Abstract
Despite frequent reference to children in Africanist literature, works that critically place childhood at the center of historical inquiry are few. Indeed, children’s history has yet to take a firm root as a sub-field of African history even with the recent appearance of literature dealing with the colonial era.1 Most of works on this aspect of African experience have come from the social sciences: anthropology, psychology, sociology, and political science. And many have been influenced by postcolonial concerns—the phenomenon of the child soldier, child labor, poverty, disease and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, crime, and delinquency.2
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Notes
The following list of works on children and juvenile history is not exhaustive: Beverly Carolease Grier, Invisible Hands: Child Labor and the State in Colonial Zimbabwe (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006);
Abosede George, “Within Salvation: Girl Hawkers and the Colonial State in Development Era Lagos,” Journal of Social History 44, no.3 (2011): 837–59;
Owen White, Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa, 1885–1960 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999);
Laurent Fourchard, “Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria,” Journal of African History 47, no.1 (2006): 115–37;
Simon Heap, “‘Jaguda boys’: Pickpocketing in Ibadan, 1930–1960,” Urban History 24, no.3 (1997): 324–43;
Simon Heap, “‘Their Days Are Spent in Gambling and Loafing, Pimping for Prostitutes, and Picking Pockets’: Male Juvenile Delinquents on Lagos Island, 1920s–60s,” Journal of Family History 35, no.1 (2010): 48–70.
See, among others, Emmanuel Jal with Megan Lloyd Davies, War Child: A Child Soldier’s Story (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009);
Loretta Elizabeth Bass, Child Labor in Sub-Saharan Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004);
Bill Rau, Combating Child Labour and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa (Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2002);
Anne Kielland and Maurizia Tovo, Children at Work: Child Labor Practices in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006);
Alcinda Honwana, Child Soldiers in Africa (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006);
Sudhanshu Handa, Stephen Devereux, and Douglas Stewart, eds., Social Protection for Africa’s Children (New York: Routledge, 2011).
For a general history of the Nigerian newspaper press, see, among others, Increase H. E. Coker, Landmarks of the Nigerian Press: An Outline of the Origins and Development of the Newspaper Press in Nigeria, 1859 to 1965 (Lagos: Daily Times Press, 1968);
Dayo Duyile, Makers of Nigerian Press: A Historical Analysis of Newspaper Development, the Pioneers Heroes, the Modern Press Barons, and the New Publishers from 1859–1987 (Ibadan: Gong Communications, 1987).
Quoted in Babatunde Agiri, “Kola in Western Nigeria, 1850–1950: A History of the Cultivation of Cola Nitida in Ẹgba-Owode, Ijẹbu-Rẹmọ, Iwo and Ọta areas” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 1972), 72.
James Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958);
Fred I. Omu, Press and Politics in Nigeria, 1880–1937 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978).
Inyeseh Ihator, “The Impact of the Second World War on West African Press and Politics: The Case of Nigeria” (PhD diss., Howard University, 1984);
John Enemugwem, “The Impact of the Lagos Press in Nigeria, 1861–1922,” Lwati: A Journal of Contemporary Research 6, no.1 (2009): 13–24;
Emmanuel Nwafor Mordi, “Press and Politics in Nigeria, 1937–1966” (PhD diss., University of Nigeria, Nsukka, 1994);
Emmanuel Nwafor Mordi, “The Nigeria Win the War Fund: An Unsung Episode in Government-Press Collaboration in Nigeria during the Second World War,” Journal of Social Science 24, no.2 (2010): 87–100.
Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Cost of Living in Lagos, 1914–45,” in Africa’s Urban Past, ed. David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone (Oxford: Heinemann and James Currey, 2000), 126–43; and
LaRay Denzer, “Intersections: Nigerian Episodes in the Careers of Three West Indian Women,” in Gendering the African Diaspora: Women, Culture, and Historical Change in the Caribbean and Nigerian Hinterland, ed. Judith Byfield, LaRay Denzer, and Anthea Morrison (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 251–66.
Patience Anne Zedomi, “Women in the Lagos Newspaper Press, 1930–1966” (BA long essay, University of Ibadan, 1987).
For a comprehensive list of newspapers published in colonial Nigeria, see Simon Heap, “The Nigerian National Archives, Ibadan: An Introduction for Users and a Summary of Holdings,” History in Africa 18 (1991): 164–67. See also Coker, Landmarks of the Nigerian Press, 116–21.
A good, concise reading on modern global childhood is Karen Wells, Childhood in a Global Perspective (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009).
Nathaniel A. Fadipe, The Sociology of the Yoruba (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1970), 100–105;
Percy Amaury Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria, (London: Frank Cass, 1969 [1923]), 2:388–415;
Percy Amaury Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria (London: Frank Cass, 1969 [1923]), 3:538–61; and
Percy Amaury Talbot, Life in Southern Nigeria: The Magic, Belief, and Customs of the Ibibio Tribe (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967 [1923]), 26–9, 38–9; 126–27.
Babatunde Fafunwa, History of Education in Nigeria (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), 53–6.
Magnus O. Bassey, Missionary Rivalry and Educational Expansion in Nigeria, 1885–1945 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Meilen, 1999), 23–59.
Peter Marris, Family and Social Change in an African City: A Study of Rehousing in Lagos (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1961), 64.
Alison Izzett, “The Fears and Anxieties of Delinquent Yoruba Children,” Odu 1 (1955), 33.
Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood, Pan-African History: Political Figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1789 (London: Routledge, 2003), 4.
For biographies and autobiographies of some of the African elite women, see Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective, ed. Bolanle Awe (Lagos: Sankore, 1992), 107–48;
Nina Emma Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 214–24;
Folarin Coker, A Lady: A Biography of Lady Oyinkan Abayomi (Ibadan: Evans Brothers, 1987);
Gbemi Rosiji, Lady Ademola: Portrait of a Pioneer (Lagos: EnClair Publishers, 1996).
Lady Cameron, the wife of Sir Cameron, who succeeded Sir Thomson as the Governor of Nigeria, continued to promote the LNN. For a study on white women in colonial Nigeria see Helen Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).
See, from NDT: “Ladies League of Nigeria: Grand Exhibition Nota Bene,” October 4, 1930; “Ladies League of Nigeria: Lady Cameron’s Active Interest,” August 25, 1931; “The Ladies’ League,” January 26, 1932; “The Ladies League of Nigeria,” April 12, 1932; and “The Ladies League of Nigeria,” April 21, 1932. See also, from LDN: “Ladies League of Nigeria,” February 1, 1934; “The Ladies League of Nigeria,” February 3, 1934. For more on the politics of girls’ education, see Rina Okonkwo, Protest Movements in Lagos, 1908–1930 (Enugu, Nigeria: ABIC, 1998), 67–85.
Vocational works for girls fit into colonial ideology of female domesticity. For more on this see LaRay Denzer, “Domestic Science Training in Colonial Yorubaland, Nigeria,” in African Encounters with Domesticity, ed. Karen Tranberg Hansen (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 116–39.
Tekena N. Tamuno, Herbert Macaulay, Nigerian Patriot (London: Heinemann, 1976), 35.
Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 193–206; Cheryl Johnson-Odim, “Grassroots Organizing Women in the Anti-colonial Struggle in Southwestern Nigeria,” African Studies Review 25, no.2/3 (1982): 137–57. LDN: “Prosecution of 200 Poor Native Market Women,” November 18, 1929; “The Plight of 200 Poor Market Women,” November 20, 1929; “Deputation of 1850 Women,” November 21, 1929; “Lady Thomson and the Market Women,” November 23, 1929.
Kitoyi Ajasa, the first Nigerian to receive knighthood, was Oyinkan Abayomi’s father, while Dr. Kofoworola Abayomi was her husband. For more on politics of class and colonial agency, see Patrick Cole, Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics of Lagos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 73–89.
The following is an example of an anti-Hitler song lyric: “Hitler that is throwing the world into confusion, push him with a shovel into the grave.” See G. O. Olusanya, The Second World War and Politics in Nigeria, 1939–1953 (Lagos: Evans Brothers, 1973), 51.
Barnaby Phillips (Aljazeera correspondent), “The Burma Boys and Me,” http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2011/08/20118101111351997html (accessed May 9, 2012). Fadoyebo saw action in Burma and published his wartime memoir in 1999. See Isaac Fadoyebo, A Stroke of Unbelievable Luck: A Moving Account of the Experience of a Teen-age Soldier in the Battlefield during the Burma Campaign, 1944 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, African Studies Program, 1999).
Akin L. Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria (New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1969), 300–11.
Peter N. Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge, 2006), chap. 10.
A similar trend took place in the United States where mass production of toys and children’s items in general transformed ideas of children as consumers. See Lisa Jacobson, “Advertisement, Mass Merchandising, and the Creation of Children’s Consumer Culture,” in Children and Consumer Culture in American Culture: A Historical Handbook and Guide, ed. Lisa Jacobson (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008), 2–25.
Elisha P. Renne, “Childhood Memories and Contemporary Parenting in Ekiti, Nigeria,” Africa 75, no.1 (2005): 63–82.
For more on the problems facing the Nigerian national archives, see Toyin Falola and Saheed Aderinto, Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010), chap. 2.
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Aderinto, S. (2015). Researching Colonial Childhoods: Images and Representations of Children in Nigerian Newspaper Press, 1925–1950. In: Aderinto, S. (eds) Children and Childhood in Colonial Nigerian Histories. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137492937_2
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