Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea (New African Histories)

In the 1940s, British shipping companies began the large-scale recruitment of African seamen in Lagos. On colonial ships, Nigerian sailors performed menial tasks for low wages and endured discrimination as cheap labor, while countering hardships by nurturing social connections across the black diaspora. Poor employment conditions stirred these seamen to identify with the nationalist sentiment burgeoning in postwar Nigeria, while their travels broadened and invigorated their cultural identities.
Working for the Nigerian National Shipping Line, they encountered new forms of injustice and exploitation. When mismanagement, a lack of technical expertise, and pillaging by elites led to the NNSL’s collapse in the early 1990s, seamen found themselves without prospects. Their disillusionment became a broader critique of corruption in postcolonial Nigeria.
In Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea, Lynn Schler traces the fate of these seamen in the transition from colonialism to independence. In so doing, she renews the case for labor history as a lens for understanding decolonization, and brings a vital transnational perspective to her subject. By placing the working-class experience at the fore, she complicates the dominant view of the decolonization process in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Business & Money

Schler, Lynn

Economics

Ohio University Press

In the 1940s, British shipping companies began the large-scale recruitment of African seamen in Lagos. On colonial ships, Nigerian sailors performed menial tasks for low wages and endured discrimination as cheap labor, while countering hardships by nurturing social connections across the black diaspora. Poor employment conditions stirred these seamen to identify with the nationalist sentiment burgeoning in postwar Nigeria, while their travels broadened and invigorated their cultural identities.
Working for the Nigerian National Shipping Line, they encountered new forms of injustice and exploitation. When mismanagement, a lack of technical expertise, and pillaging by elites led to the NNSL’s collapse in the early 1990s, seamen found themselves without prospects. Their disillusionment became a broader critique of corruption in postcolonial Nigeria.
In Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea, Lynn Schler traces the fate of these seamen in the transition from colonialism to independence. In so doing, she renews the case for labor history as a lens for understanding decolonization, and brings a vital transnational perspective to her subject. By placing the working-class experience at the fore, she complicates the dominant view of the decolonization process in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Decolonizing Independence: Statecraft in Nigeria’s First Republic and Israeli Interventions (African History and Culture)

History

Africa

Michigan State University Press

Confusion, struggle, commotion and absurdity: these characterise the urban encounter between the African immigrant community and colonial officials in Douala, Cameroon. Even the physical landscape reflects a painfully enduring history of marginalisation, of exclusion from power and privilege.  This book studies a community of African immigrants - or 'strangers' - designated to quarters in New Bell, Douala, in Cameroon, during the colonial era. New Bell was created in 1914 as part of an extensive urbanisation and relocation plan intended to reserve the Douala city centre for Europeans. New Bell housed thousands of migrants converging on Douala from Cameroon and the entire west coast of Africa. Though never completely evading colonial economic and political agendas, this vastly diverse and sometimes strife-ridden community forged alliances, solidarities, and common experiences in response to their immediate needs and long-terms goals. The author opens up an alternative historical interpretation, moving from earlier views which over-emphasise the increasing conflict and tribalisation of the colonial era. Schler focuses instead on the ability of Africans to bridge differences in culture and experience and live as neighbours in cultural and political spaces transcending postcolonial political boundaries.

The Strangers of New Bell: Immigration, Public Space and Community in Colonial Douala, Cameroon, 1914-1960

Unisa Pr

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Books by Schler, Lynn