Economic Boundaries and the Unintended Architecture of Colonial Governance: Cross Border Trade Networks Between Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger, 1914-1960

Ibiang OKOI

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Economic Boundaries and the Unintended Architecture of Colonial Governance: Cross Border Trade Networks Between Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger, 1914-1960

Authors

Ibiang OKOI University of Calabar

Keywords:

Economic boundaries, cross border trade, colonial governance, Northern Nigeria, Southern Niger, borderlands theory, illicit economies, unintended consequences

Abstract

This article examines the transformation of cross border trade networks between Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger from the establishment of the colonial boundary in 1914 to the independence of both nations in 1960. It advances a counterintuitive argument: that the illicit cross border trade which colonial administrations sought desperately to suppress did not merely persist despite their efforts, but actively shaped the architecture of colonial governance in ways that officials themselves failed to recognize. Drawing on archival sources from Nigeria, Niger, and the United Kingdom, the study analyzes how Hausa, Fulani, and Tuareg trading communities developed sophisticated arbitrage strategies that exploited differentials between British and French colonial systems. These strategies including currency arbitrage, commodity smuggling, and the cultivation of trans boundary social networks did not simply resist colonial control but generated economic flows that colonial states became structurally dependent upon. The article identifies three phases in this co constitutive relationship: disruption and reorganization from 1914 to 1922, the emergence of arbitrage economies that exposed the limits of colonial regulation from 1923 to 1939, and wartime and postwar transformations that revealed colonial dependence on the very trade they condemned from 1940 to 1960. By demonstrating how cross border trade functioned as an unrecognized infrastructure of colonial economies, the study contributes to debates in African economic history, borderlands theory, and the political economy of colonialism, arguing for a reconceptualization of illicit trade not as resistance to colonial power but as a constitutive element of its operation.

Author Biography

Ibiang OKOI , University of Calabar

FULL-TEXT

Published

2026-03-12

How to Cite

OKOI , I. (2026). Economic Boundaries and the Unintended Architecture of Colonial Governance: Cross Border Trade Networks Between Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger, 1914-1960. GNOSI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Theory and Praxis, 9(1), 70-85. Retrieved from https://www.gnosijournal.com/index.php/gnosi/article/view/333