History of Nigeria

Achebe belongs to an ethnic group known as the Tho, who have had a civilization in West Africa for centuries. Unlike many other African civilizations, the Tho were a decentralized people who maintained a largely village-based culture rather than one governed by a king or an emperor Achebe has based much of his writing on the Tho culture and its interactions with the British colonial administrations, as well as its conflicts with the central Nigerian government.

In the early 1800s, British traders interested in palm oil began to travel to the region that later became known as Nigeria, and there they encouraged the slave trade. The British maintained their influence in the area until 1914, when the British government assumed direct control of the land (which up until then had been under the administration of the Royal Niger Company). They united the northern and southern halves...