Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Saro in the Political Life of Early Port Harcourt, 1913-1949 |
Author: | Dixon-Fyle, Mac |
Year: | 1989 |
Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
Volume: | 30 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 125-138 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Nigeria Great Britain |
Subjects: | Krio colonization colonialism History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/182698 |
Abstract: | The Western-educated Krio population of Sierra Leone participated in British imperial activity along the West African coast in the 19th century. Facing a far more complex ethnic configuration than their counterparts in Yorubaland, the Sierra Leoneans (Saro) in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, acquired much influence through the manipulation of class and ethnic relations. Though most Saro here had a modest education and were working class, a few came to form the cream of the petty bourgeoisie and were active in economic life and city administration between 1913, when Port Harcourt was established, and the early 1940s. The Rev. L.R. Potts-Johnson, arguably their most famous member, developed a flair for operating in his middle-class world, and also in the cultural orbit of the local and immigrant working class. I.B. Johnson, another prominent Saro, lacked this quality. Though presenting a homogeneous ethnic front, Saro society was sharply polarized on class lines. The indigenes opted for the avuncular Potts-Johnson, for whom they felt a greater social affinity than for the more distant I.B. Johnson. Notes, ref. |