Naming of Nigeria
In an essay, which first appeared in The Times on 8 January 1897, she suggested the name "Nigeria" for the British Protectorate on the Niger River. In her essay Shaw was making a case for a shorter term that would be used for the "agglomeration of pagan and Mahomedan States" that was functioning under the official title, "Royal Niger Company Territories". She thought that the term "Royal Niger Company Territories" was too long to be used as a name of a Real Estate Property under the Trading Company in that part of Africa. What is important in Shaw’s article was that she was in search of a new name and she coined "Nigeria" in preference to such terms as "Central Sudan" that was associated with the area by some geographers and travellers. She thought that the term "Sudan" at this time was associated with a territory in the Nile basin, the current Sudan.
She then put forward this argument in The Times of 8 January 1897 thus: "The name Nigeria applying to no other part of Africa may without offence to any neighbours be accepted as co-extensive with the territories over which the Royal Niger Company has extended British influence, and may serve to differentiate them equally from the colonies of Lagos and the Niger Protectorate on the coast and from the French territories of the Upper Niger."
In 1905 Shaw wrote what remains the definitive history of Western Sudan and the modern settlement of Northern Nigeria.
Read more about this topic: Flora Shaw
Famous quotes containing the words naming of and/or naming:
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