Capability Distribution and Onset of the 1869 Bonny War

Abstract

In 1869 Bonny in the Eastern Niger Delta area of present-day Nigeria fought a civil war which split it into component parts. This came at a time when most West Africa states were experiencing the transition from slave trade to ’legitimate commerce.’ For this reason, explanations of the war were often given in the broad context of the impact of the commercial transition on coastal West African states. Scholars such as Anthony G. Hopkins (1968: 580-606; 1973: 125-6, 135-64) look at the 1869 war and the endemic Yoruba wars in the nineteenth century as parts of the ’crisis of adaptation’ of coastal trading states, which left them vulnerable to European annexation. On the other hand, students like Jacob Ade Ajayi and Ralph A. Austen (1972:303-6) are protagonists of the view that the structure of the palmoil (legitimate) trade in the Delta was virtually the same as that of the slave trade. Hence, commercial transition does not offer an explanation for wars in Bonny and Yorubaland (Law 1993: 91-115; 1995: 1-31).