In this seminal study, Bonny Ibhawoh investigates the links between European imperialism and human rights discourses in African history. Using British-colonized Nigeria as a case study, he examines how diverse interest groups within colonial society deployed the language of rights and liberties to serve varied socioeconomic and political ends. Ibhawoh challenges the linear progressivism that dominates human rights scholarship by arguing that, in the colonial African context, rights discourses were not simple monolithic or progressive narratives. They served both to insulate and legitimize...

Imperial Justice explores the imperial control of judicial governance and the adjudication of colonial difference in British Africa. Focusing on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the colonial regional Appeal Courts for West Africa and East Africa, it examines how judicial discourses of native difference and imperial universalism in local disputes influenced practices of power in colonial settings and shaped an evolving jurisprudence of Empire.
Arguing that the Imperial Appeal Courts were key sites where colonial legal modernity was fashioned, the book examines the tensions...

This book offers a thematic study of key debates in the history of the ethnic politics, democratic governance, and minority rights in Nigeria.

An interpretative history of human rights in Africa, exploring indigenous rights traditions, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, post-colonial violations and pro-democracy movements.

An interpretative history of human rights in Africa, exploring indigenous rights traditions, anti-slavery, anti-colonialism, post-colonial violations and pro-democracy movements.