Government and the Decline of the Nigerian Oil-Palm Export Industry, 1919–1939 *

THE legitimate role of expatriate capital in British West African agricultural production was a highly controversial issue in the first quarter of the twentieth century.1 The attempts by William Lever to obtain plantations for oil palm in Sierra Leone and Nigeria between I 906 and I925 are well known.2 So too are the reasons for the West African governments' resistance to such concessions. Plantation production, it was argued, might be technically more efficient than peasant production, but the latter was more economically viable, especially in times of falling prices. Second, a successful oil-palm plantation industry would inevitably create a class of landless labourers who would be left unemployed if the plantation failed. Third, the granting of freehold land to Europeans would cause endless legal and political problems for the colonial authorities. And finally, in the conditions of West Africa it was not at all certain that European-owned oil-palm plantations could be profitable without permanent government protection, assistance and subsidy.3 The British