Ethnicity, the state and the economy in precolonial Northern Nigeria

This dissertation examines the way in which ethnicity has been applied to the study of African history. It discusses the relationship between the concepts of tribe, ethnic group, state, and nation-state in order to establish the fact that the multi-ethnic state has been the most prevalent type of state organization, throughout the globe. In tracing the origins and development of the multi-ethnic state of Katsina, which is in the area that was to become Northern Nigeria, it shows that territorial identification was more salient than ethnicity in the precolonial period. It goes on to show that even the nineteenth century Sokoto Jihad, which has often been portrayed as a religious or ethnic movement, did not significantly alter the primacy of territorial identification in "Hausaland". The Sokoto Caliphate was a politically decentralized social formation. Hence, while the Caliphate was successful in replacing the ideological underpinnings of the independent Hausa states with an Islamic superstructure, it nevertheless, remained an ethnically heterogeneous polity in which territorial identification superseded any sense of being Hausa or Fulani. This was in spite of the emergence, during the period, of a Fulani aristocracy. Emirate society was more complex than a simple ruler/ruled dichotomy. Having established this, the dissertation proceeds to investigate the incorporation of the Caliphate into the world capitalist system. It stresses the fact that it was the necessities of the colonial political economy that formed the basis of the British system of Indirect Rule. In their destruction of the political and economic autonomy of the caliphal ruling class, the British developed urban complexes in Northern Nigeria which directly affected the salience of ethnicity. In areas such as Sabon Garin Zarla discussed here, southern Nigerians, who were often intermediaries of the capitalist firms, were segregated from northern Nigerians so that their labor-power could be more effectively controlled by the colonialists. To enhance this control, the southerners were granted special administrative privileges which engendered a certain degree of hostility among their northern hosts. This hostility increased the salience of Hausa ethnicity.