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The Niger and the Classics: the History of a Name

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Extract

On 8 January 1897 the name of ‘Nigeria’ appeared in print for the first time. It was the title of an article in our leading newspaper, written by Miss Flora Shaw, who at that time ‘did the Colonies for The Times’, as Cecil Rhodes expressed it. Miss Shaw later became the wife of Lord Lugard, the great builder of Nigeria; and one of the greatest of all British Colonial Administrators. And here is what Miss Shaw said.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

1 The term ‘Niger-Sudan’ was also in use during the nineties of last century.Google Scholar

2 This information and the reference to The Times article were kindly supplied by Lord Lugard (in a letter dated 21 Oct. 1940). The article quoted from The Times appeared in the issue of 8 Jan. 1897.Google Scholar

3 Illo to Forcados (on the sea) is 767 miles. The total length of the Niger is about 2600 miles.Google Scholar

4 The term ‘Nile of the Negroes’ seems to have been applied mostly to the Senegal river which Ibn Said, writing in the thirteenth century, had called ‘the Nile of Ghana’.Google Scholar

5 But Mungo Park had established, in 1805, the easterly course of the Niger.Google Scholar

6 A Dissertation on the Course and Probable Termination of the Niger, by Lieut.-Gen. Sir Rufane Donkin, G.C.B., K.C.B., F.R.S. (1829).Google Scholar

7 Necho, 610–594 B.C. The translations of the various extracts from Herodotus are, in the main, those of Rawlinson.Google Scholar

8 Bk. IV, 42.Google Scholar

9 The account of Hanno's voyage was inscribed on a tablet in Phoenician and hung in the temple of Melkarth at Carthage. The account, now extant, is a Greek translation—the Periplus, but originally it was written in the Punic language.Google Scholar

10 Herodotus, 11, 191.Google Scholar

11 Herodotus, 11, 22.Google Scholar

12 Herodotus, II, 32–4.Google Scholar

13 Mela, III, IX.Google Scholar

14 See Rawlinson's note on Herodotus, II, 32.Google Scholar Bochart derives Nasamones from Mata-Ammon, the tribe of Ammon. (See Bohn's translation of Pliny, N.H. I, 397, footnote.)Google Scholar

15 Herodotus, IV, 189.Google Scholar

16 Herodotus, IV, 172.Google Scholar

17 See Strabo, XVII, 3, 20Google Scholar, Sallust, B.J. 79Google Scholar, and Valerius Maximus, B.V.C. 6.Google Scholar The Philanoi were supposed to be two brothers, citizens of Carthage, who, in order to settle a boundary dispute with the people of Cyrene, allowed themselves to be buried alive. A well-known translator of Pliny discredits the story because of the supposed Greek name of the brothers, viz. ‘Lovers of praise’! ϕίλος + àινος. (See Bohn's translation of Pliny, N.H. I, 394, footnote.)Google Scholar

18 See Herodotus, IV, 180.Google Scholar

19 Herodotus, 11. ch. 36.Google Scholar

20 In Hausa, e.g. and many other languages of Northern Nigeria the word for maize is Masara.Google Scholar

21 There is some doubt about the date at which Vitruvius wrote, but most scholars believe that Augustus is the Imperator Caesar to whom he dedicated his work, which is quoted later by the elder Pliny.Google Scholar

22 De Architectura, VIII, 2. The text followed is that of Rose (Teubner) but the name of the marsh, ‘Coloe’, is inserted, following locundus.Google Scholar

23 Juba died in A.D. 20.Google Scholar

24 See, e.g., Mela, I, 4, 3 and III, 10, 4Google Scholar and Pliny, N.H. v, 8, 8, § 43.Google Scholar But nigritia was also in common use among post-Augustan writers in the abstract sense to describe the colour ‘blackness’. Our English words Nigritian, Nigritic and the obsolete Nigrite seem to be regarded (by the Oxford Dictionary) as derivatives of the Latin adjective niger = black. Yet the term Nigritia was being commonly used in England during the nineteenth century with the geographical connotation of ‘the region nearly co-extensive with the Sudan’ (see Shorter Oxford Dictionary).

25 Strabo, II, 5, 33 XVII, 3, 3; XVII, 3. 7.Google Scholar

26 Mela, I, 4, 3; III, 10, 4.Google Scholar

27 N.H. v, 8, 8.Google Scholar

28 Strabo, XVII, 3, 5.Google Scholar

29 Mela, III, 9, 9.Google Scholar

30 ‘Big river’ in Jukun would be ‘Nu chu’ or ‘Nu chuo’.Google Scholar

31 From the Greek participle χατωβλέπων=looking down.Google Scholar

32 See my A Sudanese Kingdom, 418: ‘It is said that this animal, when it has been severely wounded and lies down to die, keeps its upper eye open; and if the hunter approaches it before it has died and meets its dying glance, he will be pursued by the animal's ghost until his own has been captured.’Google Scholar;

33 ‘Quem (fluvium) utique prope frontem barbari Dara nominant, ceteri vero accolae Nuchul vocant’, N.H. (Orosius, 1, 2, 31).Google Scholar

34 Pliny, N.H., VIII, 21, 32.Google Scholar

35 Pliny, N.H., V, 1.Google Scholar

36 Solinus, xxv, 5, ‘Nigris, inquit, qui Nilum parit’.Google Scholar

37 Anon. Rav. III, 8, 158.Google Scholar

38 Pliny, N.H. v, 4, 4, § 30.Google Scholar

39 Pliny, N.H. v, 9, 10.Google Scholar

40 Odyssey, I, 23–4. (‘The Ethiopians, the most remote of mankind are divided into two parts: The one at the setting of Hyperion, the other at his rising.’)Google Scholar

41 Pliny, N.H. v, 8, 8.Google Scholar

42 See Herodotus, IV, 183–5.Google Scholar

43 Journal, etc., 119.Google Scholar

44 See, e.g., my A Sudanese Kingdom, 74.Google Scholar

45 Pliny, N.H. v, 8, 1.Google Scholar

46 Pliny, N.H. vi, 35, 17.Google Scholar

47 Pliny, N.H. v, 10, 2.Google Scholar

48 Geographia, IV, 6.Google Scholar

49 Strabo definitely asserts that there are no large rivers in North Africa but only in the interior, XVII, 3, 10.Google Scholar

50 Compare Pliny's account of the Amantes who ‘find water without any difficulty at a depth of about two cubits’ ( Pliny, N.H. III, 23, 26).Google Scholar

51 Atagara or Ida is on the Lower Niger.Google Scholar

52 Barth, Travels in Central Africa, v, 151.Google Scholar

53 Ibid. IV, 250.

54 Ibid. V, 613.

55 Les Touareg du Nord, 469 ff.Google Scholar

56 See, e.g., Sir Johnston's, HarryComparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages, I, 50, 64, 258. (Among the Chinyai of South Central Zambezia the form is ngira, while among the Nyanza tribes it is gera.)Google Scholar

57 Agathemerus, 11, 10.Google Scholar

58 Dio Cassius, LXXVI.Google Scholar

59 Capella, VI, 673 ff.Google Scholar

60 ‘De lacu Nilide oriri (Nilum) significat (Juba)’ (cap. 6, 676; Pliny, N.H. v, 10). Solinus (xxxii, 2) says also ‘Lacum efficit quem vocant Nilidem.’Google Scholar;

61 See Encyc. Brit, article, ‘Niger’.Google Scholar

62 Leo Africanus, III, 828 (temporal).Google Scholar

63 It was used officially as late as 1899. See Colonial Report No. 260, p. 9 (written by Colonel F. D. Lugard, later Lord Lugard).Google Scholar

64 Barth, op. cit. IV, 241.Google Scholar

65 Servius ad Verg. Georg. IV, 291.Google Scholar

66 Lydus, , De Mensibus, IV, 68 (Valens, 259).Google Scholar

67 But there are powerful arguments against this view—notably, the use of the expressions ‘Nigeira Metropolis’ and The Geir Ethiopians’. Pliny's river Niger was clearly conceived to flow south of the Sahara, while the great length of the river as described by the classical writers, coupled with the belief that it joined up with the Nile and that there was a seasonal swelling of the river (a feature of the Niger's great easterly affluent—the Benue), together with the account given of the fauna, are all inconsistent with the identification of the Niger with some small river of the Atlas region.Google Scholar