It is widely known that not only Lord Lugard who had not hesitate to say about quasi “heaven-born” superiority of the Northern Nigeria, but also many British administrators had acknowledged their preference for the northern Nigeria than southern Nigeria. It is discussed in this paper what the origin of this “British administrators' preference for the north (Nothern Nigeria)” is.
Before the year of 1830 when the River Niger's mouth was discovered, the main British people who were active on the coast of the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Biafra were slave traders and explorers. Slave traders overwhelmed explorers in number, but as far as information is concern which they had brought in to the Britain, their cotribution was nominal. In contrast to this, explorers had brought many kinds of and large quantities of information about both of the South (coastal area) and the North (inland area). They wrote many reports and books, in which they depicted the northern area as highly organized Mahomedan countries where people were modest.
About ten years after the discovery, many kinds of peoples began to come to both coastal and inland areas. Among those groups, the most important groups were non-slave traders, missionaries, and administrators. All these new-comers arrived to Nigeria with the information and knowledge which was available in Britain. That is; continual political coflicts in the south, and well organized Mahomedan Emirates in the north; wild “pagan” people in the south, and polite and honest islamic people in the north; highly humid weather in the south, and dry and relatively comfortable weather in the north.
But as missionaries in the north had experienced failure of missionary work because of strong resistance by islamic people and they had succeeded in the south, they began to change their image of Nigerian people. Contrary to this, administrators whose main interest was to find the means to secure their country's economic and political interest over the new territory, felt no need to change their image of Nigeria. For them well organized society in the north seemed to be favorable for their future rule. And this is one of the most important reasons why British administrators in the north concentrated their attention upon establishment of administrative and taxation systems in the first stage of British administration, and the British administrators in the south did not.

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本稿は, 19世紀末のゴールド・コーストにおけるアフリカ人植民地政府官吏の実態を概観し, 世紀転換期におけるいかなる状況の変化が, 彼らの植民地政府に対する認識の変化を生じさせたのかを考察する。
19世紀末までの西アフリカ海岸地域は, 病気, 資金, 現地についての知識不足などの厳しい制約のために, ヨーロッパ人が本格的にアフリカヘ侵入できる状況になかった。その為, 植民地政府は西洋教育を受けた一部のアフリカ人を官吏として採用し, 彼らの重要性を認識していた。そして, その「植民地」の運営にアフリカンエリートも進んで参加しようとした。
しかしながら, 世紀転換期を迎える頃になると, 植民地政府官吏を輩出してきたアフリカンエリートの中から, 植民地政府がアフリカ人に向けて突き付けた様々な植民地政策に対して, 活発に改善要求を行う者が現われるようになった。そして, そうした一連の「アフリカ人」の権利回復運動が, 結果として, 20世紀アフリカ史の重要テーマであるパン・アフリカニズムや反植民地思想の形成の根幹となる,「部族」を超えた連帯意識を生み出す原動力となっていく。こうしたアフリカンエリートの植民地政府及びその背後に位置する大英帝国に対する認識の変化こそが, アフリカン・ナショナリズムのみならず, その後の「アフリカ人国家」建設にも少なからぬ影響を与えていったと考えられる。

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