Robert Campbell | |
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&sq=&lang=&file=File:Robert_Campbell_(emigrant_to_Lagos).png) Portrait from Campbell's 1861 book | |
| Born | 7 May 1829 |
| Died | 19 January 1884 (aged 54) |
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| Known for | Attempting to establish a colony of black Americans in Abeokuta, Nigeria |
| Signature | |
&sq=&lang=&file=File:Robert_Campbell_signature.png) | |
Robert Campbell (7 May 1829 – 19 January 1884) was a Jamaican-born emigrant from the United States to Nigeria who wrote books and published a newspaper. Initially apprenticed to a printer he trained as a teacher in Spanish Town. Finding his salary insufficient in the economic turmoil of post-abolition Jamaica he emigrated to Nicaragua and Panama before settling in New York City in 1853. He found work as a printer before being employed as a science teacher and then assistant principal at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1858 Campbell joined Martin R. Delany on the Niger Valley Exploring Party to look for a suitable site for the settlement of black Americans in West Africa. A site at Abeokuta (in modern-day Nigeria) was selected and the expedition returned to the United States. Campbell returned to Africa in 1862, but found that, due to the American Civil War as well as opposition from the leaders of the British Colony of Lagos and disputes between the Egba people and the British, his settlement plans had been rendered untenable. Campbell instead settled in Lagos, establishing the Anglo-African newspaper. This was opposed by the British governor, Henry Stanhope Freeman, who thought it would lead to ill feeling between different factions in the colony. The newspaper ceased in 1865 and Campbell afterwards worked to develop the colony commercially.