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King Frederick William Koko, Mingi VIII of Nembe (1853–1898), known as King Koko and King William Koko, was an African ruler of the Nembe Kingdom (also known as Nembe-Brass) in the Niger Delta, now part of southern Nigeria. A Christian when chosen as king of Nembe in 1889, Koko's attack on a Royal Niger Company trading post in January 1895 led to reprisals by the British in which his capital was sacked. Following a report on the Nembe uprising by Sir John Kirk which was published in March 1896, Koko was offered a settlement of his grievances but found the terms unacceptable, so was deposed by the British. He died in exile in 1898. ==Life== An Ijaw, Koko was a convert to Christianity who later returned to the local traditional religion.〔G. O. M. Tasie, ''Christian missionary enterprise in the Niger Delta 1864-1918'' (1978), p. 61〕 Before becoming king (''amanyanabo''),〔 he had served as a Christian schoolteacher, and in 1889 this helped him in his rise to power. The leading chiefs of Nembe, including Spiff, Samuel Sambo, and Cameroon, were all Christians, and after having ordered the destruction of Juju houses a large part of their reason for choosing Koko as king in succession to King Ockiya was that he was a fellow-Christian.〔 However, there was at the same time a coparcenary king, the elderly Ebifa, who ruled at Bassambiri and was Commander-in-Chief until his death in 1894.〔Livingston Borobuebi Dambo, ''Nembe: the divided kingdom'' (Paragraphics, 2006), pp. 142, 204, 368: "All these are classical examples of the rotation of power between the two kings in Nembe signifying the coparcenery of Nembe. Even at old age King Ebifa did not relinquish his authority as the Commander-in-Chief to King Koko."〕 With the settlement of European traders on the coast, Nembe had engaged in trade with them, but it was poorer than its neighbours Bonny and Calabar.〔G. I. Jones, ''The trading states of the oil rivers: a study of political development in Eastern Nigeria'' (James Currey Publishers, 2001, ISBN 0-85255-918-6), p. 85ff〕 Since 1884, Nembe had found itself included in the area declared by the British as the Oil Rivers Protectorate, within which they claimed control of military defence and external affairs. Nembe was the centre of an important trade in palm oil, and it had refused to sign a treaty proposed by the British, opposing the Royal Niger Company's aim of bringing all trade along the kingdom's rivers into its own hands.〔Mogens Herman Hansen, ''A comparative study of thirty city-state cultures: an investigation'' (Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, 2000, ISBN=87-7876-177-8), p. 534〕 By the 1890s, there was intense resentment of the Company's treatment of the people of the Niger delta and of its aggressive actions to exclude its competitors and to monopolize trade, denying the men of Nembe the access to markets which they had long enjoyed.〔〔Augustine A. Ikein, Diepreye S. P. Alamieyeseigha, Steve S. Azaiki, ''Oil, Democracy, and the Promise of True Federalism in Nigeria'' (2008), p. 4〕 As king, Koko aimed to resist these pressures and tried to strengthen his hand by forming alliances with the states of Bonny and Okpoma. He renounced Christianity〔Dambo (2006), p. 589〕 and in January 1895, after the death of Ebifa, he threw caution to the winds and led more than a thousand men in a dawn raid on the Royal Niger Company's headquarters at Akassa.〔Falola & Genova (2009), (p. 197 )〕 Arriving on 29 January with between forty and fifty canoes,〔Sir W. Geary, ''Nigeria under British Rule'' (1927), (p. 196 )〕 equipped with heavy guns, Koko captured the base with the loss of some forty lives, including twenty-four Company employees, destroyed warehouses and machinery, and took about sixty white men hostage, as well as carrying away a large quantity of booty, including money, trade goods, ammunition and a quick-firing gun.〔Toyin Falola, Ann Genova, ''Historical Dictionary of Nigeria'' (Scarecrow Press, 2009), (p. 67 )〕〔Sam C. Ukpabi, ''Mercantile soldiers in Nigerian history: a history of the Royal Niger Company army, 1886-1900'' (Gaskiya, 1987), pp. 150-152, including footnote 38〕 Koko then sought to negotiate with the Company for the release of the hostages, his price being a return to free trading conditions,〔(Alfred Vingoe 1869-1954 A Full and Varied Life ) at tripod.com, accessed 25 September 2012〕 and on 2 February he wrote to Sir Claude MacDonald, the British consul-general, that he had no quarrel with the Queen but only with the Niger Company. MacDonald noted of what Koko said of the Company that it was "complaints it had been my unpleasant duty to listen to for the last three and a half years without being able to gain for them any redress".〔 Despite this, the British refused Koko's demands, and more than forty of the hostages were then ceremoniously eaten.〔〔Toyin Falola, Matthew M. Heaton, ''A History of Nigeria'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008) (p. 102 )〕 On 20 February the Royal Navy counter-attacked. Koko's city of Nembe was razed and some three hundred of his people were killed.〔 Many more of his people died from a severe outbreak of smallpox.〔 Rear Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford, who had led the British forces against Koko, sent the following telegram to the Admiralty from Brass on 23 February:〔'The Fighting on the Niger', from ''The Times'' of London, issue 34510 dated Tuesday, February 26, 1895, p. 5〕 Bedford sent a further despatch from Brass on 25 February:〔 On 23 March Sir Claude MacDonald arrived at Brass in his yacht ''Evangeline'' towing sixteen of Koko's war canoes which had been surrendered, but the king himself had not been captured.〔'West Coast of Africa' in ''The Times'' of London, issue 34553 dated Wednesday, April 17, 1895, p. 3〕 Towards the end of April 1895, the area returned to business as usual, with MacDonald fining the men of Brass £500, an amount which sympathetic traders on the river volunteered to pay. Koko assured the British that his part in the rising had been exaggerated, and returned several cannon and a machine-gun looted from Akassa. There was then an exchange of prisoners.〔'The Brass Rising' in ''The Times'' of London, Issue 34561 dated Friday, April 26, 1895, p. 5〕 Public opinion in Britain came down against the Royal Niger Company and its director George Goldie, who was seen as having goaded Koko into hostilities.〔 The Colonial Office commissioned the explorer and anti-slavery campaigner Sir John Kirk to write a report on the events at Akassa and Brass,〔Sir John Kirk, ''Report by Sir John Kirk on the Disturbances at Brass: C. 7977'' (Great Britain: Colonial Office, 1896, 26 pages)〕 and in August Koko came to Brass to meet MacDonald, who was about to sail for England, but quickly took to the bush again. On MacDonald's arrival at Liverpool he told reporters that the people of Nembe-Brass were waiting for the outcome of Kirk's report.〔'Sir Claude M. MacDonald on West Africa' in ''The Times'' of London, issue 34662 dated Thursday, August 22, 1895, p. 3〕 Sir John Kirk's Report was presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty the Queen in March 1896.〔Andrew Herman Apter, ''The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria'' (2005), p. 298〕 One key finding was that forty-three of Koko's prisoners had been murdered and eaten.〔Geary (1927), p. 195〕 In April 1896 Koko refused the terms of a settlement offered to him by the British and was declared an outlaw. Reuters reported that the Niger stations were strongly defended in preparation for a possible new attack.〔'West Africa', ''The Times'' of London, issue 34869 dated Monday, April 20, 1896, p. 5〕 However, no attack came. A reward of £200 was unsuccessfully offered for Koko,〔 who was forced to flee from the British, hiding in remote villages.〔J. F. Ade Ajayi, ''Africa in the Nineteenth Century Until the 1880s'', vol. 6 (Unesco International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa, 1989), p. 734〕 On 11 June 1896, in reply to a question by Sir Charles Dilke in the House of Commons, George Nathaniel Curzon, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, said Koko fled to Etiema, a remote village in the hinterland, where he died in 1898 in a suspected suicide. The next year, the charter of the Royal Niger Company was revoked, an act seen as partly a consequence of the short war with Koko,〔Mark R. Lipschutz, R. Kent Rasmussen, ''Dictionary of African historical biography'' (1989), (p. 112 )〕 and with effect from 1 January 1900 the Company sold all its possessions and concessions in Africa to the British government for £865,000, considered to be a very low price.〔Paul Samuel Reinsch, ''Colonial government: an introduction to the study of colonial institutions'' (Macmillan Company, 1916) p. 157〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Frederick William Koko Mingi VIII of Nembe」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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