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The frontier policy undertaken by the British in Borno revealed the attitude adopted by the colonisers. Indeed in 1902, Borno became the north- eastern corner of the colony of Northern Nigeria. Before this date, the international borders were not officially implemented between Northern Nigeria, Kamerun and the Territoire Militaire du Soudan. One of the first roles of the Residents of Borno was to delimitate the borders of the colony of Northern Nigeria. The boundary commissions studied earlier revealed the difficulty to delimitate precise borders between the European colonies.

For example, the National Archives of Kaduna still contain details about the Anglo-French boundary commission of 1904. According to these documents, the British Residents of Borno were eager to attract the Manga populations south of the river Yobe, i.e. into British territory.40 _{These population movements were}

encouraged by the British even if:

migrations into German territory have not been worth recording. Some people from the Mobber District have gone over the Yobe River into French territory. Occasional movements across the river may for some time be expected on this frontier, the people on both sides being the same tribe and closely related.41

The main priority of the British authorities was to prevent smuggling and ban slave-trading. As Borno was one of the termini of the transsaharan trade, the Bornoan borders had to be under their scrutiny. Nonetheless, Paul Lovejoy showed how slavery in Northern Nigeria did not come to a halt because of these measures.42 _{Moreover, as the Germans were not actively preventing slave-trade}

in their territory, the British had to patrol the international borders of Borno.43

40 _{NAK, SNP 17/5, Acc. No. 6830, 42372, Anglo-French boundary Commissions (1904-1908).} 41 _{NAK, SNP 7, Acc. No. 1271/1910: Bornu Province, Annual Report for 1909.}

42 _{Paul Lovejoy and Jan Hogendorn, Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern} Nigeria, 1897-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 1993).

43 _{Holger Weiss, ‘The Illegal Trade in Slaves from German Northern Cameroon to British}

In 1910, the Residents finally found the borders “satisfactory”: International frontiers are satisfactory; and the transfrontier migrations tend to become less frequent and unsettling, though they will of course, continue for years. It is proposed to dig a trench along the Anglo-French boundary, from beacon to beacon, as a definite line for native guidance; but a trench that would last long as a visible mark in this light sandy soil is a large operation requiring supervision that has not been available.

The arming late in the year of our 25 Preventive Service Agents with buckshot-carbines has had a good effect; for these men on the frontiers frequently ran serious risks of their lives in their duties of the prevention of salt-smuggling and slave-running. No affrays have been reported.44

Population flows were in general subject to enquiries from the colonial officers willing to ensure that the Northern Nigerian provinces would become prosperous. However, this demographic concern was not only economic. When the British conquered Sokoto in 1903, numerous Muslims chose to follow the Sultan Attihiru I in his hijra or religious migration to the east.45 _{This hijra was a}

demographic movement that the British tried to prevent but not always successfully in the first years of the colonisation.46 _{This type of definitive}

migration was also completed by the hadj, the pilgrimage to Mecca which was supposed to be temporary. However, once again, the European feared these demographic flows.47 _{When between 1}st _{April 1907 to 31}st _{December 1907, 5005}

pilgrims to Mecca travelled through Borno, the resident declared: “These figures show a continual drain on our Nigerian population.”48 _{From an administrative}

point of view, pilgrims had to be delivered travel passports from the British authorities:

44 NAK, SNP 7, Acc. No. 1090/1911: “Bornu Province, Annual Report for 1910”.

45 _{Dale Eickelman and James P. Piscatori, Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the} Religious Imagination (University of California Press, 1990), p. 38.

46 _{Personal communication with Murray Last and Murray Last, ‘Islam and Colonialism:}

Intellectual Responses of Muslims of Northern Nigeria to British Colonial Rule By Muhammad S. Umar.’, Journal of Islamic Studies, 18 (2007), 439-441.

47 _{Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels ed., Islam in Africa Under French Colonial Rule, ed. by}

Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels (Oxford: James Currey, 2000).

“There were 5954 passports issued in Bornu during 1911... Though the wastage must be very great, it is probable that many returning pilgrims omit to present themselves for registration, otherwise the annual drain on the Nigerian population must be very serious.”49

Borno was part of a wider British frontier-policy of the British in Northern Nigeria as the latter believed in a Mahdist threat. The beginning of colonial rule in Africa was largely influenced by the fears of Mahdist uprisings in the whole of Africa. As seen in the previous chapter, Rabih himself was believed to be Mahdist when the Sudanese rebellion was quelled in 1898 by Herbert Kitchener. The Mahdists ignored the new international borders as they wanted to topple established rulers in Western and Central Sudan. To a certain extent, the colonisers had reasons to feel concerned as Mahdis emerged nearly every year in Northern Nigeria. Lugard said himself: “wherever you look under every bush and tree, there is a Mahdi.”50 _{Upheavals in two towns of the Sokoto Caliphate, Bormi}

and Satiru, respectively in 1903 and 1906 led to British armed repression.51 _In

Borno, Sa’id ben Hayat created the town of Dumbulwa at the beginning of 1919. This settlement located by Fika on the border of Borno province grew rapidly to 3000 inhabitants.52

The British Resident, Herbert Palmer, took this threat very seriously and associated any expression of discontentment with Mahdism. With the help of the Shehu of Borno, he dispersed the whole community of Dumbulwa and deported their leader, Sa’id ben Hayat from 1923 to 1959.53 _{The perception of this threat}

was perfectly expressed by Palmer when he became Lieutenant-General of Northern Nigeria in 1925. Indeed the latter commissioned two of his officers to

49 _{SNP 7, Acc. No. 904/1912: “Bornu Province, Annual Report for 1911”.}

50 _{Asmau Saaed, ‘British Fears over Mahdism in Northern Nigeria: a Look at Bormi 1903, Satiru}

1906 and Dumbulwa 1923’, Frankfurter Afrikanistische Blätter, 4 (1992), p. 37.

51 _{For a description of the battle of Bormi in 1903, see D J M Muffett, Concerning Brave Captains,}

1st edn (Deutsch, 1964), pp. 196-197. For an analysis of the Mahdist uprisings in Northern Nigeria, see Paul E. Lovejoy and J. S. Hogendorn, ‘Revolutionary Mahdism and Resistance to Colonial Rule in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1905-6’, The Journal of African History, 31 (1990), 217-244.

52 _{Lovejoy and Hogendorn, Slow Death for Slavery, 217-244.}

53 _{See Asmau Saaed, ‘The British Policy Towards the Mahdiyya in Northern Nigeria: a Study of the}

Arrest, Detention and Deportation of Shaykh Said B. Hayat, 1923-1959’, Kano Studies, II (1982), 95-119. quoted by Lovejoy and J. S. Hogendorn, Slow Death for Slavery, p. 219.

write a book entitled “History of Islamic Political Propaganda in Nigeria”.54 _Islam

as a transnational movement was particularly feared by the colonial officers in Borno who saw in Mahdism an opposition to colonial rule. Borno as a border- province was at the centre of these colonial preoccupations.

Furthermore, Mahdism was not the only transborder Muslim phenomenon that the British feared. The Sanussiya, a religious order with political aims, was already opposing the French in their conquest of the Sahara.55

The British administration, once again at the border of Northern Nigeria saw the Sanussiya as a direct enemy.56 _{When considering British colonialism in Northern}

Nigeria, it is customary to argue that the British colonisers reached an agreement with the Muslims.57 _{Lugard and his successors supported and defended some}

specific aspects of Islam.58 _{But, residents of Borno had to pay a close attention to}

those Islamic aspects that were undesirable in the eyes of the British rulers. Firstly, they had to investigate the circulation of pilgrims and ideas to and from Eastern Sudan. The frontier-policy adopted by the British in Borno did not put an end to the migratory flows of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. However, they put under very close scrutiny all the ideas coming from the east.

This explains why the British were genuinely concerned with the links between the Northern Nigerians and the rest of the Muslim world. This subject has already been studied for Hausaland by Mahaman Alio who wrote a thesis about the place of Islam in the Franco-British colonial frontier.59 _{The latter}

discovered that the fear of anti-colonial Muslim revolts led to a relatively close transborder cooperation between the French and the British from the 1920s on.

54 _{See the report written by Lethem and Tomlinson in Oxford, Rhodes House, British Empire}

s.276, box 7. The report was also published G Tomlinson and Lethem, History of Islamic Political

Propaganda in Nigeria: Reports (London: Colonial Office, 1927).

55 _{Jean-Louis Triaud, ‘Islam in Africa Under French Colonial Rule’, in The History of Islam in Africa,}

ed. by Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), pp. 169-188.

56 _{Mahaman Alio, ‘The Place of Islam in Shaping French and British Colonial Frontier Policy in}

Hausaland: 1890-1960’ Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University, 1997), introduction.

57 _{Last, 'The "colonial caliphate" of Northern Nigeria', pp. 67-82.}

58 _{Jonathan Reynolds, ‘Good and Bad Muslims: Islam and Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria’, The} International Journal of African Historical Studies, 34 (2001), 601-618.

59 _{Alio, ‘The Place of Islam in Shaping French and British Colonial Frontier Policy in Hausaland:}

This collaboration consisted in the exchange of intelligence reports between Niamey and Kano but was interrupted between 1940 and 1943 when Niger came under the control of Vichy France. When de Gaulle took over the French African colonies in 1943, the cooperation was resumed. Borno was primarily concerned with this policy as many pilgrims from Northern Nigeria but also from French Western Africa were travelling through Maiduguri. Ideas and men circulating on a west-east axis then were crossing colonial borders.

These policies were partly based on the help provided by the Sultan of Sokoto or the Shehu of Borno. For their help against the Mahdists, both were awarded the C.M.G., a British decoration.60 _{The fact that Borno was a frontier}

province of Northern Nigeria cemented the relationship between the Shehu’s administration and the British officers. The nineteenth-century hierarchy of Borno was thus incorporated within a wider frontier-policy led by the British against some uncontrolled aspects of Islam. Borno and Sokoto were used as defensive walls against the presumed fanatical influence of Mahdism. The borders of Borno which were the limits of the spiritual influence of the Shehu were thus used by the British authorities to prevent foreign influences from gaining ground in Northern Nigeria. This last point reveals the extent to which the British authorities were ready to use the late nineteenth-century structures to implement their own policies.

This section argued thus that the Bornoan administration of the early colonial period played a decisive role in the preservation of the territorial continuity of Borno. As this administration operated within the same conceptual framework as their predecessors, they transmitted the notions and conceptions of the Bornoan territory and borders to the British administration. The transmission of this spatial dimension to the British colonisers reveals the strength of the Shehu’s administration. The resilience of Borno as a space is therefore not primordialist but is the result of a cultural transmission perpetuated by British Indirect Rule.

Despite the territorial changes due to the creation of colonial borders, the British assured the territorial continuity of Borno within Northern Nigeria. On a

legal point of view, the independent kingdom of Borno disappeared but the State continuity was preserved through the administrative framework of Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria and then Nigeria. It may be possible to evoke an active territorial conservatism.

The fossilisation of the territory of Borno occurred in the first years of colonial rule. In a relative short time span (1902-1914), the British reconstructed the territory of nineteenth-century Borno. This brief period can be understood as establishing the territorial matrix for British rule in Borno. The territory of Borno re-emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century not to be modified again after the 1920s. This first period of territorial fascination was subsequently echoed in the writings of the colonial officials.