Frederick Lugard (22 January 1858 – 11 April 1945), full name Frederick John Dealtry Lugard, was a British soldier, explorer and colonial administrator, born in Madras, British India, the son of a military chaplain. He served in India, Afghanistan, Sudan and Burma before moving to Africa, where he helped establish colonial control in Nyasaland, Uganda and Northern Nigeria. In July 1907 he became the fourteenth Governor of Hong Kong, serving until 1912, when the colony had a population of about half a million. He campaigned hard for a university, arguing that Hong Kong needed higher education to train local talent and to compete with the institutions that rival powers were opening in China; his proposal won backing from the Viceroy of Liangguang, the Indian merchant Mody and the local Chinese reformer Ho Kai. In 1911 the Legislative Council passed the ordinance founding the University of Hong Kong, of which Lugard became the first Chancellor, presiding over its opening on 11 March 1912; it was built with donations from Mody, Chater and Chinese merchants. On 1 October 1910 the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway opened throughout, running about 22 miles from Tsim Sha Tsui to Lo Wu and greatly increasing the movement of people and goods between Kowloon and the New Territories. He also dealt with smuggling, public order and boundary questions such as the Kowloon Walled City, overhauled land registration and administration in the New Territories, and promoted public works including the law courts and the General Post Office. Leaving Hong Kong in 1912, he was succeeded as Governor by Francis May, and returned to Nigeria to merge its northern and southern protectorates, becoming Governor of a united Nigeria in 1914, where his book The Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa set out his theory of indirect rule, which shaped later British colonial policy. He married the journalist Flora Shaw in 1902, said to have coined the name 'Nigeria'. Created Baron Lugard of Abinger in 1928, he died on 11 April 1945.
Lugard drove the founding of the University of Hong Kong, giving the city its first local university education, and the British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway, opened in his term, laid the backbone of land transport between Kowloon and the New Territories; the theory of indirect rule he practised in Africa later shaped how Britain governed its empire.
Achievements
- 1907 · Became the 14th Governor of Hong Kong.
- 1910 · The British section of the Kowloon-Canton Railway opened throughout, linking Tsim Sha Tsui with Lo Wu.
- 1911 · The Legislative Council passed the ordinance establishing the University of Hong Kong, of which he became the first Chancellor.