1892 — The Ijebu-Ode War (Imagbon)#
The first full British military invasion of a Yoruba kingdom. The Ijebu kingdom under Awujale Adesumbo Tunwase had for nearly two centuries enforced a trade-gate monopoly: no European could pass through Ijebu territory to reach the interior, and all Lagos–Ibadan commerce paid Ijebu tolls. Governor Gilbert Carter of Lagos issued an ultimatum in early 1892; when Ijebu refused, a column of about 450 troops (Hausa Constabulary, Lagos Police, Ibadan and Egba auxiliaries, two Maxim guns and a 7-pdr) under Colonel F. C. Scarbrough marched from Epe.
The decisive engagement was at Imagbon on 19 May 1892. Ijebu fielded an estimated 8,000–10,000 warriors armed largely with Dane guns and machetes; British Maxim fire broke the Ijebu line within hours. Ijebu losses are estimated at 600–800 dead, British losses at fewer than 20. Ijebu-Ode was occupied; the trade-gates were demolished; the Awujale's sovereignty was reduced to a Protectorate "Native Authority" stool. The war is the moment Yoruba country lost the capacity to bar British access to the interior, and it set the template for the 1897 Benin Punitive Expedition five years later. See the Regional Record for the looted Ijebu regalia traced to British collections.
1898 — The Ijemo Massacre (Abeokuta)#
A punitive shooting at Ijemo quarter, Abeokuta, by colonial troops sent in to suppress a tax-collection riot directed at the Egba United Government's pro-British faction. The colonial column opened fire on a market crowd; contemporary missionary accounts (Wesleyan Methodist station, Abeokuta) put the dead at around 500, though the official Colonial Office figure was 102. The massacre poisoned Abeokuta's relations with both the colonial authority and the Egba United Government's chiefs for a generation, and is the proximate cause of the 1914 formal annexation that ended Abeokuta's semi-independent treaty status. Pattern: state violence against tax resistance — the same template recurs in the 1929 Aba Women's War.
1914 — End of Egba semi-independence#
Abeokuta had operated since the 1893 Anglo-Egba Treaty as a treaty-protected polity, with its own Egba United Government (EUG) collecting tolls, issuing postage stamps and running courts. After the Ijemo massacre and the 1914 amalgamation, the EUG was dissolved and Abeokuta was formally absorbed into the Southern Protectorate. The Alake retained ceremonial status but lost fiscal and judicial sovereignty — the single most important constitutional rupture in Western Yoruba history before independence.
1946–1949 — Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti and the Abeokuta Women's Revolt#
The defining grassroots democratic movement of pre-independence Western Nigeria. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti's Abeokuta Ladies' Club — soon renamed the Abeokuta Women's Union (AWU) — organised the market women of Abeokuta against the flat-rate water-rate and the conditional-sales tax imposed by the colonial administration through Alake Ademola II. At its peak the AWU mobilised an estimated 20,000 women in continuous sit-ins at Ake Palace.
In January 1949 the Alake was forced to abdicate; the flat tax on women was abolished; four women were appointed to the Egba Interim Council — the first women in Nigerian local government. Ademola II returned to the throne in 1950 under a constrained mandate. The Abeokuta Women's Revolt is the proto-model for the Igbo Women's War of 1929 referenced in regional memory and is the direct organisational ancestor of the Nigerian Women's Union and (through Funmilayo's son Fela) the later Kalakuta resistance. Pattern: women-led tax resistance achieving institutional victory.