TerraCotta: ; there were 31 Ogisos before the Oba dynasty from Ife (although his original work cited only one mythological Ogiso, Igodo, if I remember correctly).

a) Egharevba's original publication focused heavily on the "second dynasty" of kings, and very little on the Ogiso - not even much on that first one (Igodo) that he mentioned actually. I think in his original work, he gave Igodo about a sentence or two or maybe even a short paragraph and then moved on. When Egharevba first wrote his book I doubt that he consulted with the man who was Chief Ogiamien (or his immediate and extended family members) at the time - at least I've never actually seen his name among the names of the people Egharevba consulted for information (a few of them are known and have been mentioned in some publications). If he had, I don't think he would have given such short shrift in his Short History to that pre-Eweka period in his first version of the book. I'm not going to elaborate on that beyond saying that the reason he (the Ogiamien) would or could have known much more is because his famous ancestor was the man who tried to rule and set himself up as king in the interregnum period after the Ogiso dynasty, but was rejected by the people. Such a man or some members of his family would have had important information about his ancestors and that era, but some of the relevant information about such a time is probably lost by now.

Anyway, I doubt that it's the case that simply because Egharevba didn't originally write it in the very first publication that he wrote, that his later informants who gave him more information were all completely wrong or lying. Sure that could certainly be the case, and there is no reason to take every later revision by Egharevba as being totally accurate, but it could also be the case that they weren't lying at all but just genuinely trying to remember the details that they knew about that era and gave him whatever information that they could. Also, it's not exactly surprising that he presented the least amount of information about the era that was furthest back in time and more information about less distant times in his earliest publication, and added whatever new information he learned later on. I doubt that he's the first historian to do that - it is easier to find out more about the recent past than the very distant past, after all. Also the idea that he came up with the information himself or exaggerated it himself sounds implausible for reasons I'll elaborate on immediately below. But first, to correct what you wrote above I should state the facts more accurately: Egharevba published the first version of the book in 1933, published an English translation of it in 1934, and in 1936, only two years later, he gave a list of 15 Ogisos that ruled for about 2 and half to 3 centuries.

I believe it is more likely that this was just his attempt to incorporate what his sources told him than rather than some "exaggeration agenda" on his part, and at worst it was probably a failure to verify or cross check with many other informants to see if they actually agreed with the 15 figure or to see if all of those 15 kings were all actually ruling successively at the same area rather than some of them ruling separate areas simultaneously. But I don't see some deliberate exaggeration agenda at work there.

Another author, Osaren S.B. Omoregie, in a lecture/article he presented called "The Evolution of Benin" in 1982 at a national conference hosted by Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments, added the other names to make 31, although I haven't ever read the lecture to see if he actually gave the names of his informants/sources for these other names.

Later, Prince Ena Basimi Eweka, who published a book on Benin in 1989, seems to have incorporated the additional names that Omoregie mentioned (maybe he was at Omoregie's lecture in 1982?) to publish the longer list in a book for the first time. I don't recall what the specific names were that were added to Egharevba's 15, but if there was anybody whose credibility I would call into question, it would only be Omoregie's, mostly because I still haven't seen what his sources were and because I tend to be skeptical of certain things that he writes, not Egharevba, who showed no signs, in my opinion, of carrying out some king list exaggeration agenda.


b) On the validity of the names themselves as indicating real people rather than mythological characters, it is interesting that one of those additional names he gave (Ere), apart from Igodo, was also mentioned independently by European anthropologists in other sources - European academic journals and other publications (where the name is slightly misspelled) that it is unlikely that Egharevba would have been familiar with, had access to, or ever even heard of in 1936. And the name of a son of an Ogiso that Egharevba mentioned was also mentioned independently in another source (the name is slightly misspelled, as often happens in early European renderings of African names, but is clearly the same name as the one Egharevba gives). If Egharevba was merely pulling it out of thin air, I'd be interested in knowing how he independently stumbled upon the same names of Ogisos and sons of Ogisos or how the European writers stumbled upon slightly misspelled versions of those names which Egharevba would supposedly have just made up. More importantly, none of these people (the named Ogisos) figure prominently in real Bini mythology, but instead figure only in historical accounts or historical legends/fables.

Egharevba not mentioning more than one Ogiso in his first publication really doesn't matter because he was not the "official" historian of Benin despite the perception of him as such (he was the best historian and made an enormous and invaluable contribution, but that's not the same as being an actual official historian of a court, palace, kingdom or a people) in some publications, and one of the Ogisos that was mentioned in Egharevba's 1936 publication that was not mentioned in the 1934 publication, Ere, was so significant that his memory had already been invoked in the names of historical figures from the precolonial period, long before Egharevba was born:

Eresoyen (an 18th century king)
Erediauwa (a 19th century prince of Benin, who later became Oba Osemwende)

The names of Eresoyen and Erediauwa are mentioned in publications from the late 19th century (king lists). Whether Egharevba had published his first book in 1933, translated it in 1934, but hadn't figured out who Ere or other Ogisos were until 1936 wouldn't matter because the kings of the kingdom he was writing about certainly knew who that Ogiso was before Egharevba was around.

Also, the descriptions of all of these figures in both Egharevba's account and that of the European sources is clearly not merely mythological. Perhaps, you're only taking part of Bondarenko's interpretation (but it is very clear from Bondarenko's publications that even he does not think the Ogiso are merely mythological but just that a lot of the stories from certain sources that surround them have a mythological appearance or flavor) or you are relying on Bradbury's perception of them as semi-mythological. Bradbury was not under the impression that they were merely mythological, as his publications make clear - see The Benin kingdom and the Edo-speaking peoples of south-western Nigeria (1957) - he characterized them as "semi-mythological," no doubt because of some of the fantastic elements in some of the stories about them, but did not say they were merely mythological characters.

TerraCotta: He struggles with the same issues any native-born scholar does; how to separate your pride in heritage from the truth of history. If we accept all these royalist charters and legends as true without critically parsing them, we're doing ourselves a disservice and making it that much harder for future researchers to separate myths and legends from the true historical timeline.

I'm not sure this criticism applies very well to Egharevba.

I think it was actually this absence of significant bias and his objectivity that made Bradbury make it a point to specifically praise his integrity and made Ryder praise the value of his work (in a preface to the book Dawn to Dusk: Folktales from Benin by the late Prince Iro Eweka, Ryder gives his opinion on Egharevba's work as an aside).

There are other "native born historians" from Africa whose work strikes me as having more issues with truth, objectivity or neutrality and which seem more inclined to writing in a grandiose style and apotheosizing certain specific people and events, even despite the huge historical value of their work.

But Egharevba? Egharevba wrote about more than the monarchy or the historical events of the kingdom (especially in his other publications) - some of his publications touch on laws, customs, etc. of the Edo. And he also didn't blindly glorify the monarchy - in fact, he might have unintentionally sold its grandeur short in his main book. (This is not really a criticism, as I have a huge amount of respect for Jacob Egharevba, but just a personal opinion of mine - if one only reads Egharevba's book but never sees the art and/or reads some of the written documents from Europeans, one could have a hard time grasping just what the level of development of the kingdom was at its peak.)

Now I don't think it's accurate to call Egharevba's work a "royalist charter" because it does not seem (at least to me) to simply be about royalist elevation, but a mostly dispassionate retelling of important remembered events.

His work talks of regicide/assassination (the death of Ezoti), a disloyal and scheming official (the Oliha during Esigie's time) getting into a dispute with the king - supposedly over a woman (at least, according to Egharevba's publication).

It talks about a supposedly ruthless prince who is accused of murdering some of his relatives in order to secure his ascendance to the throne (prince Okpame, who later became Ozolua), who is then banished, and later, after being invited back to become king, embarks on a series of conquests and becomes so obsessed with continuing his conquests while king that this own army becomes tired of the constant warfare and his most trusted general betrays him while they are out on a campaign to subdue a rebellion in Uzea (in the Esan area), leading to his death.

It mentions a king (Obanosa) who becomes jealous of one popular and charismatic nobleman and develops a rivalry with him, which even leads to the king having a drawn out dispute with his mother, the Iyoba (Iye Oba) at the time.

It talks about rival princes whose clashes over who inherits the throne (Ezuwarha and Kuoboyuwa) lead to their both being murdered around the same time (poisoning) by their opposing sides.

It mentions a crippled king (Oba Ohen) who is killed by the people for having his Iyase (a very high ranking official, practically second-in-command to the king) unjustly murdered.

It mentions one particular king committing excessive human sacrifices in honor of his deceased mother and this king being hated and then practically abandoned by the people for this act.

It mentions a high ranking official (the Iyase Ode) successfully intimidating and eventually warring with his king, who has to seek outside help to fend him off and eventually subdue him.

And so on and so forth. It's all in there in his work and there are even some other less than glorious details which I didn't even mention here. This is not to say that he does not give the kingdom, its royalty, its warriors, and other notable figures their just due or give them praise, because he does when mentioning people or events that would merit praise, but given how inglorious some of the details mentioned above appear, I think it's not an accurate representation to suggest that Egharevba merely wrote a "royalist charter." How many "royalist charters" would bother to present the very unpleasant or less glorious information right alongside the pleasant or glorious information so dispassionately/frankly and matter-of-factly without resorting to euphemisms, excuses or rationalizations?

Also, I think if you read the book (or read it again), and then checked the number of incidents and claims in Egharevba's book that were confirmed by other sources (archaeology being one of them) and later scholarship, then you might understand the strong praise that Bradbury, Ryder, and others (including Bondarenko and Roese) had/have for the historical worth of his work. Additionally if you read his main book (or read it again, if you already have) you might notice something else about the tone and style of the book - there is often a kind of straightforward, casual innocence or naivete in the way it presents some information that may be unpleasant/inglorious or which has obvious supernatural aspects involved. There's little to no explaining away of bad deeds or attempts to logically/rationally decode the meanings of events/stories that involve any seemingly supernatural element. This aspect is actually a positive attribute of the work (although it may not look like it at first), because it means the author is most likely much more concerned with repeating a summary of the information he was told than he is with polishing the appearance/perception of certain historical figures or events.

TerraCotta: To explain a little further, the history of societies like Ife/Ufe, Idah, Benin/Udo, etc. are as separate from their governments and elites as the history of Nigeria is separate from the claims of Governor Glover, Balewa, Azikiwe, Obasanjo or Goodluck Jonathan, in my view. Obviously political elites and their decisions have a tremendous impact, but we can't take their official versions of history, diplomacy, warfare and policy as fact. They're likely embellished, exaggerated, massaged or outright fabricated due to political pressures and needs, either ancient or current.

Here's another link to read when you have time (and if you haven't already seen it): http://www.academia.edu/1972119/Ancient_Benin_Where_did_the_First_Monarchs_Come_from

I think that you may have accepted Patrick Darling's Udo thesis uncritically, given your "phantom capital" comment from earlier. From what I can tell, Darling's basic thesis has been around since the mid 1980s (almost 30 years) and yet it doesn't have even a single endorsement (not even Bondarenko endorses it, he just notes what Darling believes and uses some of Darling's information/claims for his own idea/theory) from anybody significant in the study of any aspect of Edo culture or Benin history and there is a very good reason for this. The thesis is just not credible. I will comment at length on what the problems are with Darling's various claims tomorrow or the next day, but for now, I have to get some sleep.

Bondarenko's paper and his (and Roese's) theories have their own problems as well, although these are generally not as severe as the problems with Darling's claims (some of which they rely on for their own theories), and I'll comment on a few of the issues I see with their theory as well in a day or two.

Interesting read...

Big ups to terracotta, physicsQED, and ezeagu - I'm enjoying the discourse...

Odumchi, can you please clean up the thread?

Happy to see the discussion revived and bulging with details. I can't respond in much detail right now but I'll write something up when I get in. I will say quickly that I misunderstood your position on the Benin interactions with the Gold Coast and the Congo, and you misunderstand my position on the Ijebu-Benin relationship, the royalist tendencies to exaggerate and Egharevba's invaluable works. Some of the citations I initially credited to John Thornton were from Robin Law etc but I'll get into more detail later today.

Ezeagu, I will also try to find more specific references to Nri claims of Igala origins since you're dissatisfied with the specific lines in Jeffreys' article on the Nri-Igala relationship ("the Umundri tradition is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala", which I quoted earlier) and the use of specific items of regalia like the brass face mask and Igala cloths in their coronation ceremony. I don't own a copy of Jeffreys' PhD thesis, which he distilled into the short articles available on jstor etc, but I'd refer you to it if you want more details. As I've said, I don't really have much else to add on Nri since it's not central to the rest of the discussion.

Alright--this is a pretty detailed response that I didn't have time to complete during the week. However, it's the weekend and I pulled together some sources so we'd be having a discussion about stuff we can reference instead of pure speculation. I may be off on one or two of these since some citations were things I read years ago. I'm also not a professional scholar by any means--I make a living in a less intellectually stimulating/more typically "Naija" field (in some ways) sadly--so I'd caution again that much of this stuff is from my conclusions having reading a good deal of material and developing a strong basis for comparative analyses. This is obviously a major interest of mine outside my 9-to-5.

Ezeagu

All this does not consider the dating of the Nri kings list relevant to Eri's age of origin vs. the Igala kingdoms age, the age of Nri settlements all over the Niger River Delta like Ogwanshi-Ukwu, Igbuzor, Owa on the Western side of the river, and people of Nri descent and Nri influence like that of the Aro confederacy which rose in the 1600s.

Some of the most problematic information from Onwuejeogwu is precisely because of his acceptance of these kinglists. I find it hard to accept regular 80-90 year reigns as historical realities. I'm also not sure why the Aro groups would be primary evidence for the age of Nri's foundation in the 10th century since, as you suggest, their emergence is commonly dated to the 17th century and they claim Ekoi/Ibibio ancestry and cultural affinities along with their Igbo heritage.

You also seem to imply here that I believe the Igala kingdom is truly the source of Nri; there's some suggestive evidence of this but I'm not claiming it as fact and it's not the central point of my argument. What's important is that the Nri themselves presented their ancestry as Igala to researchers in the 1930s. Again, if the evidence from these same researchers in the 1930s through 1950s and the conclusions of other modern scholars don't convince you, there's no harm in that. It does say something about what they consider a prestigious ancestry at that point in time and feeds into what I'll write below about the uses of court propaganda.

On to Physics!

Right, but the earliest written claim about any kind of Benin authority over Ijebu only appears in European records in the writings of the Dutch, not the Portuguese. So if Benin had any authority over Ijebu or claimed such during the period when there was great interaction with the Portuguese (the 16th century), rather than the Dutch (17th century), they either didn't mention it, or the proselytizing Portuguese didn't care to ask about that or write it down. There is also little information on any other areas Benin had as tributaries from the Portuguese documents throughout that whole century - or even the names of the specific neighboring groups one early Portuguese souce (the same Duarte Pacheco Pereira) claims Benin was "usually at war with".

Pereira was notable for his accuracy and for providing a baseline of knowledge about the groups in the Gulf of Guinea. He was (one of, if not the) earliest written source we have for the culture and geography of Ijebu, Urhobo, Ijo and Benin. As I suggested in my post, it's possible that the Benin 'expansion' into Ijebu just hadn't happened by the time he wrote. Of course, it's also possible that it didn't happen at all (at least not in the way Benin legends tell it), which was my initial point.

I don't see how removing or adding kingdoms from their "tributary list" (or as some would have it, "boasting list" ) would have changed the overall perception of their status/power by their trading partners considering that the perception of Benin as an important place in the area or potential good trading partner in the early documents does not seem to be dependent on how big their sphere of influence was claimed or perceived to be but on what they have to trade. Or is there some quote you've come across where the influence of the kingdom in the wider region is commented upon favorably by a European writer in the context of assessing the worthiness of the kingdom (Benin) as a profitable or reliable trading partner?

This is a common sense assumption to me. Trading partners seek out the most favorable terms with the largest vendors, rather than going through middlemen. The early Europeans would have had little incentive to venture towards Benin if they had assumed Itsekiri traders were the most powerful polity in the region and could give them the best terms for their goods.

There is a plain business incentive to aggrandize your political and economic sphere of influence. I don't think this is too controversial a claim, but I'll use the kingdom of Dahomey as an example. The all-conquering warrior kings of that expanding kingdom had what we would consider an excellent propaganda policy of never admitting defeats and promoting themselves as the African regional equivalent of the European powers like Britain and France. Richard Burton's books, which you seem to have read, is full of these bragging scenes. The Dahomeans did it to gain the respect and loyalty of their trading partners; it's no great stretch to see why Benin may have had the same motivations in an earlier era. I'll return to Dahomey later because I think it's well-studied history can suggest guideposts to critically analyze other African societies.

c) If those sort of claims were all about bragging and telling tall tales to look grand and powerful, why even bother listing any places closer to the coast (along with tributary kingdoms in the interior) that the Europeans, whether Portuguese, Dutch, or any other group might have been able to visit to see if they really were tributary? (The Portuguese did visit Ijebu on more than one occasion - this is mentioned in Robin Law's article on Lagos that is mentioned below) Why not just claim power over a vast network of tributary kingdoms extremely far into the interior that no European can verify except through weeks of traveling blindly in the interior and somehow stumbling on these kingdoms themselves? These are rhetorical questions by the way.

d) And although this may seem counter-intuitive - because it is normal for kingdoms to self-aggrandize - I'm also a little skeptical of the idea that the Benin court made really exaggerated claims about its own influence or power to the Portuguese (or even the Dutch). In previous posts, haven't we actually been discussing and alluding to reports from the Portuguese, which they got from Benin informants, which clearly place that "Hooguanee/Ogane" ruler above them in the hierarchy that existed at the time and one of which also suggests that there is another (militarily) strong power ("Licasaguou," i.e. the king of either Oyo or Nupe) besides Benin in the wider region? If it was all about boasting to the Portuguese, why not just claim to be the overlord of everyone and anything significant and just not bother to volunteer information about other important states in the interior? The already documented honesty of the Benin informants in these two instances seems to belie the suggestion that they would just lie blindly before Europeans about the extent of their territory or power for trade benefits, so I'm skeptical of the idea that their claims about territory or power can easily be dismissed as mostly just bragging.

There are two possibilities here; one, I admit, is weaker than the other. The fact is that Ijebu was and continued to be a much more closed society than Benin. There were much fewer visits and the Benin court could have made the claim knowing the Portuguese were less likely to visit there to verify. Besides, the verification of grand boasts would happen after the presumed trade benefits of boasting would have already happened. If a con artist sells you a fake watch or gold chain, he knows you'll eventually find out. His concern is to get your money and be gone before the ruse is discovered. This is a discussion about motivation so I hope this isn't misconstrued as an insult to the Benin court of that era.

More importantly: you're conflating the argument that someone has a great deal to gain by exaggerating their area of domain, and the issue of religious piety. The mafiosi in Italy and New York are often devout Catholics; virtually every corrupt Nigerian politician is either a fervent Christian or Muslim. The court at Benin told their visitors that the Houghanee/Ogare was like the pope to European nations. He was a religious potentate and not an economic rival of the time. There was no danger in admitting to a higher religious authority but it's important to see that Benin had good reasons not to admit to being militarily subservient to someone else while also being honest about their religious or 'ancestral' connections.

e) On Pereira, like other early (16th century) Portuguese sources on southern Nigeria, his descriptions don't exactly strike me as being completely thorough or extremely informative as far as including information about all the tributary states, political connections, etc. like some of the later sources do. Of course that's just my opinion, but I think his descriptions of specific places don't go into the kind of detail that would allow us to know much about the actual histories, customs, and connections of the places that he mentions in the way that Dapper's compilation of information is able to. And of course, Duarte Pereira could have simply written about the place too early - the invasion and/or conquest could have come a few years later than when he wrote, while still being an event that happened in Oba Ozolua's reign.

I've addressed my views on this. I think Pereira is many ways more accurate than Dapper, Bosman and other sources because he visited the places he wrote about and identified many of the areas that later writers built their narratives around. That's neither here nor there if you place this 'conquest' after his writing. Pereira was an earlier Portuguese equivalent of Richard Burton, who I've written about here before as a peerless first-person source precisely because they were both well-traveled, multi-lingual, experienced in both military and diplomatic roles and less likely (in my view) to exaggerate or accept exaggerations because they had comparative experiences elsewhere.

f) Furthermore, I'm not sure the logic of your reference to Pereira there is really consistent with your skepticism of, or rejection of, the claim in Dapper's work. Is it that the Portuguese sources are somehow more credible than the Dutch sources? Or that if Peirera had written something similar to what Dapper's sources wrote, then you actually would have accepted that Ijebu was tributary? Or are you saying that every place that was tributary would have automatically volunteered that information (about who they were tributary to) to the first Europeans that showed up on their doorstep?

I think skepticism is warranted when two sources disagree, especially when one of the sources is primary (Pereira, who'd been to these areas) and the others are secondhand (Olfert Dapper, Bosman etc, who were aggregating sailors' stories and earlier works). If the two sources disagree, we have reasons to analyze them to find out which might be more accurate. I'm not the first or only person who found Dapper and co. unreliable or mistaken about this claim but I'll get into that later.

g) As an additional point, although it has not been brought up yet, I should note that I am a bit puzzled by the perception that exists in some accounts I have come across that because Ijebu was a powerful kingdom at times that it could not be have been conquered by or made tributary to another powerful kingdom, whether Benin or Oyo. I know this isn't entirely what you're saying - you're really saying that any Benin influence or indications of previous authority there are not acknowledged anywhere in Ijebu tradition - but I have seen this explanation of "it was too powerful for a conquest to have happened" given before (such as by Robert Smith in his section on Ijebu in his book Kingdoms of the Yoruba, or from others on this forum) and I can't make any sense of this claim so I think I should note the problems with such an explanation before it might be brought up again as if it were a legitimate objection. Benin (a powerful kingdom) was almost conquered by the Igala, Igala (a powerful kingdom in their area) was conquered by Benin, and later by the Jukun. Allada/Ardra was conquered by Dahomey, Dahomey was conquered by Oyo, Oyo had once been conquered by Nupe in the past, etc.

All of these conquests and almost conquests suggest to me that being a powerful kingdom was not some sort of guarantee of safety against being conquered by another powerful kingdom and I find the argument that such a conquest could not have happened based on a kingdom being powerful (such as the argument made by Smith) to be a weak argument. And once again, I'm not saying that you're making this particular argument, I'm just saying that's it's a factor that should be set aside as having no real weight or relevance in considering whether the claim is true or not.

I agree wholeheartedly with all this and I'd even add that it's part of my line of thinking on this interpretation of an Ijebu-Benin relationship. A powerful kingdom had no guarantee of safety from predations, and by the same token, military expansion wasn't the only (or perhaps not even the most powerful) type of contact between African societies. We've focused on the stories of empires and conquerors to the detriment of understanding the role of travelers, traders, artisans and craftsmen, diplomats and religious personnel etc. in forming these societies. If we all agree that there were contacts beyond the borders of these empires, we should be able to imagine other types of social and cultural interaction beyond war.

h) I think the evidence of past connections is obvious from other information that has nothing to do with what Dapper's sources were told in the early or mid-17th century or what Egharevba was told in the early 20th, so I'll refer to other sources that mention other evidence of connections besides the conquest/tributary claims of Dapper's sources and Egharevba's sources:

pp. 117-120 and p. 241 of Yoruba: Nine Centuries of Art and Thought
pp. 178-181 of Benin: Kings and Rituals

Even if one ignores what Dapper's sources were told in the early or mid-17th century, and ignores what Egharevba was told in early 20th, one would still see the same obvious signs of connections or influences between the two places and nobody seems to have missed these influences so of course we can't pretend they didn't exist.

So this brings us back to the issue of interactions, influences and 'conquest'. There are a myriad ways and reasons through which Benin art styles and beliefs could have spread to Ijebu and vice versa. The idea that these fairly obvious and well-accepted connections could only have been adopted through military means (as claimed by Benin traditions and rejected by Ijebu ones) is what I disagree with and what you presumably are insisting on.

Now--what reasons do we have of being suspicious of the Benin conquest story related by Dapper? Robin Law's exhaustive study of European sources on Ijebu agrees that the claim is probably an inflated one. Law quotes Dapper's passage and says "Dapper's statement here that Ijebu was tributary to Benin is difficult to evaluate. Although it is supported by Benin traditions claiming an early Benin conquest of Ijebu, it should be treated with reserve; since Dapper's own information was collected in Benin, it may reflect patriotic vainglory rather than political reality." (from "Early European Sources Relating to the Kingdom of Ijebu, 1500-1700: A Critical Survey", History in Africa , Vol. 13, (1986), pp. 253). If you read his quote from Dapper, you'll see that Jaboe (Ijebu) is just another claimed tributary area alongside the unidentified Isago, Gaboe (probably a misreading of Ijebu but possibly also Aboh, Istanna etc). Some of these names demonstrate the problems later readers have with Dapper's accuracy, since inconsistent spellings and multilingual translations often lead to some unintentionally garbled information. The other thing it demonstrates is that the all-conquering claim of Benin did in fact extend deep into the interior to touch even on Oyo (possibly the 'Isago' referred to here, which may also be Nupe or a currently unknown polity). You can be the judge of the accuracy of those claims but I think it's fair and sensible to take into consideration the contrary traditions of the people being discussed.

The other article you've cited by Law restates the point that the Benin claim on Ijebu may be exaggerated. In fact, the passage about Benin's earliest presence on Lagos Island agrees with what I've suggested earlier on this thread--their military presence was specifically on the island, which wasn't settled as a full-time village and instead served as a vast farm for the Olofin families who were based on Iddo (there's that name again!) while the mainland coasts like Ikorodu were more connected to the Ijebu capital on the mainland. Even if Law accepts the claim of Benin origins for Ado, Ipokia etc (he refers to a Peter Morton Williams article for the origin of this information and I haven't been able to read the original), it's clear that he was skeptical about the reach of Benin's authority.

I could go into more detail about the art historical evidence of Ijebu-Benin contact (the face bells, pectoral masks and even lesser-known points of cultural cognizance like ibowo shrines) and what these suggest but it will be too much of a digression.

Hopefully you have a completely different/distinct argument for why the Benin-Ijebu claim is implausible or false that isn't just a variation/combination of the ones that I commented on immediately above.

I think it's a fairly distinct/novel reading of the claim, although it's clear that both Robin Law and Robert Smith are as skeptical of this claim as I am.

2.

I'm not sure what relevance the example of the Danish source has to the issue of Benin courtiers possibly exaggerating the range of their kingdom's influence/power for the supposed benefits in trade it would bring them. The Danish source (Roemer) did not get his exaggerated claims about Benin's former territory from Benin or any Benin informants. Roemer did not set in foot in Benin, as his original document makes very clear, even in just the translated excerpts from it. He got his information from a local informant in the Accra area and from that Englishman who once traded at the Benin river and who did not have a particularly high view of Benin's power and level of organization - this same Englishman felt Benin as a city and its government was no better than that of any of the ordinary kings in the Gold Coast (this English man might have visited Benin in the early 1700s, as the article I posted a link to earlier suggests, which was a period immediately following Benin's major civil war, when Benin was a much weaker kingdom and lost much of its influence or authority over other polities).

I've talked about my views on the commercial benefits of Benin's claims but we can go back to Robin Law again for more clues. He suggests that the rise of Lagos was directly related to Benin's waning role in trans-Atlantic trade; as Portuguese ships headed more towards Allada and other ports to the West after trade disputes with Benin in the mid-16th century, the court was extending itself in that direction to keep a foothold on the lucrative trading. From the earliest European records we have of trade in the region (again Perriera) it looks like Ijebu textiles and the controversial jewelry called akori/aggrey were some of the main items of trade. The Ijebu cloth especially was highly valued on the Gold Coast and developed similar markets in Brazil (all the way to the end of the 19th century, in fact, when Brazilian returnees to Lagos were still selling panos da costa or 'country cloths' back to their former homes). The evidence shows that Ijebu was a formidable economic power and in several ways a rival to Benin, which was a middleman for cloth and akori from inland areas. There were strong practical reasons for either claiming dominion over Ijebu or trying to usurp its role in the trade by cutting off direct trading lines in the Lagos area.

As for the territory claim itself, I would imagine that the Accran told him that Benin's territory stretched to the Gambia river (a ridiculous claim, of course) if he was somehow aware of where Gambia was, because of the apparent nostalgic and romanticized view about the supposed Benin viceroys, not because of any mischief or guile on Roemer's part, although it is also possible Roemer himself could have been the source of his own exaggerations, but I doubt that the anonymous Englishman could have been told about the "Gambia river" (or maybe he misidentified the river that he was told about) by anyone he met in Benin, since I don't see how they (the people of Benin) could have understood where exactly Gambia was or how far away the Gambia river was located relative to Benin.

The important point in my view is not whether Roemer heard the claim from a nostalgic Accran, an exaggerating Benin citizen or a mistaken Englishman; the point is that you (rightly, in my eyes) find the claim of Benin authority over The Gambia ridiculous. This claim was made in the same breath as the Ijebu one, so I think it's logical to view it with the same skepticism when there's little evidence beyond court myths and the controversial claims of Dapper, Roemer and others who relied on second-hand information. If there was nothing to gain from exaggerating Benin's territory, why would this claim have even come up?

I think your speculation about impressions made by visiting dignitaries is a pretty strong guess about how ideas of prestige and new political affinities grow, by the way. It's central to my point that relationships developed between the West African polities through means other than military conquest or subordination. I'd say there was almost a predisposition for West Africans to admire outsiders and foreigners and give them dignitary roles (possibly because they were relatively segregated from much of the cosmopolitan world at the time) and this explains why so many groups have traditions of migrations or foreign origins for their ruling groups. There was a prestige in being connected to and aware of economic and political developments outside the serenity of the forests and savannah. There are echoes of this concept in the development of Ife but again--all speculation and it'll take a whole other post to discuss Ibn Battuta and the Arab perspective on West African developments.

I found a small part of Peter Morton-Williams' 1964 article in the JHSN (his article is cited in that article by Law above that mentions Ikpokia and Ado) that states that Ipokia was founded by people from a Benin colony. I don't have the full article, but found a relevant part:

"Benin founded colonies along the shore - of these, Lagos is of course best known, but the town of Ado (the Yoruba form of Edo, i.e. Benin) north of Badagri was, so its traditions imply, also a Bini foundation or at least got its crown from it; and Ipokia, west of the River Yewa and only thirteen miles ENE of PortoNovo, claims to have been founded from Opo Bini (the Benin colonies), though it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, if not earlier (Clapperton), subject to Oyo. I am unable at present even tentatively to assign dates to this penetration by Benin, but Snelgrave seems to have been aware of it. . ." - Peter Morton-Williams.

Thanks for providing this. I think Morton-Williams' ambiguity about whether the towns were founded by Benin "or at least got their crowns" etc. is telling and supports the point that this is not a clear-cut case of a conquering army planting 'colonies' in the region. We have no clear indication of what this relationship was. I'll discuss the issues with the term 'Ado' a little later on.

TerraCotta: The name 'Ado' brings up other issues about the origins of the name Benin/"Ado"/Udo/Edo that are worth discussing in another post as well. Where do these terms come from and what might they tell us with a critical reading?

Regarding the names question, I think one has to actually ask many people from the places involved and obtain the majority opinion on the meaning/origin of the name before one can engage in a "critical reading" of the names. Forming opinions, even ones formed through critical analysis, without doing any real in-depth searching for additional and possibly more useful/direct information might just lead one astray.

Well, I don't see how anyone can disagree with that. Of course you'd have to "ask many people from the places involved and obtain the majority opinion on the meaning/origin of the name"--that's exactly what's implied by my use of the term [url="http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/writing/history/critical/index.html"] critical reading [/url] I'd sort of taken all that as a given, but I guess I shouldn't have assumed that everyone understood these terms of art. A critical reading of these place names would help us evaluate claims about their origins and meanings beyond myths and latter-day apocryphal information. Here are some quick examples--the idea that Benin was named Ile-Ibinu by a fed-up Oranmiyan is unacceptable as a historical fact to me. The tale sounds like it was made up by people who could not explain the origin of a clearly foreign term (ie it had no obvious root in either the Edo variant spoken at Benin or current standard Yoruba). This again is repeated throughout southern Nigeria, even with the Ijebu ethnonym, which has been claimed to derive from the name of an early ruler (Ajebu) but is more likely just an archaic Yoruba word for "riverain wanderers", Ije-Ibu. This also offers clues into the origin of other ethnonyms like Ijesa (especially when paired with Geoffrey Parrinder's views on the possible existence of an early 'Esa' population in current Benin Republic, but I digress). Before it starts seeming like I'm obsessed with the Ijebu, I should say I'm not Ijebu myself but I think their history and traditional political structure is fascinating and their relative isolation until the end of the 19th century is helpful in reconstructing what precolonial societies in the are may have been like.

I'd add that I see a logical inconsistency here too--you've asked for the people of Udo to have an opportunity to define their own history of interaction with any outside influences, but you don't believe the people of Ijebu when it comes to defining the issue of whether they were subject to Benin. A critical analysis would integrate all perspectives and look for the most logical explanation.

Also, you seem to believe (or maybe I'm reading too much into those backslash marks) that Udo is some dialectical variant of or altered version of the word Edo or vice versa - that one of them is an alteration/corruption of the other. In the language spoken by both groups (the Bini of Oredo/Benin City and the Bini of Udo) there is no confusion between the vowels "U" and "E" and the two are not close in pronunciation. U's do not change to E's or vice versa in Edo, the way I's and U's sometimes swap places in Yoruba names.

It won't matter what I believe once we can agree to do a critical analysis of the terms and decide on the most logical conclusions from the evidence I'm quite familiar with the story about Ewuare's beloved slave--my opinion (just an opinion, though--is that it's a fanciful rendition to cover up a forgotten origin in the same way the "Benin" story is, but with more obvious roots--and the reason I suggested a critical reading of the term is that it might help explain its ubiquity and settle some of the controversies about dynastic origins, settlements and so on. It's not central to this discussion but it's a worthy topic to tackle at some point. I would also really like to hear anything you find out about current Udo traditions about the origins of the name and their traditions about their city.

A side point on the issue of Benin/Birnin, which I'd mentioned on here some time ago here--it's a tempting idea but its unlikely for certain reasons (the lack of other identifiably Hausa influences in the are being the most obvious, but even that's a complicated matter). Alan Ryder's suggested a fairly plausible root in his "Ife Benin Relationship Reconsidered" article, and although I think he's wrong about certain conclusions, I also believe he and Ade Obayemi have gotten closest to the root of the truth on these issues. All speculation for another day's discussion though.

1. I own that book by Thornton and I've read it. What you've written there does not seem to be an accurate account of what Thornton wrote. He stated (in chapter 7, 'African cultural groups in the Atlantic world') that Yoruba was being used as one of multiple lingua francas in the wider region, not as a court language throughout the region. These are two different things. He also notes in chapter 8, 'Transformations of African culture in the Atlantic world', that creole versions of European languages, especially Portuguese, were used for trade and as lingua francas on the Atlantic coast of Africa. Also, Thornton's claim about Benin's soldiers and administrators going as far west as Allada is that Benin's expansion played an "integrating role" and "created a cultural unity" between different groups in a part of the wider region.

2. I don't think you read in Thornton's book that he claimed "political leaders in places like Allada preferred to speak Yoruba to their own languages". Perhaps you got that from another source or perhaps you're mixing up Allada with another place mentioned in Thornton's book. If not, please post the statement of Thornton's in the book that states this, or if the source of this statement about Allada (and places like Allada) isn't Thornton, you can just indicate that.

As I mentioned earlier, you're right about my incorrect attribution of this to Thornton. I own the book as well but I was quoting from memory when I said he suggested Yoruba was used as a court language in Allada. It was actually Robin Law who said "there was enormous Yoruba influence throughout the eastern section of the Slave Coast" (ie modern Benin Republic and Togo) and he also cites De Sandoval's claim that "Lukumi (ie Yoruba) was considered "noble" and commonly spoken by local people in preference to their own language" (cited in Sandra Greene's "Cultural Zones in the Era of the Slave Trade: Exploring Yoruba Connections with the Anlo-Ewe" in the book "Identity in the Shadow of Slavery". I don't have a copy of Law's 'Slave Coast of West Africa' handy but this is on pages 23-24 for anyone who'd like to read more.

3. Assuming there were "many Yoruba in the Benin court" as Thornton extrapolates from the possibly exaggerated/inaccurate (as you suggested) information from Alonso de Sandoval (which claims that the king at the time used them because they were foreigners so he could punish them if they erred without encountering interference/trouble from any relatives), I don't see how that would touch on the issue of administrative languages of courts - if one looks at the precolonial and early colonial documents for Benin all one sees are Edo names for titled palace officials and every palace association, title or ceremony documented in the colonial era and earlier is also Edo. I certainly can't detect any trace of an administrative Yoruba language in any of the mentions of the Benin palace societies, ceremonies and officials that were published in any of the earliest accounts.

I would assume Edo courts would use Edo language myself, though we have the issue of the origin of the term 'oba' and the purported roots of the dynasty to contend with. I'm not sure there's a disagreement here since I haven't implied otherwise. I'm not sure what you're getting at here. The rest of this section of your post regarding Owo and its use of Benin court terms is puzzling--I'm guessing that you thought my reference to creative scholars extrapolating that Benin armies spread Yoruba as a court language through the empire was my own view? I thought I'd made it clear that I think that would be a wrong conclusion drawn from inaccurate or inconclusive information. If it wasn't clear earlier, I hope it is now.

I don't think this comment accurately interprets/represents my original comment that you quoted. Maybe if you re-read what I wrote and then re-read your comment, and you'll see that it does not correspond to what I said. I speculated that they were being held hostage because the king of Benin was either in negotiations with those other polities over something (exchanging hostages as insurance was a standard practice in some medieval/feudal societies around the world, as I mentioned earlier), or was holding them prisoner because he had a hostile attitude to those places and was planning something against them, or was just keeping them prisoner because they were useful in some way (perhaps for geographical knowledge). I did not say that Benin had leverage or dominion over Allada and Labadi in 1538 because Benin had two hostages.

I was saying it clearly implied contact. The point was about Benin having contact with places further west than Lagos even before the Benin war camp in Lagos. I didn't make a claim of Benin dominion over Allada or Labadi in the 16th century or imply/suggest that.

So here's the complication--if we were just discussing the notion of contact, there wouldn't be any dispute here (from my end or from any other sane, logical observer). Contacts are indisputable and proven from all aspects of the historical record (archaeological, art historical, written documentation, oral tradition etc). The disagreement we had was specifically about the military extent of Benin's reach, and I hope I've shown where my doubts and those of Robin Law and to a lesser extent Robert Smith come from. If I misunderstood your claim, perhaps you can clarify here. If we weren't talking about military incursions, I don't think we have much to disagree on.

Perhaps the founders of Ketu came from Ife (or at least somewhere near Ife) and met some Ewe people in the area they settled in and they absorbed some of them and drove others out:

"The town [Ketu] was conquered from an aboriginal population of Aja or Ewe extraction. In Ghana, many Ewe groups continue to trace their migration to the ancient city of Ketu." - Society, State, and Identity in African History, p. 384

And this link (pp. 24-27 of the book The Akpinis and the echoes of German and British colonial overrule: An archaeological investigation of Kpando, Ghana) mentions some connections of Ewe with the Ketu area:

http://books.google.com/books?id=UozFJWHRm04C&pg=PA24

(I'm too lazy to type out what is written there.)

Ewe people who would have absorbed some of the Ketu Yoruba culture or lived in the (now Yoruba dominated) Ketu area and interacted with some of the Ketu Yorubas (before migrating to a non-Yoruba controlled area or any freer and uninhabited area further west) might have learned of Ife and gleamed some idea of its importance or details about it from these interactions. The Ife stories could have spread among other Ewe who had never been near Ketu through interactions with some of the Ewe refugees who were fleeing the Ketu area.

The Ewe-Ketu claims seem to me to likely be a memory of a real event where some Ewe people left the area that they originally occupied after Ketu Yorubas expanded into and then took over that area. It doesn't seem that they are really claiming Ketu Yoruba ancestry but mostly just claiming to have previously lived in Ketu or in the Ketu area.

Your first point about Ketu and Ewe affinities are generally accepted and lots of people have written about them. As neighboring groups in all the areas between western Nigeria and eastern Ghana, there were certainly cultural connections, intermarriage and so on, through to the Dahomean era. The religious interplay between the two was particularly fertile and is probably the greatest point of integration (the Fa system, Gu, Mawu-Lisa/Orisa-Nla etc). We're at the point of trying to discern the nature of contact, not just that contact existed. And the issue is that Ewes are literally "claiming Ketu Yoruba ancestry" (which, no doubt, may be true in some instances but points to a larger symbolic importance). For claims of Ketu ancestry among the Ewe, you can see the Sandra Greene essay I mentioned earlier or this link: http://ewechicago.org/Flyers/The%20ewes/THE%20ORIGINS%20AND%20BRIEF%20HISTORY%20OF%20THE%20EWE%20PEOPLE.pdf

(there are many more spurious internet claims but there's no real point in referring to those right now).

Maybe you were unable to view the preview page I included as a hyperlink in that post, but if you could view the page shown from the hyperlink, you would see that the book makes a mention not only of slaves, but specifically of free men from the same place causing trouble there at a later date (1541) alongside some Portuguese "adventurer" (troublemaker?), and of course the first group of troublemakers from Benin mentioned in 1526 may have had some slaves among them, but if there were any slaves it is certainly not mentioned there. If there were free men in the 1541 group of troublemakers mentioned in that source, there could certainly have been many of such people in the 1526 group or they could have all been free. Even if they had come there via the Portuguese (which I said is still the most likely cause, in my opinion) and not through other means of transportation or by foreknowledge of the existence of the place through pre-Portuguese contacts, it still wouldn't necessarily mean they were slaves, since we know that Africans went on some voyages with Europeans in capacities other than as slaves.

I included a link to that particular book because I thought the relevant part would be easily accessible/viewable, but I guess you couldn't see it. The information about contact between some people from the kingdom of Benin and the kingdom of Kongo is really from Alan Ryder's book (Benin and the Europeans), where it was first published, but of course Ryder's book cannot be previewed on Google Books. Anyway, if I recall correctly (it's been a while since I read the book), Alan Ryder's mention of a few Kongo-Benin contacts does not provide evidence for anything like pre-Portuguese contact like what is suggested by the mention of Ewuare's travels in Egharevba's book, but I wouldn't assume that such contacts should automatically be ruled out just on the basis of the distance involved.

Also I did not suggest a Benin "military presence" in Congo. I think you may have misread what I wrote there. It seems clear (at least to me, upon re-reading what I wrote there) that I was talking about exploration and establishing contacts with/knowledge of far away places.

You're right--I wasn't able to view this letter so I'll just reserve comment. Again, my objection wasn't to the possibility of contact, even to places like the Congo where we might not have firm evidence of trade yet. My skepticism was about "causing trouble" through military exploits, which I would find unlikely. Since that's not your view, I'd accept the idea that there could have been little-known voyages in both directions. I'd add that my example of troublesome Jellofes/Wolofs in the early Americas is duplicated in other places and even more strikingly, there were free Angolans (quisamas) in Brazil already by the early 1500s. However, it's clear that these 'troublemaking' populations were associated with the Portuguese slave trade and not freebooting wanderers on their own or representing independent political contact.

You are certainly welcome to your opinions of his work, but I would be careful about making assumptions about intent or authorial tendencies/inclinations without first having a fuller picture of the man and his work.

I want to word this carefully, since you seem to have taken offense at a description that i thought was fairly benign. I wouldn't call this a simple opinion, although it's not a plain fact either. Egharevba used traditional stereotypes and relied heavily on court mythology. I think that could be fairly described as being "prone to exaggeration". I guess you find this to be too uncharitable to Egharevba, but as I make clear in comparing him to his peers of the colonial era, it's a tendency that was common to Rev. Samuel Johnson (and his heavily Oyo-oriented "History of the Yorubas". Robin Law's great essay "The Heritage of Oduduwa: Traditional History and Political Propaganda among the Yoruba" explains these issues in more detail. It wasn't meant to be disrespectful description; it's just my evaluation of the flaws of his approach. Any modern reader clearly owes him an enormous debt for all the information he was able to collect and provide.

To be accurate, Egharevba actually wrote "201 towns and villages," so what is written here is actually a misquotation. If he was exaggerating he would have said "201 cities" or "201 kingdoms!"

Lol. Alright--I'll accept that. I was quoting from memory so I omitted the "villages" part. If he were really pushing it, he should have said 201 confederate empires.

201 was/is clearly a symbolic number in Edo culture - it was/is a kind of expression or numerical figure of speech which basically means or signifies "an immense amount" or "a huge quantity," which Egharevba either didn't feel the need to indicate was a symbolic figure or which he may have assumed his Edo readers would understand as just symbolizing a very large amount. One will actually see the number (201) pop up multiple times in different sources relating to Benin except in different contexts (sometimes its towns or villages, sometimes it's dance steps in ceremonies, sometimes its other things), and different events relating to different people. It just means a great amount, but the number also might have some sort of religious/mystical significance (it's already been documented by other scholars that there are multiple numbers that have/had some sort of mystical association in Edo tradition).

I was aware of the symbolic quality of "201". The exact same concept is found in Ife culture and Yoruba religion more generally (see the book "City of 201 Gods: Ile-Ife in Time, Space and Imagination" by Prof. Jacob Olupona for a recent example). It's the reason why I was comfortable describing the author as having a tendency towards traditional exaggeration--the number is generally meant to represent a large multitude. Ifa verses say there were 201 irunmole that came to Ile-Ife from the sky but there are a vast array of other examples. Sixteen happens to be the most prominent mystical number in Yoruba culture, but all multiples of four, and 201 (sometimes 401) are considered auspicious as well. So, while I enjoyed your mathematical extrapolation, I think I'm safe in calling this a traditional exaggeration that was not meant to be an accurate count of the towns (and villages) Ewuare warred against.

d) I don't have a professional/academic interest in history, but I suggest that if anyone reads Egharevba's publications for research or for some other professional/academic reason, that person should try and find somebody knowledgeable (much more knowledgeable than me) about the culture or customs of the place and people whose history they are reading about, so they don't end up confused about what is actually indicated. That's what some (but definitely not all) of the foreign scholars who have published articles and books on Benin have clearly done. They have gone there to actually ask for elaboration about certain things (that were only covered briefly by Egharevba or other Edo people who wrote about the kingdom), from informants who are still engrossed in the some of the traditional ways of life and/or who have heard a lot about the stories, traditions and history of different important places, people and events. With some notable exceptions (Bondarenko being one of them), many of those foreign scholars (people like Bradbury, Nevadomsky, Ben-Amos, etc.) didn't just read something and start guessing at what is meant without asking an opinion of or explanation from people from the culture about what a statement or story really means (although they still sometimes make errors/mistakes anyway). Since some of the foreign scholars - and some of them have already noted in publications what the manner of the use of "201" and "200" was by the Edo - have actually gone and gotten first hand information on the typical use of those numbers (as a number meant to represent a very large amount), I think Nigerian researchers who have similar questions about issues in Egharevba's work should do the same thing.

All good advice. If it was meant to pertain to me however, I'd tell you that I'm far from a professional/academic historian myself, and that the history of Benin is a strong personal interest but its peripheral to my core areas of interest and late in the chronological order of the issues I find most fascinating. As I said earlier though, I was quite aware of Egharevba's purpose in using the number "201" when I called it a traditional exaggeration.

Your follow-up paragraphs on Egharevba's shifting count of Ogisos and the later elaborations that brought the count to 31 are interesting but I'm not sure they change my point. The inconsistencies and revisions in the four editions of the book are discussed in "A Comparison of Jacob Egharevba's "Ekhere Vb Itan Edo" and the Four Editions of Its English Translation, "A Short History of Benin" (Uyilawa Usuanlele, Toyin Falola and Jacob Egharevba, History in Africa , Vol. 25, (1998), pp. 361-386). A relevant quote from them:

"In Bradbury's authoritative view, the book's main substance remained unaltered and only the orthography of Benin words were changed from the original version. This view is not correct ...

Later on, they quote Egharevba:

Many, many years ago, Odua (Oduduwa) of Uhe (Ile-Ife), the father and progenitor of all Yoruba kings sent his eldest son Obagodo--who took the title of Ogiso--with a large retinue from Uhe to form a kingdom in this part of the world ... He had numerous wives but only one bore him a son (Kaladerhan) ... The Oba banished Kaladerhan with his mother from the city instead of killing him and he eventually became the founder of Guwatto (Ughoton) on the banks of a long forest ... There was an interregnum and the following leaders of the people, Ere, Orire, Akhuankhuan, Ekpigho etc. administered a republican form of government.

This story of the foundation of Benin changed from the first edition (quoted above) to the second edition ("Many, many years ago, the Binis came all the way from Egypt to find a more secure shelter in this part of the world after a short stay in the Sudan and at Ile-Ife ... The Empire of the first period was founded about 900 AD" etc. )and by the fourth edition, he'd made the refinements that yielded the most familiar stories we know of now to the Ogiso list (with the name changed from 'Obagodo' to 'Igodo', Kalhaderan to Ekalhaderan, the fuller list of fifteen Ogisos who had been previously identified as contemporary republican administrators but were now sequential Ogiso 'kings' etc). The fact that these changes were noted isn't all that remarkable; as you say, perhaps Egharevba was getting new information frequently and wanted to note what he was being told. It's just as likely to me (and the other critical readers of the Usuanlele and Falola essay) that he and/or his sources were perhaps embellishing little-known folk tales with new names and details as Bradbury suggested when he called the Ogiso period 'semi-mythical'. The footnotes in the essay I mention also discuss a Chief DN Oronsaye's criticism of Egharevba's "distortion or bias towards the reigning dynasty", which is bolstered by the fact that he submitted the book to Oba Eweka for approval and editing before publication.

So, there's a very good example of two fairly reputable scholars (at least one of whom is Edo-speaking and none of whom is humble TerraCotta ) undertaking a 'critical reading' and identifying Egharevba's inconsistencies. None of the takes away from the invaluable work that he did in sifting through palace and common myths and European sources to present us the first 'insider' coherent history of Benin. Anybody interested in West African history owes him a debt, just as they owe the other native-born writers of "itans" (the word for histories is the same in Edo and Yoruba, interestingly enough). This doesn't make his work immune from analysis for inconsistencies, mistakes or political propaganda, which was my point. I understand the respect you have for Egharevba and his pivotal role in Edo history; for me, Rev. Johnson serves that same role but I have the same criticisms/reservations about accepting all his conclusions because it's clear that his sources and influences had a Christian Missionary and specifically Oyo-Yoruba bias (or "perspective", if we're being diplomatic).

Now I don't think it's accurate to call Egharevba's work a "royalist charter" because it does not seem (at least to me) to simply be about royalist elevation, but a mostly dispassionate retelling of important remembered events.

His work talks of regicide/assassination (the death of Ezoti), a disloyal and scheming chief (the Oliha during Esigie's time) getting into disputes with the king - supposedly over a woman (at least, according to Egharevba's publication).

I think the citation I added above, which specifically mentions Oba Eweka's editorial control over Egharevba's work, justifies my description. More central is Chief Oronsaye's criticism, since he alleges that there was a notable bias towards the reigning dynasty (perhaps having to do with contemporary politics in Benin of the 1930s/1940s as the footnote speculates). I don't know what it was that Oronsaye specifically found trouble with but it suggests that other elements in Benin itself challenged the focus and veracity of Egharevba's works. Lastly, the work has elements of a "romance" in the original sense of the word, as it focused on the lives and actions of the nobility and tells us very little about the material lives of the vast majority of Benin citizens, those who fled the capital because of royal actions, those who moved away and so on.

It may be unfair to single out just Egharevba for this sort of focus since the romanticized focus on nobility was common enough around the world until a few decades ago, but it doesn't make it any less true that we have details about daring, warlike and inventive princes and kings (fewer details about princesses and queens, of course) but next to nothing about the lives of the soldiers, traders, bakers, blacksmiths, religious officers etc. that actually made the society run. No doubt, these are hard details to get in the best of circumstances when the written records are few, but the perspective of igun smithing families on their work or the Edo N' Akuhe on their business travels are virtually missing. The book's title is a "Short History" after all--maybe there wasn't space for this information after including his earlier material. Perhaps he wasn't able to glean anything useful from the oral traditions (I think Nevadomsky has done this with the smiths though). Either way, the point is that royal traditions and actions were his focus and I don't think it's unfair or even unduly critical to call the book "royalist" in outlook. It was a product of its day and that was an important (primary?) consideration in gaining approval. Your examples about ruthless princes and scheming royals does show that he tried to inject balance and deserves credit for that. I hope you can see where the more skeptical interpretation of various claims comes from as well.

I think that you may have accepted Patrick Darling's Udo thesis uncritically, given your "phantom capital" comment from earlier. From what I can tell, Darling's basic thesis has been around since the mid 1980s (almost 30 years) and yet it doesn't have even a single endorsement (not even Bondarenko endorses it, he just notes what Darling believes and uses some of Darling's information/claims for his own idea/theory) from anybody significant in the study of any aspect of Edo culture or Benin history and there is a very good reason for this. The thesis is just not credible. I will comment at length on what the problems are with Darling's various claims tomorrow or the next day, but for now, I have to get some sleep.

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This is interesting to me so I'm looking forward to your comments on the Udo thesis (particularly since you say you haven't had much time to delve into the Udo perspective on the relationship). After my earlier comments about the importance of critical reading, I would hope it's plain to see that I'm skeptical about all claims (Jan Vansina suggests it should be an Africanist's default position and I agree in most respects). My reference to the Darling thesis is because I think it's a highly original understanding of the Ife-Benin (Ufe-Udo?) relationship and deserves further inquiry since the guy is one of the leading (semi-retired) archaeologists in the region. The reason why it has so few supporters may have more to do with the dearth of archaeological work in Nigeria than any inherent flaws, though I'm sure there are several. He also didn't originate the thesis that the original capital in the area was at Udo to my recollection and that political rivalries have suppressed its former role. Egharevba himself suggests something like this early on but I'll dig up more sources on this when you have time to discuss.

I'd intended to talk more about Dahomean political propaganda and their official policy of suppressing negative news (ie about the ignoble origins of the monarchy, losses on the battlefield and so on). I think it's a useful comparative example of how court versions of history are altered to suit political purposes. There's also an influential Robin Law (to me, anyway) essay called "My Head Belongs to the King" which goes a long way to clarifying some of the ritual necessities of the kingdom and explains their reasons for the sacrifices and decapitations that Europeans and many modern observers found/find repulsive. As part of the greater cultural sphere in the region, I think Dahomey's reasonably well-known history offers a good counterpart to how we validate oral tradition, court myths and written history by comparing them all. More related to this topic, the [url="http://agongointo.worldarchaeology.net/eng/02_caves.html]archaeological evidence can open up whole new avenues of inquiry [/url] that aren't adequately explained or even mentioned in the other conventional historical records. In the example of the habitable caves in the link I provided (hope it shows up), what's interesting is that there very few references to these in written records, incomplete or garbled references in the oral traditions (with references to Dahomean soldiers 'disappearing' in front of invading Oyos) and some confusion in contemporary traditions about who built them and what they were used for (they don't appear to be primarily graves, for instance). Yet there they are--more than 1,600 highly sophisticated underground engineering works that date back to the late 17the century (at the very latest, since those earlier models are described as being more complex than the later versions) that have escaped historical notice until a recent find. It makes you wonder what else is under the earth in West Africa that we don't know of yet or adequately understand.

I'll stop here for now but I'm definitely up to discuss this in much more detail. Believe me, I appreciate the discussion and the fact that you're relying on more than opinions and outdated theories.

TerraCotta: Alright--this is a pretty detailed response that I didn't have time to complete during the week. However, it's the weekend and I pulled together some sources so we'd be having a discussion about stuff we can reference instead of pure speculation. I may be off on one or two of these since some citations were things I read years ago. I'm also not a professional scholar by any means--I make a living in a less intellectually stimulating/more typically "Naija" field (in some ways) sadly--so I'd caution again that much of this stuff is from my conclusions having reading a good deal of material and developing a strong basis for comparative analyses. This is obviously a major interest of mine outside my 9-to-5.

Ezeagu


Some of the most problematic information from Onwuejeogwu is precisely because of his acceptance of these kinglists. I find it hard to accept regular 80-90 year reigns as historical realities. I'm also not sure why the Aro groups would be primary evidence for the age of Nri's foundation in the 10th century since, as you suggest, their emergence is commonly dated to the 17th century and they claim Ekoi/Ibibio ancestry and cultural affinities along with their Igbo heritage.

You also seem to imply here that I believe the Igala kingdom is truly the source of Nri; there's some suggestive evidence of this but I'm not claiming it as fact and it's not the central point of my argument. What's important is that the Nri themselves presented their ancestry as Igala to researchers in the 1930s. Again, if the evidence from these same researchers in the 1930s through 1950s and the conclusions of other modern scholars don't convince you, there's no harm in that. It does say something about what they consider a prestigious ancestry at that point in time and feeds into what I'll write below about the uses of court propaganda.

This is misleading, there's no proof that the Nri ever claimed Igala descent. Two sentences from 1930 and a reference to a 'common ancestry' isn't proof. Jeffrey's claims that Chukwu is a sun-god is not proof that Chukwu is a sun god (they are not). There's also a silence on the Igala claim on Nri. Where are their stories? Where is Nri's stories about Igala descent? I don't know why these scanty claims are being taken as proof of anything. Such a link would form a strong bond between the two kingdoms. Igala raids on the Nri sphere of influence and lack of historical allegiances between the states also makes no sense with their theory. Their governmental systems are completely different, religion is different, language is different, rituals and traditions different. The Nri hardly even have a kingdom than a massive cult. All reference to an Igala source of Nri is in reference to Jefferys and Lawtons Nile-valley diffusionist claims, even by Umudiana nationalists. Again, you're using points from people who admittedly had "imperfect" knowledge of the subject.

Onwuejeogwu isn't the only source that has presented dating for a kings list, others (like Douglas Chambers) have moved Nri founding to the early 13th century, which still does not match the Igala source claim. The only chance this theory has is moving Eri's existence to after the 15th/16th century, again that means revising the date of settlement of every Nri settlement in the Niger Delta (including most of the major towns of northern Delta state) the average age of settlement being 1500 CE, and the entire history of the southern Benue trough itself. By the way, there's no denial of the Igala influence on Nri.

Terracotta,

Interesting read, bro.

Can you please help me out with good books I can read about Ijebu history? I noticed you're privy to so much information about my people and I'll like to get on your level, bro.

Thanks in advance.

ezeagu:

This is misleading, there's no proof that the Nri ever claimed Igala descent. Two sentences from 1930 and a reference to a 'common ancestry' isn't proof.

That's where we disagree. Two sentences from 1935 is proof that Jeffreys recorded a claim to Igala ancestry (I will leave out his dissertation references since we don't have easy online access to it). The argument isn't whether or not Nri truly was derived from Igala. That's beyond the point of this discussion. You seem to be saying that Jeffreys made this claim up arbitrarily (why not Jukun? Ife? Benin?) and didn't actually ask Nri residents of the 1930s where they thought their culture came from. Considering the useful and specific information he provided on Nri coronations, scarifications and religions, I tend to believe that he did ask and recorded a claim that he heard. That doesn't make it true that Nri was somehow an outpost of Igala, since claims aren't proof of reality as Physics and I have established in the other discussion on the thread. All we establish--if we believe Jeffreys and I have no reason not to--is that people in Nri claimed Igala ancestry when he spoke to them.

I don't think current differences in language, religion, rituals and tradition invalidate the possibility of a link. You raise good reasons to be skeptical about the claim, but you don't recognize any of the possibilities that explain the claim--ie, the Nri found Igala to be the most prestigious nearby culture they had knowledge of (perhaps through the Onoja Oboni interactions) and wanted to show some affinity to them when the colonial officials came asking about their culture. That type of exaggerated affiliation is the core of my discussion with Phsyics.

Jeffrey's claims that Chukwu is a sun-god is not proof that Chukwu is a sun god (they are not).

There's a subtle difference in the two ideas. Jeffreys interpretes Chukwu as a sun-god (or a sky-being later on; the difference seems semantic to me) and also guesses that Nri culture, like Jukun, Bini, Yoruba etc are ultimately derived from Egypt. Those are his (probably wrong) interpretations and he does not seem to credit the Nri for giving him those conclusions. When he says "Umundri traditions is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala", he clearly attributes that to first-hand data he was told--like the meanings of the ichi, for instance--and not his own speculation or theory.

Onwuejeogwu isn't the only source that has presented dating for a kings list, others (like Douglas Chambers) have moved Nri founding to the early 13th century, which still does not match the Igala source claim. The only chance this theory has is moving Eri's existence to after the 15th/16th century, again that means revising the date of settlement of every Nri settlement in the Niger Delta (including most of the major towns of northern Delta state) the average age of settlement being 1500 CE, and the entire history of the southern Benue trough itself. By the way, there's no denial of the Igala influence on Nri.

Onwuejeogwu is pretty much the only source, but why are you ignoring his claim that there were regular 80-100 year reigns in Nri in order to match the Igbo-Ukwu radiocarbon dates? It makes his other claims a little less credible, I think. It's funny that you bring up Douglas Chambers though; he is a decent scholar (some problems with his work have been discussed by David Northrup in 'Igbo and Myth Igbo' which is worth reading) but he certainly wouldn't claim any expertise in Nri history or anthropology since his interest in Igbo participation in the slave trade and African diaspora. Chambers wrote an essay in the book I've already mentioned ("Identity In the Shadow of Slavery" containing the Sandra Greene essay on Anlo-Ewe and Yoruba connections) and has this to say about Nri:

"From his analysis of the eze or king lists, M.A. Onwuejeogwu infers that Nri was founded in 948 AD, but this date may be too early as it is based on fifteen 'reigns', and it seems more likely that the odinani Nri (Nri culture) founded at Agukwu dates from the fourteenth century"

That suggests to me that he's skeptical of the Igbo-Ukwu connection to the current Nri culture based on the likely founding date in the 14th century. The only scholars he cites for evidence that the current Nri kinglists was contemporary with the Igbo-Ukwu bronze works is ... Onwuejeogwu (and Afigbo, who cites ... Onwuejeogwu).

Again, if your problem with Jeffreys (or my view, for that matter) is that he personally believed that Nri was of Igala origin, I'd say that's incorrect. The claim comes from "Umundri tradition" according to Jeffreys and Boston etc and wasn't an interpretation or theory like their claims about Egyptian origins. Hope that clarifies my view.

shymexx: Terracotta,

Interesting read, bro.

Can you please help me out with good books I can read about Ijebu history? I noticed you're privy to so much information about my people and I'll like to get on your level, bro.

Thanks in advance.

Hey--the best foundational books are the general Yoruba history ones. Samuel Johnson's "History of the Yorubas" is a necessary read, and then 'Kingdoms of the Yoruba' by Robert Smith and 'Yoruba Warfare in the 19th Century' (JFK Ade-Ajayi and R. smith again) are good starts. Then Toyin Falola's "Yoruba Warlords of the 19th Century" has good relevant chapters. The best essay is the one by Robin Law that I mentioned earlier. Those are the best places to start because most of the 'traditional' histories have problems separating myths and the odd recent references to origins in Waddai etc.

TerraCotta:

Hey--the best foundational books are the general Yoruba history ones. Samuel Johnson's "History of the Yorubas" is a necessary read, and then 'Kingdoms of the Yoruba' by Robert Smith and 'Yoruba Warfare in the 19th Century' (JFK Ade-Ajayi and R. smith again) are good starts. Then Toyin Falola's "Yoruba Warlords of the 19th Century" has good relevant chapters. The best essay is the one by Robin Law that I mentioned earlier. Those are the best places to start because most of the 'traditional' histories have problems separating myths and the odd recent references to origins in Waddai etc.

Thanks, brother.

Here are the links to some online Yoruba History books:

The history of the Yorubas : from the earliest times to the beginning of the British Protectorate by Johnson, Samuel, d. 1901; Johnson, O. (Obadiah) (c) (1921):
http://archive.org/stream/historyofyorubas00john/historyofyorubas00john_djvu.txt


The Yoruba Today by J.S Eades ( c ) 1980:
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/YorubaT/


The Yoruba-Speaking peoples of the slave coast of west Africa by W.B Ellis (c) 1891 ? :
http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/yor/yor02.htm


17 years in the Yoruba country by Anna Hinderer(1873):
http://archive.org/details/seventeenyearsi00honegoog

TerraCotta: That's where we disagree. Two sentences from 1935 is proof that Jeffreys recorded a claim to Igala ancestry (I will leave out his dissertation references since we don't have easy online access to it). The argument isn't whether or not Nri truly was derived from Igala. That's beyond the point of this discussion. You seem to be saying that Jeffreys made this claim up arbitrarily (why not Jukun? Ife? Benin?) and didn't actually ask Nri residents of the 1930s where they thought their culture came from. Considering the useful and specific information he provided on Nri coronations, scarifications and religions, I tend to believe that he did ask and recorded a claim that he heard. That doesn't make it true that Nri was somehow an outpost of Igala, since claims aren't proof of reality as Physics and I have established in the other discussion on the thread. All we establish--if we believe Jeffreys and I have no reason not to--is that people in Nri claimed Igala ancestry when he spoke to them.

Why not Ife, Benin or Jukun? Right after the claim that Nri traditions claim they came from the ruling stock of the Igala, Jeffreys implies that kingship among the Igala, Yoruba, and Igbo come from the Jukun. After that he claims these cultures are "uniform". We've already seen that Jeffreys is biased towards diffusionism. I've been saying that the claim may be a misinterpretation, not that it was made up. The claim fits well with the history according to Nri people that one of Eri's children helped found Idah, which the Nri say they are connected to and through ritual journeys by Nri people to Idah. I haven't read any modern source that implies that this claim indicates that the Nri claimed descent from Idah.

TerraCotta: Two sentences from 1935 is proof that Jeffreys recorded a claim to Igala ancestry (I will leave out his dissertation references since we don't have easy online access to it).

This isn't proof that the Nri claimed descent from the Igala. You can reference the dissertation if you have it.

TerraCotta: I don't think current differences in language, religion, rituals and tradition invalidate the possibility of a link. You raise good reasons to be skeptical about the claim, but you don't recognize any of the possibilities that explain the claim--ie, the Nri found Igala to be the most prestigious nearby culture they had knowledge of (perhaps through the Onoja Oboni interactions) and wanted to show some affinity to them when the colonial officials came asking about their culture. That type of exaggerated affiliation is the core of my discussion with Phsyics.

All this is referring to a claim we cannot verify because we don't have anything from the Nri themselves that would be enough to analyse the politics of that era. We need to have a basis to reach a conclusion. Jeffreys claims would not be published by objective sources as absolute proof that the Nri once claimed descent from the Igala.

TerraCotta: There's a subtle difference in the two ideas. Jeffreys interpretes Chukwu as a sun-god (or a sky-being later on; the difference seems semantic to me) and also guesses that Nri culture, like Jukun, Bini, Yoruba etc are ultimately derived from Egypt. Those are his (probably wrong) interpretations and he does not seem to credit the Nri for giving him those conclusions. When he says "Umundri traditions is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala", he clearly attributes that to first-hand data he was told--like the meanings of the ichi, for instance--and not his own speculation or theory.

No there isn't a subtle difference between Chukwu, the ultimate being, and Anyanwu the actual sun deity that Nri people venerate. Semantic difference only goes to show that things can be easily misinterpreted. Semantic or not, You can't misrepresent the actual sun deity of a culture that places much emphasis on the sun by completely confusing it with another concept. That's why Jeffrey's notes the "imperfect state of our knowledge of West Africa".

TerraCotta: Those are his (probably wrong) interpretations and he does not seem to credit the Nri for giving him those conclusions.

So how did he work out what Chukwu was if it wasn't from Nri information?

TerraCotta: When he says "Umundri traditions is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala", he clearly attributes that to first-hand data he was told--like the meanings of the ichi, for instance--and not his own speculation or theory.

Here's the full 'sun-god' quote: "The descendants of the royal families live in Aguku and claim ancestry from a sky-being called Eri, sent down by Chiuku, a sun-god." So he does apparently get his sun-god claim from "The descendants of the royal families". Misinterpretation again. Even if this quote wasn't available, it can't be a theory.

TerraCotta: Onwuejeogwu is pretty much the only source, but why are you ignoring his claim that there were regular 80-100 year reigns in Nri in order to match the Igbo-Ukwu radiocarbon dates? It makes his other claims a little less credible, I think. It's funny that you bring up Douglas Chambers though; he is a decent scholar (some problems with his work have been discussed by David Northrup in 'Igbo and Myth Igbo' which is worth reading) but he certainly wouldn't claim any expertise in Nri history or anthropology since his interest in Igbo participation in the slave trade and African diaspora. Chambers wrote an essay in the book I've already mentioned ("Identity In the Shadow of Slavery" containing the Sandra Greene essay on Anlo-Ewe and Yoruba connections) and has this to say about Nri:

That suggests to me that he's skeptical of the Igbo-Ukwu connection to the current Nri culture based on the likely founding date in the 14th century. The only scholars he cites for evidence that the current Nri kinglists was contemporary with the Igbo-Ukwu bronze works is ... Onwuejeogwu (and Afigbo, who cites ... Onwuejeogwu).

If I were ignoring the lengtth of the reigns, I wouldn't have brougt chambers in. He has gone into more detail on Nri in Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia (written 5 years after Identity In the Shadow of Slavery and with much more research on Nri) where he places the start at 1225. This date makes no difference to the point that the Nri kingdom existed before the Igala. The fact that Nri apparently came after Igbo Ukwu doesn't negate any link between the founders of Nri and Igbo Ukwu, in fact it provides evidence that the development of Nri started in the Igbo Ukwu site at least 1100 years ago.

Ezeagu--I'd thought about drafting a more detailed response with citations from Jeffreys and other colonial-era reports regarding Nri and Igala but I realized that I've been trying to end this discussion for the past few posts and that wouldn't help much. It's clear to me and perhaps other readers whether the line "Umundri tradition is that they come from the ruling stock of the Igala" constitutes proof of someone recording a claim. I've mentioned earlier that I don't have Jeffreys' dissertation at hand. I can't access one other article I've read that has relevant information and there's some related recent linguistic analysis that revives Jeffreys' perspective (if not this specific claim), but I'm not sure I want to start that discussion or whether it would even make any difference in the end.

I haven't read 'Murder at Montpelier'. Maybe other people reading would be interested in reading a summary of Chambers' new research about Nri/Igbo-Ukwu. I assume you do find Onwuejeogwu's records of several 80-100-year reigns unreliable as well.

The broader topics being discussed are more interesting to me and while Igbo-Ukwu has a clear relationship to the other cultures Physics and I are talking about, its importance to me is in the context of everything else we're discussing.

Terracotta, there are two things I should note: Samuel Blommaert did not visit Benin in 1602 and after reading an article on Dapper by Adam Jones, I don't think he visited Benin at all, but just that some Dutchman who worked for or with him, or who reported to him, visited Benin gave him that information on Benin and some other places. I simply got that one wrong. Also, I got the dates for Egharevba's second and first edition mixed up. I had the first edition as being from 1934 instead of 1936, and the second edition being in 1936. In reality, the Edo language version of the book was published in 1933, while the 1st English version was published in 1936 and the second edition was published in 1953.

As for your post from some weeks ago, I'll respond in detail now. It took me a while to respond mostly because I had other things to attend to but also because I had to track down some references I was aware of that deal with some of the things you mentioned or claimed.

So let's begin with Duarte Pacheco Pereira, the man who supposedly observed things "firsthand" (or so we would like to think) and was supposedly "accurate" in his descriptions:

TerraCotta: Pereira was notable for his accuracy and for providing a baseline of knowledge about the groups in the Gulf of Guinea. He was (one of, if not the) earliest written source we have for the culture and geography of Ijebu, Urhobo, Ijo and Benin. As I suggested in my post, it's possible that the Benin 'expansion' into Ijebu just hadn't happened by the time he wrote. Of course, it's also possible that it didn't happen at all (at least not in the way Benin legends tell it), which was my initial point.

Pereira was not the earliest written source on Benin, but yes he was one of the earlier ones. Now I would have to object to the idea that Pereira was actually detailed as far as giving information about most of the actual different African groups in his Esmeraldo, even if it might be true that he was in most cases accurate in his geographical descriptions. When I said that it was just my "opinion" that it was not detailed as far as its information about the actual African groups, I was only being gracious, since you seem to hold the opposite opinion for some reason. In truth, his work is actually much less detailed and less informative on specifics about the different African peoples mentioned than several later sources - but still valuable because of the early date of the publication and because he mentions (but doesn't elaborate much on) a little bit of valuable information about so many groups, unlike many other sources which just dwell on a few. Basically, as far as discussing non-geographical information about different African groups along the coast, the publication of his in question has great quantity (many groups mentioned), but little depth (not that much information about these groups, although what little is stated is still valuable information), which is understandable enough given the large number of places and people in a large region that he was giving brief and relevant/important (in his view) information about. Take Benin for example: apart from giving his estimate of the size of the kingdom, noting that some of them have certain distinguishing marks above their eyes, noting that they are usually at war with their neighbors, trade slaves, use cowrie shells for currency, and have a large city (Benin) with a large "ditch" around it and a port town (Ughoton) of some importance for their trade with the Portuguese, he doesn't have anything else of significance (to us) to say about Benin except to inform us that their lifestyle is "full of abuses" and that they aren't good Christians but Pagans:

"The way of life of these people is full of abuses and witchcraft and idolatry, which for brevity's sake I omit" - Duarte Pacheco Pereira

If he had at least attempted to elaborate on the "witchcraft and idolatry" of the Bini then maybe I could take the idea that he was very detailed and informative about the culture as a plausible one. This is not the only thing which he says that he leaves out "for brevity" in the text - he uses the same excuse again at other points in the book.

Similarly, all he has to tell us about Ijebu is that the ruler is called "Agusale," that they have a large city surrounded by a "ditch" and that they trade slaves and ivory. He has even less to tell us about groups like the Urhobo and some of his information on the Ijaw/Ijo (which by the way, also does not have much depth, but is still valuable) is far from accurate.

And although this is unrelated to our discussion, I should note how ironic it is that before and after Pereira noted in his Esmeraldo that their lifestyle was, in his opinion, "full of abuses," certain European countries - including Portugal - were carrying out witch hunts, the burning of supposed heretics at the stake (the infamous auto-da-fe), and other notorious societal abuses.

Anyway, I assume that you're familiar with the level of detail in and the amount of information on Benin and some other places given by Dapper, the amount of detail and information provided by the Dutchman 'D.R.' (Derick Ruiters, most likely) on Benin to Pieter de Marees' book, and the amount of detail and information provided by other later sources on Benin and other areas, so I don't think it would be correct to view Pereira's work as being in any way detailed in its information about the actual African peoples (not the geography of their areas) on the Guinea coast compared to much more detailed descriptions from later sources.

TerraCotta: This is a common sense assumption to me. Trading partners seek out the most favorable terms with the largest vendors, rather than going through middlemen. The early Europeans would have had little incentive to venture towards Benin if they had assumed Itsekiri traders were the most powerful polity in the region and could give them the best terms for their goods.

Yes, but the problem with "common sense assumptions" is that sometimes they are still just assumptions and they don't actually have any correspondence with reality. There's little reason to think that Europeans ventured toward Benin because it was claiming to be the most powerful polity in that particular area or even that the people there were claiming such, when such an idea (about Benin being the most powerful polity in the region) simply isn't mentioned anywhere in the earliest documents and when being the most militarily powerful wouldn't even guarantee that they had as much that was worthwhile to trade. Furthermore, they (Europeans) clearly also made repeated contact with several other areas nearby, so if they didn't develop a significant trading relationship with those places, it seems bizarre to blame this on the idea that Benin was claiming to the Europeans be the most powerful polity in the region (as if every single group of Europeans that visited was too dumb or lazy to do any exploration of their own or make further inquiries with other groups to see if there were any significant and large trading centers that they could find elsewhere.)

I don't know why you would assume they were telling anyone that they were the most poweful polity in their particular area if there isn't any trace of this idea in any of the earliest documents. Mention is made of the king of Benin being "powerful" in one of the early 16th century European documents, but even in that instance it's not stated outright that this king is the most powerful in the area.

A much better explanation for any sort of focus on Benin is the one given by Fage:

"Perhaps because the Portuguese sought to deal directly with the organized Benin and Warri kingdoms, bypassing Ijaws on the coast controlling the river mouths, they had few dealings with them and little knowledge of them. Pacheco later twice referred again to the more southerly Jos as "cannibals," adding on the first occasion that "there is no trade here, and up to the present it is now known whether any trade is possible." (K.130 and 132; M.140/41 and 144-47) Once again there seems to be a stereotype: if the Portuguese had not established commercial relations with a people, they must be warlike, barbarous, and cannibalistic." - J.D. Fage, "A Commentary on Duarte Pacheco Pereira's Account of the Lower Guinea Coastlands in His "Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis," and on Some Other Early Accounts" (1980)

That would be the key thing - level of organization and political development. I think this explanation should actually be obvious - I figured it out long before I read Fage's article - but I'm quoting that article just so you see that there is a professional source that mentions this idea.


2. On this "middlemen" thing, the most significant trade items between the Benin kingdom and Europeans, from the very beginning of the trade to the end of the trade were ivory, pepper, and palm oil/palm kernels (see the article "The Slave Trade, Depopulation and Human Sacrifice in Benin History" (1965) by James D. Graham). The pepper was directly from the Bini area as was the palm oil, and the ivory was obtained from areas in Bini land and areas to its immediate north. Gum and redwood were also sold to Europeans over the centuries and these were also obtained locally (from the Bini areas).

You are exaggerating the economic importance to Benin's early trade with Europeans of what they actually were "middlemen" in trading - I think you mean some of the cloth that was not produced locally (some of it was produced locally, as shown by multiple eyewitness accounts) and the beads. Beads were not an important export in Benin's trade with Europeans and it's not clear that the the bead trade with other African groups was in any way a major part of Benin's trade. And the cloth (some of which was produced locally) was also of tertiary importance until the mid 17th century, when it started to be more important to Benin's trade with Europeans (but it still never became the most important item in Benin's trade with Europeans).

3. I don't understand the mention of the Itsekiri. Europeans visited both Benin and the Itsekiri area multiple times and traded with both groups multiple times over the centuries, so it's not as if they (the Portuguese and other Europeans) didn't or wouldn't venture to the Itsekiri area and trade with them even if we decide to believe for whatever reason that Benin actually had been claiming to be the most powerful in the area.

And it's strange to see it implied that the Itsekiri would not have been "middlemen" if the Europeans had decided to focus very heavily on them to the exclusion of Benin, when they would much more aptly be described as middlemen in the trade between southern Nigeria and the Europeans who came to the coast, regardless of whether the Itsekiri had been perceived as the most powerful polity in the area or not. The Itsekiri are accurately described in many different publications, as often playing the role of middlemen in the trade of products that ultimately came from the Bini and Urhobo that were sold to Europeans by the Itsekiri (which is not to say that the Itsekiri did not have any of their own products to sell, of course). In fact, the Itsekiri, like the Ijaw, would set up mini-settlements to "match" real Bini settlements, for the purpose of obtaining products from the Bini:

"At Gwatto, as at all other Benin cities situated on the waterside, there are two villages of the same name, one being that of the Benin City men, built some little distance away from the creek on the top of the bank, which averages, I should think, from twenty to thirty feet high, and the other being a water-side village of the same name, which consists of a few huts occupied by the Jakris and Ejaws trading at that place. As I have said before, these trading tribes have a most wholesome dread of the Benin City men, and always make their big and more permanent villages on the other side of the creek, a few men only living on the Benin side to collect the oil, etc. that is brought down, and to take it over to their brethren on the other side, who paddle it down to the factories on the river." - Alan Boisragon, The Benin Massacre

["Gwatto" = Ughoton, "Jakris" = Itsekiris, "Ejaws" = Ijaws/Ijos.]

Incidentally, the role of the Itsekiri as middlemen between the Bini and Europeans was a significant factor in why the invasion of Benin by the British happened the way that it did (but it would have happened anyway, of course), since some of the Itsekiri traders made it a point to deliberately misrepresent to the British what Benin was doing to the trade in the region, but I won't get into that in detail as it's entirely tangential.

TerraCotta: There is a plain business incentive to aggrandize your political and economic sphere of influence. I don't think this is too controversial a claim, but I'll use the kingdom of Dahomey as an example. The all-conquering warrior kings of that expanding kingdom had what we would consider an excellent propaganda policy of never admitting defeats and promoting themselves as the African regional equivalent of the European powers like Britain and France. Richard Burton's books, which you seem to have read, is full of these bragging scenes. The Dahomeans did it to gain the respect and loyalty of their trading partners; it's no great stretch to see why Benin may have had the same motivations in an earlier era. I'll return to Dahomey later because I think it's well-studied history can suggest guideposts to critically analyze other African societies.

1. To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a single European document in which the economic significance of Benin to Europeans is claimed to be so great or large - except for sources that specifically and only mention the huge amount of ivory and/or pepper sold by Benin to Europeans (but this idea of Benin being economically significant to European traders as far as ivory and pepper is backed up by facts and figures), so I don't know why one would think that anybody in Benin was aggrandizing their economic significance to Europeans. All I came across was that some of the very earliest visitors noted that the pepper that was grown in Benin and sold to Europeans was well liked by them (Europeans) when they first encountered it, and that another later visitor (in the mid 16th century) noted that when trading discussions with their group had concluded, the king (of Benin) had his officials gather up several tons of pepper from the city and the surrounding area which they sold to that group of Europeans.

Hopefully you can cite a source here that gives you the impression that they were boasting of the value of what they had to trade to others or to Europeans or even boasting about their power. Most of what I read about Benin's trade with Europeans describes the specific items that the Europeans actually saw that Benin had to trade, rather than giving overall assessments of the place as far as its economic importance. The earliest source, and one of the few sources that I've come across which does comment on the overall economic significance of Benin to Europeans, claims that the land was "not so profitable as had been hoped" and that as a result of this lack of profitability the earliest trade with Europeans (Portuguese) died down. The later trade that was carried on with the Portuguese after this initial failure also died down again (in the early 16th century) because of restrictions on trade on the part of Benin itself (see Ryder's book for more info).


2. On Dahomey, even if the kings never admitted defeat, non-royal individuals clearly did at times, and it would be naive to assume that Europeans never came into contact with any of these non-royal people in Benin or other societies.
There are examples of the Dahomeans (though not the kings) admitting to losing. In fact, the explanation gleaned by Burton about why they occasionally constructed certain structures in Abomey that were named after places in other kingdoms (such as Asanteman) was that if they failed to capture a town belonging to another kingdom, they would construct a palace in honor of that other kingdom's military prowess:

"No study of Asante-Dahomean relations in the earlier part of the nineteenth century would be complete without reference to the highly interesting though fictionalized account published in 1856 by Greenhalgh - who clearly drew upon factual materials from an unidentified source. Referring to the town of 'Allaroonah' in the Togo hills ('near the point of junction of the kingdoms of Dahomy and Ashantee' 68 and on 'the most direct, and probably the safest route for the commerce of the interior to reach the eastern part of the kingdom of Ashantee'),69 Greenhalgh described the town's struggles to free itself from Dahomean overlordship recently accepted under duress.70 After an 'Allaroonah' force inflicted a defeat upon a Dahomean army, wrote Greenhalgh,


a report of the repulse sustained by the Dahomans, and their vast preparations for a renewed attack upon Allaroonah, spread with surprising rapidity far and wide, reaching even the Ashantee court at Coomassie, and filling it with alarm, for the king was then engaged suppressing a revolt in a distant province of his dominions. Supposing that it would be their monarch's wish to cement more fully the peace already existing between Ashantee and Dahomy, the chiefs who remained in the capital at once despatched an ambassador, with a numerous retinue and valuable presents to Abomey.71


Subsequently, however, Dahomean forces carried out a number of raids upon villages within the eastern frontiers of Asante. The Asantehene equipped an army to defend his border, and with the support of the 'Allaroonahans' inflicted a defeat upon the Dahomey. By the terms of the peace settlement, according to Greenhalgh's account, 'Allaroona' recovered its independence while the Dahomeans agreed to send hostages to Kumase and to 'swear the king's oath not to make war again on Ashantee'.72 Whatever the source of the account, it appears to have reference to the Dahomean failure to consolidate its position, after the attack upon Atakpame, in the neutral zone which separated its territories from those of Asante. The naming of the 'Kumase' gate at Abomey, the Dahomean capital, and of the 'Kumase' palace there, may have commemorated the same failure. Burton observed that, 'when Dahomian kings fail to capture an attacked place, they erect at one of the capitals a palace which is dubbed after the victor, and this satisfied the vanquished. Hence, because Dahome was defeated by Ashante, the Komasi Palace at Agbome was added to the older establishments.'73 Although Duncan gave a different account of the matter,74 both he and Burton were in agreement in attributing the naming of the gate and palace to the ruler Gezo (1818-58)." - Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order, pp. 322-323


The relevant quotes from Burton and Duncan:

' When Dahoman kings fail to capture an attacked place, they erect at
one of the capitals a palace which is dubbed after the victor, and
this satisfies the vanquished. Hence, because Dahome was defeated
by Ashanti, the Kumasi palace at Agbome was added to the older
establishments. Mr. Duncan errs (vol. ii. p. 274) when stating
of the latter "This palace was built and named about the time
when the present king (Gezo) threw off his allegiance to the kingdom
of Ashantee, the king of which formerly boasted that he could hold
Dahomey in vassalage." ' - Richard Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome

In another part of the same book by Burton, he quotes a source which states that the people of Kana at that time held a ceremony to celebrate how they they were now independent from Oyo, after paying tribute to Oyo:

'Early in the present century, King Gezo (who came
to the throne in 1818) seized his opportunity, and after
hard fighting, finally drove out the warlike Oyos, who
were sinking before the Fula or Moslem movement in the
north,1 and distributed the tribute amongst his people,
one of his proudest achievements. He made Kana a kind
of villagiatura for the Court, free and easy as such country
quarters generally are, and resided in it when his troops
went forth to their lesser wars. The remnant of the Oyo
population was enlisted in his army, and was well-nigh
killed out during the attack upon Abeokuta in 1851.
And that the subjugation of so terrible an enemy might
not be forgotten by his dynasty, Gezo - not his son, as
the missionaries believe, - then instituted a sacrifice at
Kana, which opens as it were the customs of Agbome.
The victims are made to personate in dress and avocation
Oyos, a pastoral and agricultural people.2

[2. It is called Gezo's custom, and is performed at Kana, not at
Agbome. Mr. Bernasko saw it in May, 1863; he describes it thus:
"Near the second side of the (palace) wall were eleven platforms,
erected on poles about forty feet high. On each of these was the
dead body of a man in an erect position, clothed in the native style,
each having in his hand a calabash or similar vessel, filled with oil,
grain, or some other produce of the country. One was represented
leading a sheep, also dead. All this was intended to illustrate that
at Canna, of which they (the Dahomans) are now masters, they were
once obliged to pay tribute."]' - Richard Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome


Even if the kings had a policy of never admitting defeat, it doesn't seem plausible to suggest that the non-royal Dahomean people always followed the same policy of never admitting defeats. If they never admitted defeat, I don't see how Burton could get the idea that they built palaces in honor of the military prowess of places that they failed to conquer if defeat was never admitted. And there's also the question of how Bernasko could get the impression that the purpose of the ceremony at Kana was to celebrate no longer being under the yoke of another state (Oyo).

Of course all of this is not denying the boasts of some of the Dahomeans or their kings (in their letters and in other instances), but it seems that the policy of Dahomey was that state politics were kept to the people of the state and not divulged freely to outsiders:

"Norris gives little detailed information of the sources on which he based his reconstruction. He does, however, refer generally to the difficulties involved:

As it is criminal in the natives of this country to discourse on politics, or to make any remarks upon the administration of public affairs, it is difficult to acquire any extensive knowledge of facts. . .however, during a long residence, I have picked up the following memoirs among them.16'" - "The Slave-Trader as Historian: Robert Norris and the History of Dahomey" (1989) by Robin Law

In that same article on Norris by Law, he goes on to suggest that any negative information that Norris obtained about Dahomey (an example of such negative information would be the defeat of the Dahomean army when they attacked Badagry in 1783) came from disaffected Dahomeans who had fallen out of favor with the king's court or from Dahomeans who were working for Europeans at their trading establishments.

Now as stated earlier, it would make little sense to assume that Europeans never came into contact with non-royal individuals or disaffected individuals in the case of Benin when we already know that both of these things aren't true. In fact, as far as Benin is concerned, we have an instance of a European relating how he was told in Benin by Benin informants about how the troops of the reigning king were defeated when they went to war with the troops of the rebel subordinate chief (the Iyase). The description given of the king's defeats and how the entire conflict started by this European source are clearly very negative (against the king) and show that Europeans could indeed come into contact with non-royal sources who were disinterested in propagating some invincible image of the king or the kingdom's army. The European account I'm referring to is one of the written sources that comments on the events of the Benin civil war of the early 1700s in case you're wondering.

But anyway, there are clearly no "bragging scenes" in any of the European sources on Benin. The estimates of Benin's power in the region by those who made such estimates in written documents are clearly based on their own perception as anyone can tell from the diction used by the writers in those instances. The only possible exception to this is Dapper's account which gets some of its information from people who visited Benin. And apart from actually being accurate in its account of who was and who wasn't militarily powerful in the region, Dapper's information in his book is only one out of many European documents on Benin, so it would be implausible to suggest that they had some policy of bragging when this isn't actually reflected in multiple documents over multiple centuries.

TerraCotta: There are two possibilities here; one, I admit, is weaker than the other. The fact is that Ijebu was and continued to be a much more closed society than Benin. There were much fewer visits and the Benin court could have made the claim knowing the Portuguese were less likely to visit there to verify.

There is no claim of Benin dominion over Ijebu in any of the Portuguese records, so why you think they (Benin) bothered to inform the Portuguese of this, or why you think that the Portuguese asked about tributary states or bothered to take special note of such information, I don't know.

Second, there's no reason that Benin should have assumed that Ijebu would automatically have stayed a more "closed" society (assuming that they viewed Ijebu as a "closed" society to begin with), especially in its attitude to traders from far away exotic lands who show up at their doorsteps. Furthermore, as noted above, the first time we see the claim in writing is in Dapper, describing events that are more contemporary and writing long after Europeans had already visited Ijebu. So even if they had been making the claim in earlier times, it certainly didn't change the fact that Europeans still went to Ijebu.

Besides, the verification of grand boasts would happen after the presumed trade benefits of boasting would have already happened. If a con artist sells you a fake watch or gold chain, he knows you'll eventually find out. His concern is to get your money and be gone before the ruse is discovered. This is a discussion about motivation so I hope this isn't misconstrued as an insult to the Benin court of that era.

There's not really something grand about the claim. The idea that there would have been anything "grand" about the claim is too strong an assumption. On the contrary, I would say that the Benin informants would have considered it to be an uncontroversial claim simply because they didn't consider that other kingdom (Ijebu) militarily powerful - at least at that time and relative to places that actually were considered militarily strong, anyway - as Dapper's book clearly shows.

On the con job stuff, there are some other objections that I could make to the reasonableness of this sort of speculation besides the ones below, but I'll limit it to only these two simply because I don't think the idea merits much real consideration.

1. Why list the names of real places and kingdoms, if one is running a con? That would be unnecessary. The Europeans also won't actually visit a place in the interior that simply doesn't exist, so if the motivation is deception, this approach (listing fictional places very far into the interior) is a much better way to go about this.

2. Why did the Bini sometimes offer to sell to Europeans on credit (this is attested to in a firsthand account) - that is, sell them the products now and expect them to sail back days or weeks later to make up for what they hadn't paid for on their next return - if this "con job" scheme was actually relevant to their trade? If there was anyone who could have been conned it could have been the Benin traders who were selling on credit. The Europeans also sometimes sold things to the Bini on credit according to one source (van Nyendael), but this source stresses that in his experience when he returned, the Bini always paid for what had been sold to them earlier without fail. My point is that the nature of the trade - the use of credit in particular - makes the con operation scenario you put forward here implausible since there seems to be a want of evidence of attempts to deceive European traders and because the Bini seemed, in reality, not to be worried about or have any problem with Europeans that they had traded with earlier returning to Benin at a later time.

More importantly: you're conflating the argument that someone has a great deal to gain by exaggerating their area of domain, and the issue of religious piety. The mafiosi in Italy and New York are often devout Catholics; virtually every corrupt Nigerian politician is either a fervent Christian or Muslim. The court at Benin told their visitors that the Houghanee/Ogare was like the pope to European nations. He was a religious potentate and not an economic rival of the time. There was no danger in admitting to a higher religious authority but it's important to see that Benin had good reasons not to admit to being militarily subservient to someone else while also being honest about their religious or 'ancestral' connections.

I don't think I'm conflating anything. I believe you are focusing on a detail at the expense of the bigger picture and you missed the point of my comment - which is that actually, they had no real reason to mention anybody else in a very positive manner if they didn't want to and only cared to promote their own importance.

Furthermore, I don't see how this "ancestral" and "religious" explanation explains why the Benin informants of the time mentioned that the king "Lycosagou" (the king of a Nupe state) was a militarily strong power in the larger region on two different occasions (the first time referring to the king as 'Lycosagou' and the second time referring to the state as 'Isago'). Assuming you've read the original documents, I really don't see how the honesty of the Benin informants can actually be called into question on who was or was not really powerful in the region - in this regard they noted that apart from themselves, both "Ulkami" (Oyo) and "Isago" (a Nupe state) were militarily powerful, when they had no reason to do so if they were running a "con" operation on Europeans. There would simply be no reason to bring the attention of Europeans to other powerful states in the wider region if they were being anything other than forthright.

The very last part of this comment seems to be yet another reference to Darling's bizarre theory about Udo and Benin, but anyway, I should point out that it's surprising to see you bring up that argument considering the argument you were making about this Benin-Ijebu issue. Part of the basis of your skepticism of this Ijebu-Benin claim, is that it isn't mentioned from a later traditional Ijebu source or even any early European source that visited Ijebu, but only mentioned from a source (Dapper) that presumably obtained such a claim from people in Benin. If one takes what you wrote about states not admitting to being "militarily subservient" to other states as having any validity, then one would think it would matter a lot less to you that the claim isn't mentioned by any European source that did visit or may have visited Ijebu. If one follows your line of thinking here, why would one assume that they (Ijebu) would have admitted to being "militarily subservient" (as you put it) to another kingdom? I think that this line of reasoning is somewhat contradictory to your overall argument.

TerraCotta: I've addressed my views on this. I think Pereira is many ways more accurate than Dapper, Bosman and other sources because he visited the places he wrote about and identified many of the areas that later writers built their narratives around.

I won't discuss the issue of Bosman, since I didn't bring him up and also so as not to take this discussion into any unnecessary and irrelevant detours, but I'll just comment on Pereira and Dapper.

On Pereira and Dapper there are a few things we should note:

1. Some of the places Pereira referred to are still unidentifiable (the same problem encountered with a few of the places mentioned in Dapper's publication). Take "Huela" in Pereira's Esmeraldo, for example. Nobody is really sure whether this name is some variant of "Warri" even till today, but some scholars have assumed that it probably was based on the description of the location given (the "Huela" are people who live along the Forcados river in Pereira's account) and the mention of the fact that these "Huela" are said to be near the 'Subou' (Urhobo). But it could have been the name of a presumed ethnic group like the text actually implies by its wording, rather than the name of a city or town, and the name could be that of the Ogula (sometimes called 'Ogulagha') clan of the Ijaws (as E.J. Alagoa would have it) or maybe Iwere (an alternate name for the Itsekiri) or the Ijala area in Itsekiri land (maybe the Itsekiri were being called "Ijala" after this particular place in their land) as some other scholars would have it or it could be a reference to some other group/sub-group still. But Huela is only one of multiple places mentioned in the book which are unidentifiable.

2. His information about the groups he is talking about is often very brief and scanty on details (for example, Benin, Ijebu, Urhobo, etc. - very little information is provided about these places ) in contrast to Dapper's work on the places that he focuses on.

The notion that the early Portuguese sources (including Pereira) are usually weak as far as providing detailed information on some African groups compared to some later sources (especially Dutch ones) isn't my opinion alone - Thomas Hodgkin says basically the same thing in his introduction to Nigerian Perspectives. Hodgkin and myself weren't just both imagining things, there is clearly a difference in the amount of information and detail conveyed about the actual societies and peoples themselves. That the Esmeraldo - a book intended as a navigation guide - was great in its precision and detail about nautical science or navigational/geographical information for its time doesn't mean that it had the same level of depth and detail about the actual African peoples along the coast that it mentioned. J.D. Fage also agrees with the notion that Pereira said little about Benin:

"Bearing in mind that Pacheco noted that he had visited Benin City four times (K.124; M.134/35)73, he said remarkably little about it. But, apart from the well-known seventeenth-century descriptions by 'D.R.,' Dapper and van Nyendael, there are interesting sixteenth-century descriptions of the city, its trade, the country and crops between it and Ughoton, and of the Oba and his court in Richard Eden's account of Windham's visit to Benin in 1553 (B.317-18) and in Hakluyt's printing of James Welsh's and Anthony Ingram's visit in 1598.7 " - J.D. Fage, "A Commentary on Duarte Pacheco Pereira's Account of the Lower Guinea Coastlands in His "Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis," and on Some Other Early Accounts" (1980)


Note that 'D.R.', Dapper, and van Nyendael are all Dutch, while Windham, Welsh, and Ingram, who provided the "interesting descriptions" of Benin in the 16th century mentioned above, are from the British Isles. Yet not even Ingram, Windham, etc. touch on the political connections of Benin to other places, even though they had many other interesting things to say. Clearly the issue did not come up during their visits, or they didn't ask about it, or they were more interested in other things. That does mean that there were no places that were tributary to Benin or places which Benin had political connections to at this point (the mid 1500s), and in fact, it's very unlikely (at least I think it would be to an objective reader) that there were no other places that were politically connected to Benin just because none are mentioned by Ingram, Eden, or even later by 'D.R.'

Just so you don't have to take my word for it (or that of Hodgkin):

"Although Esmeraldo de situ orbis is an important work, which combines geographical knowledge with history, it says remarkable little about the cultures and peoples of Africa." - A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400–1668 (edited by Malyn Newitt), p. 247


3. I'm also not sure where you're getting this notion that Pereira actually visited every place that he mentions in the book. This idea is incorrect. Pereira also relied on information supplied by other European inland traders who had actually been to the places he was writing about. For example, all of his information on the Niger Valley area is secondhand (this is mentioned in the book The Negroland Revisited: Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages by Pekka Masonen) and some other information on the Guinea area is likely to be secondhand because he "evidently relied upon some earlier roteiros" for information as well (see the aforementioned book by Masonen, where it mentions this in the section on Pereira called Duarte Pacheco Pereira Who Was "There" - the quotation marks around "there" are in the original). Even if you weren't aware of what his sources were (not only first hand observation, but also other people's observations) it should be clear from the diction employed by Pereira in the book (his repeated use of "we" and "our" as referring to what contemporary Portuguese sailors in general - not necessarily himself or not just himself - had done or were doing at these places or had observed at these places) that in addition to sometimes making his own observations he was also collating general knowledge gathered by other Portuguese traders, navigators, etc. who had been visiting these places along the Guinea coast or slightly inland from the coast over a period of several decades. Esmeraldo de situ orbis, is a combination of first and secondhand accounts and which information in the book is firsthand or secondhand information is not always clear. Viewing Esmeraldo de situ orbis as being composed of strictly firsthand information also does not make sense. If one reads the book, one can't possibly believe that Pereira could have personally visited all of the places that he mentions or that he actually met all of these groups that he was writing about as that would have been physically impossible, especially in the limited time frame in which he was sailing in West Africa before writing the book.

Some relevant quotes:

"Duarte Pacheco Pereira's account of western Africa is a rich compendium of geographical information, history and anecdote. It represents a comprehensive attempt to gather together all that was known about western Africa and to interpret half a century of contact and experience in the light of the classical texts of Pliny and Pomponius Mela" - The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415-1670: A Documentary History (edited by Malyn Newitt), p. 51

"It is not always clear to what extent Pacheco is reporting his own experiences or giving secondhand reports, but throughout he subjectifies the atemporality and strict objectivity of the roteiro to represent a geography mediated by the intervention of the human consciousness that renders it meaningful" - Margarita Zamora, Reading Columbus, p. 120

For an example of one of the bizarre stories that he was told about but didn't actually attempt to verify himself, check out Pereira's story about men with dog faces, dog teeth and dog tails in one part of Africa on pp. 53-54 of the book by Newitt:

"A great fair is held at Sutuco,4 to which the Mandingas5 bring many asses; these same Mandingas, when the country is at peace and there are no wars, come to our ships which, at the command of our prince, visit these parts. The Mandingas trade with said ships - they trade red, blue and green cloths of small value, and buy scarves and silks of different colours, brass bracelets (manilhas), caps, hats, the stones called alaquequas6 and much more merchandise, so that in time of peace, as we have said, five and six thousand dobras of good gold are brought from there to Portugal. Sutuco and the other places nearby belong to the kingdom of Jalofo,7 but being on the borders of Mandinga they speak the Mandinga language. This Rio de Gambia divides the kingdom of Jalofo from the great kingdom of Mandinga, which in this language is called Encalhor,8 as I have said above; Rio de Gambia9 itself is called in the Mandinga tongue Guabu.10 When ascending the Guabu the kingdom of Jalofo is to the north and that of Mandinga to the south,11 extending nearly two hundred leagues in length and eighty in breadth. The king of Mandinga can put into the field twenty thousand horsemen and as many infantry, [for] they take as many wives as they desire, and when their king is very old and cannot govern, or if he has a prolonged illness, they kill him and make one of his sons or near relatives king.12
Two hundred leagues from this river of Mandinga is a region where there is much gold, which is called Toom. The inhabitants of this region have the faces and teeth of dogs and tails like dogs.13 They are black and shun conversation, not liking to see other men. The inhabitants of the places called Betu,14 Banbarrana15 and Baha go to this country of Toom to obtain gold in exchange for merchandise and slaves, which they bring there. The way these people trade is as follows: Anyone who wishes to sell a slave or other article goes to a certain place appointed for the purpose, ties the slave to a tree and makes a hole in the ground as large as he thinks fit. Having done this he goes a good way off. Then the dogface comes and, if he is content to fill the said hole with gold, he fills it, and if not, he covers up the hole with earth and makes another smaller one and goes away. When this is done, the seller of the slave returns and examines the hole made by the dogface and, if he is satisfied, he goes away again, and the dogface returns and fills the hole with gold. This is the way they conduct their commerce both in slaves and other merchandise, and I have spoken with men who have seen this. The merchants of Mandinga go to the fairs of Betu and Banbarrana and Baha to obtain gold from these monstrous people.16"

[The translation is by Malyn Newitt, who also gives these notes in the book:

4. Sutuco, also known as Sutukoba, was situated north of the Gambia opposite Cantor.
5. Mande-speaking traders who were Muslims and originated in the Mali empire had been penetrating the forest zones, probably since the twelfth century A.D.
6. Bloodstones
7. Wolofs. See also Docs. 7, 19, and 55.
8. This presumably refers to Cayor. See Doc. 16
9. The Gambia River
10. The name Guabuu, more usually Kaabu, was given to the state established by Mandinka invaders whose ascendancy depended on their cavalry and that grew to include most of the savannah country between the Gambia and Geba Rivers.
11. The original has 'da parte do sul ou meio dia'.
12. This is an early reference to the idea of 'divine kingship', which the nineteenth-century anthropologist Sir James Fraser believed to be the archetypal form of human government, traces of which could be detected in cultures throughout the world.
13. The belief in the existence of a dog-headed people can be found in Book Four of Herodotus's Histories and was widely accepted by educated and uneducated alike in the Middle Ages. It was referred to by Marco Polo and more recently was revived in the popular but entirely fictitious account of the travels of Sir John Mandeville, which was written in the mid-fourteenth century.t
14. According to E.W. Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (Oxford, 1968) p. 149, Bitu was another name for Bonduku in northern Ashanti.
15. Possibly Bambara in modern Mali.
16. The 'silent trade' is first described in Book Four of Herodotus's Histories. Another detailed discussion of this 'silent trade' is contained in Alvise da Cadamosto's Voyages, which were written in the 1460s.]


In the case of the above example, there were clearly no monstrous "dog-faced and dog-tailed men" in that area (According to Masonen, whose book I cited above, "Pereira's Toom referred to Tambaoura, a village east of the Faleme river in Bambuk area, which was a centre of intensive gold production", but I have come across accounts that claim that "Toom" is a rendering of "Ton," a name that was used to refer to the Akan by the Wangara/Dyula and other Mande peoples), despite what Pereira claimed he had heard from "men who have seen this" but there possibly was a "silent trade" in the area since versions of that method of trade were observed in other parts of Africa by later writers who actually did visit the places that carried on such "silent trades" that they wrote about. But Pereira only tells us that he had heard from others that this "silent trade" with the non-extant "dog men" took place. He neglects to tell us one other important fact - that all of the other information he was writing about the peoples of this area (the Mandinka and Wolof areas) was also information that he heard from others and that he simply never went to the "great kingdom of the Mandingas" (the Mali empire of the Mandinka/Malinke people) and he almost certainly never went to the kingdom of the "Jolofes" (Wolof) to see what he was writing about for himself. The fact that he didn't go to those places (he didn't) but was only relating what others had told of their experiences there and/or what he might have come across in a few earlier roteiros, might be important information for us in assessing whether other things that he says about them - such as his extreme exaggeration of the possible flaws of the Wolofs of that time (which I will post below) - have any eye-witness validity to them. But as stated earlier, he doesn't bother to let us know this. Also note the much greater amount of detail he gives in this part which is based on second-hand information compared to the brief and scanty information about many of the groups in the Guinea area that he supposedly actually came across himself or whose towns and cities one might assume that he actually saw for himself.

Some more info on Pereira:

"For the historiography of the discoveries the Esmeraldo is a valuable source, for it proves that the Portuguese went to Africa and were closely examining new things there. Pereira's view on the subject is practical: "All the routes will be stated, namely the position of places and promontories in relation to one another, in order that this work may have an ordered basis and that and that the coast may be navigated in greater safety."152 Pereira interrupted his sometimes rather monotonous listing of winds, currents, and landmarks only when the area had some commercial or other value to the Portuguese.153 Otherwise the spot was passed without further explanation: "Many other things concerning the Rio de Guambea [the Gambia] I omit because I am no friend of prolixity. . ."154 This approach explains why Pereira said so little of the interior, as these areas were beyond the reach of the Portuguese traders, with the exception of the Kingdom of Kongo.155 In the West African context, Pereira repeated the already familiar description of Timbuktu and of the trans-Saharan trade. On the other hand he is, with Fernandes, amongst the first Western writers to mention the city of Jenne (Jany).156 Pereira reported that the Senegambian hinterland was dominated by the great kingdom of the Mandinguas, but he nowhere mentioned Melli (Mali). Neither had Pereira any specific interest in African peoples and their cultures, although he claimed in his introduction that he would "also describe the inhabitants of this land of Ethiopia and their way of life and commerce".158 His opinion of the blacks was for the most part negative. Of the Wolof, toward whom Cadamosto had been able to feel some admiration, Pereira wrote:

These peoples, as those of the great kingdom of Mandingua and of Tucurol and other negroes, are all circumcised and worship in the false sect of Mahomet. They are given to vice and are rarely at peace with one another, and are very great thieves and liars, great drunkards and very ungrateful and shameless in their perpetual begging.

It was not, however, the wickedness of the blacks that annoyed Pereira so much as their religion. To him, like to Zurara (and to most Portuguese), Islam represented the ultimate heresy: it was considered the negation of the holy Catholic faith. Hence the wretched who followed the evil sect of Mahomet, whether they were Moors, Guineas, or Indians, deserved no sympathy or mercy, as Pereira had already proven while serving in India and participating in the fights between the Portuguese and the local Muslim rulers.160" - 'DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA WHO WAS "THERE"' from The Negroland Revisited. Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages (2000), by Pekka Masonen


[Mandingua = Mandinka, Tucurol = Tukulor/Toucouleur, Mahomet = Mohammed]


Now on the bit above on the Wolof, we could speculate about which actual visitor to the Wolof kingdom had a bad time there and had a low opinion of them and told Pereira this or wrote it down in an earlier roteiro that Pereira used in Lisbon, but it would certainly be pointless to speculate about what negative experiences Pereira himself had with the Wolof because he simply didn't see any of this unpleasant behavior firsthand, even though he published this. In other words, although he was willing to put such an extraordinary denunciation of the Wolof into print, he didn't actually see any of that firsthand. It's all secondhand information. But Pereira doesn't tell us this and later scholars have had to figure that out.

If one were to take Pereira's words as being an accurate description, the entire Wolof group - rather than just a few low class people that Pereira's sources had a bad encounter with - all behaved terribly. But is there any reason to think that the particular traders Pereira relied on for his description of the Wolof even interacted significantly with the more "middle class" (not too well off, but not poor) Wolof or even anyone from the nobility? Note that this ridiculous caricature of the Wolof is not found in other early European written sources on the Wolof, and also note that the pretender to the Wolof throne, who went to Portugal in 1488 to seek support for his attempt to take the throne, was viewed by the Portuguese court as dignified and impressive in manner/demeanor (they commented on his 'noble deportment, skill as horseman, and elegant speech'). Apart from the illogical nature of the description (how can an entire ethnic group or nation be drunkards, beggars, and thieves - if that were the case, there would simply be no society since all law and order would break down completely), it seems contrary to the impression of the Wolof given by other early European sources. This is clearly nonsense and should be regarded as such.

4. Concerning Pereira vs. Dapper, both are important and very useful sources of information and this is the view that is standard and widely held among historians. This is why Law cites Dapper so many times in many of his publications when reaching conclusions (although, of course, he clearly does not consider Dapper's work to be free of error, just as Pereira's work is not free of error). You are welcome to your view of Dapper's work, but I should point out that this low esimation of its value is definitely at odds with the general view of Dapper's book among professional historians of Africa. I'll quote John Fage because he expresses what the value of Dapper's work is generally taken to be in this particular quote. It should be understood (without me having to go mining for quotes) that what he is saying about Dapper below is not a rare view but a common view of the worth of Dapper's work among professional historians of Africa:

"As I worked, so it became plain to me that it would be counterproductive
to stick too rigidly to the conception that the Guide should be limited to first-hand
evidence - which in the strict sense would mean, of course, that it could include only accounts
related by persons who had themselves actually seen what was described. In the first place,
it seemed desirable to point out that there are some ostensibly first-hand accounts which are
not what they seem. The writer who put the name 'Christian Frederic Damberger' on the title page
of the account of what he claimed were his travels in Africa had never been to the continent,
while to greater or lesser degrees it seems clear that Joseph Hawkins, Richard Drake,
Robert Adams, J. B. Douville, John Duncan, and Paul Du Chaillu all claimed to have done
more in Africa than in reality was the case.6 The Nouvelle Relation by J. B.Labat is substantially
based on an account of real travels in West Africa, but not by the man to whom
he attributes them (see 1685 LABAT). Indeed, although Labat has his value as a purveyor of original information about western Africa, the use he makes of what was available
to him is generally far from straightforward - as may also be judged from 1721 LABAT and from
1671 G.A.CAVAZZI. Or let us consider again the case of 1678 BARBOT who, though
he did twice visit West Africa briefly on trading voyages, drew heavily on other
men's work when he came to write his book. Among other things, this means not only that he
used material which dated from before he first went to Guinea, but also that he refers
to some events that took place some years after he was there. There is no doubt in my mind that the Guide would be the poorer and less useful if the first-hand rule had been narrowly observed. I have in fact included quite a few compilations produced by professional writers who travelled little if at all. The reason for this is that such works may well reproduce original material which is not available, or readily available, elsewhere. A good example is Dapper's Description of Africa ((1668) DAPPER), the outstanding general description of the seventeenth century. For the most
part Dapper worked from printed sources which - unlike some of his contemporaries - he often
acknowledges. But it is also apparent that in a number of places he was using first-hand
information - for example that contributed by the Dutch merchant Samuel Blommaert, who was
concerned with western Africa from c. 1614 to c. 1651 - which would not seem to have
been published elsewhere, and which may well no longer exist independently of Dapper's book.
Blommaert was the source for Dapper's substantial and important account of the Kquoja
kingdom and its neighbours in the Sierra Leone - Cape Mount region, and probably too for
some of the information on which Dapper based his accounts of Benin and the Congo.
The further back one goes into the past, the more in practice one must depend
on compilers for what original material has survived. This is why, for example, I have entries
for the fifteenth century chronicles of such as Ruy de Pina and Eanes de
Azurara (1438 PINA; 1441 AZURARA) because, although they did not themselves go to western
Africa, it was their duty as official chroniclers to be in close touch with, and to
record the activities of, those who did. For that matter, Pacheco Pereira, the author of one of the two major early Portuguese accounts of western Africa, the Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis (1505
PACHECO), although he had an active African career, and therefore a first-hand understanding
of what he was writing about, compiled his account of the western coast in Portugal
essentially as an office exercise. Indeed, for the whole fifteenth century there would seem
to be only four published European accounts of western Africa which can be directly related
to personal visits. Two of these, those by Antonio Malfante (1447 MALFANTE) and Eustache
de la Fosse (1479 LA FOSSE) were published as a result of the work of modern scholars;
that by Alvise da Ca' da Mosto (1455 CA' DA MOSTO) was first published in what is
accepted as the first printed collection of travel literature ((1507) VOYAGES: PAESI);
while the survival of the fourth, Diogo Gomes's account of his voyages (1457 GOMES), is to the
credit of one of the major collectors and compilers of the early sixteenth century, Valentim
Fernandes. Although he was based in Lisbon for the whole of his active career, it is
to Fernandes that we owe the other major early Portuguese account of western Africa (1506 FERNANDES), and much of this was apparently compiled from first-hand material which is not
known to have survived independently. " - J.D. Fage "A guide to original sources for precolonial western Africa published in European languages: for the most part in book form" (1994)


Fage also published an article in 1980 on Pereira's Esmeraldo (which I cited above) in which he noted the importance and value of Pereira's work (and it is valuable, no doubt about that) as a source of information about late 15th century West Africa, so he clearly acknowledged that it is a useful source of information. But what he is pointing out in the quote above about the Esmeraldo is that it's not the case that everything mentioned in the Esmeraldo is really "directly related" to what Pereira actually saw during his personal visit to West Africa (and in light of the fact that Pereira included things like tales of giant league-long disintegrating snakes and monstrous "dog men" in his account - things he obviously never saw - it should be obvious that Fage's perception of the work is correct).

The truth is that by hiding information about most of the sources that he heard information from (oral/verbal sources), and also possibly leaving out information about his written sources (I'm alluding to the "earlier roteiros" that Masonen says he evidently relied upon), Pereira's compilation escaped the scrutiny of later scholars attempting to find out the oral and written origins of some of his information.

5. Pereira refers to certain groups as "cannibals" without strong justification and without providing descriptions of examples of their cannibalism or any real statement of evidence. That's not exactly my idea of being accurate or detailed - not giving many details about a specific group being discussed (unlike Dapper's work, which often has more than just a sentence or two about a group being discussed), and when discussing some other groups calling them "cannibals" and "eaters of men" based on hearsay or perception without any actual detailed support for the claim. I don't assume that just because Pereira or some of his Portuguese associates or earlier writers that he relied on for information visited some places, they could actually tell who was a cannibal and who wasn't just by looking at people or by making a quick guess about what the meat "really" was in their meals.

TerraCotta: That's neither here nor there if you place this 'conquest' after his writing. Pereira was an earlier Portuguese equivalent of Richard Burton, who I've written about here before as a peerless first-person source precisely because they were both well-traveled, multi-lingual, experienced in both military and diplomatic roles and less likely (in my view) to exaggerate or accept exaggerations because they had comparative experiences elsewhere.

I'm not going to give my opinion on Burton as a writer and observer, so as not to, once again, take the discussion into even more directions than it has already gone, but I'll point out some ironies in the comparison to Burton.

First, as mentioned immediately above Pereira didn't actually visit all the places he was writing about - his work was an aggregation of other people's information and some of his own observations - unlike Burton, who usually indicates what ideas are from another source when he comments on information that is not from his own observation. And although this is not such a problem as far as the informativeness/value of the book (it is still has some valuable information), Pereira also often fails to mention what information is secondhand, something which Burton presumably did not do in his work.

Second, the comparison is ironic in light of the fact that there is a considerable difference in the amount of detail/information about many African groups that Burton writes about in any of his works compared to the scanty amount of information and detail about many African groups provided by Pereira in the Esmeraldo. Pereira wanted to know about geography and trade, and Burton wanted to know about these things as well, but he also clearly wanted to know about culture, customs, and history.

Third, it is also ironic in light of the fact that while Pereira makes wild claims about "cannibals" which are clearly based on hearsay or perception (of a group as "primitive" or 'uncivilized'), rather than any concrete facts, Burton, despite his strong racist views, makes the observation in one of his publications over three centuries later, when writing specifically about one of the ethnic groups that Pereira designated "cannibals" with no justification and without detailed description of apparent "evidence" of cannibalism on their part, that most of these claims by European writers on Africa about supposed "cannibals" are pretty much nonsense. Although I dislike Burton as an individual, I will admit that he should be given credit for being one of the earlier European scholars to recognize that this "cannibal" stuff in some European accounts was, in the vast majority of cases, just a "traditional European exaggeration" about certain African groups that were not seen as sufficiently sophisticated or organized.

And I don't think I need to comment in detail on how good Pereira was or was not at accepting distortions or exaggerations, as the material in the book about monstrous "dog men", the claim about the existence of league-long (1.5 km in length) disintegrating snakes (I didn't provide the exact quote for this, but it is in there), and the extreme caricature of the entire Wolof people (possibly based on a few bad experiences some other Portuguese traders had with a few Wolof people from the lower classes) provide a pretty clear picture of how credulous Pereira was.

TerraCotta: I think skepticism is warranted when two sources disagree, especially when one of the sources is primary (Pereira, who'd been to these areas) and the others are secondhand (Olfert Dapper, Bosman etc, who were aggregating sailors' stories and earlier works). If the two sources disagree, we have reasons to analyze them to find out which might be more accurate. I'm not the first or only person who found Dapper and co. unreliable or mistaken about this claim but I'll get into that later.

As noted by me above, it is already well known that some of Pereira's information was secondhand and what information from Pereira was primary and what information was secondhand is not always clear. Certainly there is some specific information that is probably based on firsthand experience (such as the paltry, but still valuable information on Benin, which he claimed to have visited multiple times), but some of the other information is an aggregation of "sailors' stories" from places he never visited. Even aside from the fact that he wrote about places in the interior that he had never been to, it's still not even clear which of the places on the coast that he wrote about were places that he actually visited and which ones were just places he merely passed by or went near to but didn't really visit himself.

And as mentioned earlier, Pereira's work contains mentions of many places and peoples, but a minimum of significant information about many of those peoples and places, and it does actually have issues with accuracy with regard to non-geographical and non-navigational information - the repeated casual designation of less impressive looking or less organized groups as "cannibals" is just one of these problems.

Now we already know that Pereira didn't visit the places that were further into the interior that he wrote about, hence the mix of bizarre stories and legitimate information about the interior - he was collecting both the legitimate information and the fanciful stories from other Portuguese traders and explorers rather than seeing things for himself. But as I said earlier, it's also really not clear sometimes which information is secondhand or firsthand even when dealing with the Guinea coast. So we should also question just how many of the places and people on the coast that he wrote about were actually seen by him. Certainly there are going to be several places on the coast which he really did have firsthand experience of, but as one example of an instance where we may have reason to doubt that he actually visited a place closer to the coast, let's consider Pereira's mention of Ijebu. Apart from the fact that such a small amount of information is given about Ijebu, there is another issue. It is usually noted that there is some slight confusion in the surviving editions of Pereira's book of the terms rio (river) and rey (king) when referring to the king of Ijebu:

"Pacheco then apparently remarked that "the river of this country is in
our days called Agusale," and tells us that from "the Geebuu,"
slaves could be bought at 12 to 15 manillas each, and also
elephant tusks (K.125; M.130/31).
This important passage has not been well handled by either
Kimble or Mauny. The former identifies "the Geebuu" with
Abeokuta, ignoring the fact that this town was not founded until
about 1830. This led him to believe that "the river" is the
Ogun, in which Mauny (n270) followed him. But Mauny also said
that "the Geebuu" is "sans doute" Ijebu-Ode (n269). In fact
there is no doubt at all, because neither editor has appreciated
that Pacheco's apparent reference to a river is a slip of his or
his copyist's pen or a misreading by his editors. His intention
must have been to say: "the king of this country is in our days
called Agusale"; in Portuguese, the word "rio" has slipped in
place of the word "rey."67 In the first place, the title of the
ruler of Ijebu-Ode is Awujale, which is close enough to "Agusale."
Secondly, it is unreasonable to think that the name of a river
might change from one day to the next, but kings - and therefore
their names, if not the title they bear - do change from time to
time. Pacheco in fact used just this phrase "in our days" ('em
nossos dias') elsewhere, when giving what he supposed to be the
name of a king; for example, a page or two later in respect to
"Licosaguou" (K.126; M.134/35)." - J.D. Fage, "A Commentary on Duarte Pacheco Pereira's Account of the Lower Guinea Coastlands in His "Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis," and on Some Other Early Accounts" (1980)


The terms rey (Portuguese word for king) and rio (Portuguese word for river) are sufficiently close that the minor typo here, can, as Fage said, basically be ignored as some copyist's error in transcription. But that minor issue isn't the real problem. The name of the king in the text is given as "Agusale", which matches the Benin rendition of the Ijebu king's name, Aghuzale, more than it matches the actual Ijebu version of the name, Awujale. If one takes the closeness between the version of the name given by Pereira (Agusale) and the Bini version of the name (Aghuzale) into account then this either means that he simply didn't go there himself and just got his information from sources in Benin or that the title of the ruler at the time that the Portuguese were visiting and trading with Ijebu really was Aghuzale, which the Portuguese wrote Agusale (or alternatively, both of these things could be true). The name may have been Aghuzale, and the lack of a retention of "z" and "gh" sounds without these morphing into new consonants/sounds ('j', 'w'/'oo') in that particular Yoruba dialect, as in most Yoruba dialects, might have contributed to the alteration of the name over time. If the king's title really was Aghuzale at the time that the Portuguese were visiting, then that seems like something that would support the Benin claim, but as I said, Pereira might simply have never gone to Ijebu and may instead have relied on sources in Benin or on information from another Portuguese traveler who had collected such information in Benin. Or alternatively, when compiling his work, Pereira may have mixed the information that was obtained in Benin about the Ijebu king's title with information that was derived from his actual firsthand knowledge about Ijebu (the information about the ditch and the items traded there) or from other people's experiences at Ijebu.

If you're wondering where I'm getting the notion that the Bini rendition of the name was Aghuzale, this is mentioned in a publication of Egharevba's besides his Short History. Egharevba had already brought up the Benin claim of conquest of Ijebu in the Short History but it is in that later publication from him that the Bini rendition of the title appears.

(By the way, a history professor, Tunde Oduwobi, notes in an early part of his book Ijebu Under Colonial Rule that Pereira's use of a name for the Awujale that is close to the Bini form of the name may be evidence of some sort of Bini connection. I haven't read the book, but I'm just pointing out that I'm not the only one who noticed that. But I am also considering the possibility that Pereira simply didn't actually visit Ijebu himself and was relying on some information which had its ultimate origins from somebody in Benin - something which I don't think Oduwobi takes into account.)

For another example, consider that Pereira almost certainly never went to the Urhobo area, and just mentioned that they were a people further inland because he had heard this from an African or European source. We know that he is unlikely to have actually gone there because apart from the fact that he says nothing about them (the 'Subou'/Urhobo) besides indicating their location and saying that they are very populous, there is the glaring fact that he calls them "Subou" which is clearly a rendition of "Sobo." The giveaway here is that the Urhobo don't call themselves "Sobo" and never have, and in fact, they disliked that name, which certain other groups around them called them in the past. So we already know that any information on the Urhobo (such as how populous they are or are not) is probably not from direct experience and interaction with them.

I had much more to write and to post, but the spambot banned me for my last post, so I'll respond to this thread tomorrow if the mod unbans me and unhides my post by then.

Err...we can all post conjectures, hearsay, and propaganda from both sides. However, the crux of the matter is that, if the Ijebu were militarily subservient, to the Bini's - or under Bini's dominion, at one point in history. How come there's no visible evidence of Bini's influence on Ijebu culture? We can cite the Oyo's influence on the Dahomey; Bini's influence on Eko and parts of Ondo; the Moorish and Arab influence in the Mediterranean; and the Roman influence on the Anglo-Saxons - to buttress how military subservience and dominion work.

It will be helpful if you can list what the Bini's influenced in Ijebu culture.

Shymmex, I was going to post much more information, but the spambot stopped me. The particular post it decided to hide was kind of necessary as far as the content of my response, so I don't really intend to comment at length until it's unhidden. And that hidden post is one of the ones I was going to post that relates more directly to the issue of that Benin-Ijebu claim, unlike the preceding posts.

Also, I don't actually have any interest in the Ijebu-Benin claim, and I was surprised to see it brought up when I mentioned the issue of Benin possibly having a presence west along the coast at the border of, or in, Dahomey/Benin Republic and when that might have started. I think maybe TerraCotta has an interest in the claim and he wanted to discuss it. So I'm discussing it.

On the last thing you wrote, I already referenced some sources that talk about the connections and I'm not really in the habit of memorizing all of the details of large books which I read years ago alongside several other things, so I couldn't tell you anything just off of memory.

TC,

Long time bro. You are like Egun Elemele, you come out "once a year". Negro salute o, hin say how body? More blessings to you and show up more often.

Before I continue, some spelling errors, duplications, and typos from me that I noticed above. Those parts should read like this:

"but just that some Dutchman who worked for or with him, or who reported to him, visited Benin and gave him that information on Benin and some other places"

"that they were the most powerful polity"

"there is no trade here, and up to the present it is not known whether any trade is possible."

"and it's not clear that the the bead trade with other African groups"

"If they never admitted defeat, I don't see how Burton could get the idea that they built palaces in honor of the military prowess of places that they failed to conquer if defeat was never admitted."

"That does not mean that there were no places that were tributary to Benin or places which Benin had political connections to at this point (the mid 1500s)"

"in order that this work may have an ordered basis and that and that the coast may be navigated in greater safety."

"but I should point out that this low estimation of its value is definitely at odds"

"the informativeness/value of the book (it is still has some valuable information), Pereira also often fails"


There are probably a few more typing errors besides these, but that's what I've caught so far.

So as I stated above the Aghuzale/Agusale vs. Awujale problem of the text is not really easily resolvable. It could really have been the title of that king before it changed over time, or the name could have been information which was not obtained directly from Ijebu and that could explain the pronunciation in Pereira's book instead. So depending on what assumptions one wants to make, it might not be the case that Pereira's book is actually devoid of evidence of Benin influence on Ijebu at that early time. Ryder is of the opinion that the Portuguese possibly obtained the true, original form of the title and that it "may well" have simply changed over time.

"There is good reason to regard Portuguese transcriptions of West African titles as accurate, for where they can be checked against existing titles the correspondence is close. For example, Pereira (op. cit. p. 131) gives the title of the ruler of Ijebu as Agusale: the difference between this and the present form may well represent a true change in pronunciation and not a Portuguese mistake" - A.F.C. Ryder, "An Early Portuguese Trading Voyage to the Forcados River," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Vol. 1, p. 306

Now, moving on. . .

TerraCotta: I agree wholeheartedly with all this and I'd even add that it's part of my line of thinking on this interpretation of an Ijebu-Benin relationship. A powerful kingdom had no guarantee of safety from predations, and by the same token, military expansion wasn't the only (or perhaps not even the most powerful) type of contact between African societies. We've focused on the stories of empires and conquerors to the detriment of understanding the role of travelers, traders, artisans and craftsmen, diplomats and religious personnel etc. in forming these societies. If we all agree that there were contacts beyond the borders of these empires, we should be able to imagine other types of social and cultural interaction beyond war.

Right, but the reason for the survival of the claim is not because people can't conceive of ideas or practices spreading through means other than warfare. Of course they can and I think everybody knows that, but the real reason this claim persists in the academic literature is because people from Benin made the claim multiple times and because Benin was clearly a militarily active state at many periods of time so it would be seen as plausible to some people that at least some of its connections to other places could have been brought about by military events. It doesn't amount to suggesting that connections have to or even usually do come about through warfare to suggest that some of these particular connections did.

Now of course, the connections could easily have come about without warfare, but the repetition of the wafare claim from the Benin side means that it is going to come up as a possible factor or explanation.

As for "focusing on travelers, traders, artisans and craftsmen, diplomats and religious personnel" it's not the case that such figures, when prominent, go unmentioned in Benin's history and I would assume that this is the case for other groups in Nigeria as well (though I may be wrong). Egharevba mentions such people himself in his publications and other Edo writers have done so as well. So both conquerors and their empires and other sorts of people are represented in Edo historical publications, and if the Edo of the past believed the connection had come about not through conquerors and their conquests but through some other means, they might have identified the "travelers, traders, artisans and craftsmen, diplomats and religious personnel" in their traditions that brought about that connection with Ijebu. But they didn't, so the conquest claim may persist.

TerraCotta: So this brings us back to the issue of interactions, influences and 'conquest'. There are a myriad ways and reasons through which Benin art styles and beliefs could have spread to Ijebu and vice versa. The idea that these fairly obvious and well-accepted connections could only have been adopted through military means (as claimed by Benin traditions and rejected by Ijebu ones) is what I disagree with and what you presumably are insisting on.

I actually didn't post those references in order to bring up the issue of art styles or beliefs, though the books which these references are in happen to also mention art, beliefs, etc. and do happen to be art books. There are other things mentioned in those particular pages besides stuff about art or beliefs, though I can't recall much about those sources just off memory. I just posted that to point out that, as I said earlier, the obvious signs of connections aren't based just on this or that European document or on one claim in the early 20th century. When I posted that I wasn't sure whether or not you thought that - regardless of what Dapper or Egharevba wrote - there were connections/influences, but since you apparently do, there's no disagreement between us there.

As far as "insisting" on anything, that is a misreading of my position. Ijebu is an interesting group, but this Ijebu-Benin issue was something of an unnecessary (although informative) detour to me, honestly. Apart from giving my opinion on what Ehret wrote and on Thornton's idea, my interest was in how far west Benin was going into Dahomey/Republic of Benin in the coastal area as settlers or anything else, not how far inland they were conquering, and that's what my first comment on this thread was about - a presence in places in Dahomey/Benin Republic, not Ijebu. Whether Benin conquered Ijebu or not doesn't really interest me - it wouldn't affect my perception of either kingdom - but how far west Benin had a presence in or at the border of the Dahomey/Benin Republic area and when this might have started does interest me. Additionally, the issue of whether Ijebu was ever tributary to Benin had little real bearing to me on the issue of whether Benin's presences was possibly further west into the Dahomey area before 1550 as I had been speculating (since I don't see the two issues as necessarily directly related), so I was surprised to see it even brought up.

Now you seem to have an interest in this issue and in attempting to show that the connection didn't come about through conquest. That's fine and I agree that it easily could have come about without conquest but you shouldn't assume that I have a particular interest in the Ijebu-Benin issue or in "insisting" there was a conquest just because of my "counter-skepticism" of your skepticism of the claim. That I think some of the skepticism of the claim is based on weak arguments doesn't mean I have a particular interest in the claim being true or that I'm insisting that warfare has to be the explanation - it just means that I view the basis of some of the skepticism about the claim as pretty weak in its foundation.