Troubled waters: rewriting environmental histories of Lagos, 1882–1921

Abstract The filling of the lagoons and creeks that framed the city and island of Lagos changed the relationship between people, power, land and the water at the turn of the nineteenth century. As elites in the city negotiated power with British colonial administrators, ordinary Lagosians pushed back against the measures that threatened to displace them and rewrite cultural space through the demands and logics of ‘slum clearance’ and anti-malarial campaigns. This article examines how these struggles over water, land and urban space were the catalysts for cultural change.