Part of review forum on “Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City.”

This masterpiece tells the story of British colonization, ambition, and the indigenous people of Lagos and places in nineteenth-century Lagos from the lens of maps interpretation. The author, throughout her writings of the book, without doubt displays sound knowledge of interdisciplinary methodology.

Epigraphs run through all the chapters of the book but the epigraph in the introduction section provides an uncommon lead to what the book is all about. It describes the environment of Lagos—the subject matter of the book.

The introduction offers an insight to the connection between the author, London archives map room, the lagoon city, and her choice of title for her book. It indeed tells the story in an uncommon, creative but historical style beyond mere narratives. The book illuminates the importance of the ignored (maps) in the social, economic, and political landscape of the society.

Chapter One concerns itself with street names as sites of contestation between modernity and tradition through the interpretation of maps. It recovers the names of people, events, and places inscribed into the street network of the nineteenth century. It decolonizes archives and knowledge production through the lens of map reading and interpretation. For instance, the chapter brings to fore silenced and sometimes unnamed women who have no place in the archives of early colonial Lagos, but yet contributed significantly, such as Tijuiku—a prominent name in Lagos Island public health sector.

Chapter Two discusses the historical genesis of reimagining Lagos between the visions of Kosoko and Oba Akintoye—the Kosoko city “Eko,” which would have retained much of its indigenous gestures to Yoruba urbanism, and Akintoye’s city “Lagos,” made with the help of Christian missionaries and the British Navy. The city was indeed reimagined as a place where everyone was or could be free. It reveals a lot on what was really at stake in the quest for political, social, and economic control of Lagos (succession wars).

Chapter Three analyzes the disputes that plagued Lagos, and also espouses the sociopolitical circumstances that relegated the ara eko , or “native inhabitants” of Lagos to the background. This chapter obviously discusses how Lagos spaces were redesigned to facilitate trade, generate economic profit, and do away with the vestiges of the transatlantic slave trade. It also offers an insight to the face-to-face encounters between formerly enslaved people and their captors, between missionaries, administrators, and Lagosians. The most fascinating thing is that these encounters spurred letters, petitions, and maps for reconstruction of Lagos history (see, for instance, page 73 for Gilbert Lawson’s confrontation with Asogbon—the man who sold him into slavery).

The author opens Chapter Four with Herbert Macaulay’s voice in the form of an epigraph. The epigraph deftly points to the ways that life and death can coexist in the same city space. The chapter explores land ownership and its attendant contradictions in Lagos (revelation on land disputes). These contradictions and disputes emanated from the land grants system introduced by colonial authorities.

Chapter Five explores the spatial, cultural, and criminal significance of the transformation of Back Street into Broad Street in Ehin Igbeti, and Ehin Igbeti area into Marina. It discusses the colonial prison, and its transformation to Freedom Park among others. The author posits that debates about space, race, and belonging inflected issues of justice in colonial Lagos between 1861 and 1872. She also discusses the significance of Glovers’ administration in Lagos, and his impact on the growth and development of the city.

The author ends the book with a carefully constructed conclusion about the “unthinkable city” as described by Wole Soyinka. The author indeed has brought to the fore the many obscured histories that Lagosians would not remember. In fact, I align with the author’s claim because “Eko o ni ranti”—Lagos would not remember except in a well-documented book like this. The book is therefore recommended to historians, geographers, economists, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, urban town planners, policymakers, and freelance readers who are interested in the history of Lagos.