Book Reviews
| Published date | 01 April 1961 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1961.tb01270.x |
| Date | 01 April 1961 |
Book
Reviews
SIR
GEORGE
GOLDIE
AND
THE
MAKING
OF
NIGERIA,
by J. F. Flint. Oxford
University
Press,
1960; pp.
xiv+340;
30s.
DR.
FLINT'S
book is of unusual interest on two counts.
In
the
first place he gives
us, for
the
first time,
an
authenticated
account
of
the
life
and
career
of a
man
who
was
remarkable
in
an
age
ofremarkable
men.
For
Goldie is held by
many
to
have
played as
important
a
part
in
the
making
of
Nigeria as
the
great
Lugard
himself.
In
the
second place,
Dr.
Flint
gives us
an
understanding
of
the reasons
why
government
by
Chartered
Company
so
commended
itself to
the
British
Governments
of
the
late nineteenth century.
In
dealing
with
both
subjects Dr.
Flint
has
been
faced with a
major
handicap.
Goldie, before he died, destroyed all
the
documentary
evidence in his possession
that
threw
light
upon
his career, evidence
that
would have
immeasurably
assisted posterity
both
to assess
him
as a
man
and
an
administrator
and
to
understand
the
daily workings
of
the
powerful
machine
that
he created, in
the
teeth
of
bitter
opposition,
the
Royal
Niger Company.
With
the
aid
of such
records as survive
Dr.
Flint
has recreated
patiently
and
skilfully
both
the
man
and
the machine.
But
the
resultant
picture
is,
and
must
always remain, tantalizingly incom-
plete. Goldie's life itself is full
of
partial
contradictions. His early years were
spent
in purposeless dissipation
and
in travel. But, in
the
Anglo-Egyptian
Sudan,
his interest was aroused in
the
vast regions
that
lay to
the
westward
and
he
began
to
dream
dreams
of
"Cecil
Rhodes-ian"
dimensions
of
a
great
Anglo
Sudanic
Empire
stretching from
the
Nile to
the
Niger
...
Later
unlookcd for
opportunity
came
his way. A family connection
with
afailing business enter-
prise in
the
Niger
Delta
brought
him
in person to West Africa.
Here
a
dynamic
personality
combined
with
ashrewd business
mind
enabled
him
to establish a
commercial monopoly on
the
Niger
and
the
Benue
at
the
expense of all
other
competing interests
French
and
German,
British
and
Nigerian.
And
in the
process he secured from
the
British
Government
the
Royal
Charter
that
gave
him
almost 'sovereign' rights in the vast areas
that
he controlled or claimed
to control.
This
control,
much
of
it shadowy,
much
of
it illusory,
enabled
him
by bluff
and
skilled diplomacy to secure
the
general line of Nigeria'S present
frontiers
until
the
British Government, with
Lugard
as its instrument,
at
last
stepped in to supersede him.
Goldie has
been
criticized for
the
unscrupulous
manner
in which he
treated
all
his rivals
but
assuming, as surely we must,
that
it was
not
his shareholders'
interests
but
British pre-eminence on
the
Niger, as
an
essential
prelude
to
greater
things,
that
was always
uppermost
in his
mind;
then
his control
had
to
be absolute.
Only
in his
treatment
of
the
brass traders, who
had
traded
on the
Niger for centuries, is he
out
of
character.
With
them
he could well
have
compromised.
Britain's claim to priority of interest on
the
Niger was, after all, well founded.
Park
had
discovered the
great
river's
true
course, the
Lander
brothers
had
first
found its
outlet
to
the
sea,
Laird
had
made
the
first
upstream
voyage,
under
steam
as far as
the
confluence
of
the Benue,
and
Baikie
had
first proved by
the
use of
quinine
that
Europeans could
trade
on
the
two
great
rivers
and
survive.
II2
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