ABSTRACT
The last of the great states of West Africa to fall to the Europeans was the Sokoto Caliphate. Founded in the first decade of the nineteenth century, it covered most of what later became Northern Nigeria, as well as a considerable part of modern Niger and much of Cameroon. In 1900 Great Britain abrogated the Charter which had been granted in 1886 to Goldie’s company—renamed the Royal Niger Company—and assumed direct administration over what became the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. The Sokoto Caliphate was established in the aftermath of a revolt by the Toronkawa Fulani of Hausaland against their Hausa overlords. These people had immigrated into Hausaland as early as the thirteenth century. Logistically and strategically, the reserve forces comprising the armies of mass were primarily domiciled either in Sokoto itself, or in the emirates of Gwandu and Kano, where the greatest population concentrations were to be found with a secondary reserve potential in Zaria and Katsina.
