How Nigeria was sold to the British for £865,000 in 1899
July 27, 2019
1:38 am
All through the 19th century, palm oil was highly sought-after by the British, for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery. Remember that Britain was the world’s first industrialised nation, so they needed resources such as palm oil to maintain that.
Palm oil, of course, is a tropical plant, which is native to the Niger Delta. Malaysia’s dominance came a century later. By 1870, palm oil had replaced slaves as the main export of the Niger Delta, the area which was once known as the Slave Coast. At first, most of the trade in the oil palm was uncoordinated, with …
