To Develop the Colonial Estate: The Reasons for British West African Railways

This Dissertation is a history of reasons and motivations behind building the first
railways in British West Africa. It analysis Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Lagos and
Northern Nigeria from the early 1890s to 1906. This is a history not only of the railways
but of British imperialism, and helps illustrate its economic nature. This work uses a
variety of sources such as government papers, speeches, newspapers, books and journals
written around the time of lobbying, planning and construction of these first railways. One
of the goals of this paper is to shed more light on a region of the British Empire that has not
been dealt with in great quantity and to do so with the intention to further both railway and
British imperial history. This dissertation also highlights the different nature of the
railways built in British Africa and the importance of studying all of them in order to have
the best possible understanding of railway imperialism.