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157 pages

English

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There is still a great fascination with the British Empire. Opinions vary widely about Great Britain's imperial past, and about the extraordinary characters who shaped it and were willing to sacrifice everything for it.This remarkable, engrossing true story tells of two of the British Empire's most pivotal characters: Sir Frederick Lugard, soldier, explorer, anti-slaver and controversial first Governor-General of Nigeria, and Flora Shaw, the first colonial editor of The Times. The Passionate Imperialists recounts how they met, loved and transformed each other's lives, and how they fought slavery and through their efforts helped improve the lives of millions of people in Africa.The story starts in India and moves to Afghanistan, Sudan, across Africa, then travels to Hong Kong and concludes with the founding of Nigeria.

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	The Conrad Press
Date de parution	20 novembre 2018
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781912924158
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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The Passionate Imperialists

The Passionate Imperialists
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2018
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874 www.theconradpress.com info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-912924-15-8
Copyright © Rory O’Grady, 2018
The moral right of Rory O’Grady to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
Typesetting and Cover Design by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.

The Passionate Imperialists
the true story of Sir Frederick Lugard , anti-slaver, adventurer and founder of Nigeria and Dame Flora Shaw , renowned journalist for The Times
Rory O’Grady

‘And what,’ said Gobind on Sunday evening, ‘is your honoured craft, and by what means earn you your daily bread ?’
‘I am,’ said I, ‘a kerani – one who writes pen upon paper, not in the service of the Government.’
‘Then what do you write?’ said Gobind...
‘I write of all matters that lie within my understanding, and many that do not. But chiefly I write of Life and Death, and men and women, and Love and Fate according to the measure of my ability, telling the tale through one, two,or more people.’
Life’s Handicap Rudyard Kipling 1891

PREFACE
T his book tells the true story of Sir Frederick John Dealtry Lugard and his remarkable wife Flora Shaw, who were at the centre of British colonial development at the end of the Victorian era. He was born in 1858, at the peak of the British Empire, at the very beginning of the ‘Scramble for Africa’. He influenced and saw massive changes over his lifetime, and played a vital part in the development of East and West Africa in the early days, especially Nigeria. Flora was born in 1852, and had an outstanding career as a journalist, culminating in becoming the first colonial editor of The Times. She married Lugard in 1902, and the two became a formidable and famous couple in the early part of the twentieth century.
The British Empire presents something of a quandary to most British people today. The former empire is largely dismembered and disbanded, but is still a topic of fascination and fierce debate. Most people believe nowadays that nations should not have empires at all, and that those born in their country should have the right to govern their own nation, and make their own mistakes. The great Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘ Yes, we will have problems if we are granted independence, but they will be our own problems.’
Yet it is too easy to be scathing about the British Empire and the people who administered it, especially in a Britain whose prosperity is still partly a legacy of colonial days. Yes, there were certainly colonials who enjoyed the rich trappings of a wealthy life gained at the expense of the subdued nations of imperial conquest, but there were also many who did not, and gave their all for the benefit of those nations.
Even those colonials who enjoyed a comparatively high standard of living found that their lives in hot, humid, foreign and indeed alien lands were often a poor compromise compared with the lives they could have enjoyed back home. And when they did finally retire to Britain, appeasing a yearning for their mother country which might have persisted for decades, they often found themselves suffering a new homesickness for the distant land they had left behind and which was now in many ways their real home.
What is certain is that these early colonials endured all manner of physical and mental hardships; stifling, uncomfortable climates, unfamiliar foods, deadly tropical diseases, and the constant threat of a sudden and violent death. Many travelled during the age of sail, became ill on board ship, died and were buried at sea and soon forgotten, while others suffered lonely deaths thousands of miles from their homes and families.
Lugard experienced all these hardships. He has fascinated me for over twenty years, ever since his name was first mentioned at a gathering of some of my Australian cousins in Brisbane in 1995.
Lugard’s nephew, Charles Brayne, married my great-aunt Blodwyn Price and they retired to Brisbane after Lugard’s death. On a later visit, I met their daughter Elizabeth Richmond, who was in her eighties at the time, and who had met Lugard when she was a girl growing up in Surrey, England. As she related the family legends, I found to my surprise that I had been inadvertently following in Lugard’s footsteps for much of my life, having worked in both Nigeria and Hong Kong for some years, unaware of the great man.
Here I tell the story of Lugard’s life as a soldier, adventurer, a builder of nations, a writer and a statesman. He was never looking for fame or capital gain in his life but was instead driven by enormous energy and passion. Like most people he acknowledged that the most powerful forces he experienced when he was younger were sexual ones, and he frankly confessed that he had great difficulty dealing with the feelings for the first woman he ever loved, feelings which lasted for some years, indeed for the rest of his life. It was only when he married Flora that he found true love and contentment. He had a vision, but it was Flora who inspired him and encouraged him to achieve many of his goals.
At the height of Lugard’s fame in 1893, thousands came to hear this steely, quiet, and modest man, who was never comfortable with public speaking, enthral them with readings from his book, The Rise of Our East African Empire published in 1893, about his extraordinary adventures in East Africa. He was a prolific writer, finishing his two-volume 350,000-word best-seller in six months. The book was based on his meticulously-kept diaries. He described the land, animals and tribes encountered, interspersed with digressions on history and opinions on slavery and his recommendations for future administration - the first germination of ideas for Indirect Rule. The last three chapters are directed at the British Government, pushing the case for making Uganda a Protectorate.
The number of copies sold is, as far as I’m aware, not known. The book got good reviews from newspapers and magazines, but as it consisted of two hefty volumes costing two guineas together, it was not a financial success for its publisher, William Blackwood.
Through the book, Lugard met writers such as Rider Haggard, who enjoyed enormous fame at the end of the nineteenth century with adventure novels such as Allan Quatermain (1887), and who incorporated Lugard into the heroes of his books. Lugard’s fame as an adventurer was enhanced further when he ventured on an expedition to the Kalahari Desert in search of diamonds.
After further expeditions in Nigeria, Lugard was appointed the first High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria in 1900. He had already worked out a system of government which was a further development of his ideas of Indirect Rule. It allowed the existing rulers to remain but gave the British government a veto with the authority to remove the Emirs if necessary. Native institutions would be retained, with native courts and local laws and customs, but the death sentence could only be carried out with the agreement of the British Resident (the name for regional administrator adopted by Lugard). Slavery was abolished, liquor was prohibited, except in specific areas, and there was freedom of worship for all religions. This system had been used to a certain extent in India but was developed further by Lugard. Over the next thirty years it was adopted by many British colonies in Africa, until it was abused in east and south Africa with harsh restrictions and segregation which led to rebellions and eventually calls for independence. Enormous progress was made in infrastructure, education, public health and trade in Nigeria to 1906, but an exhausted Lugard was removed after a riot ended in a massacre in a small village near Sokoto.
In 1907, Lugard was offered the post of Governor of Hong Kong and with Flora by his side during turbulent times in China, he pushed through the construction of a railway to China, and the building of Hong Kong University which led to a lifetime passion for education. It was an enormous achievement.
He was recalled to London to prepare for the unification of Nigeria in 1912, and in 1914 raised the flag in Lagos, a city he disliked from the start. He immediately wanted to move the capital to Zungeru in the north. He tried to unify the two systems of the north and the south but was foiled by the sophisticated and wily Lagos chiefs. He had success with educational reforms, but struggled with judicial reforms and the introduction of taxes. The outbreak of World War I caused further turmoil and after riots and many deaths in Abeokuta, further clashes with the Colonial Office were inevitable. He resigned in 1918 tired and frustrated.
Lugard retired to Abinger with Flora and put down his ideas for Indirect Rule in a book he wrote called The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa , which was published in 1922, and dedicated to Flora. The first part of the book covers a brief history of Africa and a survey of the peoples and the different governments. The second part sets out the special problems in Africa and his ideas for dealing with them. The book is the work of a practical administrator derived from his own experience. It is comprehensive and solid and above all showed that the Empire was not insensitively monolithic but had many layers of administration which could interact with the hundreds of tribes in Africa. Lugard firmly believed that Indirect Rule would soften the contact and give economic benefit to both sides. The book drew a mixed response, but influenced many colonial rulers right through to the start of the independence of the colonies.