Imagine Lagos: Mapping History, Place, and Politics in a Nineteenth-Century African City

Imagine Lagos combines historical sources, maps, and walking cartography to offer new perspectives on the nineteenth-century history of Lagos, West Africa's most populous city. It argues that the invention, destruction, and reinvention of spatial markers in Lagos were crucial to negotiations over identity, power, and freedom. Research for the book combines oral and archival sources from three countries with the experience of three summers of walking the streets of Lagos. Historical maps join other texts to create a complex collage of urban life in Lagos, revealing and cataloging layers of change. The story maps and full-resolution maps are available online.

Format: Hardback
Length: 216 pages
Publication date: 12 November 2024
Publisher: Ohio University Press

Written from a digital humanities perspective, this book combines historical sources, maps, and a walking cartography to create new perspectives on the nineteenth-century history of Lagos, West Africa's most populous city. It addresses the spatial history of nineteenth-century Lagos, rebuilding its past as a series of encounters between men and women, past and present, enslaved and free, living and dead, and land and lagoon. Ademide Adelusi-Adeluyi argues that the invention, destruction, and reinvention of spatial markers in Lagos, such as streets, markets, roads, squares, palaces, and lagoons, were crucial to negotiations over identity, power, and freedom. Research for this book combines oral and archival sources from three countries with the experience of three summers of walking the streets of Lagos. Contrary to historical interpretations that render the physical city as a blank, featureless space in desperate need of constant repair, this book offers a variety of visual and textual narratives to push readers to imagine the old city. Throughout Imagine Lagos, historical maps join other texts, including colonial correspondence and reports, missionary letters, oríkì (Yoruba praise poetry), and newspaper articles, to create a complex collage of urban life in Lagos. Streets emerge as sites of historical memories, and Adelusi-Adeluyi's maps of the mid-nineteenth-century city reveal and catalog layers of change. A focus on the city as a whole, as both a physical and social landscape, brings us closer than ever to understanding the lives of Lagosians between 1845 and 1872. In old Lagos, the streets keep their history alive, with their names and stories preserved in the memories of those who have lived there. The book also explores the impact of colonialism on Lagos, including the introduction of new technologies, the displacement of people, and the creation of new social and economic structures. It highlights the resilience of Lagosians in the face of these challenges and the ways in which they have adapted and transformed their city over time. Overall, Imagine Lagos offers a rich and nuanced account of the nineteenth-century history of Lagos, combining historical sources, maps, and walking cartography to create a unique and engaging perspective on the city's past.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780821424889