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Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial
Studies Series

Series Editors
Richard Drayton
Department of History
King’s College London
London, United Kingdom

Saul Dubow
Magdalene College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom
The Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies series is a collection of
studies on empires in world history and on the societies and cultures which
emerged from colonialism. It includes both transnational, comparative
and connective studies, and studies which address where particular regions
or nations participate in global phenomena. While in the past the series
focused on the British Empire and Commonwealth, in its current incarna-
tion there is no imperial system, period of human history or part of the
world which lies outside of its compass. While we particularly welcome the
first monographs of young researchers, we also seek major studies by more
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focus. The series includes work on politics, economics, culture, literature,
science, art, medicine, and war. Our aim is to collect the most exciting new
scholarship on world history with an imperial theme.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/13937
 Tim Livsey

Nigeria’s University
Age
Reframing Decolonisation and Development
Tim Livsey
Faculty of History
University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom

Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series

ISBN 978-1-137-56504-4 ISBN 978-1-137-56505-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56505-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937326

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
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the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.

Cover illustration: University College Ibadan, probably in the late 1950s. On the left is
Mellanby Hall, a hall of residence named after the university’s founding principal. In the
background is the Roman Catholic chapel, one of three places of worship at the university.
Both buildings were designed by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew.
Source: Cambridge University Library, Special Collections, RCS/Y3011KKK.

Printed on acid-free paper

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 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Historical research is invariably a collective enterprise. It is a pleasure to

acknowledge the people and institutions that have made this work possible.
This book is a substantially revised and expanded version of my doctoral
thesis. I am indebted to my supervisors, Hilary Sapire and Frank
Trentmann, for their encouragement and generosity. I am grateful to
the Department of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Birkbeck
College, University of London, for supporting the project, and to the
Arts and Humanities Research Council, which funded my doctoral
research studentship (AH/I015787/1). John Darwin and the late
J.D.Y. Peel examined the thesis and offered guidance and encouragement
with the project. It is a particular sadness not be able to repay Professor
Peel’s enthusiasm for the research with a copy of the finished book.
The project would have been impossible without the kindness of the staff
and students of the University of Ibadan, who welcomed me to their uni-
versity and took a supportive interest in the research. I am particularly
indebted to Professor Olutayo Adesina for his generous assistance. Dr.
Rasheed Olaniyi, Dr. Paul Ugboajah, and the late Professor Kunle Lawal
offered invaluable help, while Mr. Tabosun Afolabi of the Deputy Vice-
Chancellor’s Office and the staff of the Office of International Programmes
patiently assisted with administrative arrangements. I would like to extend
warm thanks to the staff and students of Balewa Hall, for making it such a
welcoming and convivial base during my visits. Dr. Adegbola Dauda of the
University of Ibadan Alumni Association helped to arrange interviews, and
Mrs. Alhaja Hassan and Mr. Sina Osunlana of the Kenneth Dike Library, and
Mr. Abraham Olayemi of the National Archive, Ibadan, kindly provided

v
vi PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

access to the collections in their care. Many thanks to Professor Bunmi

Alegbeleye for allowing me access to the University Archives and Records
Services Project collections while they are in the process of being re-catalo-
gued, and to the vice-chancellor, Professor Abel Idowu Olayinka, for grant-
ing permission to use images from the University Herald.
Also in Nigeria, Xavier Moyet of the Institut Français de Recherche en
Afrique kindly hosted me during my latest visit to Ibadan, and Professor
Olufunke Adeboye, Mr. Felix Dare, and Dr. Paul Osifodurin generously
offered assistance at the University of Lagos.
Postdoctoral research in the United States was made possible thanks to a
grant from the US-UK Fulbright Commission, supported by Mark
Mazower and the History Department of Columbia University. The
book was written while I was teaching at King’s College London, where
I appreciated the comradeship of Richard Drayton, Toby Green, Vincent
Hiribarren, and Sarah Stockwell. King’s College London also generously
funded further archival research in Nigeria and Britain. I checked the
proofs while teaching at Leeds Beckett University, and I am thankful to
Robert Burroughs, Henry Irving, and Simon Morgan for their help.
The research has been informed by questions and comments at many
workshops, conferences, and seminars. Thanks to organisers and conve-
nors at the following institutions: Birkbeck College, Columbia University,
the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, the Institute of Historical
Research, the London School of Economics, Humboldt University,
University of Cambridge, University of Cape Town, University of
Exeter, University of Ibadan, University of Lisbon, University of
Liverpool, University of Oslo, University of Palermo, and the University
of Rome Tor Vergata. Thanks also to librarians and archivists on three
continents.
In addition, I have been grateful for the help and guidance of colleagues
and friends. Thanks to ’Funmi Adewole, Oliver Coates, Samuel Daly,
Toyin Falola, Jonathan Hunt, Joanna Lewis, Jimoh Oluwasegun,
Michael Omolewa, Steve Page, Susanne Ress, Hakeem Tijani, and Ruth
Watson. Dimitri Vastardis read the entire manuscript. I am very grateful to
those who agreed to be interviewed for the project, and to Ashley
Crowson, who produced the map. Molly Beck and Oliver Dyer at
Palgrave Macmillan and Jayanthi Senthil at Springer Nature did an excel-
lent job of shepherding the book to publication. Special thanks to Ruth,
who has tolerated, encouraged, and sometimes even shared my fascination
with Nigeria.
 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

The publication of photographs was supported by a grant from the

Isobel Thornley Trust. The Cambridge University Library, the School of
Oriental and African Studies Archives and Special Collections, and the
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution also kindly
reduced or waived fees associated with the reproduction of images. An
early version of Chapter 2 was published as ‘Imagining an imperial mod-
ernity: universities and the West African roots of colonial development’ in
the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 44:6 (2016),
952–975. This material is used with the permission of Taylor and
Francis. Chapter 4 is a revised version of my article ‘“Suitable lodgings
for students”: modern space, colonial development and decolonisation in
Nigeria’, which appeared in Urban History 41:4 (2014), 664–685, and
has been used with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
Finally, a few words about my position. This book has been made possible
by the people acknowledged here, but responsibility for the text is ultimately
mine. This book is the work of a British writer. I have endeavoured to engage
with a range of sources and perspectives on the events the book documents.
Nevertheless, I grew up mostly in Britain, much of the research for this book
has been carried out in London, and my education was made possible
through the opportunities afforded me by the British state. These opportu-
nities are scarcer for most Nigerian colleagues. This book is, therefore, the
product of the enduring inequalities between global regions that it describes,
and readers should approach it mindful of the histories involved in its
production. I would like to dedicate it to the staff and students of Nigerian
universities: past, present, and future.
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction: Nigeria’s University Age 1

2 An Imperial Frame: Universities and the West African Roots

of Colonial Development 19

3 Paradoxes of Decolonisation: University College Ibadan

and the Late Colonial State 41

4 Making Modern Space: Architecture and Decolonisation

at University College Ibadan 65

5 An Incomplete Elite: Student Culture, Everyday Life,

and Decolonisation at Ibadan 89

6 Multilateral Negotiations: Nigerian Universities,

the United States, and the Cold War 119

7 Breakdown: University Development and the Nigerian

Crises 145

ix
x CONTENTS

8 Conclusion 173

Notes 183

Bibliography 235

Index 273
 ABBREVIATIONS

ACEC Advisory Committee for Education in the Colonies

AG Action Group
AID Agency for International Development
CCNY Carnegie Corporation of New York
CDW Colonial Development and Welfare
CMS Church Missionary Society
CURBML Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library
DULSC Durham University Library Special Collections
FF Ford Foundation
GL Research and Bibliographic Department (Ghandi Library),
University of Lagos Library
IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
ICA International Cooperation Administration
JICH Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
JLI Jadeas Library, Ibadan
KDL Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan, Africana Collection
MBE Member of the Order of the British Empire
MSU Michigan State University
MSUAHC Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections
NACP National Archives at College Park, Maryland
NAI Nigerian National Archive, Ibadan
NCAST Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology
NCNC National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons, later National
Council for Nigerian Citizens
NNDP Nigerian National Democratic Party
NPC Northern People’s Congress
OBE Officer of the Order of the British Empire

xi
xii ABBREVIATIONS

RAC Rockefeller Archives Center

RF Rockefeller Foundation
RHL Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House,
Oxford
SHLSC Senate House Library Special Collections, University of London
SND Southern Nigeria Defender
SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
TNA The National Archive, London
UARSP University Archive and Record Services Project, University of
Ibadan
UCI University College Ibadan
UDP University Development Program
UH University Herald
UI University of Ibadan
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
WAP West African Pilot
WASU West African Students’ Union
 LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1.1 Map of Nigeria in the mid-1950s 6

Fig. 2.1 Yaba staff and students, around 1938 26
Fig. 3.1 Kenneth Mellanby, Arthur Creech Jones, and Sir William
Hamilton Fyfe 44
Fig. 3.2 Beatrice Joly leads an academic procession, 1951 45
Fig. 4.1 University College Ibadan hall of residence, early 1950s 66
Fig. 4.2 View of Ibadan in the later 1950s 69
Fig. 4.3 Jane Drew, Kenneth Mellanby, and Maxwell Fry, 1948 73
Fig. 4.4 University College Ibadan library, later named the Kenneth
Dike Library 75
Fig. 5.1 Students wearing blazers, 1951 90
Fig. 5.2 Undergraduate woman, 1952 94
Fig. 5.3 Students in ‘regular lecture room wear’, 1952 96
Fig. 5.4 Ibadan student cricketers, 1948 99
Fig. 5.5 Gowned students, late 1950s 101
Fig. 5.6 Igbo dancers at Foundation Day celebrations, 1952 109
Fig. 7.1 University of Ife agriculture faculty building, probably in the
late 1960s 156

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Nigeria’s University Age

In January 1948 a new era was inaugurated in Nigeria, the largest,

most populous colony of the British empire. Its first university opened
in the city of Ibadan, near Lagos in the southwest of the country. ‘We
see the University College as a centre where different young men and
women from North, East and West will meet, live together as brethren
and learn to understand and tolerate one another’, declared an editor-
ial in the student-run University Herald. ‘The University College is
bound to be the centre from which the threads of unity in Nigeria will
be woven’.1
Despite this high-minded confidence, the university in some ways had
an inauspicious beginning. It was housed in the dilapidated huts of an old
military hospital, and the opening ceremony took place in an assembly hall
hastily converted from a former ward building. Only a mid-ranking colo-
nial official, the chief commissioner of the Western Region, attended the
festivities.2 ‘Rising amidst cheers Mr Abrahall expressed his pleasure for
attending the official opening of the University in one of the largest
African cities’, reported the Southern Nigeria Defender.3 There were,
however, complaints that local dignitaries had not been invited. ‘Where
then do our chiefs stand in the eyes and estimation of officialdom’, asked
one editorial.4 ‘We are co-operative with the new venture’, announced the
nationalist daily the West African Pilot, but it cautioned that ‘we are duty
bound to warn our youth aspiring after higher education to embark on
nothing that would eventually turn out to be a Yaba Higher College’,

© The Author(s) 2017 1

T. Livsey, Nigeria’s University Age, Cambridge Imperial
and Post-Colonial Studies Series, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56505-1_1
2 1 INTRODUCTION: NIGERIA’S UNIVERSITY AGE

a reference to the university’s unpopular predecessor institution.5

Nevertheless, over time journalists came to believe that an important
milestone had been passed. A year after the opening, a Southern Nigeria
Defender editorial observed that ‘Nigeria has reached the University age’.6
University College Ibadan was widely discussed, and loomed large in the
minds of students, nationalist politicians, colonial officials, and journalists.
Universities were crucial institutions in decolonising nations.
Nationalist leaders and colonial authorities saw expensive new universities
as a wise investment. They would educate new elites that would lead
economic, social, and political progress. Ibadan, and later Nigerian uni-
versities, were sites of development and decolonisation: two interrelated,
multilateral negotiations that reshaped the mid-twentieth-century world
with effects that ranged from the sphere of high politics to the minutiae of
everyday life. Unlike the many admirable institutional histories of Nigerian
universities, this book takes universities as sites to explore these wider,
transnational histories of development and decolonisation.7 It considers
universities’ administration, but also addresses the debates around their
foundation, cross-border connections, and built environments. The book
assesses student culture, universities’ role in the Cold War, and in post-
colonial politics, to analyse the place of these disparate phenomena in
broader histories of development and decolonisation. Universities are
important sites for this enquiry because of the striking transnational con-
sensus, from the 1940s to the early 1960s, that they were pivotal institu-
tions. This introduction considers, first, the deeper histories of education
in the region, and then outlines the book’s contribution to historiogra-
phies of development and decolonisation, its sources, and its structure.
University College Ibadan was an intervention in a much longer history of
West African engagements with education.

UNIVERSITY CONTEXTS
Africa was home to diverse forms of knowledge and education long
before European colonisation. Orally transmitted systems of knowledge
have long flourished without formal educational institutions; while
Muslim centres of learning at Cairo, Fez, Timbuktu, and Djenné have,
like the universities of medieval Europe, histories that span many cen-
turies.8 This study focuses on the history of African interactions with
forms of education that have roots in the western world.9 Africans have
accessed these educational institutions and forms of knowledge through
 UNIVERSITY CONTEXTS 3

a wide variety of encounters associated with exploration, the slave trade

and its abolition, missionary activity, colonial rule, diasporic networks,
and international development.10 They played crucial mediating roles in
the spread of western education. African repatriates, for example, for-
merly enslaved peoples who returned to the coast of what would become
Nigeria from Latin America and Sierra Leone, were vital intermediaries.
Sierra Leone was a particularly important bridgehead for western educa-
tion in West Africa. Founded in 1787 as a territory for formerly enslaved
people, Sierra Leone came under British jurisdiction from 1808.11
Repatriates travelling from Sierra Leone brought western education
and Christianity to much of the West African coast, often in advance of
European missionaries and direct colonial rule. Many influential repatri-
ates had studied at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, founded in 1827
as West Africa’s first western-style institution of higher education.12 The
British annexation of Lagos in 1861, and the spread of British jurisdic-
tion along the coast in the 1880s and inland in the 1890s and 1900s,
further increased the importance of western education to local people
who sought the social status associated with lucrative clerkships in the
employ of European governments, missions, or companies.13
The West African educated elite campaigned for improved educational
opportunities in southern Nigeria during the later nineteenth century. It
formed a small but prominent minority, which was often characterised by
Christianity as well as styles of education and culture that looked to the west.
They were vital protagonists in this story. African pioneers such as the West
Indian-born Liberian Edward Blyden called for the foundation of a West
African university, for example, and secured the award of British university
degrees at Fourah Bay College in 1876.14 Even when British attitudes
towards race hardened from around 1880, missionaries and colonial govern-
ments continued to educate a small number of African intermediaries who
were essential to their activities in the region, and a tiny but steady flow of
West Africans travelled abroad to study at European universities.15 This
contrasted with the predominantly Muslim, inland region of northern
Nigeria. Only conquered by the British after 1900, western influence there
was short-lived compared with the coastal south. In northern Nigeria, British
officials governed in alliance with local emirs and sultans, and placed tight
restrictions on Christian missionary activities, including schooling.16
In southern Nigeria, educated elites continued to agitate for improved
provision of western education, which was seen as central to personal and
social development. These campaigns were lent focus by the 1934
4 1 INTRODUCTION: NIGERIA’S UNIVERSITY AGE

foundation of the widely reviled Yaba Higher College in Lagos, which was
criticised for offering qualifications tenable only in Nigeria. Nigerian pro-
tests won some reforms at Yaba, and contributed to a broader British re-
evaluation of the place of higher education in colonial territories. The
British government’s ‘Elliot’ Commission on Higher Education in West
Africa toured the region in 1944, and encountered strong demand for a
Nigerian university. The Elliot report of 1945 failed to reach a clear
conclusion, but there was general agreement that higher education
would be important to West African development, and, as a result, the
new Nigerian university was opened at Ibadan in 1948.17
University College Ibadan was not unique, but part of a wider network of
new colonial universities founded by the British government. As well as
Ibadan, universities were opened in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), Uganda,
the West Indies, and Malaya (now Malaysia) in 1948 and 1949. These new
institutions awarded University of London degrees, were mostly staffed by
British lecturers, and their buildings were designed by British architects. The
new universities belonged to a distinctive post-war phase of British colonialism
distinguished by ‘development’, in which the empire was reframed as a force
for political, economic, and social progress that would prepare colonies for
eventual self-government. Universities were seen as an important part of this
new mission, bringing to colonies modern knowledge and skills, which would
drive their development and equip them for transfers of power. These doc-
trines of technocratic, state-led development were not confined to empires.
The post-war years saw the growing prominence of development ideas, and
the foundation of new universities, across the world. The university age noted
by the Southern Nigeria Defender was thus a global phenomenon that
extended beyond Nigeria and the declining British empire. In the mid-twen-
tieth century, universities were widely understood as central developmental
institutions in the west, as well as in the socialist and decolonising worlds.18
University College Ibadan’s founding principal was the British entomol-
ogist Kenneth Mellanby. His boundless energy and sometimes unconven-
tional methods could infuriate colleagues, but got the new institution
underway. In 1953, the university administrator J.T. Saunders, brought
from Cambridge with a brief to steady the ship, succeeded Mellanby. J.H.
Parry followed Saunders in 1957. Parry was a British historian who increased
student numbers and prepared Ibadan for the imminent transfer of power.
In the independence year of 1960, Kenneth Dike, an eminent historian and
University College Ibadan’s first Nigerian principal, took charge, and over-
saw Ibadan’s transition to becoming a full, degree-awarding university.
 DEVELOPMENT 5

As the transfer of power neared and new constitutions were introduced

in 1951 and 1954, Nigerian politicians took up senior posts within the
colonial government. They too saw universities as important to develop-
ment. In the Eastern Region, the leader of the National Council for
Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), Nnamdi Azikiwe, opened the
University of Nigeria, Nsukka to coincide with the transfer of power in
1960, having secured substantial American assistance. In 1962 three more
universities were founded in the newly independent nation. The leader of
the Action Group (AG), Obafemi Awolowo, founded the University of Ife
in the Western Region; Sir Ahmadu Bello, leader of the Northern People’s
Congress (NPC), inaugurated Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) in the
Northern Region; and in the capital, the federal government established
the University of Lagos (see Fig. 1.1). Nigeria had a significance in the
Cold War that has been little appreciated, but which helped prompt a
flood of American development advisors into new Nigerian universities. As
the 1960s wore on, universities became embroiled in mounting ethno-
political rivalries, and their capacity to generate meaningful development
was increasingly questioned as Nigeria slid towards civil war.19 The uni-
versity age started to draw to a close.
Today, Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa, and is on course
to become one of the most populous in the world by 2100. Despite
continuing challenges of governance and insurgency, Nigeria is home to
an expanding middle class that fascinates journalists and economists.20 In
recent years there has once again been cautious re-evaluation of African
universities’ potential contribution to development.21 This is an apposite
moment to reconsider Nigeria’s university age.

DEVELOPMENT
When the Southern Nigeria Defender reported the arrival of the university
age in 1949, it suggested that Nigeria had progressed to a new stage of
development. Development has been a crucial mobilising idea in modern
history, although its exact meaning has remained elusive both to those
engaged in bringing about development, and to scholars seeking to analyse
their activities. Visions of development, and the state of modernity to
which they aspired, have varied across time and space.
In this book, the history of Nigerian universities is explored using the
concept of ‘frames for development’. Modernity and development have
often been seen as concepts of universal relevance, but the debates around
 6
1 INTRODUCTION: NIGERIA’S UNIVERSITY AGE

Fig. 1.1 Map of Nigeria in the mid-1950s. Nigeria was formed by the amalgamation of the British-controlled territories
of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria in 1914. The Northern Provinces and the Southern Provinces were the two
main administrative units within the new state until 1939, when the Southern Provinces were divided to form the Western
Region and the Eastern Region. The North, West, and East formed a three-region system that remained in place until
1963. Note the university city of Ibadan. In the early 1960s universities were also founded in Lagos, Ife, Zaria, and
Nsukka. Map by Ashley Crowson.
 DEVELOPMENT 7

Nigerian universities suggest that many of those involved thought about

development in terms of spaces smaller than the globe: imagined,
bounded areas described here as frames for development. These frames
implied both the geographical units in which development was envisaged,
and the ideas and standards that would be involved. For example, in the
1930s and 1940s some Nigerians campaigned for a university that would
award British qualifications recognised throughout the empire, using an
imperial frame to imagine development. Others wanted a university that
would strongly emphasise indigenous skills and cultures, deploying
national or pan-African frames. Some sought a university that would
combine British models and qualifications with local culture, using two
or more overlapping frames to imagine development. Frames for develop-
ment ranged from sub-national spaces defined by administrative regions or
the presence of an ethnic group, to national frames, and transnational
frames such as empires, oceans, continents, and the Cold War-era capitalist
and communist worlds. The conceptualisation of development was an
imaginative process that often involved the combination of several frames.
People imagined development using frames that seemed to address
their local needs, but their thinking was also informed by the movement
of ideas, people, and objects through networks of communication and
transport. Envisaging development meant making comparisons between
places considered more developed and those held to be less developed, but
the variety of frames involved meant that conceptions of development
were often complex, ambiguous, and contradictory. People with broadly
similar worldviews, such as American and British development experts in
the 1950s and 1960s, could struggle to agree about development; and
even in the era of decolonisation, the nation was not seen as an unambig-
uous, natural unit of development.22 Ideas about development were more
a messy patchwork than a seamless whole.
In addition to identifying the frames involved in the conception of
development, the book studies development as a practice in which people
set about creating the futures they had envisioned. Development was not
only theory. Negotiations about putting development ideas into practice
usually involved a range of parties with their own visions of the appropriate
aims and methods. These were informed by both local concerns, and
impressions of other places considered to be more or less developed.
Given the multiplicity of actors and frames involved in negotiations of
development, and their ever-changing contexts, no single frame for devel-
opment could be accepted as definitive. A focus on development practice,
8 1 INTRODUCTION: NIGERIA’S UNIVERSITY AGE

rather than theories, emphasises the importance of these negotiations, and

their uncertain outcomes, to experiences of development.
The significance of these points can be better appreciated in relation to
the history and historiography of development. The roots of development
ideas have often been located in an optimistic conception of humans’ ability
to bring about progress through the application of reason that emerged in
the western world during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centu-
ries.23 By the 1930s, the economic and political crises unleashed by the
Depression seemed to many to demand a new kind of developmental
response. There were calls across the globe for state-directed development
that would mobilise scientific and technical expertise to modernise societies.
Nations as diverse as the United States, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union
became fascinated with the potential of an alliance between state planning
and expertise. In Britain during the 1930s and the years of the Second World
War, modernist planners and architects who claimed the expertise to insti-
tute development moved from being a small band of insurgents to influential
positions within the establishment.24 British colonial administrators too
contemplated developmental responses to the disorders of the later 1930s,
which included strikes and riots in the West Indies and West Africa, while
educated, elite Nigerians called for the colonial state to take action to
improve education and modernise cities.25 Frederick Cooper and others
have seen the 1930s as giving birth to a ‘development era’ distinguished
by transnational optimism about technocratic, state-led development.26
Across the world, in colonised and non-colonised territories alike, state-led
development was seen as the route to socio-economic progress.
These ideas reached their zenith during the era of decolonisation in the
1950s and early 1960s. Concepts of development were sufficiently author-
itative and ill-defined for advocates to overlook their inconsistencies. New
universities were founded around the world to train experts who would
sustain the onward march of development, while the superpowers saw
development as a powerful concept that could win Cold War allies
amongst decolonising nations. By the mid-1960s, though, the jubilant
consensus around technocratic development began to be overshadowed
by doubts. It buckled under the weight of its accumulated contradictions,
as development plans failed to deliver the progress they had promised and
created unanticipated new problems. Development planners faced a fur-
ious backlash.
Since this time, development and modernity have been seen as deeply
problematic terms. During the 1960s and 1970s, technocratic
 DEVELOPMENT 9

development ideas were criticised for in fact delivering underdevelopment

and dependency.27 Development has come to be seen as authoritarian and
riddled with racialised western assumptions that were presented as having
universal relevance. By the 1990s, scholars including James Scott and
James Ferguson argued that development legitimised the global activities
of a tiny, unaccountable cadre of mostly western planners.28 Ferguson and
Frederick Cooper contended that the concept of modernity, often the
implied goal of development practices, had never been an objective con-
dition but was, and is, merely a ‘claim-making concept’ or a ‘myth’.29
Technocratic development now looks more like the socio-cultural artefact
of a particular historical period rather than a rational, or even scientific,
method of transforming societies. The concept of frames for development
contributes to this scholarship by exploring how development and mod-
ernity were the products of imaginative work that involved a spatial
dimension.
The historiography of colonial development since the 1970s, in
similar ways to research on development in general, has often concluded
that development was inseparable from colonial power and largely
directed by European officials. In 1976, D.A. Low and John Lonsdale
posited a post-war ‘second colonial occupation’ of Africa that was
distinguished by European technical experts arriving in colonies in
unprecedented numbers, intervening more deeply than ever in colo-
nised societies, and provoking new forms of resistance.30 A few years
later, J.M. Lee and Martin Petter interpreted British colonial develop-
ment as a ‘metropolitan initiative’ that was planned in London and
exported to the colonies.31 More recently, David Anderson has agreed.
‘Nowhere in colonial Africa were Africans participants in the colonial
decision-making process that defined development goals’, he has argued
of rural development projects.32 American development programmes
during the Cold War have frequently been interpreted in a similar way,
as privileging foreign agendas at the expense of indigenous aspirations
for development.33
Colonial universities have rarely been analysed as development pro-
jects, but accounts of their history also emphasise Europeans’ agency.
For the British figures that founded colonial universities, the story was
essentially one of how the British Colonial Office embarked upon a
new, developmental colonial policy in the years around the Second
World War that produced the new institutions.34 Many historians
have agreed, seeing the universities as British-led projects that may
10 1 INTRODUCTION: NIGERIA’S UNIVERSITY AGE

have opened some possibilities for their students, but also perpetuated
colonial-era asymmetries of power.35 Apollos Nwauwa, for example, has
acknowledged African demand for universities, but argued that they
reflected a British colonial politics that was about ‘seizing control for
the centre to make and execute policy’.36
For a long time, though, there have been scholars who have seen
development ideas and practices as emerging from more collaborative, but
still unequal, processes. In the 1960s, J.F. Ade Ajayi argued that the
development of education in Nigeria was moulded more by Nigerians’
demand for certain forms of schooling than by the decisions of colonial
officials; and in the 1970s J.D.Y. Peel contended that conceptions of
development amongst the Yoruba of southwest Nigeria were formed from
a mix of local and imported ideas.37 By the 1990s, more scholars were
rethinking modernity as a concept produced through interactions
between global regions, rather than as a western phenomenon exported
to the rest of the world. Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that western con-
cepts that claimed universal relevance invariably encountered pre-exist-
ing local ideas, creating mixed conceptions of modernity; while S.N.
Eisenstadt envisioned ‘multiple modernities’, with modernity a hybrid
produced by diverse groups’ appropriation of the concept on their own
terms.38
This pioneering work, together with wider scholarship on postcoloni-
alism, globalisation, and networks, has made possible a reappraisal of
colonial development which sees it as a process characterised by asymme-
tries of power, but which was nevertheless interactive and multi-direc-
tional.39 Monica van Beusekom advocated a paradigm of ‘negotiated
development’, which makes room for the involvement of colonised peoples
as well as colonial officials in the formation of development practice.40
Joseph Hodge and Julia Tischler too have argued that, even in colonial
contexts, developmental expertise and practice was shaped by criss-crossing
flows of people and ideas.41 This interest in the co-creation of colonial
development has drawn on recognition of African intermediaries’ crucial
role in relations between Africa and other parts of the world before, during,
and after colonial rule.42 The history of development has thus come to look
more like an episode in a longer history of encounters between global
regions which, as Sebastian Conrad has argued, is probably better concep-
tualised as a multilateral tangle of transnational engagements rather than in
terms of bilateral relationships, as in the older historiography of colonial
development.43
 DECOLONISATION 11

A focus on the uncertain world of putting development plans into

practice, rather than on development theories, offers a route towards a
fuller exploration of the role of contingency in negotiations of develop-
ment, and further recognition that these negotiations involved not only
planners and politicians, but also other protagonists who negotiated
development through their experience of everyday life. A wide range of
people and forms of knowledge were involved in negotiations of develop-
ment at Nigerian universities. Development practice involved Nigerians,
Americans, British, and others who conceived of development using a
variety of frames. Their visions were combined through negotiation to
create new ideas and experiences of development. If development was
intended as an instrument of control, in practice its effects were uncertain.
At times, development negotiations produced moments of consensus,
when it seemed as if many actors visualised development using similar
frames. At other times negotiations were marked by disagreement. They
failed to create a harmonious modern world, producing instead only new
iterations of development negotiations. The importance of practice to
experiences of development suggests the value of detailed historical studies
of particular development projects at a local level, which remain relatively
scarce.44
Universities are apt sites for such enquiries because they were locations
where development was imagined, practised, and contested. The
announcement in the Southern Nigeria Defender that the university age
had arrived suggested that there were universal stages of development that
all nations would eventually pass through. A focus on frames for develop-
ment and the ways in which it was negotiated in practice emphasises that
development was invariably more complex and contentious than a linear,
stage-by-stage progress towards modernity. Decolonisation, too, is a
freighted word that demands further discussion.

DECOLONISATION
This book uses evidence from universities to reassess histories of decolo-
nisation. It was no coincidence that decolonisation coincided with the age
of technocratic development. New visions of colonies’ social and eco-
nomic prospects implied a re-evaluation of their political future. Scholars
have used the term ‘decolonisation’ in a variety of senses, two of which are
particularly relevant here.45 Decolonisation suggests change at the level of
high politics: a process in which nationalist leaders and British officials
12 1 INTRODUCTION: NIGERIA’S UNIVERSITY AGE

negotiated transfers of power, distinguished by constitution-writing and

state-building. The high politics of British decolonisation lasted many
years, defining a late colonial era that got underway slowly in the 1940s
and peaked with transfers of power in the 1960s. Decolonisation can also
be seen as a more socio-cultural process of addressing and ameliorating
legacies of colonial rule. Decolonisation in this sense involved more
people. Instead of being confined to meeting rooms in colonial and
imperial capitals, it encompassed patterns of everyday life, and outlasted
the period associated with the high politics of decolonisation. Indeed,
this socio-cultural negotiation of decolonisation continues today. The
high politics and cultural processes of decolonisation were at once
related, and distinguished by the people and periods involved.
The colonial state formed a vital arena for the political and cultural
dynamics of decolonisation. Considering this state arena offers historians a
route towards responding to calls for further study of the cultural dimen-
sions of empire and decolonisation, and examining the interaction
between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ dynamics in decolonisation.46 In
the 1930s, before decolonisation and Nigeria’s university age, British
colonial states in Africa tended to be small, with limited revenues and
few employees.47 Rather than intervening extensively in African societies,
colonial states restricted their goals to the maintenance of order and the
‘gatekeeper’ function of regulating and taxing the movement of people
and goods across colonies’ borders.48 The prevailing colonial ideology of
indirect rule suggested that the government of colonised people should be
left as much as possible to ‘native authorities’ led by local chiefs. From the
1940s to the 1960s, colonial administrators adopted a different approach.
They sought to build modern states that would one day become self-
governing. These new-style colonial states were larger, with improved
capacity to plan and oversee political, social, and economic development.
State revenues were increased, including through the allocation of new
funds from metropolitan Britain, and the ranks of state employees grew.49
An influx of foreign development experts in the employ of the state after
1945 formed the foot soldiers of the second colonial occupation identified
by Low and Lonsdale.50 This transformation of colonial states was immen-
sely significant, and has often not been sufficiently emphasised in analyses
of colonial legacies.51 Decolonisation was partly a process of enlarging the
state, and universities were at the heart of these changes.
Universities have often been seen as non-state institutions; but in
Nigeria, and many other territories, universities were so densely
 DECOLONISATION 13

interconnected with the state for them to be virtually indistinguishable.52

Nigerian universities were founded and funded by the state, and were
deeply enmeshed with colonial and postcolonial states. Like other state
and semi-state institutions founded during decolonisation, including leg-
islatures and state corporations, universities formed part of the arena in
which decolonisation was negotiated.
Although they have rarely been considered as such, universities were
quintessential institutions of decolonisation that exemplify decolonising
states’ increasing heterogeneity.53 British colonial states underwent
‘Africanisation’, a policy of appointing Africans to senior civil service posts
from which they had generally been excluded. Students at University
College Ibadan were expected to take up senior state posts opened up by
Africanisation, and one day to lead the self-governing nation. Nigerian
lecturers at University College Ibadan were also beneficiaries of
Africanisation, and nationalist politicians were put in a position to found
new universities because they held state posts opened by decolonisation’s
constitutional changes. At universities, and elsewhere in the state, Nigerians
gained more influence during decolonisation.
Nigerian universities also exemplified decolonising states’ increased
openness to new influences from overseas, seen in their recruitment of
multi-national bodies of lecturers, growing American involvement in the
context of the Cold War, and the engagement of international organisa-
tions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(better known as the World Bank).54 The new universities formed part of
the decolonisation-era growth of the state, which saw its interventionist
capacity expand even as its personnel became more heterogeneous.
Instead of being run by a tiny nucleus of British colonial officers, states
became sites where the meaning of decolonisation was contested.55 These
larger, more plural colonial states were bequeathed to independent African
nations.
High politics was evidently important to colonial states’ transforma-
tion, but it had enormous socio-cultural implications as well. Universities
were places where people lived, sites of everyday life, and arenas in which
the cultural and quotidian dimensions of decolonisation were made man-
ifest. This makes them good locations to study the interaction of the high
politics of decolonisation with its cultural dimensions. Africanisation cre-
ated a new elite of Nigerians who held senior posts in state and semi-state
organisations, including civil servants and university lecturers, and those
who expected to, like university students. Their novel place in a
14 1 INTRODUCTION: NIGERIA’S UNIVERSITY AGE

decolonising society implied new forms of everyday life. These elite

Africans lived in distinct built environments provided by the state that
had previously been restricted to Europeans. They were relatively well
paid, and worked in institutions that were deeply shaped by British and
imperial frames of reference. At University College Ibadan, students were
often considered suspiciously Anglophile, and the university’s buildings
have been viewed with misgiving as embodying British norms that were
left implanted in African soil even after the colonisers departed.56
The foundation of new institutions and the emergence of new cultures
of everyday life during decolonisation involved a political economy of
‘standards’ that were often presented as universal but which were
informed by distinctively British and imperial frames for development.
The importance invested in these standards influenced virtually every
aspect of decolonisation, from high politics to everyday life, and proved
strikingly resilient, far outlasting political transfers of power.57 The
ongoing salience of standards associated with Britain continued well
after independence to associate Nigerian universities with what Tamson
Pietsch has called a ‘British academic world’.58 Colonial universities offer
a new perspective on decolonisation that highlights the importance of
state institutions as sites where its political and cultural dimensions
interacted. Universities have the additional advantage to historians of
being documented by a wealth of historical sources, many of them little
used.

SOURCES
The book draws on a variety of sources, representing a range of perspec-
tives, to illuminate histories of development and decolonisation. All of the
sources used naturally offer partial evidence that requires critical reading
and comparison with other sources. Nigerian university archives have been
little used by historians, especially historians of development and decolo-
nisation. This research drew on the archives of the University of Ibadan
and the University of Lagos, and on records from Yaba Higher College,
the highest educational institution in Nigeria from 1934 until Ibadan was
established 1948.59 These collections hold important sources on these
institutions’ foundation, operation, overseas connections, and everyday
life. In Britain, the archives of the University of London and Inter-
University Council for Higher Education in the Colonies have been
consulted, and in the United States the archive of Michigan State
 SOURCES 15

University, for evidence of their programmes of assistance to Nigerian

universities.60 They too form significant and under-used resources for
histories of development.
Extensive use has been made of sources that illuminate the socio-
cultural dimensions of development and decolonisation. This includes
evidence about the planning, construction, and use of university build-
ings, including architects’ papers and buildings themselves.61 The study
of the University College Ibadan buildings, in conjunction with archives
about their tortured conception, reveals the assumptions involved in
their planning. The buildings and spaces designed around 1950 can be
contrasted with later extensions for evidence of changing expectations of
student life during decolonisation, for example, while walking university
campuses contributes to an appreciation of expectations about their use,
including by affording a sense how they were intended to relate to the
neighbouring city.
Student magazines, essays, and short stories offer abundant evidence of
young Nigerians’ perspectives on everyday life at universities, as do novels
written by former students.62 Student magazines often included photo-
graphs, which offer evidence of built environments and dress.63 The
personal papers of staff and visitors can offer useful impressions of uni-
versity life, as do student and staff memoirs, although they can betray signs
of nostalgia.64 Interviews with former students, staff, and their families
have been used, and some conducted especially for this book.65 Like all
historical sources, interviews must be treated critically, but they form an
important source on university social and cultural life. Nigerian universi-
ties were also objects of study during decolonisation, particularly by
American social scientists interested in modernisation, whose work
includes useful detail about university life.66
Historians are fortunate that Nigeria was home to an exceptionally
vibrant, Nigerian-owned press during decolonisation.67 It was a vital
part of the Nigerian public sphere, and a forum for vigorous debate
about higher education, development, and decolonisation. Official
and semi-official reports, and especially the personal papers of those
involved in writing them, offer important evidence on university plan-
ning; and government archives offer voluminous documentation on
universities and the high politics of decolonisation.68 The Nigerian
National Archive, Ibadan holds the records of the central colonial
government of Nigeria, and the National Archive in London the records
of the British government, including the Colonial Office.69 The colonial
16 1 INTRODUCTION: NIGERIA’S UNIVERSITY AGE

archive forms a distinctive corpus, shaped by the preoccupations and

processes of colonial government in ways that offer historians opportu-
nities for insight into the mentalities that underpinned colonial rule,
but demand careful and critical use.70 The United States National
Archive in College Park, Maryland holds records of the American gov-
ernment’s activities in Nigeria, including the files of the Agency for
International Development (AID), its predecessors, and records pro-
duced by American diplomats stationed in Nigeria.71 Sources produced
by representatives of the United States government share some of the
qualities of colonial archives, including the potential for racialised views
of Nigerian development. The archives of the major American philan-
thropic foundations that assisted Nigerian universities have similar qua-
lities.72 This wide-ranging body of evidence has been consulted to permit a
reassessment of development and decolonisation that reaches from the local
to the transnational, and from high politics to everyday life.

CHAPTERS
The book falls into three sections. Chapter 2 considers the period before
Nigeria’s first university was founded, addressing debates that led to the
dawn of the university age in 1948. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 concentrate on
the period associated with decolonisation, from the late 1940s to around
1960, when University College Ibadan was Nigeria’s only university.
Finally, Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the era of the transfer of power itself
in the later 1950s and 1960s, which saw the foundation of new universities
and increasing American involvement in Nigerian affairs.
Chapter 2 explores the pre-history of Nigeria’s university age by con-
sidering the debates that led to the foundation of University College
Ibadan in 1948. It addresses the importance of Nigerian demands for
improved higher education, with a particular focus on opposition to
Ibadan’s predecessor institution Yaba Higher College and the British
government’s formation of the Elliot Commission, whose 1945 report
recommended establishing a university at Ibadan. The chapter argues that
Ibadan was not purely a colonial development project, but was shaped by
deeply rooted West African visions of progress. The university was the
outcome of a lengthy negotiation informed by Nigeria’s position within
the British empire.
Chapter 3 concerns the politics of university development from 1948 to
1960. It argues that University College Ibadan should be seen as part of
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sacks, or even pieces of wood—are placed between the chain and
load. Then, with the chain turned twice round the whole tightly, the
danger is minimised. An extra chain may also be run from each end
of the load to a point some distance up the supporting chain, as
shown on fig. 126.

Timber.—Timber in lengths can be carried in the same manner as

ironwork, but, owing to the greater friction set up, it is not so likely to
slip as the former. The same precautions should be taken.
To carry timber or ironwork vertically, the supporting chain is given
a timber hitch round one end of the pole, and a half hitch round the
end which is meant to rise first. It is sometimes advantageous to
substitute a cord lashing for the half hitch. Then, when the highest
end of the pole reaches the platform, the lashing can be removed
and the pole received horizontally. This method is useful where the
load has to be passed through a window.

Bricks, slates, &c., are slung in crates and baskets, and on small
jobs are carried in hods by labourers. These accessories are
described in Chapter VI.
Note should be taken that these fittings are in the first instance
strongly made, kept in proper repair, not overloaded, and that spring
hooks are used on the slings.

Stone.—Stone-work can be slung by means of the lewis, slings,

cramps, clips, or shears. Another method is to pass the chain
several times round the material, as for girder lifting. It is only
suitable for rough work, as any finished edges or chamfers may be
flushed even if ‘softeners’ are used.
 CHAPTER VIII

THE STABILITY OF A SCAFFOLD

A scaffold, considered as a whole, is in a stable condition when,
under the forces that may act upon it, it remains in a state of rest or
equilibrium. Two forces which tend to create a loss of equilibrium
are: the pressure of wind which acts from any direction in a
horizontal plane, and the force of gravity due to the weight of the
scaffold and that of attendant loads.

Wind Pressures.—The effect of wind upon a pole scaffold:

The effect of wind acting on a single scaffold pole, erected as a
standard, can be first considered. For this purpose the pole shall be
taken as 32 feet long, 2 feet of which are below ground level. The
force of wind depends upon its velocity, and it is measured by the
pressure it exerts on a square foot of surface normal to its direction.
If a point in a body is fixed, so that the body cannot move out of its
place, but may rotate about that point; a force which acts at any
other point, but in a direction that does not pass through the fixed
point, will produce rotation.
In applying this principle to the effect of wind on the scaffold pole,
the ground level will be the fixed point about which the standard may
rotate.
The wind acting upon the exposed surface of the pole may be
likened to a series of parallel forces that, not acting through the fixed
point, tend to produce rotation.
An advantage is gained if, instead of taking the wind as a series of
parallel forces, it is considered as a resultant force of proportionate
magnitude exerting a pressure upon the centre of the exposed
surface. In practice it will be sufficiently correct to take the centre of
surface of the pole at a point at half its height.
The tendency of a force to produce rotation about a fixed point is
termed its moment about that point. It is measured by multiplying the
units of force exerted by the units of the distance between its point of
application and the fixed point.
Example: If at the centre of surface of the pole under
consideration, that is at 15 feet above the fixed point, the resultant
force of the wind is equal to a pressure of 100 lbs., the moment
about the fixed point will be 15 by 100 = 1500.
In like manner the moment of resistance due to the weight of earth
packed round that portion of the pole below ground can be
estimated.
For the pole to remain in equilibrium it will be necessary for the
moment of resistance to equal the moment of the overturning force,
assuming that the fixed point is stable.
No practical good can result by pursuing this calculation further. It
may be taken for granted that as the wind occasionally exerts a
pressure of over 50 lbs. per square foot, and a pressure of 40 lbs.
per square foot is the least for which calculations should be made, it
will always be necessary when scaffolding to any height to adopt
special measures to preserve stability.
When the ledgers are added to the standards they have some
effect upon the equilibrium of the erection, and this must now be
considered.
The wind can be taken as acting from two directions, first directly
along the scaffold, and secondly across the scaffold. When at any
other angle to the structure it will have effect in both of these
directions, being greatest in the one with which it most nearly
corresponds.
When blowing along the scaffold.—The standards and ledgers
form with the ground level a series of rectangular parallelograms.
The connections between the sides of the parallelograms are not
rigid. They most nearly approach cup and ball joints, and as such, it
will be wise to regard them as entirely loose to a rotating force.
The shape of a parallelogram with loose joints can be altered by a
force acting in the plane of its surface, and this alteration of shape
can take place without creating any strain on its joints or members.
From this it will be seen that the tyings and ledgers of the erection
may be considered as offering no resistance to a force tending to
rotate the standards about their fixed points; but by adding to the
surface upon which the force can act, the ledgers increase the
overturning moment about the fixed point.
In practice, although the scaffold may not entirely fail, any change
from regularity of structure due to wind pressure would cause the
members of the erection to offer a less effective resistance to the
other forces acting upon it. This being so, means must be taken to
give that rigidity to the standards, without which the scaffold may
collapse.
Although a parallelogram with loose joints will alter its shape under
pressure, a triangle under similar conditions cannot do so.
Advantage is taken of this fact to obtain the rigidity which is
necessary.
Taking a standard, and one of the ledgers, or the ground level as
forming two sides of a triangle, a pole, termed a brace, is fixed to
form the third side.
The triangle thus formed is a rigid figure offering resistance to any
force acting upon it in the same plane as its surface, and it will
remain rigid until the destruction of one of its joints or members. It
follows, therefore, that the standard forming one side of the triangle
becomes a sufficiently rigid body to withstand any pressure of wind
that may act upon it. The other standards in the erection, if not tied to
the brace, gain rigidity from the triangulated standard because of
their connection thereto by the ledgers.
When the wind is blowing across the scaffold.—If the erection is of
the dependent type, the standards, putlogs, wall of building, and
ground level form a series of parallelograms which differ from those
previously noted in that a sufficiently rigid angle is formed between
the wall and ground level.
The effect of this inflexibility is to create rigidity throughout the
parallelogram, always providing that the other sides are firmly
connected at their points of juncture.
In practice this is not so; the putlogs, if tied to the ledgers, which
for this purpose is the same as being tied to the standards, have no
fixed connection to the wall of the building; but if they are
supplemented by poles tied from the standards to within the building,
they can be regarded as having, in effect, fixed joints.
 If it be impossible to tie the standards within the building, the same
effect can be gained by strutting from the ground level.
This scaffold, if so treated, is sufficiently rigid to withstand any
wind force that tends to overturn the standard, either towards or from
the building.
If the erection is of the independent type, the cross section also
shows a series of parallelograms with loose joints, and so similar
conditions exist as in the first example, except that the overturning
force is acting in a different direction.
Any of the methods of gaining rigidity already given, and shown on
figs. 21 and 24, can be applied in this instance.
Guard boards, rails, face boards, &c., have no other effect than
that of increasing the surface upon which the wind can act. In
consequence, the overturning moment of the standards about their
fixed point is also greater.
Gantries form parallelograms with fixed joints with sufficient
strength—unless carried to a great height—to withstand any wind
pressure. If necessary, they can be braced in the same manner as
the pole scaffold.
Scotch derricks are so strongly built that, unless a wind force
exerting great pressure acted upon them, they could be considered
safe from destruction by that means.
The four pillars standing square to form each leg are crossed at
right angles by transoms which are bolted to the uprights. The
parallelograms thus formed have joints which allow of rotation; but
the cross braces fitted in each bay give rigidity in two ways. Besides
triangulating the frame, they offer a definite resistance to movement
on the bolt by butting against the transom, as will be seen by
reference to fig. 1.
This resistance to movement is to some extent due to the
resistance of the timber to crushing.
The larger parallelograms formed by any two legs, the trussed
beam and the ground level, have joints that can only be destroyed by
very great force.
As the highest pressures noted in this country have equalled 80
lbs. per square foot, and therefore have to be guarded against, it is
wise to triangulate the sides as shown on Frontispiece.
 The Force of Weight or Gravity.—The weight of a body equals
the force with which that body is drawn towards the earth’s centre.
The weight of a scaffold may thus be considered as a force acting
vertically downwards. The point at which the force acts is known as
the centre of weight or the centre of gravity.
As a first example, the effect of the forces of gravity may be
considered when acting upon an independent unloaded scaffold in
its simplest form, consisting of four standards, erected square on
plan, with ledgers and braces on each side.
This form of scaffold having regular sides, and its weight being
equally distributed throughout, may be considered as a single,
evenly disposed, rigid, rectangular body. The centre of such a body
will coincide with its geometrical centre, and may be found thus:—
Draw a diagonal from a to b and from c to d (see fig. 127). The
point of intersection will represent the centre of gravity required.

Fig. 127
 In practice, it will be best to consider the scaffold as a regular
body, comprised as to height within the top and bottom ledgers. The
extra length of standards in this connection can safely be ignored.
If a body rests on a hard surface, it will stand or fall according as
to whether a vertical line, drawn from the centre of gravity, falls within
or without its base. The base of a body is within a line drawn round
the points of support.
It will therefore be seen that so long as the scaffold is not acted
upon by any other force it will remain in equilibrium. But a scaffold is
erected to carry weights, and the effect of these weights upon the
stability must now be considered. The effect of a load upon the
scaffold is to alter the position of its centre of gravity.

Fig. 128
Considering the scaffold and its load as two separate bodies, the
point or centre of gravity about which the two combined weights
would act is found as follows:—
Let a and b, fig. 128, represent two heavy bodies. Join the centre
of a to centre of gravity of b; divide this line into as many parts as
there are units of weights in a and b together. Then mark off from a
the number of units there are in b, and the point thus found is the
point about which the combined weights act, i.e. the required centre
of gravity of the bodies.
The scaffold may, however, have several loads to carry, one or
more of which may be materials slung on the hoist.

To find the Centre of Gravity of a number of Bodies.—Find the

centre of gravity of two of the bodies a and b (fig. 129). From the
point thus found, take a line to the centre of gravity of a third, c.
Divide the line into as many parts as there are units of weight in all
three bodies. Then from the centre of gravity of a and b divide off a
number of units of distance equal to the number of units of weight in
c. The point thus found is the required centre of gravity. This process
is continued until all the bodies have been considered, care being
taken that all the units of weight in the bodies which have been
considered are added to the units of weight in the body under
consideration when dividing the line in which the centre of gravity is
found. The final centre of gravity found is the centre of gravity of the
entire mass. If the vertical line taken from it falls within the base, the
scaffold is in equilibrium and therefore stable.

Fig. 129
When boards are laid on a scaffold, they may be treated as a load.
If, however, they are evenly distributed over the entire top of a
scaffold, their comparatively light weight may be usually neglected,
as, their centre of gravity occurring immediately above the centre of
gravity of the scaffold itself, would have no other effect than to
slightly raise the centre of gravity of the structure.

To find the Centre of Gravity of Scaffold Boards laid to form a

Platform.—A scaffolding platform, being of a slight depth in
comparison with its length and breadth, may be treated as a surface
usually rectangular.
 Fig. 130
The centre of gravity of a rectangular surface is the point of
intersection of its diagonals (fig. 130).

To find the Centre of Gravity of a Dependent Scaffold and the

Effect of Loads upon it.—A dependent scaffold, having only one
frame of standards and ledgers, to which are attached the putlogs,
cannot be considered as an evenly disposed regular body.
Nevertheless, the rule that the scaffold will not be in equilibrium
unless a line from the centre of gravity fall within the base still holds
good. In the case under consideration, as the wall of the building to
which the scaffold is securely attached by the putlogs and ties,
carries its share of the weight of the loads and putlogs, it must be
taken as forming an integral portion of the scaffold itself.
Therefore the centre of gravity of a dependent scaffold will be the
resultant centre of gravity of the outer frame, the putlogs, and the
wall, considered as separate bodies.
The centre of gravity of the frame may be found by taking it as a
rectangular surface. If necessary, the boards may be treated in like
manner.
The system of putlogs, if they are regularly placed, may be treated
as a regular body, and the centre of gravity found by the method
already given; but in practice their weight would have no effect
towards loss of equilibrium.
The wall may also be treated in like manner if of even thickness. If
of varying thickness, the centre of gravity of each portion of even
thickness should be found.
The resultant will be found by the method already given for finding
the centre of gravity of a number of bodies.
The base of the erection in this case should include the base of
the wall.
 The effect of ordinary loads upon the stability of a scaffold of this
type is practically nil. No weight that the scaffold was capable of
carrying in itself could bring the resultant centre of gravity of the
scaffold and wall outside of the base; so that unless the scaffold
failed from rupture of its members or connections, it may be
considered safe from collapse due to instability.

To find the Centre of Gravity of a Gantry.—This can be found by

the method given for independent pole scaffolds.

To find the Centre of Gravity of a Scotch Derrick.—Owing to

the unevenly distributed weights about these scaffolds, they cannot
be taken as regular bodies. It will therefore be necessary to take
each part of the erection separately, and after finding the centre of
gravity of each, to find the resultant centre of gravity of the mass by
the method already given.
To find the Centre of Gravity of each Part.—Each leg can be
treated as an evenly disposed rigid body.
The mass of brickwork that is placed at the foot of the legs may be
treated similarly.
The platform may be considered as a surface. If triangular, the
centre of gravity is found by the following method:—
Bisect the base and join the point of bisection to the opposite
angle. The centre of gravity is at a point one-third of the length of the
line measured from the side divided (fig. 131).

Fig. 131
 The centre of gravity of the joists supporting the platform can be
taken with that of the platform itself, providing that the weights of
each are added together and the centre of gravity of the platform
only lowered to half the depth of the joists. The trussed girders
supporting the platform may be treated as rectangular surfaces.
The centre of gravity of the guys, sleepers, and jib will be at a
point in the centre of their length.
The centre of gravity of the engine may be somewhat difficult to
find, but it will be sufficient to treat it as a cylinder. The centre of
gravity of a cylinder is the middle of its axis.
Loads may be of various forms, but the centre of gravity will be
found on a line drawn downwards through the load immediately
under the supporting chain. In actual practice no load, the centre of
gravity of which, considered separately, falls within the base of the
scaffold which supports it, will cause instability. The greatest effect it
can have is to bring the centre of gravity of the entire mass nearly to
the edge of the base, so that a comparatively light load acting from
without may cause loss of equilibrium.
It has been so far assumed that, owing to the use of braces, ties,
struts, &c., the scaffolds considered have been rigid bodies, and
where this is so the principles given hold good. In practice, however,
owing to the lack of, or only partial use of, the members just
mentioned, scaffolds are often more or less flexible bodies. Where
this is the case, the lack of rigidity greatly increases the danger of
collapse, as the timbers, through yielding by flexure to the loads that
act upon them, allow such an alteration of the shape of the scaffold
that the centre of gravity may be carried outside the base. Even
where this does not occur, the racking movement allowed is
dangerous, as the connections are strained and become loose,
creating an element of risk that the otherwise careful scaffolder
cannot altogether remove. For the scaffolder the lesson to be
learned is—that, whether the force he is dealing with arises from the
wind, loads, or a combination of both, he must triangulate—
TRIANGULATE.
It will be necessary to know the weight of material in working out
these problems. These have been given in the Appendix.
 CHAPTER IX

THE STRENGTH OF A SCAFFOLD

The strength of a scaffold equals the resistance that its members
and their connections can offer to the strains that act upon it. The
timbers used may fail in various ways.
First.—As beams, they may fail to resist a cross strain.
Secondly.—As pillars and struts, they may fail to resist
compression in the direction of their length.
Thirdly.—As ties and braces, they may fail to resist tension; that is,
a strain tending to pull a beam asunder by stretching.
The loads that act upon a scaffold may be dead, that is to say,
they do not create a shock; or live, which means they are not
stationary, and may cause shock and vibration.
A live load causes nearly double the strain that a dead load
produces. If, therefore, both are of equal weight, the timber under
strain will carry as a live load only one half of what it would carry as a
dead load. The breaking weight is the load that will cause fracture in
the material. The safe load is the greatest weight that should be
allowed in practice. It is in proportion to the breaking load, and that
proportion is termed the factor of safety.
Experiments have been made to determine the resistance of
timber to fracture under the various forces that act upon it.
The result of these experiments is expressed by a given number,
termed a constant, which varies with the different growths of timber
and the different strains to which they are subjected.
The constants (C) for the strength of different kinds of timber
under a cross strain are as follows:

Table I.
C in lbs. for
rectangular beams
Material Authority
supported
at both ends
 Spruce 403
Larch 392
Fir, Northern
Fir, Dantzic 448
Fir, Memel
Fir, Riga 392 Hurst
Elm 336
Birch 448
Ash, English 672
Oak, English 560
Oak, Baltic 481

The factor of safety for beams under a cross strain is one-fifth.

Table II.—Constants (D) for compression.

D4 in lbs. for
Material D3 in lbs. for Material flexure for
crushing only long
pillars
Wet Dry
Spruce 6,499 to 6,819 Spruce —
Larch (fallen two
Larch 1,645
months) 3,201 to 5,568
Fir (white deal) 6,781 to 7,293 Fir, Riga 2,035
Fir, Memel 2,361
Elm 10,331 Elm 1,620
Birch, English 3,297 to 6,402 Birch —
Birch, American 11,663
Ash 8,683 to 9,363 Ash 1,840
Oak,
Oak, English 2,068
6,484 to 10,058 English
Oak,
Oak, Dantzic (very dry) 2,410
7,731 Dantzic
Pillars of medium length—the constant for bending is taken at 2·9
for all timbers.

The working load on pillars should not be greater than one-tenth of

the breaking weight; but if the pillars are used for temporary
purposes, and are over 15 and under 30 diameters one-eighth, and
under 15 diameters one-fifth may be taken as the factor of safety.
Table III.—The Constants (E) for Breaking Weight under tensional
stress.
Material E in lbs. per unit of 1 sq. inch Authority

Spruce 3,360
Larch 3,360
Fir 3,360 Hurst
Elm 4,480
Ash 4,480
Oak 6,720

The working load should not exceed one-fifth of the weight that
would cause rupture.

Beams subject to a Transverse Strain.—The loads that act upon

a beam may be concentrated, that is, acting at one point, or
distributed, which means that the load is evenly placed over the
entire length of the beam or a portion of the beam.
An evenly distributed load is considered to act at a point
immediately below its centre of gravity.
 If a beam carries several loads they are considered to act at a
point immediately below the resultant centre of gravity of the whole.
Beams may be fixed, loose, or continuous. When fixed they are
built into the structure; if loose they are supported only; and are
continuous when they have more than two points of support in their
length.
For practical purposes, a continuous beam may be considered
one-half stronger than when supported at two points only.
The strength of a solid rectangular beam varies directly as its
breadth, the square of its depth, and inversely as its length.
The formula for finding the breaking weight (B.W.) of a solid
rectangular beam supported at each end and loaded at its centre is
as follows:

B.W. = (bd2)/l × c

where b = breadth in inches;

d2 = depth multiplied by itself in inches;
l = length of beam between supports in feet;
c = the constant found by experiment on the timber in use.

Example.—Find the B.W. of a solid rectangular beam of Northern

fir, 9 in. by 9 in., and 10 feet between supports, loaded at its centre.
The constant for Northern fir (Table I.) is 448.
B.W. = (9 × 92)/10 × 448
= (9 × 9 x 9 x 448)/10
= 14 tons 11 cwt. 2 qrs. 111⁄5 lbs.
One-fifth of this must be taken as a safe load, say 2 tons 18 cwt.

The strength of a solid cylindrical beam varies directly as its

diameter cubed, and inversely as its length.
The formula for finding the breaking weight (B.W.) of a solid
cylindrical beam supported at each end and loaded at its centre is as
follows:
B.W. = d3/l × c × 10/17
 where d3 = least diameter in inches cubed;
l = length of beam between supports in feet;
c = the constant found by experiment on rectangular
beams;
10/17 = the proportion that cylindrical beams bear to square
beams,

Example.—Find the B.W. of a solid cylindrical beam of spruce fir 6

inches in diameter and 4 feet between supports.
The constant C for spruce fir is (Table I.) 403.

B.W. = (6 × 6 × 6 × 403 × 10)/(4 × 17)

= 12,8013⁄17 lbs.
= 5 tons 14 cwt. 1 qr. 53⁄17 lbs.

One-fifth of this must be taken as a safe load, say 1 ton 2 cwt. 3

qrs.

Fig. 132
The above diagram (fig. 132) illustrates the supports and loading
of the beams just considered. The following diagrams show beams
variously supported and loaded, and their relative strength to the
first. By adding to the formulæ already given, the proportion that
these following bear to the first, the same formulæ can be used for
all.
 Fig. 133
Beam supported at both ends and load equally
distributed bears double of fig. 132.

Fig. 134
Beam fixed, load in centre, bears half more than fig.
132.

Fig. 135
Beam fixed, load evenly distributed, bears triple of fig.
132.
 Fig. 136
Beam fixed one end only, load on free end, bears a
quarter of fig. 132.

Fig. 137
Beam fixed one end only, load evenly distributed,
bears half of fig. 132.
To find the effective length of a beam supported at both ends when
the position of the load is varied:
Rule.—Divide four times the product of the distances of the load
from both supports by the whole span, in feet.
Example.—Find the effective length of a beam the supports of
which are 6 feet apart, the load acting at a point 1 foot from its
centre.
The distances of the load from each support in this case are 2 feet
and 4 feet.

Therefore (2 × 4 × 4)/6 = 51⁄3 feet, effective length of beam.

Posts and Struts subject to Compression.5—Posts and struts,

when above 30 diameters in length, tend to fail by bending and
subsequent cross breaking. When below 30 and above 5 diameters
in length, their weakness may partly be in their bending and partly by
crushing, and when below 5 diameters in length by crushing alone;
but, as these latter are rarely met with in scaffolding, they need not
be considered.
On the resistance of long posts.—To find the greatest weight, W,
that a square post of 30 diameters and upwards will carry:
Multiply the fourth power of the side of the post in inches by the
value of D (Table II.), and divide by the square of the length in feet.
The quotient will be the weight required in pounds.
The formula is as follows:
W = (d4 × D)/L2 = weight in lbs. for square posts to resist bending,
where d = depth in inches,
D = constant in pounds, for flexure,
L = length in feet.
Example.—Find the weight that may be placed upon a post of elm
12 feet long and 4 inches square.
The value of D (Table II.) being 1,620,

(44 × 1,620)/122 = (256 × 1,620)/144

= 2,880 lbs.

One-tenth of this must be taken as a safe working load = 288 lbs.

The strength of cylindrical posts is to square ones as 10 is to 17,

the rest of the formula remaining the same, except that d = diameter
of post in inches.

When the pillar is rectangular.—Multiply the greater side by the

cube of the lesser in inches, and divide by the square of the length in
feet. The quotient multiplied by the value of D (Table II.) will give the
weight which the post will carry in pounds.
The formula is as follows:

W = (BT3 × D)/L2,
 where B = breadth of post in inches;
T = least thickness in inches, and the rest of notation as before.

Example.—Find the weight that may be placed on a rectangular

post of Dantzic oak 8 in. by 6 in. and 18 feet long.
The value of D (Table II.) being 2,410 lbs.,

(8 × 63 × 2,410)/182 = (8 × 216 × 2,410)/324

= 12,853 lbs.

The safe working load = say, 1,285 lbs.

On the strength of posts of medium length.—When a post is less

than 30, but over 5, diameters in length, and therefore tending to fail
by crushing as well as by bending, the resistance to crushing is a
considerable proportion of the strength. This must, in consequence,
be allowed for in any calculation for the breaking weight.
To find the weight that would break a square or rectangular post of
between 5 and 30 diameters in length:
Multiply the area of the cross section of the post in square inches
by the weight in pounds that would crush a short prism of 1 inch
square (Table II.), and divide the product by 1·1 added to the square
of the length in feet, divided by 2·9 times the square of the least
thickness in inches.
The formula is as follows:
W = DS/(1·1 + L2/T2 2·9)
where D = the constant for the resistance to crushing.
S = the area of the cross section of the post in square inches.
1·1 is a modification introduced in order that the result
may be in accord with the result of experiments.
L = the length of the post in feet.
T = the least thickness in inches.
2·9 = the constant for the resistance to bending, and which
is taken at that figure for all timbers (Table II.).

Example.—Find the breaking weight of a post of Dantzic oak 10

feet long and 6 inches square.
The constant for Dantzic oak (Table II.) is 7,731.
W = (7,731 × 36)/(1·1 + 100/(2·9 × 36))
= 278,316/2·05