Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria
182 pages
English

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182 pages
English

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Description

Guns are an enduring symbol of imperialism, whether they are used to impose social order, create ceremonial spectacle, incite panic, or to inspire confidence. In Guns and Society, Saheed Aderinto considers the social, political, and economic history of these weapons in colonial Nigeria. As he transcends traditional notions of warfare and militarization, Aderinto reveals surprising insights into how colonialism changed access to firearms after the 19th century. In doing so, he explores the unusual ways in which guns were used in response to changes in the Nigerian cultural landscape. More Nigerians used firearms for pastime and professional hunting in the colonial period than at any other time. The boom and smoke of gunfire even became necessary elements in ceremonies and political events. Aderinto argues that firearms in the Nigerian context are not simply commodities but are also objects of material culture. Considering guns in this larger context provides a clearer understanding of the ways in which they transformed a colonized society.


Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Firearms in Twentieth-Century Colonial Africa
1. "This Destructive Implement of European Ingenuity": Firearms, the Atlantic World, and Technology Transfer in Precolonial Nigeria
2. All Firearms Are Not Made Equal: Colonialism, Social Class, and the Emergence of a Nigerian Gun Society
3. "A Dane Gun Is Useless without Gunpowder": The Political Economy of Nigeria's Most Popular Explosive
4. "All Europeans in This Country Should Be Able to Fire a Rifle": Race, Leisure Shooting, and the Lethal Symbol of Imperial Domination
5: "Bread and Bullet": Guns, Imperial Atrocity, and Public Disorder
6: A Fearful Weapon: Violent Crime and Gun Accidents in Everyday Nigeria
7: "You Are to Be Robbed of Your Guns": Firearms Regulation and the Politics of Rights and Privilege
Epilogue: Guns and the Crisis of Development in Postcolonial Nigeria
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

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Publié par
Date de parution 06 janvier 2018
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9780253031624
Langue English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

GUNS AND SOCIETY
IN COLONIAL NIGERIA
GUNS AND SOCIETY
IN COLONIAL NIGERIA
Firearms, Culture, and Public Order
SAHEED ADERINTO
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Saheed Aderinto
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03160-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-03161-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03162-4 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
FOR ALHAJI LATEEF ADERINTO (BABA ONIPAKO)
OJU TO R IBI TI O FO, O DURO D IRE THE EYE THAT DID NOT GO BLIND UPON SIGHTING EVIL AWAITS BLESSING
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Introduction: Firearms in Twentieth-Century Colonial Africa
1. This Destructive Implement of European Ingenuity : Firearms, the Atlantic World, and Technology Transfer in Precolonial Nigeria
2. All Firearms Are Not Made Equal: Colonialism, Social Class, and the Emergence of a Nigerian Gun Society
3. A Dane Gun Is Useless without Gunpowder : The Political Economy of Nigeria s Most Popular Explosive
4. All Europeans in This Country Should Be Able to Fire a Rifle : Race, Leisure Shooting, and the Lethal Symbol of Imperial Domination
5. Bread and Bullet : Guns, Imperial Atrocity, and Public Disorder
6. A Fearful Weapon: Violent Crime and Gun Accidents in Everyday Nigeria
7. You Are to Be Robbed of Your Guns : Firearms Regulation and the Politics of Rights and Privilege
Epilogue: Guns and the Crisis of Development in Postcolonial Nigeria
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When people hear I was doing research on firearms or listened to my presentation at conferences and seminars, an important question I often get is whether my book will support gun use or not. Their curiosity is thoroughly justified. The unprecedented wave of gun violence in the second decade of the twenty-first century in the United States and in Nigeria has consistently brought to the limelight vociferous debate over the role of guns in our diverse societies. At the core of discussion about terrorism, ethno-regional agitation for secession and resource control, and ransom kidnapping, among other forms of public disorder in Nigeria, is the question of uncontrolled access to guns, the most potent tool for prosecuting violence at all levels of the society. But as this book demonstrates, the story of guns in twentieth-century colonial Nigeria transcends the seemingly irreconcilable difference between prohibition and regulation of firearms. While not contesting the obvious fact that the gun is an instrument of human destruction, I contend that it also played complex social, economic, political, and religious roles, which historians of twentieth-century colonial Africa have largely glossed over.
If it takes an entire community to raise a child in many parts of Africa, it takes more than an individual to write an academic book. Archivists Gboyega Adelowo, Eke Amadi, and Anthony Nwaneri of the Ibadan, Kaduna, and Enugu branches of the Nigerian National Archives, respectively, generously offered a lot of help in identifying and copying dozens of files used for writing this book. My good friends Adewale Adeboye, Victor Olaoye, and Philip Olayoku not only helped search for sources but also allowed me to use their apartments as temporary repository for archival materials before being shipped to the United States. Abubakar Sadiq Musa, Bilques Yusuf, and Hauwau Yusuf liaised with my contacts at the Kaduna Archives to collect and transport archival materials to North Carolina. Without the assistance of Sara Katz and Andrew Rutledge, who reproduced documents from the National Archives of the United Kingdom, I might not have been able to compose the lead story of this book-a 1924 firearms smuggle scandal involving a popular Calabar family. Katz also supplied figure EPI.1 , showing children holding toy machine guns and mimicking soldiers at a 1972 Christmas party in Benin City. When I learned I would be unable to include the cartoons in chapter 5 because of poor quality, Ganiyu Jimoh (Jimga), a talented artist and art scholar came to my help, re-creating the images as closely as possible to the originals, which were first created by Akinola Lasekan and published in the West African Pilot in 1949 and 1951. Xavier Moyet, the former director of the Nigeria office of the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA), placed the resources of his establishment at my disposal whenever I was in the southwestern part of the country. The current director of IFRA Elodie Apard gave me accommodation in the institute s guest house while I work on the final edits of the manuscript in summer of 2017. Semeeh Omoleke was so kind to allow me to stay in his apartment during my trip to Kaduna archives, and his wife, Mariya Ibrahim, and in-laws fed me for days when I visited the northern Nigerian city of Kano in 2014. Plying the very bad Onitsha-Enugu highway (like most Nigerian roads) during fieldwork in eastern Nigeria in 2014 and 2015 was uncomfortable; but Chinedu Okoye gave relief to my experience with crucial on-the-spot cultural information, which helped me to put ideas in proper historical context.
When I hired Adeyemi Afolabi, a cab driver operating on the campus of the University of Ibadan to take me to some villages in southwestern Nigeria to conduct oral interview in June 2015, I did not know I was beginning a process that would unlock the life and times of Yoruba hunters and their guns in an exciting and unexpected way. Coincidentally, Afolabi s father was a distinguished chief hunter of Alatamun village, a boundary community between Oyo and Osun states, who had spent much of his life hunting game of varying sizes across the length and breadth of southwestern Nigeria. The name of the community, Alatamun, which literally translates as the one that shoots to hold/grab renders an interesting perspective to the village s long history of firearms use. Afolabi introduced me to an entire community of hunters, who readily shared their stories of gun use and animal world with passion and enthusiasm. My special appreciation goes to Oluode (chief hunter) Kamoru Adeyemo, who coordinated interviews with his colleagues. At Mamu, another boundary community between Ogun and Oyo states, chief hunter Adegboyega Rasheed Manare, an ex-soldier shared lifetime of incredible stories of hunting, wildlife, and gun culture that cannot be found in any academic book or written archive.
Portions of this book were presented at conferences and symposia in the United States and Nigeria. In May 2013, my very good friend Adeyemi Ademowo invited me to Afe Babalola University to give an overview of the entire project. The second draft of chapter 2 was first presented at the staff and postgraduate seminar of the Department of History, Ahmadu Bello University, in June 2014, at the invitation of Zachary Gundu and Sule Muhammed. In 2015, I presented incarnations of chapters 5 and 6 at the Second Biennial International Conference of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, and at the African Studies Association meeting in San Diego, California, respectively. I thank all those who invited me and participants at these academic gatherings for their useful comments, which helped me to improve on the project. Social gatherings of great minds, aside from the office, archive, conference, and classroom, are also important sites where ideas germinate and consolidate. Rotimi Babatunde, Benson Eluma, Ropo Ewenla, Tolulope Odebunmi, Yomi Ogunsanya, Olawale Olawumi, Lanre Oladoyinbo, and Sola Olorunyomi, among other friends at the University of Ibadan Senior Staff Club, gave me a listening ear and posed provocative questions as I tested my ideas at different stages of their evolution. Abimbola Adunni Adelakun and Odebunmi also helped to transport kolanut from Nigeria-thus assisting in sustaining my fifteen years of addiction to the caffeine supplement that kept me awake to write.
My indebtedness goes to the following friends and colleagues who shelved their own work to read the book manuscript: Laurent Fourchard, Simon Heap, Giacomo Macola, Olisa Godson Muojama, Olatunji Ojo, Timothy Stapleton, William K. Storey, and Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani. I thank them for putting their diverse expertise to work in helping me rethink and restructure many portions of this book. When I got lost in the intricate web of the historiographies that this project engages, Isaac Olawale Albert, Joseph Inikori, Brian Larkin, Jeremy Prestholdt, and Simon Wendt gladly responded to my email inquiries suggesting sources and pointing my attention to emerging trends in commodity, firearms, economic, social, and political history. Duro Adeleke and Adeola Mobolaji put their knowledge of Yoruba historical linguistics to work in helping me to understand the social context (usually lost in written text) under which the nickname (Alapafon), given to a famous murderer in 1920s Lagos emerged. The academic careers of my ogas -Olufunke Ade

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