image: Dr. Bright Alozie with hand-written petitions and a copy of the book, African Voices in Ink
Credit: Bright Alozie
Who writes history? It depends on who you read.
Dr. Bright Alozie of Portland State University considers himself a historian of ordinary voices. His newly published book explores petitions and the trend of petition writing by Igbo individuals to British officials in colonial southeastern Nigeria to gain a sense of what it was like to live under colonial rule. Using a "history from below" approach, he eschewed elite sources in favor of centering the ‘voices’ of petitioners.
The book, published in 2024 by Rowman & Littlefield, is called Petition Writing and Negotiations of Colonialism in Igboland, 1892–1960: African Voices in Ink. Through a careful reading and rigorous analysis of thousands of petitions, Alozie shows what this genre of letter writing tells us about broader colonial society and how Igbo individuals influenced colonial decision-making, using the language of rights and justice to navigate the colonial system.
Born in Nigeria, Alozie is an assistant professor in Black Studies at PSU whose core research focuses on colonial and postcolonial Africa and the African diaspora. He has always been interested in how African communities resisted, negotiated, and generally interacted with the colonial state.
Growing up in Nigeria and hearing stories about the colonial period, I was always fascinated by how much agency was omitted from traditional colonial narratives.
"As a child, I always listened to my grandmother. She experienced the Aba Women's War of 1929 (erroneously called the Aba Women's Riots by the British in order to downplay the women's opposition to colonial rule), which was the first successful, all women-led revolt against British colonialism in West Africa. She told me those stories. I was really fascinated then. Later, as a researcher, I had the privilege of interviewing her and getting deeper insights into accounts such as this," Alozie said.
These first-hand stories from his grandmother and others spurred Alozie on to see what else he could find. In search of more original sources, he traveled to each one of the four main national archives in Nigeria. He went to the national archives in Ghana. He explored national archives and libraries in England, and delved into institutions and archives here in the United States as well.
The search eventually led him to uncover over 4,000 petitions from people in Igboland, all articulating the individual and collective needs and concerns of their writers. This was a very rich but unexplored body of letters; many of the documents that he found had never even been opened. In sorting through them, over time and with a magnifying glass, he learned to decipher the different styles of handwriting and even came to recognize certain professional petition writers who wrote frequently on others' behalf.
What struck me the most was that these petitions were not passive documents at all. They represented a form of agency and resistance.
Knowing their audience, the petitioners framed their demands in ways that the colonial authorities would understand, using words that were used to justify colonial rule like justice, rights, and equity.
Interwoven Strands of Social, Political, and Gender History
The book is organized into specific topics and time periods, exploring the history of petition writing as well as ideas around land rights and ownership, gender identity and equality, conflict, economic development, and welfare. There is also a chapter devoted to letters from incarcerated individuals, and another to petitions from men and women who were conscripted to serve in the First and Second World Wars. In his book, Alozie successfully extracts a sociopolitical and gender history of colonial Igboland through a study of petitions.
"By understanding the historical roots of these issues, we gain valuable insights into current global conversations around decolonization, around human agency, around social justice. So for me it was also kind of a personal mission, because the history I am researching resonates today," Alozie said.
In World War II, Nigeria contributed an estimated 100,000 conscripts to the Allied victory, along with vast amounts of resources. During the postwar economic boom, and especially after the 1948 signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Alozie noticed a change in the tone of petitions as people showed more awareness of their rights. This demonstrated how global events also shaped petition writing during this period.
"It was very beautiful to see how the tone changed from being too humble, and begging, to saying: Look now, this is a negotiation. We have given you resources. We have given you our time. We have killed, we have died on the battlefield for you. Now you have to repay us."
What's next?
A second book from Alozie, tentatively titled Roots and Routes, Black Voices, and Oregon Stories: A History of African Immigrants in Oregon, 1970-2024, is already on the horizon: his next work will focus on African immigrants in Oregon and their voices.