Writing Back to Empire: Anticolonial Petitioning and Decolonisation in Postwar British West Africa, 1945–1960

This article reexamines petition writing as a strategic form of anticolonial resistance and negotiation in British West Africa between 1945 and 1960. Focusing on Nigeria and the Gold Coast (now Ghana), it argues that petitions – often regarded as apolitical or ineffective – were in fact deeply political texts through which colonised individuals asserted rights, challenged imperial authority, and participated in shaping decolonisation discourse. Drawing on new archival petitions, colonial correspondence, and administrative records, the study analyzes how a wide range of African actors – including trade unions, veterans, women’s organisations, and youth groups – appropriated colonial bureaucratic norms to express grievances and demand reform. By adopting the formal language of imperial governance while embedding radical political claims, petitioners revealed the tensions between colonial authority and African aspirations. Petitions operated within sanctioned channels, yet they unsettled the legitimacy of colonial rule by articulating demands for justice, representation, and sovereignty. Even when dismissed or ignored, they contributed to a growing rights consciousness and influenced constitutional reforms that gradually expanded African political participation. This study thus challenges prevailing assumptions about the marginality of petitions in anticolonial activism. It shows how petitioning – alongside mass protests and nationalist organising – helped expose cracks in the imperial order and laid the groundwork for postcolonial state formation. Petitions should be understood not as signs of compliance, but as calculated interventions in the struggle for decolonisation and African self-determination.