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Frederick William Koko Mingi VIII of Nembe

January 19, 2023

King Frederick William Koko, Mingi VIII of Nembe (1853–1898), known as King Koko and King William Koko, was an African ruler of the Nembe Kingdom (also known as Nembe-Brass) in the Niger Delta, now part of southern Nigeria.

King Koko in His War Canoe on His Way down the River, from The Daily Graphic of March 30, 1895

A Christian when chosen as king of Nembe in 1889, Koko's attack on a Royal Niger Company trading post in January 1895 led to a retaliatory raid by the British in which his capital was sacked. Following a report on the Nembe uprising by Sir John Kirk which was published in March 1896, finding that forty-three of Koko's hostages had been murdered and ceremoniously eaten, Koko was offered a settlement of his grievances but found the terms unacceptable, so was deposed by the British. He died in exile in 1898.

King Koko of Fantippo, a character in the Doctor Dolittle books of Hugh Lofting (1886–1947), appears to be based on the real King Koko.

Life

An Ijaw, Koko was a convert to Christianity who later returned to the local traditional religion.[1] Before becoming king (amanyanabo),[2] he had served as a Christian schoolteacher, and in 1889 this helped him in his rise to power. The leading chiefs of Nembe, including Spiff, Samuel Sambo, and Cameroon, were all Christians, and after having ordered the destruction of Juju houses a large part of their reason for choosing Koko as king in succession to King Ockiya was that he was a fellow-Christian.[1] However, there was at the same time a coparcenary king, the elderly Ebifa, who ruled at Bassambiri and was Commander-in-Chief until his death in 1894.[3]

With the settlement of European traders on the coast, Nembe had engaged in trade with them, but it was poorer than its neighbours Bonny and Calabar.[4] Since 1884, Nembe had found itself included in the area declared by the British as the Oil Rivers Protectorate, within which they claimed control of military defence and external affairs. Nembe was the centre of an important trade in palm oil, and it had refused to sign a treaty proposed by the British, opposing the Royal Niger Company's aim of bringing all trade along the kingdom's rivers into its own hands.[5]

 
Admiral Bedford, who
routed Koko's forces in 1895

By the 1890s, there was intense resentment of the Company's treatment of the people of the Niger delta and of its aggressive actions to exclude its competitors and to monopolize trade, denying the men of Nembe the access to markets which they had long enjoyed.[6][7] As king, Koko aimed to resist these pressures and tried to strengthen his hand by forming alliances with the states of Bonny and Okpoma. He renounced Christianity[8] and in January 1895, after the death of Ebifa, he threw caution to the winds and led more than a thousand men in a dawn raid on the Royal Niger Company's headquarters at Akassa.[9] Arriving on 29 January with 22 war canoes and 1,500 foot soldiers from different parts of the Ijo nation to attack the RNC depot in Akassa. They destroyed the warehouses and offices, vandalised official and industrial machines, and burnt down the entire depot. While about 70 men were said to have been captured, 25 were killed, and 32 white men were taken hostage as part of the spoils of war to Nembe and 13 were not accounted for. Many of the white men were later executed in cold blood at the "Sacrifice Island" the next day, January 30, 1895.[10]

 
Sir Claude MacDonald, British
consul-general at Brass

Koko then sought to negotiate with the Company for the release of the hostages, his price being a return to free trading conditions,[11] and on 2 February he wrote to Sir Claude MacDonald, the British consul-general, that he had no quarrel with Queen Victoria but only with the Niger Company. MacDonald noted of what Koko said of the Company that it was "complaints it had been my unpleasant duty to listen to for the last three and a half years without being able to gain for them any redress".[6] Despite this, the British refused Koko's demands, and more than forty of the hostages were then ceremoniously eaten.[12][13] On 20 February, a Royal Navy expedition launched a retaliatory raid against the Nembe Kingdom, capturing and razing the kingdom's capital city of Nembe.[6] Many more of his people died from a severe outbreak of smallpox.[5]

Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford, who had led the British forces against Koko, sent the following telegram to the Admiralty from Brass on 23 February:[14]

Left Brass on February 20, with HMS Widgeon, HMS Thrush, two steamers of the Niger Company, and the boat of HMS St George, with marines and Protectorate troops; anchored off Nimbi Creek and seized Sacrifice Island the same afternoon; the approach was obstructed by stockades, which are also under construction on the island; 25 war canoes came out and opened an ineffectual fire; three were sunk, and the rest retired. On February 21 the intricate channels were buoyed and the creek reconnoitred. At daybreak on February 22 we attacked, and, after an obstinate defence of a position naturally difficult, a landing was gallantly effected and Nimbi completely burned. In the evening the force was withdrawn, after King Koko's and other chiefs' houses were destroyed.[14]

Bedford sent a further despatch from Brass on 25 February:[14]

Fishtown destroyed today. Brass chiefs and people implicated in attack Akassa have now been punished. No more casualties. Wounded progressing favourably. No further operations contemplated. Consul-General concurs. I am leaving for Loanda to-morrow evening. Two ships remain in vicinity for present.[14]

On 23 March Sir Claude MacDonald arrived at Brass in his yacht Evangeline towing sixteen of Koko's war canoes which had been surrendered, but the king himself had not been captured.[15] Towards the end of April 1895, the area returned to business as usual, with MacDonald fining the men of Brass £500, an amount which sympathetic traders on the river volunteered to pay. Koko assured the British that his part in the rising had been exaggerated, and returned several cannon and a machine-gun looted from Akassa. There was then an exchange of prisoners.[16] Public opinion in Britain came down against the Royal Niger Company and its director George Goldie, who was seen as having goaded Koko into hostilities.[13] The Colonial Office commissioned the explorer and anti-slavery campaigner Sir John Kirk to write a report on the events at Akassa and Brass,[12] and in August Koko came to Brass to meet MacDonald, who was about to sail for England, but quickly took to the bush again. On MacDonald's arrival at Liverpool he told reporters that the people of Nembe-Brass were waiting for the outcome of Kirk's report.[17]

Sir John Kirk's Report was presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty the Queen in March 1896.[18] One key finding was that forty-three of Koko's prisoners had been murdered and eaten.[19] In April 1896 Koko refused the terms of a settlement offered to him by the British and was declared an outlaw. Reuters reported that the Niger stations were strongly defended in preparation for a possible new attack.[20] However, no attack came. A reward of £200 was unsuccessfully offered for Koko,[6] who was forced to flee from the British, hiding in remote villages.[21]

On 11 June 1896, in reply to a question by Sir Charles Dilke in the House of Commons, George Nathaniel Curzon, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, said

The Commissioner has in his possession a plan prepared by the chairman of the Royal Niger Company for the admitting of the Brass men into markets hitherto closed to them on the Niger. It was, however, subject to acceptance by King Koko, which it has been impossible to obtain as, since the attack on Akassa and subsequent cannibalism of captives in his capital, he has declined to meet any of the British authorities, including Sir John Kirk. In consequence of this behaviour he has been deposed. The settlement is now dependent upon the organization of a new native government in Brass, and will, it is hoped, very soon be arrived at.[22]

Koko fled to Etiema, a remote village in the hinterland, where he died in 1898 in a suspected suicide. The next year, the charter of the Royal Niger Company was revoked, an act seen as partly a consequence of the short war with Koko,[23] and with effect from 1 January 1900 the Company sold all its possessions and concessions in Africa to the British government for £865,000.[24]

In popular culture

In his book for children Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1923), Hugh Lofting created the West African kingdom of Fantippo, ruled over by a king named Koko.[25] Before his encounters with Dolittle, the fictional King Koko had sometimes made war on others and had sold some of his prisoners as slaves.[26] The main stated purpose of the British in the Anglo-Aro War of 1901–1902 was to suppress the slave trade still being carried on by some African states in what is now Nigeria.[27]

Further reading

  • Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, The Akassa Raid, 1895 (Ibadan University Press, 1960)
  • Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, The small brave city-state: a history of Nembe-Brass in the Niger Delta (Ibadan University Press and University of Wisconsin Press, 1964)
  • Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, Beke you mi: Nembe against the British Empire (Onyoma Research Publications, 2001) ISBN 9783507567
  • Livingston Borobuebi Dambo, Nembe: the divided kingdom (Paragraphics, 2006)
  • Sir John Kirk, Report by Sir John Kirk on the disturbances at Brass (Colonial Office, 1896)

Notes

  1. ^ a b G. O. M. Tasie, Christian missionary enterprise in the Niger Delta 1864-1918 (1978), p. 61
  2. ^ Toyin Falola, Ann Genova, Historical Dictionary of Nigeria (Scarecrow Press, 2009), p. 67
  3. ^ Livingston Borobuebi Dambo, Nembe: the divided kingdom (Paragraphics, 2006), pp. 142, 204, 368: "All these are classical examples of the rotation of power between the two kings in Nembe signifying the coparcenery of Nembe. Even at old age King Ebifa did not relinquish his authority as the Commander-in-Chief to King Koko."
  4. ^ G. I. Jones, The trading states of the oil rivers: a study of political development in Eastern Nigeria (James Currey Publishers, 2001, ISBN 0-85255-918-6), p. 85ff
  5. ^ a b Mogens Herman Hansen, A comparative study of thirty city-state cultures: an investigation (Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2000, ISBN 87-7876-177-8), p. 534
  6. ^ a b c d Sir W. Geary, Nigeria under British Rule (1927), p. 196
  7. ^ Augustine A. Ikein, Diepreye S. P. Alamieyeseigha, Steve S. Azaiki, Oil, Democracy, and the Promise of True Federalism in Nigeria (2008), p. 4
  8. ^ Dambo (2006), p. 589
  9. ^ Falola & Genova (2009), p. 197
  10. ^ Etekpe, Ambily (2009). African Political Thought & Its Relevance In Contemporary World Order. Port Harcourt: Harey Publication Coy. p. 166. ISBN 9789784911504.
  11. ^ Alfred Vingoe 1869-1954 A Full and Varied Life at tripod.com, accessed 25 September 2012
  12. ^ a b Sir John Kirk, Report by Sir John Kirk on the Disturbances at Brass: C. 7977 (Great Britain: Colonial Office, 1896, 26 pages)
  13. ^ a b Toyin Falola, Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge University Press, 2008) p. 102
  14. ^ a b c d 'The Fighting on the Niger', from The Times of London, issue 34510 dated Tuesday, February 26, 1895, p. 5
  15. ^ 'West Coast of Africa' in The Times of London, issue 34553 dated Wednesday, April 17, 1895, p. 3
  16. ^ 'The Brass Rising' in The Times of London, Issue 34561 dated Friday, April 26, 1895, p. 5
  17. ^ 'Sir Claude M. MacDonald on West Africa' in The Times of London, issue 34662 dated Thursday, August 22, 1895, p. 3
  18. ^ Andrew Herman Apter, The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria (2005), p. 298
  19. ^ Geary (1927), p. 195
  20. ^ 'West Africa', The Times of London, issue 34869 dated Monday, April 20, 1896, p. 5
  21. ^ J. F. Ade Ajayi, Africa in the Nineteenth Century Until the 1880s, vol. 6 (Unesco International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa, 1989), p. 734
  22. ^ 'House of Commons: The Niger Company's Markets' in The Times of London, issue 34915 dated Friday, June 12, 1896, p. 6
  23. ^ Mark R. Lipschutz, R. Kent Rasmussen, Dictionary of African historical biography (1989), p. 112
  24. ^ Paul Samuel Reinsch, Colonial government: an introduction to the study of colonial institutions (Macmillan Company, 1916) p. 157
  25. ^ Hugh Lofting, Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1924), Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake (1948)
  26. ^ Donnarae MacCann, Gloria Woodard, The Black American in books for children: readings in racism (1985): "The pre-Dolittle years of King Koko's reign were not so "golden." In those days he occasionally made war on other African tribes and took many prisoners. Some he sold as slaves to white traders."
  27. ^ Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo, The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Southeastern Nigeria, 1885-1950 (University of Rochester Press, 2006), p. 44

See also

January 19, 2023
frederick, william, koko, mingi, viii, nembe, king, frederick, william, koko, mingi, viii, nembe, 1853, 1898, known, king, koko, king, william, koko, african, ruler, nembe, kingdom, also, known, nembe, brass, niger, delta, part, southern, nigeria, king, koko, . King Frederick William Koko Mingi VIII of Nembe 1853 1898 known as King Koko and King William Koko was an African ruler of the Nembe Kingdom also known as Nembe Brass in the Niger Delta now part of southern Nigeria King Koko in His War Canoe on His Way down the River from The Daily Graphic of March 30 1895 A Christian when chosen as king of Nembe in 1889 Koko s attack on a Royal Niger Company trading post in January 1895 led to a retaliatory raid by the British in which his capital was sacked Following a report on the Nembe uprising by Sir John Kirk which was published in March 1896 finding that forty three of Koko s hostages had been murdered and ceremoniously eaten Koko was offered a settlement of his grievances but found the terms unacceptable so was deposed by the British He died in exile in 1898 King Koko of Fantippo a character in the Doctor Dolittle books of Hugh Lofting 1886 1947 appears to be based on the real King Koko Contents 1 Life 2 In popular culture 3 Further reading 4 Notes 5 See alsoLife EditAn Ijaw Koko was a convert to Christianity who later returned to the local traditional religion 1 Before becoming king amanyanabo 2 he had served as a Christian schoolteacher and in 1889 this helped him in his rise to power The leading chiefs of Nembe including Spiff Samuel Sambo and Cameroon were all Christians and after having ordered the destruction of Juju houses a large part of their reason for choosing Koko as king in succession to King Ockiya was that he was a fellow Christian 1 However there was at the same time a coparcenary king the elderly Ebifa who ruled at Bassambiri and was Commander in Chief until his death in 1894 3 With the settlement of European traders on the coast Nembe had engaged in trade with them but it was poorer than its neighbours Bonny and Calabar 4 Since 1884 Nembe had found itself included in the area declared by the British as the Oil Rivers Protectorate within which they claimed control of military defence and external affairs Nembe was the centre of an important trade in palm oil and it had refused to sign a treaty proposed by the British opposing the Royal Niger Company s aim of bringing all trade along the kingdom s rivers into its own hands 5 Admiral Bedford whorouted Koko s forces in 1895 HMS Thrush By the 1890s there was intense resentment of the Company s treatment of the people of the Niger delta and of its aggressive actions to exclude its competitors and to monopolize trade denying the men of Nembe the access to markets which they had long enjoyed 6 7 As king Koko aimed to resist these pressures and tried to strengthen his hand by forming alliances with the states of Bonny and Okpoma He renounced Christianity 8 and in January 1895 after the death of Ebifa he threw caution to the winds and led more than a thousand men in a dawn raid on the Royal Niger Company s headquarters at Akassa 9 Arriving on 29 January with 22 war canoes and 1 500 foot soldiers from different parts of the Ijo nation to attack the RNC depot in Akassa They destroyed the warehouses and offices vandalised official and industrial machines and burnt down the entire depot While about 70 men were said to have been captured 25 were killed and 32 white men were taken hostage as part of the spoils of war to Nembe and 13 were not accounted for Many of the white men were later executed in cold blood at the Sacrifice Island the next day January 30 1895 10 Sir Claude MacDonald Britishconsul general at Brass Koko then sought to negotiate with the Company for the release of the hostages his price being a return to free trading conditions 11 and on 2 February he wrote to Sir Claude MacDonald the British consul general that he had no quarrel with Queen Victoria but only with the Niger Company MacDonald noted of what Koko said of the Company that it was complaints it had been my unpleasant duty to listen to for the last three and a half years without being able to gain for them any redress 6 Despite this the British refused Koko s demands and more than forty of the hostages were then ceremoniously eaten 12 13 On 20 February a Royal Navy expedition launched a retaliatory raid against the Nembe Kingdom capturing and razing the kingdom s capital city of Nembe 6 Many more of his people died from a severe outbreak of smallpox 5 Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford who had led the British forces against Koko sent the following telegram to the Admiralty from Brass on 23 February 14 Left Brass on February 20 with HMS Widgeon HMS Thrush two steamers of the Niger Company and the boat of HMS St George with marines and Protectorate troops anchored off Nimbi Creek and seized Sacrifice Island the same afternoon the approach was obstructed by stockades which are also under construction on the island 25 war canoes came out and opened an ineffectual fire three were sunk and the rest retired On February 21 the intricate channels were buoyed and the creek reconnoitred At daybreak on February 22 we attacked and after an obstinate defence of a position naturally difficult a landing was gallantly effected and Nimbi completely burned In the evening the force was withdrawn after King Koko s and other chiefs houses were destroyed 14 Bedford sent a further despatch from Brass on 25 February 14 Fishtown destroyed today Brass chiefs and people implicated in attack Akassa have now been punished No more casualties Wounded progressing favourably No further operations contemplated Consul General concurs I am leaving for Loanda to morrow evening Two ships remain in vicinity for present 14 On 23 March Sir Claude MacDonald arrived at Brass in his yacht Evangeline towing sixteen of Koko s war canoes which had been surrendered but the king himself had not been captured 15 Towards the end of April 1895 the area returned to business as usual with MacDonald fining the men of Brass 500 an amount which sympathetic traders on the river volunteered to pay Koko assured the British that his part in the rising had been exaggerated and returned several cannon and a machine gun looted from Akassa There was then an exchange of prisoners 16 Public opinion in Britain came down against the Royal Niger Company and its director George Goldie who was seen as having goaded Koko into hostilities 13 The Colonial Office commissioned the explorer and anti slavery campaigner Sir John Kirk to write a report on the events at Akassa and Brass 12 and in August Koko came to Brass to meet MacDonald who was about to sail for England but quickly took to the bush again On MacDonald s arrival at Liverpool he told reporters that the people of Nembe Brass were waiting for the outcome of Kirk s report 17 Sir John Kirk s Report was presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty the Queen in March 1896 18 One key finding was that forty three of Koko s prisoners had been murdered and eaten 19 In April 1896 Koko refused the terms of a settlement offered to him by the British and was declared an outlaw Reuters reported that the Niger stations were strongly defended in preparation for a possible new attack 20 However no attack came A reward of 200 was unsuccessfully offered for Koko 6 who was forced to flee from the British hiding in remote villages 21 On 11 June 1896 in reply to a question by Sir Charles Dilke in the House of Commons George Nathaniel Curzon Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs saidThe Commissioner has in his possession a plan prepared by the chairman of the Royal Niger Company for the admitting of the Brass men into markets hitherto closed to them on the Niger It was however subject to acceptance by King Koko which it has been impossible to obtain as since the attack on Akassa and subsequent cannibalism of captives in his capital he has declined to meet any of the British authorities including Sir John Kirk In consequence of this behaviour he has been deposed The settlement is now dependent upon the organization of a new native government in Brass and will it is hoped very soon be arrived at 22 Koko fled to Etiema a remote village in the hinterland where he died in 1898 in a suspected suicide The next year the charter of the Royal Niger Company was revoked an act seen as partly a consequence of the short war with Koko 23 and with effect from 1 January 1900 the Company sold all its possessions and concessions in Africa to the British government for 865 000 24 In popular culture EditIn his book for children Doctor Dolittle s Post Office 1923 Hugh Lofting created the West African kingdom of Fantippo ruled over by a king named Koko 25 Before his encounters with Dolittle the fictional King Koko had sometimes made war on others and had sold some of his prisoners as slaves 26 The main stated purpose of the British in the Anglo Aro War of 1901 1902 was to suppress the slave trade still being carried on by some African states in what is now Nigeria 27 Further reading EditEbiegberi Joe Alagoa The Akassa Raid 1895 Ibadan University Press 1960 Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa The small brave city state a history of Nembe Brass in the Niger Delta Ibadan University Press and University of Wisconsin Press 1964 Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa Beke you mi Nembe against the British Empire Onyoma Research Publications 2001 ISBN 9783507567 Livingston Borobuebi Dambo Nembe the divided kingdom Paragraphics 2006 Sir John Kirk Report by Sir John Kirk on the disturbances at Brass Colonial Office 1896 Notes Edit a b G O M Tasie Christian missionary enterprise in the Niger Delta 1864 1918 1978 p 61 Toyin Falola Ann Genova Historical Dictionary of Nigeria Scarecrow Press 2009 p 67 Livingston Borobuebi Dambo Nembe the divided kingdom Paragraphics 2006 pp 142 204 368 All these are classical examples of the rotation of power between the two kings in Nembe signifying the coparcenery of Nembe Even at old age King Ebifa did not relinquish his authority as the Commander in Chief to King Koko G I Jones The trading states of the oil rivers a study of political development in Eastern Nigeria James Currey Publishers 2001 ISBN 0 85255 918 6 p 85ff a b Mogens Herman Hansen A comparative study of thirty city state cultures an investigation Kgl Danske Videnskabernes Selskab 2000 ISBN 87 7876 177 8 p 534 a b c d Sir W Geary Nigeria under British Rule 1927 p 196 Augustine A Ikein Diepreye S P Alamieyeseigha Steve S Azaiki Oil Democracy and the Promise of True Federalism in Nigeria 2008 p 4 Dambo 2006 p 589 Falola amp Genova 2009 p 197 Etekpe Ambily 2009 African Political Thought amp Its Relevance In Contemporary World Order Port Harcourt Harey Publication Coy p 166 ISBN 9789784911504 Alfred Vingoe 1869 1954 A Full and Varied Life at tripod com accessed 25 September 2012 a b Sir John Kirk Report by Sir John Kirk on the Disturbances at Brass C 7977 Great Britain Colonial Office 1896 26 pages a b Toyin Falola Matthew M Heaton A History of Nigeria Cambridge University Press 2008 p 102 a b c d The Fighting on the Niger from The Times of London issue 34510 dated Tuesday February 26 1895 p 5 West Coast of Africa in The Times of London issue 34553 dated Wednesday April 17 1895 p 3 The Brass Rising in The Times of London Issue 34561 dated Friday April 26 1895 p 5 Sir Claude M MacDonald on West Africa in The Times of London issue 34662 dated Thursday August 22 1895 p 3 Andrew Herman Apter The Pan African Nation Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria 2005 p 298 Geary 1927 p 195 West Africa The Times of London issue 34869 dated Monday April 20 1896 p 5 J F Ade Ajayi Africa in the Nineteenth Century Until the 1880s vol 6 Unesco International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa 1989 p 734 House of Commons The Niger Company s Markets in The Times of London issue 34915 dated Friday June 12 1896 p 6 Mark R Lipschutz R Kent Rasmussen Dictionary of African historical biography 1989 p 112 Paul Samuel Reinsch Colonial government an introduction to the study of colonial institutions Macmillan Company 1916 p 157 Hugh Lofting Doctor Dolittle s Post Office 1924 Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake 1948 Donnarae MacCann Gloria Woodard The Black American in books for children readings in racism 1985 The pre Dolittle years of King Koko s reign were not so golden In those days he occasionally made war on other African tribes and took many prisoners Some he sold as slaves to white traders Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo The Abolition of the Slave Trade in Southeastern Nigeria 1885 1950 University of Rochester Press 2006 p 44See also EditBenin Expedition of 1897 Nigerian traditional rulers Scramble for Africa Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Frederick William Koko Mingi VIII of Nembe amp oldid 1066296336, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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