A West African Cavalry State: the Kingdom of Oyo

1975 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Law
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Economic Burden ◽  
West African ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Considerable Evidence ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Military

Following an earlier article in this Journal, by Humphrey Fisher, dealing with the role of the horse in the Central Sudan, this article considers the role of cavalry in the kingdom of Oyo. It is suggested that the use of cavalry may have been adopted by Oyo during the sixteenth century. Oyo never became self-sufficient in horses, but remained dependent for its horses upon importation from the Central Sudan, while local mortality from trypanosomiasis was considerable. Evidence relating to the operations of Oyo armies supports the view that cavalry was of substantial military value, while at the same time illustrating the limitations of the military efficacy of cavalry. The acquisition and maintenance of large numbers of horses represented a considerable economic burden for Oyo, and the high cost of maintaining a large cavalry force may have inhibited the establishment of a royal autocracy in Oyo. The decline of the cavalry strength of Oyo in the early nineteenth century was due, it is suggested, to economic difficulties.

Abolition on shore

2019 ◽  
pp. 41-68
Author(s):  
Mary Wills
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West African ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Naval Officers

Naval officers played a part in a reconfiguration of relations between Britain and West Africa in the early nineteenth century, as British abolitionist ideals and policies were introduced in the colony of Sierra Leone and increasingly rolled out along the coast. This chapter details the role of naval officers in the pursuit of anti-slavery treaties with African rulers, the encouragement of ‘legitimate’ trade (as non-slave-based trade was termed) and assisting increased exploration and missionary efforts. All were tied to the desire to end the slave trade at source in West African societies via the spread of European ideas of ‘civilization’ among African peoples. Officers’ narratives are revealing of increasing British intervention in West Africa, and how economic and strategic advantages for Britain became inextricable from humanitarian incentives.

Frontier Disputes and Problems of Legitimation: Sokoto–Masina Relations 1817–1837

1976 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-514 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. C. Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Sudan ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
The Subject

The nature of relations between the neighbouring West African caliphates of Sokoto and Hamdullahi in the early nineteenth century has been the subject of speculation by students of the western and central Sudan from the time of Barth's visit to the area in the mid-nineteenth century. Now, working from several new manuscript finds and the evidence built up by scholars who have studied the two caliphates in detail, a tentative reconstruction of relations between the states in the crucial period 1817–37 is possible. What emerges is evidence of an intricate balance between the two caliphates and their mutually acknowledged spiritual advisers from the Kunta confederation in the Azaouad in which economic and strategic priorities as well as internal politics and theological matters all seem to play a role in determining the nature of relations between Hamdullahi and Sokoto.

The National and the Universal

2020 ◽  
pp. 368-386
Author(s):  
Sarah Collins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Respective Treatment ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the continuities between the categories of the “national” and the “universal” in the nineteenth century. It construes these categories as interrelated efforts to create a “world” on various scales. The chapter explores the perceived role of music as a world-making medium within these discourses. It argues that the increased exposure to cultural difference and the interpretation of that cultural difference as distant in time and space shaped a conception of “humanity” in terms of a universal history of world cultures. The chapter reexamines those early nineteenth-century thinkers whose work became inextricably linked with the rise of exclusivist notions of nationalism in the late nineteenth century, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and John Stuart Mill. It draws from their respective treatment of music to recover their early commitment to universalizable principles and their view that the “world” is something that must be actively created rather than empirically observed.

The Dahomean Middleman System, 1727–c. 1818

1987 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ross
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Supply Problem ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
Trading Partners

During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, European merchants bought more slaves in the Bight of Benin than on any other part of the West African coast. From c. 1720 until 1727 much of their buying was concentrated in Savi, the capital of a small Aja state called Whydah. When the Dahomeans overran Savi in 1727 they stopped the inland slave suppliers from travelling to the coast, prevented the local Hueda from going inland to collect slaves, and insisted that the Europeans bought slaves only from Dahomean dealers. In an attempt to make sure that the Europeans had nothing more to do with their former trading partners the Dahomeans burned the factories in Savi and forced their European occupants to retire to Grehue, Savi's port, a spot on the coast where the Europeans maintained a number of fortified warehouses.The middleman policy did not at first operate satisfactorily. There were two reasons for this. The first was that the Dahomeans were, in practice, unable to prevent the Europeans from continuing to trade with the Hueda. The second was that the inland suppliers refused to sell slaves to Savi's conquerors. The Dahomeans solved their ‘coastal’ problem in the 1740S by placing a garrison in Grehue. This garrison kept the exiled Hueda at bay and held the Europeans in what amounted to open captivity. The Dahomeans were never able completely to solve their ‘supply’ problem. In the 1730s and 1740S the inland merchants took their slaves to ports which opened up on the Bight to the east of Grehue. Only in the 1750s and 1760s did they channel substantial numbers of slaves through Dahomey. In the last decades of the century they again boycotted the Dahomean market. Dahomey therefore prospered as a middleman state only between c. 1748 and c. 1770.An examination of their eighteenth century trading suggests that the Dahomeans were a slave-raiding community whose members realised in 1727 that they would soon run out of fresh raiding grounds. They appear to have introduced their middleman policy in an attempt to ensure that they would continue to profit from slave trading even after they had ceased to be able to take large numbers of captives themselves. Although the policy was by no means a complete success, it was important in that it seems to have led the Dahomeans to begin placing garrisons in the territories they ravaged. It appears, in fact, to have been the pursuit of their middleman goals that led them to begin creating the often described nineteenth century ‘greater’ Dahomean state. The middleman programme ceased to be of much importance after c. 1818, when the fall of Oyo enabled the Dahomeans to resume raiding widely in unexploited territory.

Geopolitics of Comparison: World Literature Avant la Lettre

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Waïl S. Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Literature ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

Abstract According to a well-known narrative, the concept of Weltliteratur and its academic correlative, the discipline of comparative literature, originated in Germany and France in the early nineteenth century, influenced by the spread of scientism and nationalism. But there is another genesis story that begins in the late eighteenth century in Spain and Italy, countries with histories entangled with the Arab presence in Europe during the medieval period. Emphasizing the role of Arabic in the formation of European literatures, Juan Andrés wrote the first comparative history of “all literature,” before the concepts of Weltliteratur and comparative literature gained currency. The divergence of the two genesis stories is the result of competing geopolitical interests, which determine which literatures enter into the sphere of comparison, on what terms, within which paradigms, and under what ideological and discursive conditions.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theories ◽  
Evolutionary Thought ◽  
History Of

The introduction sets the scene by exploring the role of Edinburgh as a centre for the development and propagation of pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories. It gives essential background on natural history in the Scottish capital in early nineteenth century and the history of evolutionary thought and outlines the aims and objectives of the book. In addition, it explores some of the historiographical issues raised by earlier historians of science who have discussed the role of Edinburgh in the development of evolutionary thought in Great Britain.

Wilderness of Waters

2018 ◽  
pp. 14-40
Author(s):  
Jason W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Maritime Culture ◽  
Empirical Rationality ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the origins of navigational science in the American maritime culture of the early nineteenth century, in marine societies, and in the U.S. Navy, linking the institutionalization of naval science to the broader expansion of American maritime commerce and the evolving role of science in the federal government more broadly. The chapter argues that naval scientists, surveyors, and cartographers saw their work as bringing empirical rationality to a watery wilderness, imposing cartographic order over nature and an appropriation of space in the interests of American maritime commerce. In the process, they aimed to replace folkloric and experiential navigational understandings deeply held by the American seafaring community with a growing embrace of science institutionalized in the federal government and in the American navy specifically.

Politics and the Military, 1790–1832

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-27
Author(s):  
Nick Mansfield
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Military ◽  
Political Radicalism

This chapter reviews the involvement of soldiers in conventional politics in the early nineteenth century. In contrast to the leeway which allowed officers to be involved in politics (both as voters and MPs), the rank and file were discouraged from taking part. It outlines military policies of Whigs and Tories in the early nineteenth century and profiles key individual officers. It discusses the emergent influence of political radicalism on both parties, with some Whig officers embracing the concept, in contrast to Tory anathema.

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