Literary communities and colonial citizenship in early twentieth-century Yorubaland, Nigeria

This project examined the connections between literary communities and the emergence of new ideas of colonial citizenship in south-western Nigeria in the decades between the first and second world wars. It aimed to understand the social and cultural world in which a second generation of urban and Christian Yoruba men lived, and how this world intersected with their political activities.
There is a rich historiography on the relationship between literacy, the development of the public sphere and ideas of citizenship in Europe from the eighteenth century onwards, but this subject is critically under-researched in early twentieth-century Africa. The importance of the project thus lies in its attempt to explain the cultural content of political movements and organisations in interwar Nigeria which have previously been narrowly interpreted as no more than an early manifestation of nationalism.
Three journal articles will be submitted for publication to appear no later than 2007/2008 and they can be expected to have a significant impact in the academic field of African history. In particular, these outputs will likely stimulate further comparative research in the social and cultural histories of South Africa and British West Africa because they draw attention to shared themes in the historiography.