This chapter discusses the various social changes experienced in Nigeria during its colonial phase. It brings together the various events, changes, and processes established in previous chapters, focusing on their impacts, specifically on the social landscape of Nigeria. It takes important topics such as women’s rights and industry and explores what they were like in precolonial times, the changes seen during the colonial period, and the social ramifications of these changes. In colonial Nigeria, colonial officials fostered social change to promote British economic and political interests. Generally, this meant the diffusion of Western ideas, customs, material culture, and institutions, among many others. These were to be promoted (often violently) at the direct expense of their Indigenous counterparts (except for Northern Nigeria, which retained many Islamic and Indigenous institutions). The specific impacts of these efforts and the social changes seen during this period will be explored in detail. Finally, the chapter explores the social development of Nigeria’s Western-educated elite. Through direct exposure to Western customs and their hypocrisy, they would organize in opposition to colonial rule, culminating in Nigeria’s independence.

The historiography of Nigerian independence from colonial rule has not often considered the role played by trade unions. This chapter seeks to correct this gap in the literature by tracing the history of Nigerian trade unions from the precolonial period to 1960 and beyond. Far from a British import, trade unions were rooted in local craft organizations that predated colonization. The protectionist goals of these organizations informed the development of the first formal trade union in Nigeria in 1912, named the Civil Service British Workers’ Union. This union and others soon expanded their purview from labor conditions to a broader anticolonial agenda, especially because of shared leadership and institutional affiliation with nationalist organizations. As trade unions became politically radicalized, nationalist groups borrowed tactics developed by the unions such as strikes and collective bargaining. Trade unions were instrumental in the nationalist movement and remain powerful engines of social and economic justice.

This chapter will address the various peoples, polities, individuals, movements, and the social-political and economic conditions of Nigeria before the colonial era (1900). It will also go over the processes that spurred ongoing transformations in the complex patchwork of political, cultural, and religious entities that dominated what is known today as Nigeria. This chapter names five principal events as the primary catalysts for these transformations. They are the abolition of the slave trade and the switch to legitimate trade; the Sokoto Jihad; the decline and eventual collapse of the Old Oyo Empire; freed captives returning from Sierra Leone along with the arrival of missionaries; and the advent of colonial rule. These events would result in an environment of instability which gave way to new powers prompted by shifting demands from an increasingly industrialized and interconnected world. The chapter explores the social and economic shifts that resulted from these political changes and how these social and economic processes impacted the political changes in question. Finally, the chapter gives specific examples of lifestyle changes experienced by millions during this period, such as changes in clothing, religious practices, and diet.

This chapter explores how aspects of culture informed the compositions of Nigeria’s various precolonial and colonial societies. These happenings will be shown through several unique customs and practices, such as dance, music, and art. The second part of the chapter explains how the onset of colonialism shifted the cultural landscape of Nigeria. These cultural transformations are framed in three primary ways: the often racist and violent diffusion of Western culture, the retainment of Indigenous cultures, and the fusion of the former and latter. The social, economic, and political ramifications of these transformations will be detailed, along with the subtle, often insidious role colonialism and Western culture had to play in the changing mental constructs of the Nigerian people, most prominent amongst the growing class of Western-educated elites.

Since the bicentennial of Haitian independence in 2004, the field of Haitian literary and cultural studies has expanded considerably. It is no longer possible to claim with the same degree of urgency that Haitian history and literature are being ignored in North Atlantic academe. Not only have Haitian literature panels become a central part of the often social science-focused Haitian Studies Association (which has been in existence for more than thirty years), but numerous conferences and colloquia on both sides of the Atlantic have now been devoted almost singularly to the topic of Haitian literary studies.1 We are witnessing, in fact, something of a revival in Haitian literary studies. Various scholars from both French and Francophone Studies, as well as English, History, and American Studies, are turning their attention to Haiti’s robust literary culture.

This chapter presents the political organisation and power dynamics during the reign of Kigeri Rwabugiri, the last king of precolonial Rwanda. At the end of the nineteenth century, European overrule, under the form of German colonisation and missionary activity, profoundly modified political dynamics.

This chapter focuses on Haiti’s twentieth-century periodicals, and more specifically on the literary magazine. By bringing to light the complex stories of literary revue culture during key historical moments I show how these specific forms of publications, which played a major role in Caribbean countries, have influenced Haiti’s sociopolitical and intellectual life. At its core, this chapter addresses the tension between the aesthetics and politics of several literary revues by highlighting, first, literary and/or socially engaged magazines predominantly concerned with the development of Haiti’s literature and culture, and, second, those with a clear political agenda, some of which were infused with an explicit objective: the forging of a Haitian national voice.

Why have we been so quick to dismiss late nineteenth-century Haitian novels in the field of francophone postcolonial studies? What have we failed to recognize as francophone or postcolonial in these texts? And how can we now begin to revisit them? This chapter proposes to answer these questions by drawing attention to the historical predicament that led nineteenth-century Haitian intellectuals and writers to embrace the West’s narratives of civilization and modernity when such discourses were in fact integral to North Atlantic imperialisms and white supremacy. It first provides a historical overview of the Haitian novel from its inception in the mid-nineteenth century to its booming production in the early 1900s. It then sheds light on Demesvar Delorme’s Francesca and Louis Joseph Janvier’s Une Chercheuse, two novels that help us understand how Haitian intellectuals sought to exist in a Eurocentric, international lettered sphere. Finally, it concludes by considering some of the ethical and intellectual challenges we must face in order to do justice to such works and their authors.

This chapter considers how the zonbi has served twentieth-century Haitian writers as a valuable trope through which to account for and contest the horrors of everyday life under and in the wake of Duvalierism. The chapter examines the literary configuration of the zonbi from three distinct yet interrelated perspectives: as a figure of immanent and even imminent revolt; as a lens through which to reckon with gender in Haiti and beyond; and as a metaphor for the alienation and trauma of exile. The chapter calls for an appreciation of the zonbi as a popular cultural figure whose inherent ambivalence has allowed Haiti’s writers to embrace the unresolved tensions of the nation’s oft-evoked resilience in the face of seemingly relentless tragedy, both within the island and in its diasporas.