Journeys to the Hinterland: Twentieth-Century Nigerian Travel Writing and Local Heterogeneity in Lagos and Beyond

Abstract

This paper looks at constructions of locality in the serialised Yoruba and English-language travel narratives which flourished in the Lagos newspapers between the 1910s and the 1930s. Travelling between Lagos and the Yoruba-speaking 'hinterland' and beyond, the writers frenetically cultivated local, translocal and regional networks, and portrayed the towns they travelled through as heterogeneous and distinct. Though some of the interests of these travel writers chime with the interests of postcolonial criticism, they are not preoccupied with ‘writing back’ to the centre or with colonialism, nor are they writing in dialogue with colonial travel writing about Nigeria; they are more interested in local and regional networks, and in the particular demands of local print culture.