Beyond Indirect Rule

This article re-examines British rule in Benin between 1897 and 1935. It argues that cannot adequately understand the colonial administration through the familiar distinction between direct and indirect rule. Instead, British policy sought to weaken and contain a once-powerful kingdom while preserving selected indigenous institutions under close administrative control. Drawing on archival records, Education Department files, missionary correspondence, government publications and early oral histories, the article shows that the 1897 punitive expedition became the foundation of a wider administrative order. British territorial reorganisation, the controlled restoration of the monarchy, restrictions on education, close supervision of Native Authority, and the management of ritual and material culture all reflected a continuing concern that Benin should never again emerge as a major political force in what is now southern Nigeria. The article develops the concept of punitive pacification to describe this mode of colonial governance. Used critically, the term refers not to the colonial rhetoric of ‘pacification’ but to a system in which British colonial officials carried forward the objectives of military conquest through routine administration. The Benin case demonstrates that colonial governments could preserve indigenous institutions while systematically reducing their political capacity, thereby revealing important limits in the conventional direct/indirect rule framework.

Benin · British colonial rule · colonial administration · colonial education policy · indigenous institutions · Native Authorities · Restoration of the monarchy · Southern Nigeria · African history and culture studies · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · German Colonialism and Identity Studies

• The Scholarship of Jacob Egharevba of Benin

  Open Access•Uyilawa Usuanlele, Toyin Falola•History in Africa•1994

  Add to list

• Trade and Religion in British-Benin Relations, 1553-1897

  Open Access•Johnson Olaosebikan Aremu, Ediagbonya Michael•Global Journal of Social Sciences…•2018

  Add to list

• The Owner of the Land

  Open Access•Pauline Von Hellermann, Uyilawa Usuanlele•The Journal of African History•2009

  Add to list

• The fall of benin

  Open Access•Philip A Igbafe•The Journal of African History•1970

  Add to list