Reduction of Lagos

Reduction of Lagos
Part of the Suppression of the Slave Trade
"British Men o' War Attacked by the King of Lagos" (James George Philp, 1851)
Date 1851-1852 Location Lagos, present-day Nigeria Result British victory Atlantic slave trade abolished in Lagos with the Treaty Between Great Britain and Lagos Akitoye reinsistated as Oba of Lagos
Belligerents
United Kingdom	Lagos
Commanders and leaders
John Beecroft Commander Wilmot Commander Forbes Commander Gardner	Kosoko Oshodi Tapa

The Reduction of Lagos or Bombardment of Lagos was a British naval operation in late 1851 that involved the Royal Navy bombarding Lagos (in present-day Nigeria) under the justification of suppressing the Atlantic slave trade and deposing the King (Oba) of Lagos, Kosoko, for refusing to end the slave trade.

Many intersecting interests provided the Government of the United Kingdom with the impetus for military action against Kosoko. These interests included British desires to replace the slave trade with an alternative "legitimate" trade, British missionary interest in spreading Christianity, and fears that some Lagos residents, known as the Saro people, who were liberated from Atlantic slave trade, would be persecuted and re-enslaved.

The British eventually deposed Kosoko and replaced him with Akitoye, who previously lost his throne to Kosoko and asked the British to help him return to power. In return, Akitoye promised to end the slave trade. In 1852, Akitoye and John Beecroft signed the Treaty Between Great Britain and Lagos.

The treaty required the native ruling elite of Lagos to abolish the Atlantic slave trade, liberate enslaved Africans, expel European slave traders residing in Lagos, and to allow British subjects to have trade access to Lagos. However, illegal slave-trading activities persisted until the British Empire annexed Lagos as a British protectorate in August 1861, which would later be declared a British colony in 1862, and then incorporated into the Southern Nigeria Protectorate in 1906.