Lugard, Frederick Dealtry, Baron Lugard of Abinger

(1858–1945)

   British soldier, diplomat, and colonial administrator best known for his articulation of the British policy of indirect rule. Born in India to missionary parents, Lugard was educated in England and later returned to the subcontinent in 1878 as a young army officer. Over the next decade he served in campaigns in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Burma before leaving the army in 1887 to volunteer his services to British chartered companies working to open the interior of East Africa to European trade. After leading an expedition to suppress the slave trade around Lake Nyasa, in 1889 he assumed command of the Imperial British East African Company’s (IBEAC) garrison in Uganda and quickly intervened in a local civil war in an effort to increase British influence in the region. Upon hearing that the IBEAC wanted to abandon portions of the East African interior rather than administer so large and volatile a territory, Lugard returned to England in 1892 and spent the next two years successfully lobbying the British government to declare a protectorate over Uganda.

   Lugard returned to Africa in 1894 where he worked for the Royal Niger Company, racing against French expeditions to sign treaties of protection with chiefs on the middle portion of the Niger River. Over the next decade, first as commander of the newly created West African Frontier Force (1897–1899) and then as high commissioner for Northern Nigeria (1900–1906), Lugard used a combination of diplomacy and force to expand British holdings in West Africa.

   While on home leave in Britain he was knighted for his service in 1901, and in 1902 he married Flora Shaw, former colonial editor for the Times of London. Because his wife’s health could not tolerate the Nigerian climate, in 1907 Lugard left Africa and took up a new post as Governor of Hong Kong. In 1912, he was appointed Governor of Nigeria and charged with the task of uniting its two halves into a single colony. Building on lessons learned during his earlier service in northern Nigeria, he became committed to the doctrine of indirect rule, whereby colonial administrators relied heavily on traditional indigenous political authorities to implement official policy. As this doctrine, which Lugard articulated in his 1922 book entitled The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, had the benefit of being both cheaper and less likely to arouse opposition to the colonial presence, it was soon adopted throughout British Africa. Lugard returned to Britain after World War I and became one of its leading colonial authorities through his prolific writings and his work on the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission. He was raised to the peerage in 1928 in recognition for his many years of service to the British Empire.

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   FURTHER READING:

    Cavendish, Richard. “The Fall of Kano.” History Today 53 (2003): 52;

    Crowder, Michael. “Lugard and Colonial Nigeria: Towards and Identity?” History Today 36 (1986): 23–29;

    Mellor, Bernard. Lugard in Hong Kong: Empires, Education and a Governor at Work, 1907–1912. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1992;

    Perham, Dame Margery Freda. Lugard. 2 vols. London: Collins, 1955–1960;

    Thomson, Arthur. Lugard in Africa. London: R. Hale, 1959.

   KENNETH J. OROSZ