Illuminated Address to Frederick Dealtry Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger

Illuminated Address from Birmingham dignitaries to Captain F.J.D. Lugard, late officiating Resident in Uganda, on his return from representing the British East Africa Company there. Dated 2 December 1892. A typescript transcript of the Address is also included.

Frederick John Dealtry Lugard (1858-1945), soldier, administrator and author was born in Madras, India but raised at Worcester and educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Entering the Army, he received his commission in 1878 in the 9th Foot (the Norfolk Regiment), joining the second batallion in India. In 1884 he secured secondment to the Military Transport Service, which was dispatched the following year to support the campaign for the relief of Khartoum in the Sudan. For this and his service in Burma in 1886 he was awarded the DSO.

In c1888, after being placed on medical leave and after a couple of abortive attempts to join the Italian forces in Abyssinia, he signed up with a small force which the African Lakes Company was preparing for the defence of a trading station at Karongwa, Nyasaland. His work in securing the station attracted the attention of Sir William Mackinnon, who gave him the task of opening up a new route from Mombasa (Kenya) to the interior by way of the Sabaki River. He completed this as far as Machakos (near Nairobi), when he received orders to proceed to Uganda, where, over a period of two years, he established order and a favourable state of affairs for the company in Buganda and the Bunyoro, Toro and Ankoli chiefdoms. He was also instrumental in persuading the British government to adopt Uganda as a protectorate in 1894.

In 1894, he was given the task of obtaining a treaty for the Royal Niger Company with Borgu on the western border of Nigeria. He then accepted an offer from the British West Charterland Company to explore a mineral concession near Lake Ngami in Bechuanaland. In 1897 he was recalled to West Africa as Her Majesty's Commissioner for the Hinterland of Nigeria, where he was also responsible for raising the West African Frontier Force. After the declaration of a protectorate over Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1900, he assumed office as High Commissioner of Northern Nigeria. He was appointed KCMG in 1901 and held the temporary rank of Brigadier-General from 1900 to 1907.

In 1907 he became Governor of Hong Kong, where he was largely responsible for the creation of the University of Hong Kong in 1911. He was appointed GCMG in the same year. In 1912 he returned to Nigeria as Governor of the two protectorates, and was made Governor-General 1914-1919. During this period, he laid down in the form of political memoranda the system of indirect rule which is associated with his name.

After his retirement, he spent a period in Ethiopia on behalf of the Abyssinian Corporation . He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1920, then devoted himself to the preparation of The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh and London, W. Blackwood & Sons, 1922). From 1922 to 1936 he was a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. He was a member of the international slavery committees of 1924-1925 and 1932, served on the Colonial Advisory Committee on Education, 1923-1936 and from 1926 onwards was chairman of the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures. In 1930 and 1931 he was an active member of the parliamentary joint select committee on closer union in East Africa.

He was commander of the Legion of Honour, 1917 and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold II of Belgium, 1936. He received honorary degrees of the Universities of Oxford, Durham, Cambridge, Glasgow and Hong Kong. He was also a gold medallist of the Royal Geographical Society, Royal African Society and Royal Empire Society, and a silver medallist of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. In 1902 he married Flora Louise Shaw.

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