Colonial Nigeria refers to the area of West Africa, which became the modern day Nigeria, during the

time British rule in the 19th and 20th centuries. British influence began with prohibition of slave
trade to British subjects in 1807. The resulting collapse of African slave trade led to the decline and
eventual collapse of the Edo Empire. Britain annexed Lagos in 1861 and established the Oil River
Protectorate in 1884. British influence in the Niger area increased gradually over the 19th century,
but Britain did not effectively occupy the area until 1885. Other European powers acknowledged
Britain's power over the area in the 1885 Berlin Conference.

From 1886–1899, much of the country was ruled by Royal Niger Company, authorized by charter,
and governed by George Taubman Goldie. In 1900, the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern
Nigeria Protectorate passed from company hands to the Crown. At the urging of Governor Frederick
Lugard, the two territories were amalgamated as the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, while
maintaining considerable regional autonomy among the three major regions. Progressive
constitutions after World War II provided for increasing representation and electoral government by
Nigerians. The colonial period proper in Nigeria lasted from 1900 to 1960, after which Nigeria gained
its independence.

In the 1700s, the British Empire and other European powers had settlements and forts in West Africa
but had not yet established the full-scale plantation colonies which existed in Americas. Adam Smith
wrote in 1776 that the African societies were better established and more populous than those of
the Americas, thus creating a more formidable barrier to European expansion. Earlier elements
related to this were its founding of the colony at Sierra Leone in 1787 as a refuge for freed slaves,
the independent missionary movement intended to bring Christianity to Edo Empire, and programs
of exploration sponsored by learned societies and scientific groups, such as the London-based
African Association. Local leaders, cognizant of the situation in the West Indies, India, and
elsewhere, recognized the risks of British expansion. A chief of Bonny in 1860 explained that he
refused a British treaty due to the tendency to "induce the Chiefs to sign a treaty whose meaning
they did not understand, and then seize upon the country.

In 1900, the British government assumed control of the Southern and Northern Protectorates, both
of which were ultimately governed by the Colonial Office at Whitehall. The 1922 constitution
provided Nigerians the chance to elect a handful of representatives to the Legislative Council. The
principal figure in the political activity that ensued was Herbert Macauley, often referred to as the
father of Nigerian nationalism. He aroused political awareness through his newspaper, the Lagos
Daily News. He also led the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP), which dominated elections
in Lagos from its founding in 1922 until the ascendancy of the National Youth Movement (NYM) in
1938. His political platform called for economic and educational development, Africanization of the
civil service, and self-government for Lagos. Significantly, Macauley's NNDP remained almost entirely
a Lagos party, popular only in the area whose people already had experience in elective politics. The
National Youth Movement (NYM) used nationalist rhetoric to agitate for improvements in education.
The movement brought to public notice a long list of future leaders, including H.O. Davies and
Nnamdi Azikiwe. Although Azikiwe later came to be recognized as the leading spokesman for
national unity, when he first returned from university training in the United States, his outlook was
pan-African rather than nationalist, and emphasized the common African struggle against European
colonialism. (This was also reflective of growing pan-Africanism among American activists of the
time.) Azikiwe had less interest in purely Nigerian goals than did Davies, a student of Harold Laski at
the London School of Economics, whose political orientation was considered left-wing.