Mahinland

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Mahinland (Nigeria)
Mahin
Mahin
Location of Mahin in present-day Nigeria

The Mahinland (also Mahinggebiet ) was a coastal country east of Lagos on the Bay of Benin in today's Nigeria . In the second half of the 19th century it briefly became the subject of German colonial efforts .

history

Mahin, east of Lagos on a map by Hugo Zöller (1885)

The Hamburg entrepreneur Gottlieb Leonhard Gaiser operated a branch in Lagos, UK, and was anxious to expand the oil fruit trade to the east and inland. To this end, he entered into negotiations with local rulers via middlemen, including the Africa explorer Gottlob Krause . From May 1884 Heinrich Bey , German consul and at the same time general agent for G. L. Gaiser , and Krause came into friendly contact with rulers Mahin. In the place Akpata a German was Faktorei created. On August 23, 1884, Bey met with Gustav Nachtigal , the new Reich Commissioner for West Africa , in Lagos , and tried to convert the friendship treaties into sovereignty treaties. On December 15, 1884, Bey anchored the company's own steamship Tender (approx. 79  GRT , built in 1862) as a Hulk in the Artijere lagoon.

On January 14, 1885, the Gaiser agent Zimmer asked Gustav Nachtigal for "German protection", who was in Cameroon at the time. German merchants supported the cause, hoping to bypass British-controlled areas and import goods duty-free to upper Niger . The Nigerian coast from Lagos to Cameroon was theoretically under the jurisdiction of the British consul in Calabar since 1882 . However, the area was too extensive to actually be controlled. On January 18, 1885, the Gaiser agent Eugen Fischer signed a private contract with the Amapetu ("King") of Mahin, according to which 50 miles of coastline east of Lagos with all sovereign rights were ceded to the G. L. Gaiser company . On January 20, 1885, Nachtigal traveled with the ships Möwe and Gaiser (276 GRT, built in 1878) from Victoria (today Limbe in Cameroon) to Gogoro in the western mouth of the Niger . He was accompanied by the German explorer and journalist Hugo Zöller .

Gustav Nachtigal and Eugen Fischer, accompanied by Zöller, concluded a protection treaty over the Mahinland with the Amapetu on January 29, 1885 (according to another source on January 25). According to German sources, it was a lagoon-like forest and swamp area with stilt villages , in which around 8,000 to 10,000 people lived. The village of Mahin, where the Amapetu resided, was spacious and prosperous. The other settlements were economically less important. Among them were Aboto (also Agboto), in which one of the most powerful sub-chiefs lived, and the coastal town of Gogoro. In return for the land assignment, the Amapetu received silk , spirits , 20 British pounds and an imperial eagle with the inscription King of the Mahin .

The British authorities in Lagos initially recognized the purchase and protection contract and the British governor was ready to start negotiations to safeguard the interests of both parties. On March 11, 1885, Nachtigal confirmed the German protection over the coastline of the Mahinland known as the “Mahinstrand” from Abejamura to Abotobo . However, the protection was subject to the ratification of the protection treaty by the German government within 18 months. This reservation corresponded to Bismarck's consideration for British colonial interests. As in the case of the South African Santa Lucia Bay , which he did not have under protection in the first place, Bismarck saw the Mahinland as a pure object of exchange. Nachtigal was therefore instructed to refrain from "further steps regarding Mahins". In the initiation of the British-German agreement of April 29, 1885, the Mahinland became a bargaining chip in the colonial settlement between the German Empire and the United Kingdom for property claims on the coast of Cameroon. Germany pledged to Great Britain not to exercise any “patronage” on the coast between Lagos in the west and Rio del Rey in the east. On October 24, 1885, the exercise of "patronage" finally passed to Great Britain. An initially intended compensation to the Gaiser house was rejected by the responsible authorities in London on the grounds that only the exchangeable goods and no further expenses could be assessed - if at all. Since international trade was granted free navigation on the Niger at the Congo Conference , the disadvantages for Gaiser's business were minor.

Mahin today

The place Mahin is now in the Nigerian state of Ondo .

See also

  • Kapitaï and Koba (West African coastal countries, also briefly under German "protection")

literature

  • Olayemi Akinwumi: The Colonial Contest for the Nigerian Region 1884-1900. Lit, Münster / Hamburg / London 2002, ISBN 3-8258-6197-X .
  • Ernst Hieke: GL Gaiser. Hamburg – West Africa. 100 years of trading with Nigeria. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1949.
  • Akinsola Olorunfemi: The Germans in Mahinland (Nigeria) 1884–1885: Threat to British Trade on the Niger? In: Africana Marburgensia. Volume 23, Issue 1, 1990, pp. 48–62. ( Abstract )
  • Norbert B. Wagner (Ed.): Archive of German Colonial Law. 2nd Edition. Brühl / Wesseling 2008, pp. 259–260 and 374. (PDF; approx. 1.9 MB)
  • Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Bismarck and Imperialism. 4th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-423-04187-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Location of Mahin on Google Maps
  2. ↑ Meyers Konversationslexikon. Correspondence sheet for the 1st volume , 4th edition. Verlag des Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig / Vienna 1885–1892, p. 1023.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Max von Koschitzky: German Colonial History. Volume 2 - Acquisition of the Reich Protected Areas until the Carolinen Controversy was settled, Paul Frohberg's publishing house, Leipzig 1888, p. 324 ff. ( Online ).
  4. ↑ a b Hieke 1949, p. 133.
  5. ↑ Wehler 1976, p. 329.
  6. ↑ Pierre Bertaux: Africa - From Prehistory to the States of the Present. Weltbild, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-89350-989-5 , p. 232.
  7. ↑ Max Buchner : Aurora Colonialis - fragments of a diary from the first beginning of our colonial policy 1884/1885. Piloty & Loehle, Munich 1914, p. 214 f. (unchanged facsimile reprint, Fines Mundi, Saarbrücken 2016).
  8. ↑ Schüßler o. D., p. 701.
  9. ^ Hugo Zöller: The German possessions on the West African coast - II. The German colony of Cameroon. Part 1, published by W. Spemann, Berlin and Stuttgart 1885, 67 ff.
  10. ↑ Zöller 1885, p. 78.
  11. ↑ Akinwumi 2002, p. 61.
  12. ↑ Zöller 1885, p. 79.
  13. ↑ Akinwumi 2002, p. 62.
  14. ↑ Wagner 2008, p. 374.
  15. ↑ Wagner 2008, p. 259.
  16. ↑ Wehler 1976, p. 330.

Web links

  • Olanyemi Akinwumi: The Colonial Contest for the Nigerian Region 1884-1900. Lit, Münster / Hamburg / London 2002, pp. 60ff.
  • Meyers Konversationslexikon. Correspondence sheet for volume 1, Leipzig / Vienna 1885, p. 1023.
  • W. Schüßler: Colonial History. In: Albert Brackmann, Fritz Hartung (ed.): Annual reports for German history . Volume XXI, 13th year, Koehler, Leipzig 1937-1939, pp. 700f. (made available by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences)
  • Friendship and Protection contract between Nachtigal u. King Amapetu from March 11th, 1885 in the picture inventory of the Dt. Colonial Society in the University Library Frankfurt am Main, p. 1, p. 2, p. 3, p. 4, p. 5.
  • Protocol for friendship and Protection contract between Nachtigal u. King Amapetu from March 11th, 1885 in the picture inventory of the Dt. Colonial Society in the University Library Frankfurt am Main, p. 1, p. 2.
  • "Gold and slave coast" from the 15th century to 1885 - history atlas map with the temporary German claims on Mahin (see right side of the map)
  • Map of the waterway from Lagos eastwards towards the Niger to Agboto . With the participation of Consul Heinrich Bey and Ms. Eugenie Krause recorded the 3rd – 5th May and 10-13 August 1884 and drawn by Gottlob Adolph Krause. Bibliothèque numérique de Chambéry.
  • Mahinland , Archive Guide German Colonial History, University of Applied Sciences Potsdam - Department of Information Sciences (Ed.)