ABSTRACT
This paper sketches the broad outlines of Benin political history between the years immediately before 1897, when the independence of this ancient West African kingdom was abruptly terminated, and 1951, when Nigerian regional and national politics had begun to make a direct impact on its internal affairs. Despite their subjection to alien rule and the destruction of their traditional framework of government, the Benin (Edo) people – especially the residents of the capital – displayed an unflagging appetite for the game of politics. Their exuberant and fluid factionalism and their tendency to internal, unstable dichotomization constantly taxed the wits of their colonial over-rulers, whose ability to understand and control these processes was limited by their lack of adequate information about Edo political culture. On several occasions the British officers on the spot found that the ‘native authority’ recognized by the government as the instrument for the implementation of its objectives, had become transformed into an unpopular ‘ruling’ clique, to which they themselves were assimilated; and from which, in order to avoid a complete breakdown of order, they had, sooner or later, to withdraw their support.
