Mahin
Mahinland (sometimes known as the Mahin area) [2] was a piece of land in the coast east of Lagos on the Bight of Benin in modern Nigeria. In the late 19th century it was briefly the object of German colonial initiatives.
Mahinland (sometimes known as the Mahin area) [2] was a piece of land in the coast east of Lagos on the Bight of Benin in modern Nigeria. In the late 19th century it was briefly the object of German colonial initiatives.
The Hamburg businessman Gottlieb Leonhard Gaiser had a trading post in the British colony of Lagos and wanted to extend its interests in palm oil to the east along the coast and into the interior. He therefore hired a number of agents, including the explorer Gottlob Krause to conduct negotiations with local rulers. From May 1884 Krause and Heinrich Bey, who was both German consul and agent for G. L. Gaiser, opened friendly discussions with the rulers of Mahin and a trading post was opened in Akpata.
On 23 August 1884 Bey met Gustav Nachtigal, the Imperial Commissioner for German West Africa in Lagos and tried to convert these friendly agreements into sovereign treaties. [3] On 15 December 1884 Bey moved the firm’s steamer Tender [4] into the Artijere lagoon where it remained as a hulk.
On 14 January 1885 one of Gaiser’s agents, Zimmer, asked Gustav Nachtigal, then in Kamerun, to assure German protection for their property. [5] German traders supported this request as they wanted to ensure their goods could reach the upper Niger region free of the duties applied by the British in the areas they controlled. Since 1882 the coast between Lagos and Cameroon had fallen under the jurisdiction of the British consul in Calabar, although it was too large for Britain to be able to exercise effective control over it. [6] On 18 January 1885 another of Gaiser’s agents, Eugen Fischer reached a private agreement with the Amapetu (king) of Mahin, granting sovereign rights to G. L. Gaiser over fifty miles of coastal land to the east of Lagos. On 20 January 1885 Nachtigal steamed from Victoria (today Limbe, Cameroon) to Gogoro in the western Niger with the gunboat SMS Möwe and the Gaiser, [4] [3] accompanied by the explorer and journalist Hugo Zöller. [7]
With Zöller accompanying them, Gustav Nachtigal and Eugen Fischer concluded a treaty of protection over Mahinland with the Amapetu on 29 January 1885 (some sources say 25 January). [3] According to German sources the treaty covered lagoon, forest and swamp areas with stilt dwellings, in which 8-10,000 people lived. [8] [9] The village of Mahin, where the Amapetu lived, was sprawling and prosperous [10] although the other settlements were less significant. [11] These included Gogoro in the coast, and Aboto (or Agboto), where the most important subchiefs lived. [12] in return for ceding his land the Amapetu was given silk, liquor, 20 pounds sterling and a Reichsadler inscribed with the words King of Mahin. [11]
The British authorities in Lagos recognised the German agreements and the British governor was ready to enter into bilateral negotiations. [3] On 11 March 1885 Nachtigal confirmed that the German protectorate extended over the “stretch of coast in Mahinland known as Mahin beach” from Abejamura to Abotobo. [13] The protectorate was conditional on ratification by the German government within 18 months. [13] : 259
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck regarded territories such as Mahinland and Santa Lucia Bay , which he did not even bother to take under formal protection, as useful bargaining chips in his negotiations with the British; he did not see colonies as valuable in themselves. He therefore instructed Nachtigal to avoid “any further steps with regard to Mahin.” [5] During the negotiations leading to the Anglo-German agreement of 29 April 1885 Mahinland was traded for British recognition of the German protectorate over Cameroon. Germany undertook not to establish any protectorates between Lagos in the west and Rio del Rey in the east, while Britain had already guaranteed the free navigation of the Niger at the Berlin Conference. [3] On 24 October 1885 Mahinland was formally handed over to the British. Gaiser received no compensation as trade was unimpeded. [3]
Today Mahin lies in the Nigerian state of Ondo.
Reichskommissar, in German history, was an official governatorial title used for various public offices during the period of the German Empire and Nazi Germany.
Kamerun was an African colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1920 in the region of today's Republic of Cameroon. Kamerun also included northern parts of Gabon and the Congo with western parts of the Central African Republic, southwestern parts of Chad and far northeastern parts of Nigeria.
The German colonial empire constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies, and territories of the German Empire. Unified in 1871, the chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts at colonization by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but Bismarck resisted pressure to construct a colonial empire until the Scramble for Africa in 1884. Claiming much of the remaining uncolonized areas of Africa, Germany built the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and French. The German colonial empire encompassed parts of several African countries, including parts of present-day Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Namibia, Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, as well as northeastern New Guinea, Samoa and numerous Micronesian islands.
Togoland, officially the Togoland Protectorate, was a protectorate of the German Empire in West Africa from 1884 to 1914, encompassing what is now the nation of Togo and most of what is now the Volta Region of Ghana, approximately 90,400 km2 in size. During the period known as the "Scramble for Africa", the colony was established in 1884 and was gradually extended inland.
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The Royal Niger Company was a mercantile company chartered by the British government in the nineteenth century. It was formed in 1879 as the United African Company and renamed to National African Company in 1881 and to Royal Niger Company in 1886. In 1929, the company became part of the United Africa Company, which came under the control of Unilever during the 1930s and continued to exist as a subsidiary of Unilever until 1987, when it was absorbed into the parent company.
German West Africa (Deutsch-Westafrika) was an informal designation for the areas in West Africa that were part of the German Colonial Empire between 1884 and 1919. The term was normally used for the territories of Cameroon and Togo. German West Africa was not an administrative unit. However, in trade and in the vernacular the term was sometimes in use.
Germany colonized Africa during two distinct periods. In the 1680s, the Margraviate of Brandenburg, then leading the broader realm of Brandenburg-Prussia, pursued limited imperial efforts in West Africa. The Brandenburg African Company was chartered in 1682 and established two small settlements on the Gold Coast of what is today Ghana. Five years later, a treaty with the king of Arguin in Mauritania established a protectorate over that island, and Brandenburg occupied an abandoned fort originally constructed there by Portugal. Brandenburg — after 1701, the Kingdom of Prussia — pursued these colonial efforts until 1721, when Arguin was captured by the French and the Gold Coast settlements were sold to the Dutch Republic.
Ndumbé Lobé Bell or King Bell was a leader of the Duala people in what is now the southern part of Cameroon during the period when the Germans established their colony of Kamerun. He was an astute politician and a highly successful businessman.
Jantzen & Thormählen was a German firm based in Hamburg that was established to exploit the resources of Cameroon. The firm's commercial and political influence was a major factor in the establishment of the colony of Kamerun in 1884.
Events in the year 1884 in Germany.
The Kamerun campaign took place in the German colony of Kamerun in the African theatre of the First World War when the British, French and Belgians invaded the German colony from August 1914 to March 1916. Most of the campaign took place in Kamerun but skirmishes also broke out in British Nigeria. By the Spring of 1916, following Allied victories, the majority of German troops and the civil administration fled to the neighbouring neutral colony of Spanish Guinea. The campaign ended in a defeat for Germany and the partition of its former colony between France and Britain.
The Naval operations of the Kamerun campaign were carried out by German and Allied forces during the Kamerun campaign of the First World War from August to September 1914. Naval activity occurred all along the coast of German Kamerun in the Bight of Bonny but most of the action took place in the Wouri estuary. The main event of the campaign were the successful British and French amphibious landings at Duala. The operations carried out by British and French naval forces concluded in securing control over the German colony's entire coastline and the destruction of any German naval vessels that were capable of offering resistance. Allied occupation of the coastline forced the Germans to retreat into the interior of Kamerun where they would meet their defeat in 1916.
The former General Hospital situated in Douala is a building constructed in 1896 by the Germans and designed by the architect Henri Drees.
Kapitaï and Koba were two areas on the coast of West Africa which were the object of German colonial initiatives in 1884 and 1885. They lay between the Pongo and Dubréka rivers, south of Senegal and Gambia in modern Guinea; in the terms commonly used in the 19th century they were considered part of Senegambia. The short-lived German colony there was known as the Dembiah colony or Colinsland.
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The Chad–Nigeria border is 85 km in length and consists of a single diagonal line running NW to SE from the tripoint with Niger in the north to the tripoint with Cameroon in the south.
German colonial efforts on the Somali coast were pursued from 1885 to 1890. Representatives of the German East Africa Company signed friendship and protection treaties with local rulers in the coastal cities of Somalia in 1885 and 1886 with the aim of acquiring areas north of Wituland. In 1888 and 1890, respectively, the project, which overlapped with British and Italian claims, was abandoned.
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