Dr Chima Korieh, Rowan University
2006 award - pilot project
£16,012 for 3 months
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The collections held at the National Archives of Nigeria at Enugu and Calabar, which
date from the late 1800s to 1960, are invaluable for the history of European contact with Eastern Nigeria. The collections are known to include official British colonial government papers; papers of native and local authorities; papers of semi-public bodies and institutions; colonial court records; photographs, several petitions, and letters by local people during the colonial period; private and family papers, as well as those of ecclesiastical bodies.
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These documents that deal with European contact with Eastern Nigeria are in danger due to deplorable, deteriorating conditions and the frequent use of photocopying of fragile papers. At the Calabar regional archive, thousands of pages of colonial documents and private papers are piled on the floor in a room without climate controls because the archive has no permanent home. These deteriorating conditions leave the records damp and prone to mold growth and termite infestation. The conditions at the Enugu archive are not much better. Without immediate efforts to preserve these materials, they may not last more than a few more years.
The materials located at these archives are significant for a number of reasons. Europe had a long history of economic and political relationship with the societies of Eastern Nigeria. The development of the slave trade in the fifteenth century created the initial economic link with European traders, particularly the British, until the abolition of the trade. Like many parts of Africa, Nigeria was incorporated into the British Empire as the drive for imperial possessions heated up toward the late nineteenth century. The documents at the Enugu and Calabar archives tell the story of this contact, the major players, and the impact on local peoples.
Also, the present day eastern part of Nigeria was perhaps the most important and unique in British West Africa. From the eighteenth century, Britain was the region's most important trading partner both in the era of the slave trade and in the post-abolition period, when the trade in palm oil and later kernel brought the region into closer economic contact with the British. Following European colonization of Africa toward the end of the nineteenth century, the British entered into several treaties with local chiefs, which eventually gave Britain control of the region. British traders and missionaries provided other opportunities for greater intercourse between Europeans and local people. These papers present stark evidence of that contact. The surviving papers are a unique record of a wide range of African-European relations during the colonial era.
A three month pilot study will be undertaken to assess the feasibility and scale of effort required to preserve the endangered regional records held at The National Archives of Nigeria at Enugu and Calabar. In addition, the pilot study seeks to determine the existence of privately held manuscripts and other records related to the slave trade in the region.
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The results of this pilot study will then be evaluated and used as a basis for creating a larger scale project aimed at preserving more of these unique materials and documents and making them accessible to international scholars, university faculty members, college students, and advanced high school students researching colonial Nigeria as well as providing a model for other regional archives.
