Colonial itineraries: Muhammadu Dikko's metropolitan adventures

Abstract

In 1921 and 1924 Muhammadu Dikko, the emir of Katsina, traveled to Britain on a sightseeing trip, becoming the first emir or chief from Northern Nigeria to visit the British imperial metropole. This article analyzes the colonial relationship that put Dikko in the colonizers' orbit and favor and paved the way for him to embark on the trips, the colonial logistics and networks that facilitated the journeys, Dikko's experiences and adventures in Britain, and, most importantly, his perspectives on British society, institutions, goods, and forms of leisure. I argue that Dikko, though constrained by serving as a prop in a colonial performance of power, used travel to Britain as a platform to advance metropolitan modernity as an aspirational if distant model of socioeconomic advancement and to give his peers and subjects in Northern Nigeria a textual reference for navigating colonial culture in relation to their own natal Islamo-Hausa cultural norms.