A recent
Bombastic Element's post reveals the aspirations of an emerging
elite in Victorian
Lagos. It also lays bare the dysfunctional foundation on which the society itself was being built:
They wanted good education for their children to be "refined," and so they frequently sent them to England. These children had to be in the smart circles of Lagos, so thay went into the right professions--law, medicine and the Arts. Educated Lagosians wanted to associate themselves with the usual recreations of a sophisticated Europe, and so went to the Races, to Fancy Dress balls, to the Gymkhana games, and to cricket.
Victorian Britain had reached its heights of power and influence by building,warring,trade and manufacturing,the refinement came later. The "right"professions might have been so for a rich empire at the apogee of its influence but not for an assemblage of peoples who had barely framed their national identity. Contrast this with
Japanese experience of roughly the same time. Their
Meiji restoration, the antithesis of refined African elites behavior transformed Japan into an industrialized nation in about two generations.Most of Africa still awaits its version of "enlightened"-Meiji type- rule
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