Lynn Schler. Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea.

Extract

Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea, by Lynn Schler, follows an interesting list of recent works focusing on the way in which Africans shaped the colonial encounter and were shaped by it. The book is a detailed analysis of the intersection of colonialism, African labor, race, and resistance in colonial Nigeria. Schler details the process through which Nigerian men exploited the opportunity provided by European shippers to enter the world of seafaring in the colonial period and the changing identity dynamics that increasingly placed these men as transnational actors. The extension of the analysis into the postcolonial period and to the indigenization of the Nigerian shipping industry provides not only a critique of continuity and change but also an excellent example of the crisis of postcolonial developments in Nigeria and Africa in general.

The strength of Schler’s book lies in the juxtaposition and analysis of a range of sources as well as in the broader link it makes between the shipping industry and the larger sociopolitical and economic development of Nigeria in the post–World War II period. However, the book is not just about Nigerian seamen. It covers important themes that defined African-European encounters, from economic opportunities, race, and the making of new identities and political consciousness, to anticolonial movements.