Thread by @paddydocherty

A short thread about imperial attitudes and how Africa was carved up by European occupiers… 🧐🧵 #BritishEmpire #history #Africa

I’ve tweeted before about Major Sir Claude MacDonald (pic above)… He’s one of the main figures in my new book BLOOD AND BRONZE because he led the initial formal British occupation of what is now southern Nigeria. #BeninBronzes #history @HurstPublishers

hurstpublishers.com/book/blood-and…

I regard MacDonald as a cut above the average imperial official, but nonetheless he was guilty of some horrendous acts, which have been largely obscured or forgotten in the archives. ⬇️😖 #Nigeria #BritishEmpire #history #ColonialViolence

https://twitter.com/paddydocherty/status/1472566084234588162

One telling piece of evidence about him and his attitude didn’t make it into my book, so a quick note about it – I think it says a great deal about the way that European imperial officials operated, and the way they thought about Africa… 🧐 #history

In 1914, after his retirement, MacDonald attended a meeting at the Royal Geographical Society to hear a paper about the Nigeria-Cameroon boundary, which was published in the Geographical Journal in June 1914. @RGS_IBG 🌍🌳🍃🍂

Back in 1889, MacDonald had been tasked with looking into the options for what to do with the “protectorate” that Britain had unilaterally declared over much of what is now Nigeria. #history #Africa

This declaration of a protectorate had come in the wake of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 – the central event of the “Scramble for Africa” – but with no real thought as to what to do with the territory claimed… #history #Africa #ScrambleForAfrica

At the same time, he was given the job of agreeing the boundary with territory claimed by Germany in Cameroon. At the RGS meeting in 1914, MacDonald spoke about his 1889 experience during the discussion. 🌍🌳🍃🍂 @RGS_IBG

As a highly-esteemed elder statesman speaking to a friendly group of Empire types, MacDonald’s tone is avuncular and he is naturally seeking to amuse… His remarks are, however, highly revealing about the way he approached this business of carving up Africa. #BritishEmpire

Here are some direct quotations from the Geographical Journal, reporting MacDonald’s words:

“In those days we just took a blue pencil and a rule, and we put it down at Old Calabar, and drew that blue line up to Yola, and that is the boundary which Captain Nugent has described to you so charmingly and in such detail this evening.”

“This was in 1889, and the same year I was sent by my old chief, the late Lord Salisbury, and the authorities of the Foreign Office, up the Niger River. I went as far as Yola…”

“…I recollect thinking, when I was sitting having an audience with the Emir, surrounded by his tribe, that it was a very good thing that he did not know that I, with a blue pencil, had drawn a line through his territory.”

“The following year I was sent to Berlin to endeavour to get from the German authorities some sort of modification or rectification of the blue line, and the instructions which I received on that occasion… vaguely they were, I was to grab as much as I could.”

“I was also provided at that time with the only map – the same map on which we had drawn the blue line. That was nothing more or less than a naval chart! It had all the soundings of the sea very carefully marked out, but the whole of the rest of the sheet was white!”

Although delivered in a somewhat jocular form, these remarks by MacDonald comprise a damning indictment of the mindset of European officials in their carving up of Africa in 1880s and 1890s… 🤨🌳🍃🍂⛓ #BritishEmpire #Nigeria #history

He admits to not even informing the local ruler that his territory was being divided by foreign powers… The casual approach to dividing up the region is shocking! 😳🤯 #BritishEmpire #Nigeria

Given the European ignorance of African geography, it would be extraordinary that such a task was even undertaken, if we didn’t already know that greed and power were the driving forces, not reason and the public good. 🌍🌳🍃🍂⛓

MacDonald’s remarks in this obscure little article therefore provide a graphic illustration of imperial attitudes, and help explain why we must – for the sake of justice – address the difficult topic of #reparations for colonialism. [ends] 🤨✊🌍🌳🍃🍂⛓ #BritishEmpire #history