1851, 1861: (The British Bombardment of Lagos 1851 and Annexation 1861 — a Persistent Slave-Exporting City-State on the Yoruba Coast Where Gunboats Created F…

1851, 1861: (The British Bombardment of Lagos 1851 and Annexation 1861 — a Persistent Slave-Exporting City-State on the Yoruba Coast Where Gunboats Created Favorable Commercial Conditions but Also an Unwelcome Extension of Formal Political Control): The Ijebu, located close to the coast north of Lagos, were transit handlers of firearms bound for the north and heavily involved in the illegal slave trade, exporting the hapless victims of Yoruba violence. It was this which prompted the British to bombard Lagos, a persistent slave-exporting city-state on the Yoruba coast, in 1851 and eventually annex it in 1861. The increase in scale of European economic interest in Atlantic Africa led to growing levels of political and military intervention — gunboats might create favorable commercial conditions, the British discovered, but it also meant a usually unwelcome extension of formal political control. Thus the struggle to suppress the slave trade along certain stretches of the Atlantic coast, and to spread the gospel of legitimate production, clearly led to increased European involvement in African politics across the region, laying the foundations for later outright partition.