Material life and domestic economy in a frontier of the Oyo empire during the Mid-Atlantic Age

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 42, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 351-386

  Ogundiran, Akinwumi ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHARLOTTE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77952175207     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. I use the term "Atlantic Period" to refer to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in other writings that focus specifically on the Yoruba-Edo cultural history. The implications of this essay for the broad Atlantic Africa and the Atlantic World require that the period be qualified here as "Mid-Atlantic Age." See A. Ogundiran, "Chronology, Material Culture, and Pathways to the Cultural History of Yorùbá-Edo Region, Nigeria, 10th-19th Century," in T. Falola and C. Jennings, eds., African Historical Research: Sources and Methods (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003), 62
2. P. Curtin, The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
3. D. Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
4. D. Eltis, S. Behrendt, D. Richardson, and H. Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-Rom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
5. E.g., W. Rodney, "African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade," Journal of African History 7 (1966), 431-43
6. J. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
7. S. Alpern, "What Africans Got for Their Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods," History in Africa 22 (1995), 5-43
8. P. Lovejoy, "The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of the Literature," Journal of African History 30 (1989), 365-94
9. D. Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery
10. J. Inikori, "Africans and Economic Development in the Atlantic World, 1500-1870," in S. Walker, ed., African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 123-38
11. J. Inikori and S.L. Engerman, eds., The Chaining of a Continent: Export Demand for Captives and the History of Africa South of the Sahara, 1450-1870 (Bridgetown, Barbados: University of the West Indies, Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1992)
12. For examples of empirical and conceptual discussion of domestic economy in state-level societies, see T.N. D'Altroy and C.A. Hastorf, eds., Empire and Domestic Economy (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001), 243-64
13. J.A. Hendon, "Archaeological Approaches to the Organization of Domestic Labor: Household Practice and Domestic Relations," Annual Review of Anthropology, 25 (1996), 45-61
14. In fact, at the peak of the slave trade in 1780s, human cargoes accounted for over 90 percent of total exports. D. Eltis and L.C. Jennings, "Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World in the Pre-Colonial Era," American Historical Review 93 (1988), 944
15. J. Inikori, "Africa and the Globalization Process: Western Africa, 1450-1850," Journal of Global History 2, 1 (2007), 63-86
16. Eltis and Jennings, "Trade between Western Africa and the Atlantic World," 957-58
17. For an expanded version of this argument, see Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery
18. E.g., J. Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
19. J. Adams, Remarks on the Country Extending from Cape Palmas to the River Congo (London: G. & W.B. Whittaker, 1966 [1823])
20. W. Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London: Cass 1967 [1705])
21. P. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967)
22. P.E.H. Hair, A. Jones, and R. Law, eds., Barbot on Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712 (London: Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., 1992)
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24. J.B. Lockhart and P.E. Lovejoy, eds., Hugh Clapperton into the Interior of Africa: Records of the Second Expedition, 1825-1827, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2005)
25. A.G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), especially chapter 2
26. R. Law, The Oyo Empire c.1600-c.1836: A West African Imperialism in the Era of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977)
27. P. Lovejoy, "Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria," Journal of African History 25, 4 (1974), 563-85
28. Law, The Oyo Empire, 207
29. E.g., T. Falola, "The Yoruba Toll System," Journal of African History 30, 1 (1989), 41-63
30. For examples, ed., An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and European on the Gold Coast, 1400-1900 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001)
31. C. Goucher, "Iron Is Iron 'til It Is Rust: Trade and Ecology in the Decline of West African Iron-Smelting," Journal of African History 22 (1981), 179-89
32. A. Ogundiran, "Living in the Shadow of the Atlantic World: Material Life, History and Culture in Yoruba-Edo Hinterland, ca. 1600-1750," in A. Ogundiran and T. Falola, eds., Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 77-99
33. A.B. Stahl, The Archaeology of Global Encounters Viewed from Banda, Ghana," African Archaeological Review 16 (1999), 5-81
34. A.B. Stahl, Making History in Banda: Anthropological Visions of Africa's Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)
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37. A.B. Stahl, "Political Economic Mosaics: Archaeology of the Last Two Millennia in Tropical Sub-Saharan Africa," Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), 155-56
38. A. Ogundiran, "Of Small Things Remembered: Beads, Cowries, and Cultural Translations of the Atlantic Experience in Yorubaland," International Journal of African Historical Studies 35, 2-3 (2002), 427-57
39. I. Hodder, ed., The Archaeology of Contextual Meanings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
40. C. Geertz, "Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture," The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 3-32
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42. See I. Hodder and S. Hutson, Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 156
43. A point well illustrated by Ann Stahl, "The Archaeology of African History," International Journal of African Historical Studies 42, 2 (2009), 241-55
44. Ogundiran, "Chronology, Material Culture, and Pathways, 33-79
45. A. Ogundiran, "Frontier Migrations and Cultural Transformations in Yoruba Hinterland, ca. 1575-1700: The Case of Upper Osun," in Toyin Falola and Aribidesi Usman, eds, Movements, Border and Identities Formation in Africa (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2009), in press
46. A. Ogundiran, "The Formation of an Oyo Imperial Colonial Enclave during the Atlantic Age," in Cameron Monroe and Akinwumi Ogundiran, eds., Landscapes of Power: Regional Perspectives on West African Polities in the Atlantic Era (Forthcoming)
47. R. Law, "Trade and Politics behind the Slave Coast: The Lagoon Traffic and the Rise of Lagos, 1500-1800," Journal of African History 24 (1983), 321-48
48. R. Law, "Early European Sources Relating to the Kingdom of Ijebu: A Critical Survey," History in Africa, 13 (1986), 245-260
49. A.F.C. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 1485-1897 (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), 31
50. Sango was the patron deity of the Oyo Empire. His symbol of authority is the two-sided axe. See J. E. Tishken, T. Falola, and A. Akinyemi, Sango in Africa and the African Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009)
51. Law, Oyo Empire, 202
52. See chapters in C. DeCorse, ed., West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade (London: Leicester University Press, 2001)
53. Also, see N. Norman, "An Archaeology of West African Atlanticization: Regional Analysis of the Huedan Palace Districts and Countryside (Bénin), 1650-1727" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, 2008)
54. J. C. Monroe, "Building Dahomey: Landscape, Architecture and Political Order in Atlantic West Africa" (Ph.D. thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, 2004)
55. E. Olunlade, Ede: A Short History (Ibadan: General Publications Section, Ministry of Education, 1961); Interviews by author: Oba Tijani Oyedokun Agbonran II, The Late Timi of Ede, Timi Agbale Palace, Ede, January 21, 2004; Oba Musa Olatunbosun, Alawo of Awo, Alawo Palace, Awo, May 6, 2004
56. S. Johnson, The History of the Yorubas (Lagos: CSS Bookshop, 1921), 156
57. J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 139
58. Lovejoy, "Interregional Monetary Flows," 563-85
59. J. Hogendorn and M. Johnson, The Shell Money of the Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)
60. According to Thomas Phillips, an English trader in Whydah: "when they go to market (in Whydah) to buy anything they bargain for so many cowries ... and without these shalls [sic] they can purchase nothing." Thomas Phillips, Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal of London (London: H. Lintot, 1746)
61. D. Richardson, "Slave Exports from West and West-Central Africa, 1700-1810: New Estimates of Volume and Distribution," Journal of African History 30 (1989), 1-22
62. Eltis, Rise of African Slavery, 169
63. Hogendorn and Johnson, Shell Money, 43-46
64. R. Law, "Cowries, Gold, and Dollars: Exchange Rate Instability and Domestic Price Inflation in Dahomey in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," in Jane Guyer, ed., Money Matters: Instability, Values, and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1995), 65
65. S. Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1775)
66. "Archaeological Reconnaissance of Ipapo-Ile, Kwara State, Nigeria: An Interim Report," West African Journal of Archaeology 19 (1989a), 21-36
67. and "Oyo Ruins of NW Yorubaland, Nigeria," Journal of Field Archaeology 17 (1990), 367-73
68. see also I. Omokhodion, "Oyo Ile Pottery Analysis" (M.Sc. thesis, University of Ibadan, 1978)
69. A. Ogundiran, Archaeology and History in Ilare District (Central Yorubaland, Nigeria), 1200-1900, Cambridge Monograph in African Archaeology No. 55 (London: Archaeopress, 2002)
70. P.M. Rice, "Evolution of Specialized Pottery Production: A Trial Model," Current Anthropology 22, 3 (1981, 219-40
71. L.G. Cecil, R.J. Speakman, and M.D. Glascock, "Report on Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis of Pottery and Clay from Upper Osun, Yorubaland, Nigeria" (Archaeometry Laboratory, Missouri University Research Reactor, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, September 22, 2006)
72. J.W. Ball, "Pottery, Potters, Palaces, and Polities: Some Socioeconomic and Political Implications of Late Classic Maya Ceramic Industries," in J.A. Sabloff and J.S. Henderson, eds., Lowland Maya Civilization in the Eighth Century A.D. (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1993), 247
73. B. Agbaje-Williams, "Contribution to the Archaeology of Old Oyo"
74. P. Ajekigbe, "Pottery Making in Ilora and its Relationship with Old Oyo Pottery Finds," in K.W. Wesler, ed., Historical Archaeology in Nigeria (Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 1998), 99-141
75. M. Anifowose, "An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Pottery in Ilorin" (Bachelors of Arts Essay, Dept. of Archaeology, University of Ibadan, 1984)
76. A.K. Fatunsin, Yoruba Pottery (Lagos: National Commission for Museums and Monuments, 1992)
77. For details on the organization of ceramic production, cross-culturally, see Carla M. Sinopoli, Approaches to Archaeological Ceramics (New York: Plenum Press, 1991)
78. A. Ogundiran, "Imperial Colonists and Their Neighbors: The Shaping of Identities in a Frontier of Oyo Empire" (paper presented at the 73rd Annual Meeting of Society of American Archaeologists, Vancouver, Canada, March 28, 2008)
79. R. Law, The Horse in West African History (London: Oxford University Press, 1980)
80. See Agbaje-Williams, "Contribution to the Archaeology of Old Oyo."
81. C.M. Tinsley, "Preliminary Faunall Report: Ede-Ile and Osun Grove Settlement, 2004 Season" (report on file with author, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY, May 2006)
82. Law, Horse, 26
83. Lockhart and Lovejoy, eds., Clapperton: Records of Second Expedition, 170
84. See R. Lander, Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition to Africa, vols. 1 & 2 (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830)
85. R. Lander and J. Lander, Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger, vol. 1 (London: John Murray 1832)
86. R. Lander, Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition to Africa, vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830), 203
87. J. Adams's travels in West Africa as a ship captain took place between 1786 and 1800. See his Remarks on the Country, 80
88. Lander, Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition, vol. 2, 153
89. J.D.Y. Peel, "A Comparative Analysis of Ogun in Precolonial Yorubaland," in S. Barnes, Africa's Ogun: Old World and New (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 263-89
90. B. Belasco, The Entrepreneur as Culture Hero: Preadaptations in Nigeria Economic Development (New York: Praeger, 1980), 153
91. G.J.A. Ojo, Yoruba Culture: A Geographical Analysis (London: University of London Press, 1966), 99
92. Belasco, Entrepreneur as Culture Hero, 153
93. Peel, "Ogun in Precolonial Yorubaland," 271
94. Lockhart and Lovejoy, Clapperton: Records of Second Expedition, 120
95. C.E. Kriger, Cloth in West African History (Lantham, MD: Altamira Press, 2006), 124
96. Kriger, Cloth in West African History, 128
97. C.A. Folorunso, "The Archaeology and Ethnoarchaeology of Soap and Dye Making at Ijaye, Yorubaland," African Archaeological Review 19, 3 (2002), 127-45
98. J. Byfield, "Innovation and Conflict: Cloth Dyers and Interwar Depression in Abeokuta, Nigeria," Journal of African History, 38 (1997), 79
99. Adams, Remarks on the Country, 94
100. K. Barber, "Money, Self-realization, and the Person in Yorùbá Texts," in Jane Guyer, ed. Money Matters: Instability, Values, and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities, (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995), 214
101. For cross-cultural syntheses, J. Schneider, "The Anthropology of Cloth," Annual Review of Anthropology 16 (1987), 409-48
102. A.B. Weiner and J. Schneider, Cloth and Human Experience (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989)
103. A. Ogundiran, "Frontier Migrations and Cultural Transformations in Yoruba Hinterland, ca. 1575-1700: The Case of Upper Osun," in Toyin Falola and Aribidesi Usman, eds., Movements, Border and Identities Formation in Africa (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press), 37-52
104. Ogundiran, "Of Small Things," 427-57
105. O. Eluyemi, "The Technology of the Ife Glass Beads: Evidence from the Igbo-Olokun," Odu, 32 (1987), 200-16
106. Ajetunmobi, R.O., "The Origin, Development and Decline of the Glass Bead Industry in Ile-Ife" (M.A. thesis, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife-Ife, 1989)
107. Ogundiran, "Frontier Migrations."
108. Lander and Lander, Journal of an Expedition, vol. 1, 180
109. P. Ozanne, "The Diffusion of Smoking in West Africa," Odu, new series, 11 (1969), 29-42
110. J.E. Philips, "African Smoking and Pipes," The Journal of African History 24, 3 (1983), 303-19
111. T. Shaw, "Early Smoking Pipes: In Africa, Europe, and America," Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 90, ii (1960), 272-93
112. Philips, "African Smoking."
113. Shaw, "Early Smoking Pipes," 293
114. S.K. McIntosh, D. Gallagher, and R.J. McIntosh, "Tobacco Pipes from Excavations at the Museum Site, Jenne, Mali," Journal of African Archaeology 1, 2 (2003), 192
115. Ogundiran, Archaeology and History in Ilare District
116. and "Frontier Migrations."
117. For example, "In 1777, Oba Ologunkutere of Lagos wrote to Richard Miles, the Governor of Cape Coast, requesting an advance of 'Good goods and Tobacco' in exchange for 'Good Trade.'" And, as late as 1856, 2,000 rolls of tobacco was listed among the commodities that a group of Lagos traders received on credit from a Brazilian trader, Joaquim Pereira Machado. Olatunji Ojo, "The Organization of the Atlantic Slave Trade in Yorubaland, ca. 1777 to ca. 1856," International Journal of African Historical Studies 41, 1 (2008), 90, 91
118. S. Rafferty and R. Mann, eds., The Archaeology of Tobacco Pipes in Eastern North America: Smoking and Culture (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2004), xiii
119. C.G. Leslie et al., "Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis."
120. G. Connah, The Archaeology of Benin: Excavations and Other Researches in and around Benin, Nigeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)
121. DeCorse, An Archaeology of Elmina
122. K. Kelly, "Change and Continuity in Coastal Benin," in DeCorse, ed., West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade, 81-100
123. The most recent and ongoing excavations (2009) at the residential structure associated with the Locus B refuse mound have yielded only an imported European tobacco pipe and the base fragment of a bottle. These are the first of such imports to be recorded in the Yoruba hinterlands 150km from the coast and dating to pre-1840s. Such finds have not even been reported in the metropolitan area of Oyo Empire. See Agbaje-Williams, "A Contribution to the Archaeology of Old Oyo"
124. A. Ogundiran, "Four Millennia of Cultural History in Nigeria (ca. 2000 B.C.-A.D. 1900): Archaeological Perspectives," Journal of World Prehistory 19, 2 (2005), 156
125. R.K. Flad and Z.X. Hruby, "'Specialized' Production in Archaeological Contexts: Rethinking Specialization, the Social Value of Products, and the Practice of Production," in R.K. Had and Z.X. Hruby, eds., Rethinking Craft Specialization in Complex Societies: Archaeological Analyses of the Social Meaning of Production (Washington DC: Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, 17, 2007), 5
126. C. Sinopoli, "The Organization of Craft Production at Vijayanagara, South India," American Anthropologist, n.s., 90, 3 (1988), 586
127. E.M. Brumfiel and T.K. Earle, "Specialization, Exchange, and Complex Societies: An Introduction," in E.M. Brumfiel and T.K. Earle, eds., Specialization, Exchange, and Complex Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 5
128. Eltis, The Rise of Atlantic Slavery
129. Belasco, Entrepreneur, 156
130. Inikori, "Africa and the Globalization Process," 63
131. J. Guyer, Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 5
132. Stahl, "Political Economic Mosaics."