Before the Name

Before "Nigeria" was a name, the territory that would bear it was a complex constellation of polities: the Nok terracotta culture (c.1500 BCE–500 CE), the Kingdom of Benin and its bronze guilds, the Hausa city-states of Kano, Katsina and Zaria, the Sokoto Caliphate established by Usman dan Fodio in 1804, the Old Oyo Empire of the Alaafin, and the trading kingdoms of the Niger Delta — Bonny, Brass, Itsekiri, Calabar. Each had its own legal traditions, currencies, succession rules and external trade relations long before the Royal Niger Company chartered in 1886.