Legal And Diplomatic Implication Of Treaties On The Evolution Of The Nigerian State, 1860 - 1914
Abstract
The legal and diplomatic implication of treaties on the evolution of the Nigerian state has not received adequate scholarly attention. Extant literature on the subject shows how treaties provided the basis for territorial claims and for demarcations of spheres of influence. The diplomatic and legal content in the eyolution of the Nigerian State is the thrust of this article. The paper argues that Nigeria's political evolution was thus compelled by the processes and motions by which the imperial objective of consolidating a territory for commercial profit brought together as well as induced the actual construction of Nigeria.
References
Henry Wheaton, Elements of International Law, 8th ed., London: Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1866, pp. 23-27. Republished by Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1936, pp. 20-23
Erik Goldstein, Wars and Peace Treaties: 1816 to 1991, London: Routledge, 1992, p. 21.
Charles Henry Alexandrowicz, The European-African Confrontation: A Study in Treaty Making, Netherlands: Sijthoff, Leiden, 1973, p. 65.
Ibid., p. 68.
G. N. Uzoigwe, Evolution of the Nigerian State, 1900-1914 in J. lsawa Elaigwu, E. O. Erim, G. N. Uzoigwe, and R. A. Akindeie (eds.), Foundations of Nigerian Federalism, 1900-1960, Institute of Governance and Social Research (IGSR), 2001, p.
Otoabasi Akpan, The Niger Delta Question and the Peace Plan, lbadan: Spectrum Books Ltd., 2011, p. xvii.
Marcia Langton, 'Unsettling Sovereignties' in Marcia Langton et al. Honour Among Nations? Treaties and Agreements with Indigenous People, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 2004, p. 29.
lbid., p. 30
Michae| Crowder, The Story of Nigeria, London: Macmillan Publishers, 1962, p. 177.
F0. 84/1819, Note by the Lord Chancellor (Selborne) on the Law Officers report on the third basis (of the Berlin West African Conference),
January 1885
