Sarcouncil Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences

Abstract: Foreign trade has been part of the British Colonial economic system since the establishment of relationships between the colonialist and the Nigerian people which started around the 12th century. The essence of this work is to appraise the British colonial economic system which runs through the period of the late 18th century and lasted up to the 20th century. The dynamics of the foreign trade in Nigeria was skewed to benefit the British colonial administration as they possessed the political and economic power which made it easy to manipulate the colonial economic system. The work also examined the patterns of foreign trade in colonial Nigeria which started from trade in slaves and later to the trade in agricultural commodities and raw materials for the service of the British economy. Also it highlights the role of transport infrastructure in the facilitation of the colonial economic system as it was developed to integrate the economic system and facilitate foreign trade between 1900 – 1960. The methodology of this work is anchored on primary and secondary sources of information. This work therefore gives a historical perspective to the colonial economic system in Nigeria and the foreign trade patterns that existed within the period