Iwe Itan Ọyọ: A Traditional Yoruba History and its Author

1989 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toyin FalỌla ◽  
Michel R. Doortmont
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Original Text ◽  
New Information ◽  
Bachelor Of Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Features

This article offers a translation of M. C. Adeyẹmi's book, A History of Old and New Ọyọ, completed in Yoruba in 1914. The original text comprises 32 pages, divided into ten short chapters, six of which treat the history of Ọyọ from the origins to 1914. The remaining four chapters examine cultural and political institutions. The translation retains the flavour of the original text which stems from a tradition of Yoruba oral historiography. M. C. Adeyẹmi was trained by the C.M.S., and had a Bachelor of Arts degree in education at Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone. Between 1911 and 1942, he combined the functions of educationalist and missionary. His short book, which refers to no published or unpublished written work, is based on Ọyọ oral traditions describing the major developments in the political history of Ọyọ. The author did not moralise on wars and the collapse of the Ọyọ empire, nor did he use the book as a means of propagating Ọyọ hegemony in Yorubaland.The book is significant in many ways: it is a representative example of Ọyọ traditions as they existed at the beginning of this century; it complements Johnson's The History of the Yorubas where both describe the same event; it is very useful for understanding how ‘traditional’ historians study society; and it provides new information on Ọyọ in the nineteenth century and on some cultural features of the Yoruba.

Kings, Titles, and Quarters: A Conjectural History of Ilesha I: The Traditions Reviewed

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 109-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.D.Y. Peel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional Centers ◽  
Conjectural History ◽  
The Town

This is an essay in conjectural history. Its subject is Ilesha, the capital of Ijesha, one of the larger Yoruba kingdoms, founded probably in the early sixteenth century roughly midway between the larger regional centers of Oyo and Benin. Except for some cursory references to Ijesha rescued from slavery in Sierra Leone in the early nineteenth century, there is absolutely no positive contemporary evidence, whether documentary or archeological, until Europeans first visited the town in 1858. Thereafter, since Ilesha was the leading member of the Ekitiparapo alliance which fought Ibadan to a standstill in the 1880s, contemporary documentation becomes fairly abundant. But my concern here is with the evolution of Ilesha's socio-political structure, with what has since come to be considered its “traditional” constitution, over roughly three centuries up to the third quarter of the nineteenth century. For that, virtually all our evidence lies in what people have said and done since the 1880s.African historians have perforce relied greatly on such evidence and since Vansina's Oral Tradition they have been able to use it both more confidently and more critically, especially in the area of Bantu Africa. My fellow sociologists, however, remain more radically sceptical. Despite their admission of the need for history, they have learned too well how dynastic tradition and legends of origin tend to serve as “characters” for contemporary arrangements and need primary interpretation in the light of this -- and have often concretely illustrated the point with devastating and, for those desirous of using oral traditions for historical ends, depressing effect.

scholarly journals Movement(s) in Elizabeth Helen Callender Melville’s travel letters from Sierra Leone

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Palma
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Local Food ◽  
The Political ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
British Colony ◽  
History Of

Bought by British activists of the abolitionist cause in the late 18th century to shelter Black survivors of the slave trade, Sierra Leone as a territory was marked by the political movement of abolitionism, and by the import of colonial settlers, including Melville. When Sierra Leone became a British colony, it was populated by freed slaves and poor Blacks from Britain. In the nineteenth century, settlers such as Melville and her husband had to discover the history of the place they were colonizing. The feeling of superiority subsided, they acclimated and eventually adopted a hybrid identity. Melville’s travel letters and diary reveal that she first appreciated the fauna and flora, then the local food, and confronted with slavery, she became aware of the European brand of savagery, far mor noxious than errant drumming and funny gaits or laziness. Melville also experienced prejudice upon returning home, when she felt and was made to feel like an African, rather than a British or Scottish subject.  

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.

scholarly journals The Politics of Gift Exchange in Early Qajar Iran, 1785–1834

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 550-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assef Ashraf
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Political History ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Political ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Center Periphery

AbstractThis article uses gift-giving practices in early nineteenth-century Iran as a window onto statecraft, governance, and center-periphery relations in the early Qajar state (1785–1925). It first demonstrates that gifts have a long history in the administrative and political history of Iran, the Persianate world, and broader Eurasia, before highlighting specific features found in Iran. The article argues that the pīshkish, a tributary gift-giving ceremony, constituted a central role in the political culture and economy of Qajar Iran, and was part of the process of presenting Qajar rule as a continuation of previous Iranian royal dynasties. Nevertheless, pīshkish ceremonies also illustrated the challenges Qajar rulers faced in exerting power in the provinces and winning the loyalty of provincial elites. Qajar statesmen viewed gifts and bribes, at least at a discursive level, in different terms, with the former clearly understood as an acceptable practice. Gifts and honors, like the khil‘at, presented to society were part of Qajar rulers' strategy of presenting themselves as just and legitimate. Finally, the article considers the use of gifts to influence diplomacy and ease relations between Iranians and foreign envoys, as well as the ways in which an inadequate gift could cause offense.

The “Elmina Note:” Myth and Reality in Asante-Dutch Relations

1986 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Larry W. Yarak
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
The Political ◽  
History Of

One of the more perplexing issues in the history of Asante's relations with the Europeans on the nineteenth-century Gold Coast has been that of the origin and significance of the so-called “Elmina Note,” the pay document which authorized the Asantehene to collect two ounces of gold (or its equivalent in trade goods) per month from the Dutch authorities at Elmina. Not only have modern historians of Ghana evidenced no small amount of confusion on this matter, but during 1870/71 the Asantehene, the British, and the Dutch also disagreed strongly over the political significance of the note, as the Dutch negotiated to cede their “possessions” on the Gold Coast to the British. Failure to resolve these disagreements contributed significantly to the Asante decision to invade the British “protected” territories in 1873. This action in turn led to the British invasion of Asante in 1874, which most historians agree constitutes a critical watershed in Asante history. Clearly, the matter of the “Elmina Note” (or kostbrief as it was known to the Dutch) is one of some historical and historiographical importance. An examination of the relevant Dutch, Danish, and British documentation now makes possible a resolution of the major questions concerning its origin and meaning.The debates between the Asante, the British, and the Dutch show that in the later nineteenth century there was considerable agreement over certain issues: first, no one disputed that the Dutch had for some time past paid to the Asantehene (actually to an envoy dispatched by the king to Elmina) a stipend (or kostgeld, as the Dutch termed it) of two ounces of gold per month, or twentyfour ounces per year.

The River of Salvation Flows Through Africa: Edward Wilmot Blyden, Raphael Armattoe, and the Redemption of the Culture Concept

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Hanretta
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Social Group ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nobel Peace Prize ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Culture Concept

The concept of culture, in the Boasian sense of the learned, variable, and mutable “structures” underlying “the behavior of the individuals composing a social group collectively and individually,” has played an important role in the production of knowledge about many human societies. This chapter examines two moments in the history of the culture concept as applied to West Africa. First, a moment during the process of the concept's formation in the mid-nineteenth century; second, a moment in the 1950s that revealed the political limits of appeals to culture. Juxtaposing the lives of Edward Wilmot Blyden, the father of Pan-Africanism, and the Ghanaian doctor and poet Raphael Armattoe, one of the first Africans nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the chapter illuminates the diverse networks and shifting political valences that shaped the rise, redemption, and circumscription of the culture concept in Africa from colonialism to neoliberalism.

scholarly journals The Maps That Killed Alexander Posey

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-94
Author(s):  
Matt Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Survival ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Data Visualizations

Nineteenth-century struggles over mapping concepts and techniques yielded the forebears of digital humanistic data visualizations today, staging the political tensions of the deep map’s entry into the humanities. The careers of educational reformer Emma Hart Willard and Creek poet and critic Alexander Posey, who were both map-makers in their ways, exemplify the entanglements of the history of deep mapping. Willard was a feminist innovator in her work with historical visualization, but at the cost of solidifying a regime of indigenous vanishment. Posey fought for his people’s cultural survival, but he did so from within a bureaucratic engine made possible in part by Willard’s widespread pedagogy linking the American map with a vision of settler dominance. These two figures left us provocative maps, but also offer a way to reflect on the justness of map-making — on the difficulty of deepening the map wisely, or even ethically.   

The Pre-History of Religious Exclusionism in Contemporary Pakistan:Khatam-e-Nubuwwat1889–1953

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 1840-1874 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAHIR KAMRAN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Initial Part ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Principal Objective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Religious Polemic

AbstractDuring the late nineteenth-century colonial era in India, theKhatam-e-Nubuwwat(Finality of the Prophethood) assumed remarkable salience as a theme for religious debate among Muslim sects. The controversies around the establishment of the Ahmadiya sect in 1889 brought the issue ofKhatam-e-Nubuwwatto the centre stage of religious polemic ormunazara.Tense relations continued between Ahmadiya and Sunnis, in particular, though the tension remained confined to the domain of religious polemic. However, immediately after Pakistan's creation, theKhatam-e-Nubuwwatsqueezed itself out of the epistemic confines of the ‘theological’ and entered the realm of the ‘political’.Majlis-Tahafuz-i-Khatam-e-Nubuwwat(the Association for the Safety of the Finality of the Prophethood) grew out of the almost-defunctMajlis-i-Ahrar-i-Islamon 13 January 1949, with the principal objective of excluding the Ahmadiya sect from the Islamic fold.1This article seeks to reveal how theKhatam-e-Nubuwwathas impinged upon the course of Pakistani politics from 1949 onwards as an instrument of religious exclusion, peaking in 1953. The pre-history of religious exclusion, which had 1889 as a watershed—the year when the Ahmadiya sect took a definitive shape—thus forms the initial part of the article.

The Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 81-112
Author(s):  
Iain Walker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The Political ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
History Of

Chapter four recounts the arrival of Malagasy leaders on the islands of Mwali and Mayotte in order to profoundly shape the history of the latter island, sold to France to become a colony in 1841. The political maneuvers between France, Britain, Madagascar and Zanzibar had significant consequences on the three smaller islands, particularly as the British tried to suppress the slave trade, the fulcrum of local economies and the source of labor for French plantations on Mayotte. Only Ngazidja remained apart, until finally, towards the end of the century, both Britain and Zanzibar renounced their claims to and influence over the archipelago and France declared protectorates over the three westernmost islands. The development of struggling plantation economies on all the islands and the loss of their historical economic mercantile activities would spell economic disaster for the islands.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 162-168
Author(s):  
Kevin Duong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Bonds ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Tradition

This conclusion reviews the importance of studying redemptive violence in nineteenth century France in light of the political history of the twentieth century. It argues that, despite the increased intensity of violence in the twentieth century, a study of redemptive violence in the nineteenth century is still important for us today. That is because it emphasizes that all democratic revolutions are social revolutions. All democratic revolutions pose the problem of reconstructing democratic social bonds. Redemptive violence’s history underscores that fraternité was always as important as liberty and equality in the French tradition. Critics of fraternité today ignore the importance of democratic solidarity at their peril.

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