Disrupting Tradition: Colonial Rule and Criminality in Northern Nigeria, 1900–30

Abstract

This article examines how British rule disrupted precolonial socio-cultural systems, reshaping patterns of criminality in Northern Nigeria in the period between 1900 and 1930. Focusing on property and economic offences, it utilizes archival records, colonial reports and oral traditions to reconstruct local experiences. While colonial officials represented crime in terms of disorder or moral decline this article argues that property and economic crimes evolved not from deviant behaviour, but as adaptive responses to structural disruptions by British colonial rule. As the discussion will show, the imposition of new taxation, monetization and legal systems reconfigured economic life and social relations. Colonial regulatory efforts redefined certain activities as criminal and thus reshaped the criminal landscape. By relating criminality to processes of disruption and adaptation, this article repositions crime as a lens for understanding the social consequences of colonial rule. It also contributes to broader historiographical discussions on agency, transformation and everyday responses in colonial Africa.