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When the British and the French signed a new boundary agreement in 1898, the text of the treaty did not provide any clear description of Borno’s borders. It did not provide the rationale for the modification of the previous boundary agreement of 1890 either. Still, the territory located north of the Komadugu river and west of Lake Chad was now included in the British sphere of influence.

Figure 11: The boundaries in the Lake Chad area in 1898

(the red line represents the European boundary)

Was this to insure that the British could have total control of the western shores of Lake Chad? Was this boundary thought to respect more the boundaries of Rabih’s Borno? Due to the lack of sources concerning this part of the boundary in 1898 and the presence of Rabih in Borno, these questions only remain

hypotheses. Indeed, scholars have paid little attention to the territory included between Barruwa and the Komadugu River as, it was British for a short time between 1898 and 1906, before reverting to French domination. The text of the 1898 agreement between the different authorities laconically described this part of the boundary:

[…] then due north until it regains the 14th parallel of north latitude; then eastwards along this parallel as far as its

intersection with the meridian passing 35' east of the centre of the town of Kuka, [Kukawa], and thence this meridian southward until its intersection with the southern shore of Lake Chad.11

The lack of precision for this first modification is comparable to the agreement between Germany and the United Kingdom in 1903. Indeed, the German presence in the northern parts of their colony of Kamerun and in Borno in particular was not effective before 1902.12 _{In 1903, ten years after the first}

agreement was signed between the United Kingdom and Germany, a commission was appointed to determine the positions of Kukawa and the boundary on the shores of Lake Chad. Prescott has detailed the technical difficulties encountered by the surveyors who had to move the boundary eastwards because of an imprecision of the map.13

The rectangular boundary line around Dikwa was demarcated with 28 concrete pillars up to the shores of Lake Chad.14 _{The various diaries or articles}

written by the British and German surveyors were technical reports dealing with the feasibility of the demarcation of the boundary as the British surveyor Louis

11 _{British Parliamentary Papers, Treaty series. No. 15. 1899. Convention between the United}

Kingdom and France for the delimitation of their respective possessions to the west of the Niger,

http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-

2004&res_dat=xri:hcpp&rft_dat=xri:hcpp:fulltext:1899-077753 [accessed 20 March 2010].

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

Nigeria’, 141-197.

13 In the 1893 agreement, the Anglo-German boundary on the shores of Lake Chad was supposed to lie 35’ East of Kukawa. But the position of Kukawa on the map was supposed to be 13O _{25’ E.}

When the surveyors discovered that the actual position of Kukawa was 13°33’ E, they calculated that the boundary should be, as detailed in the 1893 agreement, 35’ east of Kukawa. Thus the boundary was moved to 14°08’ E. See Prescott, The evolution of Nigeria's international and

regional boundaries, 1861-1971, pp. 37-38.

Jackson15 _{and his German counterpart L. Ambronn}16 _{did not seem to have any}

specific perception of the nineteenth-century boundaries of Borno.

In March 1906, the two governments signed an agreement defining more precisely the boundary. Subsequently, the populations were allowed to choose the side of the border where they would be able to live.

V. Thence it will follow the median line of the Yedseram into Bornu, as far as a point about 1 kilom. southwest of the village of Gorege [Gworege]. This point was defined in 1905 by the local officers of both sides by a mark cut on a large tree. 17

15 _{Louis Jackson, 'The Anglo-German Boundary Expedition in Nigeria', The Geographical Journal,}

26, no. 1 (1905), 28-41. See his report in the British National Archives, Lieutenant-Colonel Jackson, “Report on the Yola-Chad boundary Commission”, 23 November 1904, FO 64/1653.

16 _{L. Ambronn, 'Berichte über die astronomisch-geodetischen Beobachtungen der Expedition zur}

Festlegung der Grenze, Yola-Tschadsee zwischen nordwest Kamerun und Nord Nigeria',

Mitteilungen aus den Deutschen Schutzgebieten, 18 (1905), 59-88.

17 _{Edward Hertslet, R. W. Brant, and H. L. Sherwood, The map of Africa by treaty: in three volumes} and a collection of maps (London: HMSO, 1909), vol.3, pp.937-939.

Figure 12: Nigeria-Kamerun boundary survey map.18

18 Edward Hertslet, R. W. Brant, and H. L. Sherwood, The map of Africa by treaty (London: HMSO, 1909)

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-

bin/query/r?ammem/gmd:@filreq%28@field%28NUMBER+@band%28g8200m+gct00004%29 %29+@field%28COLLID+gnrlmap%29%29 [accessed 13 February 2010]

The map which accompanied the reports written by Jackson and Ambronn aimed purely at geo-localisation, as the surveyors only outlined the main landmarks of Borno such as the banks of Lake Chad. Its topographical precision was intended to make the boundary as clear as possible for both the British and German governments. This phenomenon is easily explainable by the fact that the map was annexed to the 1906 treaty. As a purely diplomatic document, both treaty and map try to be as factual as possible. They do no mention any existence of Borno at all.

The diplomatic treaties between the Europeans lead to an obvious conclusion. There was no difference between the British, the French or the German perception of their new boundaries: they were all described on a purely technical level. Until the end of the nineteenth century, there was no distinctive national approach to colonial boundary creation in Borno. This situation dramatically contrasts with the nationalist climate present in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The absence of any clear national aspect to the negotiations stemmed from the ignorance of the conquered territories given that only the borders had been surveyed. This first wave of boundary creation ended in 1903.