaves held by Arabs in the Zanzibar mainland.

In 1890, Lugard was sent by the company to Uganda, where he secured British predominance of the area and put an end to the civil disturbances. The efforts came with severe fighting, chiefly notable for an unprovoked attack by the French on the British faction.

After the successful efforts to end disturbances, Lugard became Military Administrator of Uganda from 26 December 1890 to May 1892. While administering Uganda, he journeyed round Ruwenzori to Albert Edward Nyanza, mapping a large area of the country. He also visited Albert Nyanza, and brought away some thousands of Sudanese who had been left there by Emin Pasha and H. M. Stanley during the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.

When Lugard returned to England in 1892, he successfully persuaded Prime Minister William Gladstone and his cabinet from abandoning Uganda. In 1894, Lugard was despatched by the Royal Niger Company to Borgu, where he secured treaties with the kings and chiefs acknowledging the sovereignty of the British company, while distancing the other colonial powers that were there.

From 1896 to 1897, Lugard took charge of an expedition to Lake Ngami on behalf of the British West Charterland Company. From Ngami he was recalled by the British government and sent to West Africa, where he was commissioned to raise a native force to protect British interests in the hinterland of Lagos and Nigeria against French aggression.

In August 1897, Lugard organized the West African Frontier Force, and commanded it until the end of December 1899, when the disputes with France were composed..

Early colonial services

After he relinquished command of the West African Frontier Force, Lugard was made High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, a position he held until 1906. At that time, the portion of Northern Nigeria under effective control was small, and Lugard's task in organizing this vast territory was made more difficult by the refusal of the sultan of Sokoto and many other Fula princes to fulfil their treaty obligations.

In 1903, British control over the whole protectorate was made possible a successful campaign against the emir of Kano and the sultan of Sokoto. By the time Lugard resigned as commissioner, the entire Nigeria was being peacefully administered under the supervision of British residents. There were however uprisings that were brutally put down by Lugards troops. A Mahdi rebellion in 1906 at the Satiru, a village near Sokoto resulted in the total destruction of the town with huge number of casualties.

Governor of Hong Kong

About a year after he resigned as High Commissioner of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, Lugard was appointed as Governor of Hong Kong, a position he held until March 1912. During his tenure, Lugard proposed to return Weihaiwei to the Chinese government, in return for the ceding of the rented New Territories in perpetuity. However, the proposal received less than warm receptions, and it was not acted upon. Some believed that if the proposal was acted on, Hong Kong might forever remain in British hands.

Lugard was largely remembered for his efforts to create the University of Hong Kong in 1911, despite the cold receptions from the imperial Colonial Office and most local British companies, such as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.

Post-governorship

In 1912, Lugard returned to Nigeria as Governor of the two protectorates. His main mission was to complete the amalgamation into one colony. Although controversial in Lagos, where it was opposed by a large section of the political class and the media, the amalgamation did not arouse passion in the rest of the country. From 1914 to 1919, Lugard was made Governor General of the now combined Colony of Nigeria. Throughout his tenure, Lugard sought strenuously to secure the amelioration of the condition of the native people, among other means by the exclusion, wherever possible, of alcoholic liquors, and by the suppression of slave raiding and slavery.

The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa

From 1922 to 1936 he was British representative on the League of Nations' Permanent Mandates Commission.

Lugard's The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa was published in 1922. It discusses indirect rule in colonial Africa. In this work, Lugard outlined the reasons and methods that he recommended for the colonisation of Africa by Britain. Some of his justifications included spreading Christianity and ending barbarism. He also saw state-sponsored colonisation as a way to protect missionaries, local chiefs, and local people from each other as well as from foreign powers. Also, for Lugard, it was vital that Britain gain control of unclaimed areas before Germany, Portugal, or France claimed the land and its resources for themselves. He realised that there were vast profits to be made through the exporting of resources like rubber and through taxation of native populations, as well as importers and exporters. In addition, these resources and inexpensive native labour (slavery having been outlawed by Britain in 1834) would provide vital fuel for the industrial revolution in resource-depleted Britain as well as monies for public works projects. Finally, Lugard reasoned that colonisation had become a fad and that in order to remain a super power, Britain would need to hold colonies in order to avoid appearing weak.

Lugard pushed for native rule in African colonies. He reasoned that black Africans were very different from white Europeans. He did speculate about the admixture of Aryan or Hamitic blood arising from the advent of Islam amongst the Hausa and Fulani.^[1]. He considered that natives should act as a sort of middle manager in colonial governance. This would avoid revolt because, as Lugard believed, the people of Africa would be more likely to follow someone who looked like them, spoke their languages, and shared their customs.

Olufemi Taiwo argues that in fact Lugard blocked qualified Africans educated in Britain from playing an active role in the development of the country, preferring to advance prominent Hausa and Fulani leaders from traditional structues.^[2]

Personal life

Lugard married Flora Louise Shaw in 1902. Flora was a distinguished writer on colonial subjects for The Times. Lugard died on 11 April 1945.

Honours

Lugard was created Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1895. He was knighted as Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1901 and raised to Knight Grand Cross (GCMG) in 1911. He was appointed to the Privy Council, entitling him to style himself "The Right Honourable", in the 1920 New Year Honours.^[3]

Published works

In 1893, Lugard published The Rise of our East African Empire, which was partially an autobiography. Also, Lugard was the author of various valuable reports on Northern Nigeria issued by the Colonial Office.
The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 1926.

Places named after him

The Lugard Road at The Peak in Hong Kong
Lugard Tower (the Faculty of Education Building in University of Hong Kong)
Lugard Hall (a dormitory complex in the University of Hong Kong)
Lugard Avenue Ikoyi Lagos, Nigeria
Lugard Hall, Kaduna, Nigeria. Currently used by Kaduna State House of Assembly
Lugard Avenue Entebbe, Uganda
Lugard House Rossall School, Fleetwood
Many school dormitories, guest houses etc. in East Africa and West Africa are named Lugard House
The fictional Lord Lugard's College, a preparatory school in Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah, where three of the central characters were educated
Lugard House (a dormitory on the eastern compound of Achimota school in Achimota, Ghana

Footnotes

^ The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa p76
^ 'Reading the Colonizer's Mind: Lord Lugard and the Philosophical Foundations of British Colonialism' by Olufemi Taiwo in Racism and Philosophy edited by Susan E. Babbitt and Sue Campbell, Cornell University Press, 1999
^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 31712, p. 1, 30 December 1919.

References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Biography, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

External links

Archives Hub:Papers of Frederick Dealtry Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger: 1871-1969

Government offices
Preceded by Sir Matthew Nathan	Governor of Hong Kong 1907–1912	Succeeded by Sir Francis May
Preceded by none	Governor-General of Nigeria 1914–1919	Succeeded by Hugh Clifford Governor of Nigeria
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New Creation	Baron Lugard of Abinger 1907–1945	Succeeded by Extinct

v • d • e British Governors of Hong Kong

Pottinger • Davis • Bonham • Bowring • H. Robinson • MacDonnell • Kennedy • Hennessy • Bowen • Des Vœux • W. Robinson • Blake • Nathan • Lugard • May • Stubbs • Clementi • Peel • Caldecott • Northcote • Young • Grantham • Black • Trench • MacLehose • Youde • Wilson • Patten

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