This chapter explores the influence of public opinion on official policy towards detention, by looking at the cases of two leaders removed in the 1880s from Egypt, which was neither a colony nor a protectorate, but was under de facto British control after the invasion of 1882. The first case involves Ahmed Urabi Pasha, the Egyptian nationalist leader whose removal from power was the aim of the invasion. Given that the invasion itself represented a political volte-face for Gladstone, and in view of the support Urabi had attracted from influential Britons, the British wanted to ensure that Urabi was seen to have a fair trial in an Egyptian court. They consequently used their influence to broker a settlement under which Urabi was expelled from Egypt, and lived in voluntary exile in Ceylon. By contrast, in the second case, that of the Sudanese leader and notorious slave trader Al-Zubayr Rahma Mansur, the Foreign Office and Colonial Office were content to hold him in detention under an ad hominem ordinance at Gibraltar, at the behest of the military. With no political supporters to defend his case in London, the British authorities had no qualms about detaining him without trial.

This chapter examines the detention of African chiefs who stood in the way of British expansion in the Niger Delta in the era of the Berlin Conference. At a time when the legal conception of protectorates was being rethought, Britain began to claim more extensive jurisdiction over chiefs with whom it had signed treaties. This chapter concerns the cases of three rulers – Jaja of Opobo, Nana Olomu and Ovonramwen of Benin – each of whom had signed the standard form treaty of protection first taken to the region in 1884. Jaja had struck out a clause permitting free trade, and, when he continued to insist on controlling his rivers, he was removed to Accra. After an inquiry into his conduct, he was removed under an ordinance. In the following decade, after the creation of the Niger Coast Protectorate, Nana, who had also blocked trade after reserving his rights, was tried by a career soldier in a consular court, before also being exiled by ordinance. Ovonramwen’s deposition and removal (after an ambush of a British party on its way to Benin City) was made without trial or authorising ordinance, but by a simple assertion of power which was not legally validated until 1911.

This chapter examines the beginnings of the use of ad hominem detention laws in West Africa, in an era during which Britain sought to expand its influence over areas in which the nature of its jurisdiction was often uncertain or contested. In the 1860s and 1870s, a number of African leaders were detained without any lawful authority, at the behest of local officials. In 1881, the Colonial Office began to insist that legal mandates for such detentions were necessary, in the form of ordinances. A raft of such ordinances followed. They were used for a number of purposes: in Sierra Leone, they were used to deal with African leaders who attacked areas under British protection, or engaged in local wars. In the Gold Coast, they were used for political purposes, notably to deal with agitators who threatened to unsettle British policy towards Asante. Detention by means of ordinance was used not only where the nature of British jurisdiction was in doubt, but also where there were doubts over whether convictions could be secured of those over whom there was jurisdiction. With little political pressure in the metropolis to counter such policy, detention by ordinance became routine.

This chapter turns to the use of ad hominem legislation to authorise the detention in the Cape of Zulu political prisoners, removed from Natal. It examines the cases of the Hlubi chief Langalibalele and the Zulu kings Cetshwayo and Dinuzulu. Each attracted the support of the family of Bishop J. W. Colenso, who drew the attention of the public in Britain to their cases. Langalibalele was banished from Natal in 1874, after a ‘customary’ trial presided over by Governor Benjamin Pine for rebellion. Although the trial attracted much criticism from the Colonial Office for violating the rule of law, political sensibilities ensured that Langalibalele remained in detention. He was soon joined by Cetshwayo, who was initially held as a prisoner of war but then detained at the Cape under another special ordinance. His subsequent release owed more to his importance for the political settlement of Zululand than to concerns about the rule of law. However, concerns that the rule of law be seen to be upheld – and the experience of Langalibalele not be repeated – informed British attitudes towards the trial of Dinuzulu for rebellion in 1889, which ended in his exile to St Helena under sentence.