ABSTRACT
The attack launched from the British colony of Lagos against the capital of the Ijebu in May 1892 began the last phase in the long, often hesitant, expansion of that colony, opening the way to the rapid extension of British rule over the Yoruba country which soon became the Lagos Protectorate and in 1906 was merged with the former kingdom of Benin and territories to the east of the Niger in the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. The British presence in southern Yorubaland dated from the last days of 1851 when a naval force, after a fiercely contested landing from the sea, evicted the ruler of the small coastal kingdom of Lagos, Oba Kosoko, and reinstated his deposed uncle Akitoye on the throne. For the Ijebu, May 1892 was the beginning of a new world. To them had fallen the honourable duty of defending their country against foreign invasion, and in this they were in the van of all the Yoruba.
