Abstract

This paper explores the role of River Benue and her tributaries in the European penetration and the growth of commerce, Christianity and Europeanization among the peoples of the Benue Valley. When the Slave trade was abolished beginning from Britain in 1807 the need to stimulate legitimate trade, promote Christianity and civilization in West Africa became imperative. The British government, the Christian Church and humanitarians collaborated in exploratory missions to open up routes to the interior. The paper advances the extant literature by examining the place of the natural environment in facilitating European activities, the Planting of the Church and the associated colonization and the transformation of the economy from pre-capitalist to a semi capitalist one. It shows that European traders, Missionaries and colonizers worked together to achieve exploitation, conversion and subjugation of the lands and peoples of the Benue Valley. Using Missions records, missionary diaries and memoirs, trading company records, official colonial communications, along with works of Western Anthropologists, sociologists, as well as African historians, the study unveils a history of water ways as access points for entry into the interior of the Benue Valley area and establishing of a foothold of European activities. It is concluded that River Benue and her tributaries had a central place in setting the stage for the early transformation of the region.

Key Word: Benue-Valley, Christianity, Colonization, Civilization, Commerce, Highway, Waterbodies.