Nation on Board. Lynn Schler
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others had pictures of their foreign girlfriends and children on the walls of their homes. But mostly, visits to seamen’s homes in the low-income neighborhoods of Lagos provided physical evidence of the dire fate of the working class within the history of the NNSL. The interviews I conducted with seamen were open-ended, but they covered a range of topics including seamen’s recruitment and training, life on board ships in both the colonial and the postcolonial eras, time spent at international ports of call, their involvement with independent trade, relations with their families abroad and back in Nigeria, the seamen’s union and labor protests, and seamen’s perspective on the circumstances leading to the demise of the NNSL. Often, seamen’s wives were present at the interviews, and I was able to use this opportunity to interview the women as well. Seamen’s wives told very different stories than those of their husbands, as they had to struggle with many months and years of maintaining the household and caring for their children in their husbands’ absence. Women provided an essential perspective on the financial significance of men’s independent trading enterprises, and they also provided fascinating insights into the romantic relationships their husbands maintained abroad.
As the interview process progressed, and more and more seamen voiced criticisms of Nigerian officers and management, I soon realized that in order to gain a fuller perspective of life on board NNSL ships, it was imperative to interview former captains, engineers, and managers. Interviews with captains and engineers offered a very different perspective from those of seamen. These NNSL officers received far more extensive training than rank-and-file seamen, which included several years of academic study in Britain, and thousands of hours of practical training logged on foreign vessels. They therefore possessed a wealth of knowledge, and the ability to draw comparisons, about the technical and economic aspects of running ships and cargo in the international shipping industry, and the functioning of the NNSL within it. Captains and officers had their own criticisms of both rank-and-file seamen and management, and their perspectives were an important complement to seamen’s testimonies. As opposed to the officers, it was fairly difficult to locate former managers of the NNSL who were willing to provide an interview. Many who had occupied positions of influence and power in the former company were not willing to meet with me, probably in light of the rampant misappropriation and corruption that led to the NNSL’s failure. But a few key informants from both middle and upper management of the NNSL did provide important information on the general running of the company, financial issues, and the links between the volatile political history of postcolonial Nigeria and its impact on the National Shipping Line. Finally, one former government official who oversaw the process of liquidation also provided a key interview regarding the final years of the NNSL.
This research would not have been possible without these interviews, as no official or complete archive of the NNSL exists. Even in the presence of the available sources, interviews provided me with invaluable insights that brought to life, enriched, and contradicted the written material found in archives. But as historians of Africa are well aware, the use of oral histories can raise its own set of concerns, including issues of remembering and forgetting, and questions of accuracy, authenticity, and bias. I attempted to overcome many of these problems by conducting over seventy interviews with a range of informants, thus enabling me to find common threads and themes that emerged again and again from the interviews. Yet, throughout the research, and particularly in this effort to overcome biases and partialities in oral testimonies, I remained keenly aware that many of my informants did not necessarily share my agenda. While my primary concern was to produce a book that accurately portrayed their experiences, I realized that those who provided interviews did so with the earnest hope that telling their stories would make a difference. For rank-and-file seamen, officers, and managers, the intersections between their lives and the history of the NNSL were not simply a matter of historic interest, but an unfinished business that still evoked varying claims. This issue was all the more complicated by the fact that there were stark contrasts between the agendas of each class of informants. Officers and managers offered systematic analyses of the political economy of shipping in Nigeria, and how the wrongdoings of the past could be overcome and corrected by reestablishing the national line. Working-class seamen, on the other hand, gave testimonies full of pride, anger, disillusionment, and a sense of betrayal around their experiences with the NNSL, and interviews often ended with a bitter lament of their extreme poverty and lack of prospects. Despite stark differences in the material and political agendas that characterized each class of informants, none told their stories to merely enrich the historical record. For all those interviewed, the story of the NNSL strongly resonated in the present, and there had to be utility and impact in its retelling. While conducting interviews, and later analyzing and interpreting the testimonies, I was confronted with the dissonance that existed between my primary concern for constructing an accurate account and my informants’ efforts to convey a story that addressed the injustices and disappointments they experienced. I hope that the narrative that has taken shape, and the lessons it can provide, resolves this issue by signifying something of use to those who shared their insights with me.
AN OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTERS
The first two chapters of the book trace the origins of Nigerian seafaring in the late colonial period and describe the work and lifestyles of seamen employed on colonial vessels. Chapter 1 provides background on African seafaring in the modern age, and the processes that led to the recruitment of Nigerians en masse. This chapter describes work on board the ships, and the types of jobs seamen were engaged in, training provided, relations with European crews, incidents of racism and discrimination, and the background of union organizing among Nigerian seamen and labor relations between seamen and management of the colonial shipping lines. Chapter 2 examines the cosmopolitanism that characterized the economic, social, and cultural lives of seamen offshore. This chapter describes the trade conducted by seamen in secondhand goods such as electronics, small and large appliances, foodstuffs, clothing, and even in scrap metals and used cars. The chapter also looks at the social lives of seamen abroad, and examines particularly the romantic relationships seamen established with European, Asian, and Latin American women in the course of their travels. This review of the centrality of cosmopolitanism in seamen’s consciousness and experiences provides essential context for understanding the eventual impact of nationalism and nationalization on seamen’s working lives.
Chapters 3 and 4 evaluate the seamen’s organizing efforts and relationship with the Nigerian Union of Seamen, and the impact the rise of nationalism had on this organizing. Chapter 3 focuses on the history of labor organizing and the Nigerian seamen’s union in the shadow of decolonization. The chapter examines cooperative efforts between Nigerian seamen and diaspora communities, and highlights the ideological and political support the seamen obtained from these transnational alliances in organizing protests and strikes. This chapter describes how the process of decolonization ultimately limited the potential for cooperative efforts between Nigerian seamen and diaspora working classes. The role played by union leadership in Lagos in bringing about this shift is scrutinized. Chapter 4 examines the establishment of the Nigerian National Shipping Line, reviewing the economic and political motives for its establishment, the terms by which the enterprise was launched, and the relationship between the NNSL, British shipping lines, and international shipping conferences. A close investigation into the negotiations that took place between Nigerian and British officials reveals the ways in which elite interests prevailed in the history of decolonization. The chapter reviews the intense critique this business relationship between the NNSL and Elder Dempster received from the broader public, who questioned the autonomy of the Nigerian shipping line under the arrangement.
Chapters 5 and 6 trace the history of the Nigerian National Shipping Line and the fate of the seamen employed by it. Chapter 5 examines the process of “Nigerianization”