Among the Ibos of Nigeria

In the late autumn of 1900, George T. Basden, a young British man newly ordained as an Anglican priest, was sent to Nigeria, on the west coast of Africa, by the Church Mission Society. Since 1886 the territory had been administered by the Royal Niger Company, but in 1900 it was transferred to the control of the British government, officially becoming a British protectorate in 1901. Basden was posted to Onitsha, in the south east of Nigeria, a dangerous place for Europeans at the time, where he was to bring Christianity to the Ibo people (now more usually known as the Igbos).

He was an aspiring man of science, interested in geography and anthropology, and, despite the demands of missionary life, he was never too busy to take an interest in the culture and way of life of the people amongst whom he lived, making notes and taking photographs, contributing to the proceedings of scholarly societies and making maps of the 'Ibo hinterland' that were used by the colonial administration as well as the mission society.

Among the Ibos of Nigeria is the product of his two decades of observation and remains an important contribution to anthropological knowledge of West Africa during the early twentieth century.