Abstract
The literature on the Third Plague Pandemic in West Africa focuses on urbanisation and disease processes in colonial Senegal, Ghana, and Nigeria. Consequently, there is a dearth of historical study of the relational complexities between public health interventions and maritime trade during the outbreak in the region. It is with this in mind that this article examines the historical effects of plague control on internal commerce and international maritime trade in Lagos from 1924 to 1931. The study is based on the historical analysis of colonial administrative, sanitary and medical records as well as newspaper reports. It concludes that the nature of colonial public health intervention was determined by economic policy preferences that impacted distinctively on internal commerce and international maritime trade in Lagos.
The vast maritime resources of what is now the Nigerian megacity of Lagos – lagoons, marshlands and geostrategic location on the West African coastline – have attracted waves of local settlers and foreign opportunists since the pre-colonial era. Local oral tradition contends that the place was originally settled by migrant fishermen, farmers and warriors from Ile-Ife, Mahin and Benin. 1 Linguistic evidence suggests that the Awori-Yoruba people were the original inhabitant of Lagos, 2 which has been a theatre of imperial domination since the pre-colonial era. The Benin military incursion into the island during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries has been confirmed in the oral tradition relating to the origin of Lagos, and in Losi’s History of Lagos as well as European travellers’ accounts. 3
Improved navigational technology in the nineteenth century stimulated new patterns of maritime trade and migration networks linking Lagos with the outside world. Indeed, Lagos witnessed an unprecedented influx of migrants of diverse background during the nineteenth century – early colonial Lagos was a multicultural society. This was a society divided across racial and ethnic lines (Yoruba, Europeans, Nago/Brazilians, Saro/Sierra Leoneans). 4 Other groups that impacted the socio-economic and cultural sphere of the port city in the early colonial era included Lebanese and Syrian traders. As noted by Fourchard, 5 while the Yoruba indigenes lived at Isale Eko, the heterogeneous European community resided in Marina around the racecourse. The exodus from Brazil was initiated by a series of deportations after the 1835 slave rebellion in Bahia as well as voluntary migration. While many of these migrants moved to the hinterland and elsewhere on the West African coast, others settled on Lagos Island. The Nago immigration into Lagos gained impetus following the establishment of the port city as a British colony in 1861. 6 The Brazilian immigrants settled in the so-called ‘Portuguese Town’ – Popo Aguda in Lagos. 7 In the face of fierce inter-group and interracial competition for local resources, this group of migrants eventually assimilated into the native local culture during the first quarter of the twentieth century. 8
Lebanese immigration into Lagos can be traced to the nineteenth-century worldwide migratory phenomenon. Starting as peddlers of low-quality goods in the 1900s, Adebayo observes that the Lebanese emigrants had ‘within decades achieved remarkable progress in their desire for economic prosperity through participation in the retail, distributive, wholesale import merchandise trade’. 9 The Sierra Leonean immigrants, locally referred to as the Saro, lived at Olowogbowo and competed with European traders in Marina. 10 Indeed, by the first quarter of the twentieth century, Lagos flourished as a trading colony linking vast agrarian communities in West Africa with industrial Europe. This was not without its challenges, as population growth led to overcrowding and the introduction of epidemic diseases. As Alison Bashford points out, ‘it is well recognised that epidemics of communicable disease have long been a ramification of contact between cultures and communities, accompaniments to exploration, migration and colonisation, one of the events of the “frontier”’. 11 The historical pattern of epidemic outbreak aligns with the nature of trade networks and transportation infrastructure. As observed by Boerner and Severgnini, maritime transportation networks facilitated trade and urbanisation in costal settlements in Medieval Europe. The predominance of sea transport in international trade during this era created a plagued footprint that centred on port cities. 12 Using statistical analysis of geo-referenced trade routes in pre-industrial Europe, the diffusion of epidemic plague through maritime trade routes has been re-confirmed. 13
Despite the challenges posed by the exposure of ships to local disease reservoirs, seafarers had devised strategies to protect themselves and their crew mates. Carter and Roberts observed high mortality in British merchant seamen and Lascars in the nineteenth century due to their exposure to diverse disease environments across maritime trade networks. 14 The British maritime tradition of recruiting local seamen into the Royal Navy appears to have been informed partly by the susceptibility of European naval officers to local disease environments. As noted by Charles Foy, the British ‘navy was regularly compelled to rely upon local maritime workers … when naval seamen became ill or died’. 15 This was particularly the case in Senegambia, where the local seamen were patronised due to ‘their resistance to tropical diseases’. 16 On the other hand, the contact of European ships with other regions of the world had public health implications for local communities.
The outbreak of epidemic plague in Lagos had followed the pattern of inter-regional trade, migration and transport networks. In this case, trade relations played a major role, as demonstrated by the transmission of plague from Kumasi on the Gold Coast (now Ghana) to Lagos, Nigeria, in 1924 as well as its spread to the environs of Lagos – Agege, Abeokuta and the Ijebu towns and villages. 17 This suggests the centrality of trade and transportation hubs to epidemic outbreak and control in colonial Lagos. Hence, public health measures characterised by the ‘contagionist’ and environmentalist approaches were adopted, with a special focus on colonial transportation and trade networks. This had implications for intra-regional and international maritime trade. While most studies of plague in West Africa focus on the nexus between the epidemic and town planning, 18 this article reflects on the nexus between trade and public health interventions in Lagos between 1924 and 1931.
The Third Plague Pandemic: An historical overview
The Third Plague Pandemic (1855–1959) evolved in the Chinese Yunnan province in 1855, whence it spread to India around 1896 killing about 12 million people in a period of 30 years. Transmission beyond mainland China has been associated with the opium trade with Hong Kong. 19 The disease spread through maritime trading links to diverse ports situated in different continents, such as Hong Kong (1894), Bombay and Mumbai in India (1896), Alexandria in Egypt (1899), Porto in Portugal (1899), Buenos Aires in Argentina (1900), Rio de Janeiro in Brazil (1900), Honolulu (1899), Sydney in Australia (1900), Cape Town in South Africa (1901), 20 Accra in Ghana (1908), Dakar in Senegal (1914), 21 and Lagos in Nigeria (1924). 22
The pandemic reached Africa at the turn of the nineteenth century. 23 While plague was rarely evident in Sub-Saharan Africa before 1900, it was not a stranger to the North African enclave bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, both the Plague of Justinian (the First Pandemic) and the Black Death (the Second Pandemic) had inflicted high mortality rates on North Africa. By 1899, bubonic plague had returned to Alexandria in Egypt. Compared to Egypt’s previous experience of plague, the Third Pandemic was not severe due to an improved public health system, and a timely and adequate response. After 1899, however, plague was transmitted from Alexandria to Port Suez, the Nile Delta and Upper Southern Egypt where it had killed 10,000 people by the 1930s. 24 The pandemic spread to Cape Town from Argentina in January 1901 through the seaborne trade in horse fodder. The earliest cases were recorded in the native African population. The white supremacist regime used this opportunity to evict most Africans from urban centres to segregated quarantine camps in New Brighton. The South African colonialist approach to the scourge was the association of plague with native settlements and the destruction of native quarters. In Senegal, the pandemic appeared in 1914 and came to an end in 1945, leaving an estimated 35,000 fatalities in its wake. 25 Plague control in Dakar led to the displacement of a considerable portion of the indigenous population. 26
The pattern of plague transmission reveals how ports in colonial West Africa served as conduits for the proliferation of infectious diseases across state boundaries. As noted by Emmanuel Akyeampong, ‘disease, together with the environment, set some of the important parameters within which West African societies and communities have operated, reflecting the challenges of both settlement and ecology, as well as documenting the history of contact between peoples’. 27 West Africa experienced the Third Pandemic due to its intense intercourse with Europe and its subsequent incorporation into the European imperial framework and the emerging global economy. The total number of cases recorded in the Gold Coast in 1908 was 336, with 288 fatalities. While Accra was the worst hit in 1908, the port town of Secondi was the epicentre of the epidemic in 1924. 28 The interconnectivity of British West Africa, especially the Gold Coast and Nigeria, made the eventual transmission of the epidemic to Lagos through maritime trade inevitable by 1924. A report entitled ‘Iku Ojiji’ (Sudden Death) published in the local Yoruba newspaper, Eleti-Ofe, on 6 August 1924, noted with apprehension the sudden death of two or three people in the same house in Lagos and the obligation of public health officials to live up to expectations by ensuring the safety of the populace in face of the virulence. 29 The official index case was diagnosed in a post-mortem examination of Dan Sokoto, a foreman to Momo Bogobiri, a Hausa kola nut importer on 28 July 1924. 30 He was believed to have imported infected fleas in his baggage from Kumasi in the Gold Coast. 31 A considerable trade in kola nuts between the Gold Coast ports and Lagos accounted for between 400 and 500 tons of kola sold on a monthly basis, and a total of 7430 tons of kola in 1923. 32 Dan Sokoto’s place of abode – Oko Awo, an insanitary and overcrowded Lagos slum – soon became the epicentre of the plague bacterium, whence it spread through human and animal media. 33
Plague was transmitted essentially via transportation routes to Lagos and its environs. Trade relations and migration between Lagos and its Ijebu and Egba neighbours are rooted in antiquity. In the pre-colonial era, commerce between Lagos and the hinterland was facilitated through the Ijebu and Egba territories by way of the Osun, Ooni and Ogun rivers. While the British trading activities were initially confined to the coast in the early colonial era, the need to penetrate the interior in order to promote British trading interests necessitated the establishment of mechanised road and railway transportation linking Lagos with the hinterland through the Ijebu and Egba corridors by the first quarter of the twentieth century. 34
The steady traffic of commuters, traders and commodities between Lagos and its environs facilitated the spread of the infection to the neighbouring town of Abeokuta by October 1924. On 31 October 1924, two suspected cases of plague were notified by the Medical Officer at Abeokuta, some 60 miles and three hours by rail from Lagos. Dr Clark, the Assistant Director of the Sanitary Service, proceeded to Abeokuta on the same day to investigate the cases of which only one was certified to be plague. This was a case of plague imported from Lagos. 35 It subsequently spread through the town and was then transmitted to other areas, such as the Ijebu towns and villages in 1925. An outbreak of over 500 cases was reported from Ijebu Ode Province about 30 miles east of the Lagos railway network in August 1925. By November 1925, another outbreak accounting for 44 deaths occurred in Abeokuta, while the plague that afflicted Ijebu Ode in the Remo District in 1925 had ceased by the end of the year, only to reappear in March 1926 and spread to neighbouring settlements of Oru, Ago, Ijebu Igbo, Idowa and Ososa. A fresh outbreak involving nine cases of plague occurred in Abeokuta in 1926. 36 The colonial government directed its attention towards this emerging trend in plague morbidity by endeavouring to stop the epidemic spreading to densely-populated neighbouring settlements, such as Ibadan. This was a goal that was achieved through sanitary measures involving rigorous disinfestation exercises at geostrategic nodes in transportation networks. 37
Mapping trade and economic development in Lagos up to 1924
In the pre-colonial era, Lagos was essentially an agrarian society that depended on the fishing trade. 38 Its strategic location in the Gulf of Guinea saw the settlement develop into a major maritime transport corridor in transatlantic trade. Industrialisation in the Western world during the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries altered the role of Lagos in the international commercial network. The need for raw materials and markets for European industries led to the annexation of the slave port by the British in 1861. With the improvement in navigational technology that found expression in the steamship during the nineteenth century, the influx of European trade tycoons was inevitable. 39 The European colonial exploitation agenda was spelt out in the Charter of the Royal Niger Company in 1886, which emphasised the administration of taxation, custom duties and trade. 40 This was essentially a trade exchange in African agricultural produce (e.g. cocoa, groundnut, palm oil) and European industrial products. Lagos served as an export corridor in this regard.
According to the colonial government in 1925, ‘improved means of communication now make it possible for all classes of manufactured goods to reach the consumer at a moderate cost’. 41 Olukoju observed that against this background, ‘import trade benefited from the provision of transport facilities’. 42 Despite the challenges posed by trade restriction during the First World War, the postwar era witnessed the removal of trade restrictions with Germany. Indeed, seaborne trade was central to the economy of colonial Lagos. The significance of trade in this respect was obvious at the end of the war; for instance, April 1919 marked the end of price restrictions on palm oil in West Africa amidst rising demand for tropical raw materials in Europe. The new opportunities and prospects of trade in West African primary produce brought commercial firms into the Lagos market, with the number of European firms engaged in the export business rising from nine in 1914 to 362 in 1919. The attendant trade boom and high cost of labour witnessed the influx of migrants from the hinterland to take up jobs as labourers. 43
The period 1920 to 1922 was marked by economic depression in Lagos due essentially to changes in international trading dynamics. This has been traced to a chain reaction to the saturation of the European market with West African agricultural produce. Hence, there was a drastic decline in demand for the region’s produce. However, this scenario improved in 1923 and 1924 with the total value of trade exceeding the 1922 and 1923 levels by £2 million and £4 million respectively. The gains have been attributed to the wreckless purchase of primary products, such as cocoa, by some merchants. 44 This trade boom occurred at a time when plague was virulent, extending to 1947 official cases and 1813 deaths. 45 The severity of the outbreak, with its very high fatality rate, could have had a severe impact on the trade flows between Lagos and the outside world (Figure 1). However, this seems not to have been the case, as the following analysis of this peculiar episode in West African economic and public health history indicates.
Trends in plague morbidity and mortality in Lagos, 1924–1931.
Plague control: Lessons from Lagos, 1924–1931
Epidemics impact societies due to poor health, mortality and the fear of contagion with attendant poor human productivity. 46 Ackerknecht observed that the perceptiveness of political authorities during a time of epidemic outbreak often determines the nature of public health interventions. 47 This is a phenomenon that Bashford has referred to as ‘biopolitics of health’. 48 Moreover, health interventions such as quarantine measures, transborder epidemic surveillance, disinfestation and sanitation had a bearing on the conduct of trade in societies over time. Whereas trade and human mobility has been indicted in the global spread of the Third Pandemic, 49 funding public health interventions through commercial profits was also vital to its control. This creates a policy dilemma, for, as this article shows, the British public health tradition was engrained in a pro-trade paradigm, which dictated colonial intervention and public health outcomes in Lagos.
In answering broader questions in the wider historiography, it is pertinent to examine how plague control measures, such as disease surveillance and local responses, impinged on domestic and international trade. The association of migration and trade with the outbreak of infectious diseases is rooted in antiquity. The globalisation of infectious diseases through improved transportation networks led to the promulgation of trans-border screening regulations in order to prevent sick travellers and infected cargoes from spreading infectious diseases to their destinations. 50 In essence, ‘countries are linked by the economic exchanges into an integrated epidemic system’. 51 Lagos, as a trading economy, was affected in the area of food supplies by public health measures of movement restrictions and road blockages due to the fear of contagion. Local responses to the quarantine measures were documented in local newspaper reports of the period. An excerpt from a colonial newspaper, The Nigerian Advocate of Wednesday 23 July 1924, described local responses to the reality of a new infectious disease being spread in town: ‘About a fortnight ago, the unfortunate news spread about the town of the many deaths which occurred at the Oko Awo district within a very few days. The incident was so dreadful in its effect that some of the residents had to take their flight by night to seek for shelter at other parts of the town’. 52 The quarantine measures appear to have led to general panic among Lagosians. A local observer noted that this colonial measure implied forceful incarceration and hunger strike. 53
Describing the inhuman nature of sanitary measures, a local commentator noted with apprehension the manner in which sanitary inspectors ordered local market women to strip off their clothes for disinfestation.
54
Advancing this discourse, Awoluje, a local observer, noted that the repulsive nature of the sanitary officials created unnecessary panic among Lagosians, which might discourage neighbouring agrarian communities, such as Epe, Ikorodu and Ejinrin, from supplying foodstuffs like Gari (cassava flour), Agbado (maize), Epo (palm oil), Isu (yam) and Ogede (plantain) to Lagos. As Awoluje noted, the public health approach seemed to be tilting the scenario from epidemic outbreak to an economic crisis.
55
The unfriendly approach of sanitary officials triggered the fear of contagion and panic, which led to food shortages on the island, as traders avoided the area.
56
This is corroborated by the paragraphs appearing under Editorial Notes on pp. 4–5 of The Spectator in 1924,
57
which affirm that the activities of the spraying operations carried on at the Iddo Gate prevented market women from passing through the gate before 6.30, thereby obstructing food supplies from the mainland to the island.
58
The sanitary modalities, which required the screening of all persons and vehicles leaving the infected area, were encapsulated in the instruction that ‘all distinctly dirty persons should have their cloth sprayed with kerosene mixture’, which was alleged to have been misused to intimidate local people, especially market women who were deemed to fit perfectly into this categorisation.
59
The fear of contagion, as well as harsh quarantine and sanitary measures, impacted negatively on internal trade in the port city. An extract from the minutes of a meeting of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce in March 1926 highlights this apprehension: The Chamber is deeply concerned with the continued prevalence of plague in Lagos, and the hinterland. We wish to point out that from July 1924 to August 1925 the port was in quarantine for 203 days … In addition to the grave menace to life, very great injury has been done to trade, owing to the limitations placed upon the free movement of the native community who refrained from bringing in their produce for fear of being placed in isolation camps.
60
The inadequate food supply to Lagos from the hinterland led to the removal of the duty on imported foodstuffs in 1928. 61 This scenario was further complicated by the global economic depression that began in 1929. Indeed, by 1931, the colonial government had observed that the ‘cases of various forms of deficiency diseases are reported from time to time and it is probable that much ill-health must be caused by a lowered resistance to infections caused by unbalanced diets’. 62 For example, the price of a ton of corn rose from £12 in 1924 to £14 in 1925 and £14 10s in 1926. Also, a pound of weighted Nigerian stock fish that had sold for 1 shilling in 1923 and 1924, had doubled by 1927 when it was sold at 2 shillings per lb. 63 This price change occurred before the global economic depression that commenced in 1929, thereby ruling out external causal factors. Thus, the inflation of food prices during the outbreak suggests a disruption in internal trade between Lagos and the hinterland due to quarantine measures and the fear of contagion.
The export trade statistics from 1924 to 1931 indicate that an acute trade restrictive measure, such as border closure, was not taken. Considering the export orientation of the colonial economy, the British administrators in Nigeria encouraged a significant traffic of local produce to the European market through the port of Lagos despite the virulence of the plague. The port health services were positioned to examine and disinfect all outgoing and incoming cargoes and passengers. 64 This public health measure was considered adequate to ensure the profitability of the British enterprise in Nigeria. Also, Lagos being a non-agrarian urban centre, but essentially an international transport hub, was not really affected by plague in the area of produce production. To this end, the colonial transportation system, especially the railway, conveyed raw materials from the interior with very little human interaction that could result in a further spread of the disease. Ascertaining the impact of plague on production levels and exports through Lagos entails an analysis of the volume and value of some principal exports at the Lagos port before, during and after the outbreak from 1924 to 1932.
The maritime import trade of Lagos was based on industrial goods from Europe and America, while the export trade was dependent on primary produce such as cocoa, groundnut, palm kernel, palm oil, tin ore and cotton. 65 Britain was the principal destination for exports, accounting for an average of 54 per cent of the total during 1924–1931, with Germany and the United States receiving 20 per cent and 10 per cent repsectively. On the other hand, the import trade was dominated by industrial products from Britain, which made up an average of 70 per cent of the total, with Germany contributing 9 per cent and the United States 8 per cent. 66 While the import trade of Lagos responded to export earnings and governmental fiscal policies, it was conducted with insignificant interruption due to improved transportation networks following the economic bubble of the early post-First-World-War era. 67 In addition, the political will of the colonial government to align with the imperial objective of uninterrrupted raw material supplies from the colony cannot be ruled out.
This course of events is underpinned by the volume of principal exports, which shows insignificant disruption to production levels from 1924 to 1931. For example, the production of two of Lagos’s principal exports – palm kernel and groundnut – experienced growth during the period (Figure 2). The quantity of palm kernel exported in 1920 was 80,386 tons, increasing to 85,588 tons in 1929 and 109,363 tons in 1932. On the other hand, the quantity of groundnut exported, which had stood at 31,053 tons in 1920, 68 had risen to 111,489 tons in 1929, and 129,223 tons in 1932. 69 The slump in the volume of commodity exports recorded in 1926, especially in the case of groundnut, has been traced to unfavourable climatic conditions that impacted negatively on agricultural production. 70 In the face of the plague virulence in colonial Lagos, the great global depression that took hold in the period 1929–1934 stimulated higher production levels in response to the declining prices of goods in the international market. 71
Commodity exports from Lagos, 1920–1932.
Elsewhere in the world, this was not the case. In India, during the Third Plague Pandemic, the value of trade in the port of Bombay (now Mumbai) declined in the face of plague control measures introduced amidst peculiar local dynamics, with negative implications for international and inter-regional trade. 72 ‘In the years preceding the plague, Bombay had exported large quantities of dry fish to Mauritius, Colombo, and Rangoon, but with the onset of the plague, the fish trade practically ceased to exist’, due to labour flight. In South Africa, movement restrictions, especially in Natal, undermined commerce as trade restrictions were imposed. 73
The experience of uninterrupted international trade flows in Lagos despite the plague outbreak seems to have been determined by the political nature of the colonial government in Lagos. This is in tandem with Ackerknecht’s postulation that public health interventions often reflect the political nature of governments. 74 To this end, the choice between strict quarantine and flexible sanitary measures is determined by government preference. Peter Baldwin opined that these choices are technically determined by the historical lessons of epidemic control, as well as economic and environmental considerations. In this line, the British, along with France and Germany, had historically demonstrated a liberal approach of juxtaposing quarantine with sanitary measures. 75 As observed by Deborah Brunton, approaches to public health intervention differ in colonial societies. The settler colonies seem to fully adopt the medical practices of the mother country. However, public health interventions in non-settler colonies (such as Lagos) have been more selective and geared towards the protection of imperial material and immaterial interests. Hence, colonial intervention during epidemic outbreak appears to have been coloured by the desire to protect international trade. 76 This was the case in Lagos, where a liberal approach, involving the admixture of flexible quarantine and sanitary measures, was introduced by the British authorities without imposing border closure. This approach to epidemic plague was influenced by the British public health tradition, as well as the colonial determination to protect the trans-border flow of commodities in a trade-dependent imperial economy.
The British holistic approach to public health in Lagos was reflected in the steady rise in the expenditure estimates of the medical and sanitary departments during the outbreak. The medical recurrent and extraordinary expenditure stood at £199,694 and £4,558 in 1923 before the outbreak. These figures rose to £203,780 and £6,442 in 1924. The year 1925 witnessed a slight deflation of the sanitary and medical recurrent and extraordinary expenditure, which were reduced to £199,001/£5,262. 77 This was in tandem with a reduced plague morbidity of 104 cases and plague mortality of 88 deaths in 1925. This marked a downward slope when compared with 1924, which witnessed 414 cases and 343 deaths. The upsurge of plague morbidity (497 cases) and mortality (476 deaths) in 1926 had serious financial consequences for the year. 78 Consequently, the recurrent and extraordinary expenditures rose to £230,994 and £8,331 in 1926, £250,404 and £14,509 in 1927, £270,445 and £23,650 in 1928, £290,462 and £41,038 in 1929, and £318,645 and £25,200 in 1930. 79 Sanitation expenses increased from £46,294 in 1924 to £49,785 in 1925 and £59,856 in 1926. 80 The Medical Research Institute, Yaba, Lagos was at the forefront of biomedical diagnoses and monitoring of the outbreak. It is not surprising, therefore, that the annual expenditure of the institute experienced a steady rise from £4,881 in 1923 to £5,006 in 1924 and £8,034 in 1930. 81 However, increased public health expenditure was cushioned by trade outflow, which in the long run provided the needed funding for plague control as well as saving grace in a period of global economic depression.
The colonial approach to plague control in Lagos from 1924 to 1931 differs from contemporary public health policies, especially in cases such as Ebola in West Africa where borders were hurriedly closed due to the fear of contagion. Whereas the implementation of travel bans seems attractive, this phenomenon negatively impacts international trade and increases poverty levels, which technically undermines disease control as illustrated by the Ebola saga, accounting for a reduction of economic growth from 4.5% to 2.4% in Guinea, 5.9% to 2.5% in Liberia and from 11.3% to 8.0% in Sierra Leone in 2014. 82 The consequent economic decline served as the groundswell that ensured the endurance of Ebola in West Africa from 2014 to 2015. No doubt, the colonial export-focused economy in the plague years helped accrue needed funds for plague control. This approach created a firm grounding and a life-line for the economy during the global economic depression that coincided with the later period of the plague in colonial Lagos. Indeed, the ‘contagionist’ approach to the Ebola outbreak in 2014 was informed by the global socio-spatial imperial boundaries. This ultimately aggravated the severity of the epidemic in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, where the epidemic bared its fangs.
Concluding remarks
The plague epidemic in colonial Lagos was a landmark in the history of disease processes in the port city. The struggle against the plague delivered lessons about trade liberalisation and transport infrastructure during the outbreak in colonial Lagos. The epidemic shock, colonial interventions and local responses provided a testing ground for the evaluation of the societal structure and potential for historical progress. The public health measures enshrined in quarantine procedure and sanitary measures obstructed food supply from the hinterland into Lagos.
The export-focused colonial economy was sustained despite the virulence of the plague. This was made possible through the liberal British tradition of holistic public health measures combining both quarantine and environmental sanitary measures with a free trade economic approach. While this impinged on government revenue, the lack of trans-border trade barriers sustained capital inflow and stabilised the colonial economy. The colonial rail transportation networks linking the port with the sources of raw materials in the interior effectively facilitated international maritime trade and the colonial revenue base during the outbreak and the global economic depression of the 1930s. Even though the British colonial intervention may have been driven by exploitative motives, this economically sensitive approach to trans-border epidemic control in Lagos, if properly adapted, may inform public health policies in the contemporary historical epoch.
Footnotes
1.
Kunle Lawal, ‘Mahin and Early Lagos’, Odu: A Journal of West African Studies, 38 (1991), 98–107.
2.
Kunle Lawal, ‘The Coastal Scene: The Yoruba of Lagos Society Before 1900’, in D. Ogunremi and B. Adediran, eds., Culture and Society in Yorubaland (Ibadan, 1998), 79–80.
3.
Lawal, ‘Coastal Scene’, 79–80; John B. Losi, History of Lagos (Lagos, 1914), 1–12.
4.
Pauline H. Baker, Urbanisation and Political Change: The Politics of Lagos, 1917–1967 (Berkeley, 1974), 22.
5.
Laurent Fourchard, ‘Lagos’, in S. B. Bekker and G. Therborn, eds., Capital Cities in Africa: Power and Powerlessness (Capetown, 2012), 68.
6.
Lisa A. Lindsay, ‘“To Return to the Bosom of Their Fatherland”: Brazilian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Lagos’, Slavery and Abolition, 15 (1994), 22.
7.
Victor O. Edo and Monsuru Muritala, ‘Overcrowding and Disease Epidemics in Colonial Lagos: Rethinking Road and Railway Infrastructure’, The Nigerian Journal of Economic History, 11&12 (2014), 179.
8.
Lindsay, ‘“To Return to the Bosom of Their Fatherland”’, 22.
9.
Peter F. Adebayo, ‘The Lebanese and the Economy of Lagos, 1890–1980’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of History, University of Ilorin, 2003), 332–4.
10.
Edo and Muritala, ‘Overcrowding and Disease Epidemics in Colonial Lagos’, 179.
11.
Alison Bashford, Imperial Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism and Public Health (New York, 2004), 14.
12.
Lars Boerner and Battista Severgnini, ‘Epidemic Trade’, EHES Working Papers in Economic History, 24 (2012), 2–3.
13.
Ricci P. H. Yue, Harry F. Lee and Connor Y. H. Wu, ‘Trade Routes and Plague Transmission in Pre-Industrial Europe’, Nature, 7 (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-13481-2.
14.
Tim Carter and Stephen E. Roberts, ‘Infectious Disease Mortality in British Merchant Seamen and Lascars Since 1900’, International Journal of Maritime History, 29 (2017), 788–825.
15.
Charles R. Foy, ‘The Royal Navy’s Employment of Black Mariners and Maritime Workers, 1754–1783’, International Journal of Maritime History, 28 (2016), 29.
16.
Foy, ‘The Royal Navy’s Employment of Black Mariners’, 29.
17.
NAI, CSO 26. 13001. Vol. III. ‘Plague in Lagos: Report for the Fortnight Ended 4 November 1924’, from the Deputy Director, Sanitary Service, Lagos to the Director of the Medical and Sanitary Service, Lagos, Ref 333C/DMS/24, 6 November 1924, 3.
18.
Myron Echenberg, Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal (Oxford, 2002), 15–52; Myron Echenberg, ‘Plague in Africa: Third Pandemic’, in J. P. Byrne, ed., Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics and Plagues (London, 2008), I, 487–91; Liora Bigon, ‘A History of Urban Planning and Infectious Diseases: Colonial Senegal in the Early Twentieth Century’, Urban Studies Research (2012), Article ID 589758, DOI: 10.1155/2012/589758; Liora Bigon, ‘Bubonic Plague, Colonial Ideologies, and Urban Planning Policies: Dakar, Lagos, and Kumasi’, Planning Perspectives, 31, No. 2 (2016); Kalala Ngalamulume, ‘Plague and Violence in Saint-Louis-du-Sénégal, 1917–1920’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 183 (2006), 539–65.
19.
William C. Summers, ‘Plague in China’, in J. P. Byrne, ed., Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics and Plagues (London, 2008), I, 495–7.
20.
Myron Echenberg, Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894–1901 (New York, 2007), 5.
21.
Adu A. Boahen, ed., Africa Under Colonial Domination 1880–1935 (Paris, 1985), VII, 204.
22.
Annual Report, Nigeria, No. 1245 (1924), 9–12.
23.
Echenberg, ‘Plague in Africa: Third Pandemic’, 487–91.
24.
Echenberg, ‘Plague in Africa: Third Pandemic’, 487–91.
25.
Echenberg, ‘Plague in Africa: Third Pandemic’, 490.
26.
Bigon, ‘A History of Urban Planning and Infectious Diseases’; Emmanuel K. Akyeampong, ed., Themes in West Africa’s History (Oxford, 2006), 199; Echenberg, ‘Plague in Africa: Third Pandemic’, 490.
27.
Akyeampong, ed., Themes in West Africa’s History, 186.
28.
Akyeampong, ed., Themes in West Africa’s History, 199.
29.
Eleti-Ofe, ‘Iku Ojiji’, 6 August 1924, 3.
30.
NAI, CSO 26. 13001. Vol. I. ‘Out-Break of Bubonic Plague in Lagos’, From the Director Medical Research Institute, Yaba, to the Director of the Medical and Sanitary Service, Lagos. Report No. 8/M R.I/24, 7 August (1924), 1–4.
31.
NAI, CSO 26. 13001. Vol. I. ‘Plague in Lagos. Reference Cable from Secretary of State’, From the Deputy Director of Sanitary Service, Lagos to the Director of the Medical and Sanitary Service, Lagos. Memorandum No. 333/DMS/24, 30 July 1924, 1.
32.
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