Review: The Yoruba and Their Wars

Reviewed Work(s): Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century by J. F. Ade Ajayi and
Robert Smith
Review by: D. H. Jones
Source: The Journal of African History , 1965, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1965), pp. 430-432
Published by: Cambridge University Press

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43? REVIEWS

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THE YORUBA AND THEIR WARS

Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century. By J. F. ADE A

SMITH. Cambridge University Press in association with
African Studies, University of Ibadan, I964. Pp. x, I60;

The Yoruba empire of Oyo, at the height of its power in the

provided security and regular government for many million
strength and weakness in that government have not yet bee
Clearly, like all the empires of West African history, it had
in an environment where difficulties of communication were
to large-scale state buildings, and its harsh rule provoked the
from tributary kingdoms, Dahomey, Borgu and Nupe. O
relatively sudden breakdown at the turn of the century are
distinguish. There seems to have been a dangerous build-up
population in the metropolitan area itself. Linked with this,
Islam, even before the Fulani jihad, may have been one of th
upset the delicate balance between the political authority of
ritual primacy of the Oni of Ife. Another was surely pro
intensification of the external slave trade in the Badagry-Lago
half of the eighteenth century, even though the subjects of
provided few of its victims.
However this may be, the collapse of Oyo before the Fulan
the abandonment of the capital itself and many other cities,
migration of hundreds of thousands of refugees, was a disaste
tions. Regrouped in new cities, the Yoruba quickly effected a
The advance of the Fulani of Ilorin was finally checked by t
decisive battle of Oshogbo, c. I840. Abeokuta held the wester
the determined aggressions of Dahomey. More serious was t
vacuum created by the fall of Oyo. It posed political pro
hardly to be solved in more than fifty years of confused civil
This prolonged crisis in nineteenth-century Yorubaland is

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 REVIEWS 431

documented themes of African history, though one may hesitate to accept

Professor Ajayi's claim that it is uniquely so. In addition to the records of the
British consuls and administrators at Lagos who were increasingly involved in
the later phases of the conflict, the presence, from the early fifties, of C.M.S. and
American Baptist missionaries at most of the important centres of action,
provides an almost continuous contemporary documentation by observers who
tended to identify themselves, much more closely than European reporters of
nineteenth-century Africa usually did, with the political viewpoints of the rival
communities which had accepted their ministrations. Moreover, the Yoruba
produced in Samuel Johnson a truly great historian of their own who began to
collect materials for his masterly History of the Yorubas at a time when even the
earliest of the civil wars was still present in living memory. It may even be that
the quality of Johnson's work has deterred a later generation of professional
historians from following in his steps and accounts for the want of a major modem
study of these events.
The present book, supplementing Dr Biobaku's study of the Egba, goes some
way to meet that lack and whet the reader's appetite for more. It brings together
two quite independently written papers: a general study of the purely military
aspects of the Yoruba wars by Mr Robert Smith of the University of Ife, and a
more detailed consideration by Professor Ajayi of Ibadan of the Ijaye War of
I86o-5, examined as a 'case study in Yoruba wars and politics'. Despite some
inevitable overlapping, the two papers are happily complementary, the one
reinforcing the conclusions of the other.
Mr Smith distinguishes three main periods in the history of the Yoruba wars:
the first periods of initial confusion extending from the Owu war of about i820
to the founding of a new Oyo at Ago-Oja about I837; the second, from about
1837 to 1878, essentially a struggle between Abeokuta and Ibadan as the principal
successor states to Oyo; and the third from I878 to I893, characterized by a
coalition against the over-mighty power of Ibadan.
Mr Smith's account of Yoruba military organization, armament and method
of fighting, draws heavily upon Johnson, and upon an intelligence report written
by Captain Arthur Jones of the 2nd West Indian Regiment in I86I, after a visit
to Abeokuta and to the Egba camp before Ijaye, which is here reproduced in full.
He is, however, the first scholar to have applied the conventional techniques of
the military historian to West Africa, and has made energetic efforts to widen his
evidence by field studies, by personal examination of battlefields and surviving
fortifications, and through the collection of local tradition. Missionary records,
of course, provide eyewitness accounts of the battle of Abeokuta in i851. He
stresses that his account is ' preliminary and tentative', but considers the evidence
already available strong enough to refute Burton's scathing picture of Yoruba
military incompetence. One problem in particular stands out as unresolved. It
seems to be well established that firearms entered general use in Yoruba country
only in the early course of these wars, and this circumstance is very difficult to
account for when one remembers, for example, the scale of the arms trade with
Dahomey in the eighteenth century. Perhaps Yoruba military organization was
less flexible than Mr Smith suggests.
Professor Ajayi's chapters are of wider interest. He adds little to our knowledge
of the Ijaye war itself; it would seem that little traditional information survives
to supplement Johnson's epic narrative. He has, however, given it a new

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432 REVIEWS

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School of Oriental and African Studies, D. H. JONES
University of London

KIRK ON THE ZAMBEZI

The Zambezi Journal and Letters of Dr John Kirk, I858-6

FOSKETT. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, I965. Two vo
illus. and maps. ?6. 6s.

These volumes should be welcomed for four good reasons.

knowledge of Livingstone's Zambezi Expedition, on both
impersonal level, and provide a valuable commentary on
of this venture. Secondly, through the austere and scientif
Kirk, the Expedition's botanist and medical officer, they
reams of emotional writing the horrors of disease in the Z
and its effects on early British enterprise in this area. Th
of Central Africa, which has yet to be properly written
journals and letters an essential source. Thirdly, they illum
Scottish nature of British pioneering in the Malawi area
and its cantankerousness alike. And, finally, they reveal t
Coupland's Kirk on the Zambezi (1928), and afford the stud
historiography a fascinating glimpse of Coupland's tastes
cially by observing those elements in the Kirk papers w
employ.
The editor of these volumes is not a professional student of African history,
and specialists in this field must be prepared to make allowances for this.
Nevertheless, he has performed a most useful task in making these papers, for
long a family treasure, available to the public. Unfortunately, he has not been
well served by his publishers, whose exorbitant price for what is, technically, a
mediocre production will put this basic source of Central African history well
beyond the reach of most private purchasers.
University of Edinburgh GEORGE SHEPPERSON

DE WINTON IN THE CONGO

Sir Francis De Winton, Administrateur General du Congo 188

LUWEL. Tervuren: Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale,
map, illus.

A striking feature of Leopold II's Congo venture, until i886, was the important
role of British sympathizers and British chief agents. H. M. Stanley is doubtless

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