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Missionary Knowledge and the State in Colonial Nigeria: On How G. T. Basden became an Expert*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Dmitri van den Bersselaar
Dmitri van den Bersselaar*
Affiliation:
University of Liverpool
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Extract

Between 1931 and 1937, the Anglican missionary G. T. Basden represented the Igbo people on the Nigerian Legislative Council. The Igbo had not elected Basden as their representative; he had been appointed by the colonial government. Basden's appointment seems remarkable. In 1923 the Legislative Council had been expanded to include seats for Unofficial Members, representing a number of Nigerian areas, with the expressed aim of increasing African representation on the Council. In selecting Basden the government went against their original intention that the representative of the Igbo area would be a Nigerian. However, the government decided that there was no “suitable” African candidate available, and that the appointment of a recognized European expert on the Igbo was an acceptable alternative. This choice throws light on a number of features of the Nigerian colonial state in 1930s, including the limitations of African representation and the definition of what would make a “suitable” African candidate.

In this paper I am concerned with the question of how Basden became recognized as an expert by the colonial government and also, more generally, with the linkages between colonial administrations' knowledge requirements and missionary knowledge production. Missionary-produced knowledge occupied a central, but also somewhat awkward position in colonial society. On the one hand, colonial governments and missions shared a number of common assumptions and expectations about African peoples. On the other hand, there also existed tensions between missions and government, partly reflecting differing missionary and administrative priorities, which means that the missionary expert was not often recognized as such.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 33 , 2006 , pp. 433 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2006

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to all those who attended the panel on “Acknowledging Knowledge” at the 2005 AEGIS Conference for their useful contributions and discussions. CMS = Archive of the Church Missionary Society in the University of Birmingham Library (UK); NAE = National Archives of Nigeria, Enugu; NAI = National Archives of Nigeria, Ibadan; PRO = The National Archive (formerly Public Record Office), London; TC = Tugwell Collection in the University of Birmingham Library (UK).

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