Making headway
Subtitle: the introduction of western civilization in colonial northern Nigeria
By: Andrew Barnes.
Series: Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora -- v. 41
Publisher: University of Rochester Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Rochester, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 330
ISBN-13: 9781580462990
Subjects: Christianity and culture -- Nigeria -- History; Missions -- Nigeria -- History; Civilization, Western -- African influences -- History; Identity (Psychology) -- Nigeria -- History
Description: "The process of cultural transfer in Northern Nigeria was historically thought to have been dictated by European colonial domination. In fact, Western missionaries may not have been able to guide African Christians toward mastery of the secular world when they themselves lacked the worldliness to do so. In this penetrating study, Andrew E. Barnes argues that competition among colonizing forces impelled British colonial administrators and Christian missionaries alike to offer Africans those aspects of Western civilization Africans themselves specifically wanted: schools that provided greater access to Western intellectual skills. In Making Headway: The Introduction of Western Civilization in Colonial Northern Nigeria, Barnes demonstrates effectively that Europeans were successful in transferring to local peoples the cultural values they hoped to foster only because Africans and Europeans reached consensus about the nature and character of the Western civilization to be shared. Ultimately, this study asserts, Africans had greater control over the introduction of Western civilization to the region than traditionally thought."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Some theoretical concerns; title: Historiography; title: Indirect rule as a form of cultural transfer, 1900-35; title: Indirect rule and making headway, 1920-35; title: The cross or the crescent, 1900-30; title: Christian missions and the evangelization of the north, 1900-35; title: Twin revolutions, 1930-45; title: The Africanization of western civilization, 1930-60; title: The indigenization of modernity, 1950-65.