{"id":1525,"date":"2021-06-28T07:00:36","date_gmt":"2021-06-28T07:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/?p=1525"},"modified":"2022-01-04T07:04:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-04T07:04:04","slug":"a-long-view-sheds-fresh-light-on-the-history-of-the-yoruba-people-in-west-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/1525\/a-long-view-sheds-fresh-light-on-the-history-of-the-yoruba-people-in-west-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"A long view sheds fresh light on the history of the Yoruba people in West Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Akinwumi Ogundiran<\/a>*<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Yoruba<\/a>\u00a0are among the most storied groups in Africa. Their ancestral homeland\u00a0cuts<\/a>\u00a0across present-day southwest Nigeria, Benin Republic and Togo in West Africa. They\u00a0number<\/a>\u00a0between 35 and 40 million. Their dynamic culture, philosophy, arts, language, sociology and history have attracted\u00a0numerous studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What has been missing in this rich literature is a deep history that benefits from a diverse range of disciplines and sources.\u00a0Scholars<\/a>\u00a0have long recognised the value of combining different methods and sources, beyond documentary and oral traditions, to study pre-colonial African history.<\/p>\n

I wrote\u00a0The Yoruba: A New History<\/a>\u00a0to fill this gap. The book is a product of the studies I have carried out in different parts of Yoruba region over the past 30 years as an\u00a0archaeologist, anthropologist, and historian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By providing insights from different disciplines I have been able to uncover new themes in Yoruba history.<\/p>\n

I provide a 2,000 year account of cultural changes and continuities, how local and global processes have affected social transformations, the meanings people made out of their experiences, and how these affected actions, and what the consequences were.<\/p>\n

I weave multifaceted stories about ups and downs, successes and failures, coping with risks and opportunities and solving existential crises. These have ranged from climate change to shifting global political economies, and the impact on the ideas of gender, class, and power, among others.<\/p>\n

The history<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the first half of the book, I account for how the Yoruba community evolved on the western side of the Niger-Benue Confluence in present-day Nigeria\u00a0about 4000 years ago<\/a>\u00a0and the dramatic changes that stimulated their\u00a0rapid geographical expansion between 300 BC and AD 300<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The climate change that commenced in the last quarter of the first millennium BC,\u00a0known as the Big Dry<\/a>, sparked this expansion process. Extreme droughts pushed families and social groups to look for new water corridors and resources. The early centuries of this ecological crisis were also a period of new technological innovations, especially the\u00a0adoption of iron metallurgy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the time the Big Dry ended and optimum wet conditions returned in the 3rd AD, the Yoruba had expanded from the Niger-Benue Confluence\u00a0as far as the Atlantic coast<\/a>. The second half of the first millennium AD was a period of\u00a0rapid socio-political innovations<\/a>. The idea of divine kingship alongside a unique system of urbanism evolved in multiple places and\u00a0became the basis of social order<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Between the 12th and 14th centuries, Ile-Ife was the centre of the Yoruba world. It was an emporium and holy city. Its economy was based on a novel technology of glass manufacture mainly devoted to making beads,\u00a0the primary currency of power, authority and wealth in the region.<\/a><\/p>\n

Ile-Ife remains the only place in sub-Saharan Africa known as an industrial centre for\u00a0primary glass production<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ile-Ife used its technological and economic advantages to restructure the ideology of divine kingship. It also used this advantage to standardise the Yoruba religious system (Orisa pantheon) and make itself (literally) the beginning and end of time. It brought vast territories, as far as the River Niger and the Atlantic coast, under its political control and cultural influence. These\u00a0included even non-Yoruba-speaking peoples<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For these and other reasons, I concluded that Ile-Ife built the first empire in the Yoruba world during the 13th and 14th centuries.<\/p>\n

Collapse and rebirth<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Ife Empire came to an end by 1420 due to\u00a0several colliding factors<\/a>. These included long spells of drought that kicked off around 1380 across West and East Africa (the equivalent of the\u00a0Little Ice Age<\/a>\u00a0in the northern hemisphere), political disturbances in Western Sudan (for example, the collapse of the Mali Empire), and internal crisis within the Ife Empire.<\/p>\n

Conflict, war, disease, famine, and dynastic changes\u00a0rocked<\/a>\u00a0most of the Yoruba world and other parts of West Africa.<\/p>\n

It was not until the late 16th century that the region began to recover, thanks to\u00a0regional cooperation notably championed by Oyo<\/a>. By then, the political landscape had been permanently changed. Some of the minor kingdoms of the Classical period were now in control (for example, Oyo), and several new states emerged from the rubbles of the old ones.<\/p>\n

This was also the beginning of the integration of the Yoruba into a newly emerging global political economy that focused on the Americas and the European maritime might.<\/p>\n

The book explores how the commercial revolution of this early modern period, especially the\u00a0Atlantic slave trade<\/a>, shaped Yoruba political landscape, culture, and society starting from the early seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

During this time, the Yoruba economy\u00a0became far more monetised than before<\/a>. There was an overall increase in productivity due to economic specialisation. The cowrie currency that powered this economy was imported while the external trade of the region was driven by\u00a0a dependency on imported addictive commodity \u2013 tobacco<\/a>. Both\u00a0cowries and tobacco exports<\/a>\u00a0were exchanged for human cargo in the Bight of Benin, where\u00a0almost a million Yoruba<\/a>\u00a0entered the Middle Passage, mostly between 1775 and 1840.<\/p>\n

The second half of the book focuses on the effects of this new experience on social valuation, the theory of rights, privileges, and power, as well as gender and class relations.<\/p>\n

I bring it to a close with the collapse of the\u00a0Oyo Empire<\/a>, the second empire in Yoruba history, and its aftermath in the mid-nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the concluding chapter, I reflected on what this 2000-year history means for the present.<\/p>\n

The book tells the story about the unique gifts that the Yoruba people gave to the world in social organisation, resilience, technology, arts, philosophy, religion, and ethics.<\/p>\n

From time to time, many scholars,\u00a0including me<\/a>, have lamented how African historical experience rarely informs public policies in contemporary Africa, mainly because\u00a0policymakers have a poor understanding<\/a>\u00a0of that history.<\/p>\n

An awareness of the challenges faced by ancestral Yoruba and how they solved those problems for more than 2000 years is as important as understanding why they came short in some instances.<\/p>\n

In searching for solutions that address contemporary challenges, it would help to pay more attention to African history.<\/p>\n

\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640\u0640<\/span><\/p>\n

*<\/span>\u00a0Chancellor\u2019s Professor, and Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology & History, University of North Carolina \u2013 Charlotte<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Akinwumi Ogundiran* The\u00a0Yoruba\u00a0are among the most storied groups in Africa. Their ancestral homeland\u00a0cuts\u00a0across present-day southwest Nigeria, Benin Republic and Togo in West Africa. They\u00a0number\u00a0between 35 and 40 million. Their dynamic culture, philosophy, arts, language, sociology and history have attracted\u00a0numerous studies. What has been missing in this rich literature is a deep history that benefits from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":14,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"The Conversation","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":""},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[169,168],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-west-africa","tag-history-of-the-yoruba-people","tag-yoruba-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}