The Davies Chronicles : An African Merchant Family in Victorian Lagos

Abstract

This thesis examines the making and unmaking of the Davies family during the period from 1830 to 1920. The Davies were Saro Creoles, descendants of liberated Yoruba slaves who had been settled in Sierra Leone before returning to Yoruba, where they settled in Lagos. The thesis evaluates previous definitions of this cultural group and finds, through an examination of the institution of the family and its changes over time, that Saro culture was an extremely dynamic syncretism. It concludes that the various pressures for change operating on the group - political, economic, religious, sentimental and emotional - cannot be analysed separately.

The primary purpose of the work is the historical reconstruction of one particular family through a narrative sequence of events. Within this framework, considerable attention is paid to various social and economic roles within the family - husband, father, wife, mother, provider, home-manager, child - and how its members responded to the obligations placed upon them. Particular emphasis is given to the way external pressures affected the internal dynamics of the family.

The history of the Davies family is firmly placed in the context of the changing world economy of the nineteenth century, the rise and fall of the Creoles, the rise of British imperialism in West Africa, internal divisions and changes in Yoruba, and the origins of African nationalism. The work how the Davies family influenced these events and processes and how they, in turn, affected the family.