Frederick John Dealtry Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard (22 January 1858 – 11 April 1945), known as Sir Frederick Lugard between 1901 and 1928, was a British soldier, mercenary, explorer of Africa and a colonial administrator. He was Governor of Hong Kong (1907–1912), the last Governor of Southern Nigeria Protectorate (1912–1914), the first High Commissioner (1900–1906) and last Governor (1912–1914) of Northern Nigeria Protectorate and the first Governor-General of Nigeria (1914–1919).
Early life and education
Lugard was born in Madras (now Chennai) in India, but was brought up in Worcester, England. He was the son of the Reverend Frederick Grueber Lugard, a British Army chaplain at Madras, and his third wife Mary Howard (1819–1865), the youngest daughter of Reverend John Garton Howard (1786–1862), a younger son of landed gentry from Thorne and Melbourne near York. His paternal uncle was Sir Edward Lugard, Adjutant-General in India from 1857 to 1858 and Permanent Under-Secretary of State for War at the War Office from 1861 to 1871. Lugard was educated at Rossall School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. The name 'Dealtry' was in honour of Thomas Dealtry, a friend of his father.
Military career
Lugard was commissioned into the 9th Foot (East Norfolk Regiment) in 1878 and joined the second battalion in India; he served in the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878–1880), the Sudan campaign (1884–1885) and the Third Anglo-Burmese War (November 1885) and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1887. After this promising start, his career was derailed when he fell in love with a twice married British divorcee he met in India; learning she had been injured in an accident, he abandoned his post in Burma to join her in Lucknow, then followed her to England. When she rejected him, Lugard decided to make a fresh start in Africa.
Karonga War
Around 1880, a group of Swahili traders under Mlozi bin Kazbadema established trading bases in the north-west sector of Lake Malawi, including a stockade at Chilumba on the lake from where ivory and slaves could be shipped across the lake. In 1883 the African Lakes Company set up a base in Karonga to exchange ivory for trade goods from these Swahili merchants.
Relations between the two groups deteriorated, partly because of the company's delays or unwillingness to provide guns, ammunition and other trade goods, and also because the Swahili traders turned more to slaving, attacking communities that the company had promised to protect, and hostilities broke out in mid-1887. The series of intermittent armed clashes that took place up to mid-1889 is known as the Karonga War, or sometimes the Arab War.
The African Lakes Company depot at Karonga was evacuated at the end of the year but in May 1888, Captain Lugard, persuaded by the British Consul at Mozambique, arrived to lead an expedition against Mlozi, sponsored by the African Lakes Company but without official support from the British government.
Lugard's first expedition of May to June 1888 attacked the Swahili stockades with limited success and, in the course of one attack, Lugard was wounded and withdrew south. Lugard's second expedition in December 1888 to March 1889 was larger and included a 7-pounder gun, which, however, failed to breach the stockade walls. Following this second failure, Lugard left the Lake Malawi region for Britain in April 1889.
Exploration of East Africa
After leaving Nyasaland in April 1889, Lugard accepted a position with the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) and arrived in Mombasa on the coast of east Africa that December. A year earlier in 1888, the IBEAC had been granted a royal charter by Queen Victoria to colonise the 'British sphere of influence' between Zanzibar and Uganda and were keen to open a trading route between Lake Victoria in Uganda and the coastal port of Mombasa. Their first interior trading post was established at Machakos 240 miles in from the coast. But the established traditional route to Machakos was a treacherous journey through the large Taru Desert —93 miles of scorching dust bowl.
Lugard's first mission was to determine the feasibility of a route from Mombasa to Machakos that would bypass the Taru Desert. He explored the Sabaki River and the neighbouring region, in addition to elaborating a scheme for the emancipation of the slaves held by Arabs in the Zanzibar mainland.
On 6 August 1890, Lugard began his caravan expedition to Uganda, accompanied by five other Europeans - George Wilson, Fenwick De Winton (son of Francis de Winton - Lugard's other chief), William Grant and Archibald Brown.
