The British Empire in Nigeria

The Portuguese were the pioneers that opened up the African coast to trade, in the 15th century. But it did not take long to other European countries to send ships to African region.
The European struggled to establish forts and trading posts on the West African coast from about the mid-1600s to the mid-1700s. The Danes, the Dutch, French and the British were part of a big competition for trade and empire in the African coast. The British like other newcomers to the slave trade, found they could compete with the Dutch in West Africa only by forming national trading companies. The construction of the English enterprise was the Company of Real adventures, with it the British built a monopoly company and they afforded and kept the forts, to hold stocks of slaves and trade goods.
The French and the British fought against the Dutch and they took control on West African trade. Later on with civil problem inside France, the British took control in West Africa
The geographic areas that the British settled in on that time, was the whole West African coast, besides south and east.
One of the British’s colonies was Nigeria. The first idea that the British had was to open markets for manufactured goods in West Africa and expands commerce in palm oil. But the main reason changed and the British started exploring Nigeria, because of the slave trade. The slave trade devastated Nigeria during three centuries (1500 to mid 1800).
Besides the slave trade Nigeria, the British were focused in take advantage of Nigeria’s raw material, minerals, and foodstuffs. Since in Europe the weather is not very good to plant tropical crops, the British tried to encourage trade tropical crops for British manufactured goods
I am not sure how many people came over Nigeria that time. But since the British had power enough to take over the West Coast, I guess there were a lot of them there.
I believe the difference between America and Nigeria colonization was that in American colonization the British were more interested in expanding land and finding a way to extend trade to Asia. In Nigeria they were more interested in slave and crops trade. They would use these slaves to increase their production and become wealthier.

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Middle Passage is a novel by Charles Johnson, the story is told via ship log entries by Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave and thief in early 19th century.

Rutherford is freed slave from New Orleans, who does not have opportunities, he tries to find a job but people do not want to give a job to a freed slave, so he becomes a thief. Calhoun has a girlfriend, and she is putting so much pressure on him to get married and he owes a lot to a creditor.
To escape those he is indebted (Papa) to as well as a marriage with, the school teacher, Isadora he is being forced to run away, he sneaks aboard an outbound ship, The Republic. He quickly finds out that the ship is put on the sea and it is a slaver headed for Africa, led by midget captain Falcon. He is an insane captain, and nobody into the ship can stand him not even his own crew.
After leaving Africa with 40 slaves, treasure, and an African "god," the ship suffers many hardships, including mutiny, slave takeover, bad weather, illness, cannibalism, and mystical mumbo jumbo brought on by the "god. I think this part of the book has the main objective to show how bad were the conditions that the slaves lived aboard the ship, a lot of them died and suffered with diseases.
After a while the ship goes down and few people are rescued, and Rutherford is one of them. Coincidentally aboard this ship are Isadora and Papa, who are about to get married. Papa finds out that Rutherford knows about his relationship with the illegal slave trade, so he gives up and let Calhoun to marry Isadora.
The book is a wonderful adventure story. It is hard to imagine but I think the book tells about slavery in a humorous way. It is a fictional story but sometimes the journey becomes so real that Charles Johnson really made me feel like one of the crew of the ship. Like with any adventure there is a romance, that looks like will not to work, but in the end everything works out well.