I started on this show a week ago and I'm up to episode 8 of the 1st season. I'm liking this show a lot so far. There's some smart writing in it and it's far from predictable.

Nice pictures Negro Ntns/Dudu Negro. I just checked out the Frobenius Institutes's photo archive and I see that they have a whole lot of interesting pictures there.

Hey One Naira, I see that you gave your opinion on the existence of the quote in another thread called "Genevieve Nnaji Believed Omotola Jalade Paid To Get Her Name On Time 100 List" but in there you just restated that you googled it, which is the same as what you had already said in the Soyinka interview thread that I referred to earlier. But like I said, if one expends any actual effort, references to the quote show up in google from sources other than Soyinka's 2013 interview.

And perhaps you referenced that intensive search in every place you could think of in another thread that I missed. If you can show me that, then I'll take back what I said earlier.

One Naira, you say that before I called you lazy, you had already stated multiple times that you "researched intensively on it on everywhere I can think of." I don't follow your posts, so could you actually refer me to the posts from before my "lazy" criticism of you (my first post in this thread) where you mentioned your intensive search? If you did state that you had researched it intensively before I called you lazy, I will apologize for my insults. I just went through several pages of your post history again, but apart from your first comment in this thread, these are the only posts about the Ashiwaju quote from you that I saw and they are all from the Soyinka interview thread where you first stated your opinion of Soyinka's mention of it, but maybe you stated this intensive search stuff elsewhere or I missed it when looking through your post history:

One Naira: interesting enough I googled this exact word and excluding you and others that claimed CA said such on NL. one commentor mentioned it on saharareport, nowhere else seem to have such word. therefore, any link to support your accusation against CA

https://www.nairaland.com/1294694/wole-soyinkas-interview-chinua-achebe/18#15805258

One Naira: WS said it and we have nothing else to verify CA actually said it. again such a shame WS is descending so low. not only is he jealous of his colleague, he is also accusing his colleague wrongfully. smh. so disappointed today.

if you have link that verify CA said then we'll accept it. thus far, google can't find any

https://www.nairaland.com/1294694/wole-soyinkas-interview-chinua-achebe/18#15805300

One Naira: Anyway, back to what I was saying, second accusing CA of a comment against WS that cannot be verified and it's not found anywhere else except on WS comment

https://www.nairaland.com/1294694/wole-soyinkas-interview-chinua-achebe/27#15877540

All I can see there is your claim that you checked for it on google, which I was already aware of as this was contained in your first mention of the Asiwaju quote in the Soyinka interview thread that I referenced earlier in this thread. Was there some other thread (besides the Soyinka interview thread) where you mentioned the Asiwaju quote and your intensive search for it? If so, then I'll take back what I said about you being lazy.

Now the google thing ties into what I said about not expending even the slightest effort before saying someone is making up a quote, because references to the Ashiwaju quote besides those from the Soyinka interview are easily findable on google books provided one expends some actual effort or goes past the first page of results. I don't see how one can think mentions of Achebe's quote are only found in Soyinka's interview and only in this year (2013) if one goes past the first page of results in a search using the very same Google that you said you used. Your past posts show that you've made efforts to make extensive searches for information online before, yet you insisted that the only place that one could find mention of the quote was Soyinka's recent interview. If you couldn't find anywhere else where mention was made of Achebe's Asiwaju quote besides Soyinka's interview before, then of course I would think you didn't expend any real effort in doing so, but since you visited all those other sites where you assumed the quote would be, then I guess I'll take your word for it that you carried out an intensive search.

As for the wikipedia post, the website listed every opinion about noble prize CA had as well as his rejoice for WS when he won the said award. I find it ironic the said website which is a clear attack on WS award is disregarded

If you think that it was a "clear attack" on Soyinka, then that's simply what you choose to make of the quote. You're not alone - others have done the same thing. I have a different interpretation, anyway, which I already stated above. I don't really see how not seeing someone as the leader of a something because they recently won a very prestigious prize is equivalent to an attack, but of course you're welcome to your own opinion.

By the way, most controversial interview as well as a statement made by someone as popular as CA usually are digital.

Thanks for presenting this opinion as fact, but I'm not under any obligation to accept it as true, since I haven't actually compared all non-digital and digital sources that contain interviews from popular authors and I doubt that others have done so either.

I doubt the existence of the exact quote because that said quote is an insult to another man's achievement and I doubt CA would result to that mere attack.

Or he could have just been stating his opinion and was not out to attack anybody.

And no you don't even need to buy the book - I suggested a library although I saw where you wrote that you would buy it. But go ahead and buy it if you want, I just don't see the point of buying a book to verify one quote. Perhaps you actually intend to read it though.

Why you felt the need to inform me that books are not usually digital

That is not what I was saying. I don't think you understood me. The issue is not that books are not usually digital, but rather that you can't take the fact that you can't find a specific quote online as showing that such a quote does not exist elsewhere in sources that are not available online, since the ability to find that quote online is entirely dependent on whether the material from that publication has been put online by somebody.

I find it Ironic that of all this years, of all the comparison between CA and WS all this years, all the interview between the two in all this years, none ever mentioned the said quote until recently in this year.

That's just the thing - this simply isn't true. It was mentioned in the past and I even referenced the fact that it was mentioned in the 80s and how it seems that some people took the comment the wrong way back when it was made.

A supposed controversial insult hidden for so many years until he, WS, mentioned it.

Well, no. It wasn't hidden at all. If one expends some actual effort, one can indeed find older references to it online.

I doubt the existence of the exact quote because that said quote is an insult to another man's achievement and I doubt CA would result to that mere attack. If you have different opinion about what the statement implies, then that's on you. I don't have to have the exact same opinion as you.

Fair enough. We read the meaning and significance of the quote differently, but yeah, the quote exists.

Rest in peace. He was a really great actor. It's unfortunate that he passed away as early as 51.

One Naira, you might really be much lazier than I thought you were. The solution here is not to start Google searching like a madman and taking random screenshots, but to go and actually pick up the book that I cited from a library. Then you would see the source of the quote and you would realize that while the quote itself is definitely in the book, the quote does not even originate from that book but from an interview that Achebe did indeed give in 1988.

The quote is from a magazine called Quality and the name of Achebe's interviewer was Onuora Udenwa. The quote is from 1988 and yes it exists because he made the statement. The problem is that you're so lazy and ill-informed that you think that every publication ever made has been digitized and put on the internet so you think you can find everything by searching on sites like Google or wikipedia.

I've quoted statements from old publications which one absolutely cannot find the quotes from through Google books or jstor or other online sources many times - that doesn't mean that the quotes don't exist! It means the person I'm discussing something with has to go to and actually check the source if he (for some reason or another) doesn't believe me. Not every academic journal article is online and not every quote from a book can be found on Google books! Similarly not every article from every single journal, book, or magazine published in west Africa or elsewhere has been digitized and made easily available for your convenience. This concept is so elementary that I shouldn't even have to explain it and it's a bit annoying that I even had to do so.

Now to rehash what I stated above, Ezenwa Ohaeto was a former student of Achebe's, a literature professor, and a great admirer of Achebe's and he sought authorization from Achebe to even produce that biography, so it would make no sense to think that he cooked up the quote. But more relevantly, he was also a proper academic, and when writing a detailed biography, he cited sources for his quotes just as any proper academic would. This is the source for the quote, as given by Ohaeto:

Onuora Udenwa, 'The Nobel is not an African Prize - Chinua Achebe', Quality, 3 November 1988

So there you have the name of the interviewer (Udenwa), the title of the interview as given in the magazine, the name of the magazine (Quality), and the exact date (November 3, 1988) of the publication. You can find this source given on p. 302 of Ohaeto's book. Now since I think that professor Ohaeto was able to provide the quote as it was stated in the interview, I'm fine with quoting from that biography, and I don't intend to track down that issue of that old magazine, scan the pages, and upload them to the internet just for this worthless argument with you. However, if you still have issues (because you couldn't easily find the quote after multiple Google searches) what you need to do is get off the internet immediately (instead of thinking that engaging in more and more "Googling" will get you the answer) and actually start trying to track down that issue of the magazine (in either a university archive or library, if it is kept there, or directly from the owners of that former magazine, if they have it in their archives).

And if the authors of Achebe's wikipedia article who relied heavily on Ohaeto's book for much of their other information didn't care to provide the entire Ashiwaju quote from p. 264 of Ohaeto's book, then that's not my problem because I'm not the one dumb enough to think that every single bit of information in books that are cited in wikipedia articles is actually reproduced in and always quoted in full in those same articles. Ohaeto's book is 300+ pages. Should or could the wikipediaists who put together Achebe's wikipedia article even have included every single detail mentioned in Ohaeto's biography when putting together a general encyclopedia style article? No. I don't even know why you would doubt the existence of the quote. It's not even anything outlandish or very controversial - it's just an opinion, plainly and honestly stated - that winning the Nobel doesn't automatically make one the leader of African or Nigerian literature, and I doubt that the basic idea of the quote is anything that other people haven't expressed before, anyway.

One Naira: wow. it's official WS is just like his people. A tribal, hate filled mongrel. Chinua Achebe dies, unable to.defend himself, and Wole Soyinka took the opportunity to make wild accusation about the man. Pretended to be his friend all this years. He waited till the man dies, and then unleashed his bigotry hatefilled mind. I'm trying to phatom why the heck will you smile, called a man your bestfriend, my brother, etc when the man is still alive and then do a complete 360 when he dies. in my opinion that's the major definition of cowardly. here i thought WS was different from the rest of his people. At least now, we know. dem all the same. Instead of him wasting his time yarning rubbish everywhere, maybe he should focus on his barely selling books. spare us jor with the tales that CA jealoused your award. a tae that we can't find anything else to verify it to another take that CA saw him as an enemy. another tale that nothing ,other than WS saying it, verfies. one more thing i forgot to add, a man that is secure with himself and truly believe insult giving to him are not accurate representation of himself does not waste his time writing long but boring articles to defend himself against those he believe are not in his level. Take a close look at CA reaction with your people barade of insult from his last book and learn from it.

kinda glad i didn't finish reading this. the little i read was a waste. WS thank you for continuing showing your true colors. At least we know who you ae now. I'm glad you let the facade fall.

This will be the second time now that you are claiming that the quote from Achebe (the "Asiwaju" statement) that Soyinka mentioned in that interview from a few weeks ago is a false or made up statement that no one can verify. So I might as well set the record straight:

"The interviewer insisted on obtaining Achebe's view concerning remarks in several Lagos-Ibadan newspapers that he was neither a relevant nor an effective writer since he was not awarded the Nobel Prize in 1986. Achebe had to contextualize the issue in a way that would educate and inform.

My position is that the Nobel Prize is important. But it is a European prize. It's not an African prize. It's not a Nigerian prize. Those who give it, Europeans who give it are not responsible to us. You can't go and ask them, "why are you not giving it to so, so and so?" It is not your prize. They have reasons for setting it up. They have their rules for determining who should get it. And so what we should be saying is: 'Okay we are happy they have given one of us their prize'. But to go from there to say, 'Ah now this is the Ashiwaju of African literature', is so absurd. Now, that is something I would like to take on sometime and explain, that a European prize does not make anybody the Ashiwaju of Nigerian literature."

You can find what I quoted immediately above on pp. 263-264 of the book Chinua Achebe: A Biography (1997) by Ezenwa Ohaeto. That quote above from Achebe is originally from an interview that Chinua Achebe gave two years after Soyinka won the Nobel prize and the author of that biography, Ezenwa Ohaeto, a former student of Achebe's, was a poet and a professor of literature who wrote one of the first biographies of Achebe.

I'm not sure why you are denying that that quote from Achebe really existed. From some of your past posts, it's clear that you're competent at searching for quotes online, so it's surprising that you didn't already come across it in other sources if you actually made even a halfhearted effort to look for it. Even if one couldn't find the full quote in an official source (an authorized biography), as I did, there are still multiple publications from the 80s and the 90s which one can easily find which reference this quote by Achebe.

When he originally caught wind of the statement, Soyinka commented on the statement in a lighthearted manner, saying that he was not interested in being the "Asiwaju" of Nigerian literature, but that he was trying to be the "Ogbuefi" of Nigerian literature. Regardless of how one wants to interpret Achebe's "Ashiwaju" statement, he did indeed make the statement. However, they clearly seemed to be on friendly terms (I don't claim, like some people, to know much of anything about the specifics of their relationship, but that's just what I can tell from my observations from a distance) and they showed up together at multiple events after this "Ashiwaju" vs "Ogbuefi" back and forth. In fact at one event, Soyinka presented an award to Achebe that a certain organization (the African Overseas Union) had given Achebe in honor of his work.

Now regarding the quote itself: In the process of defending himself from undeserved attacks on his achievements as a writer, Achebe made a comment about whether the Nobel prize really made a person the "Ashiwaju" (leader) of Nigerian literature. From what I've read, this "Ashiwaju" comment was seen by some people back then as unfortunate and something that could be interpreted as negative toward Soyinka, but in the context that it was made, it seems much more likely to me that it was meant mostly as a criticism of the idea that a prize determined by and awarded by European writers could make a person the real "leader" of African literature, and not meant as a real insult to Soyinka (who Achebe had congratulated two years earlier when he won the prize). One can see that Achebe's quote is much more about there being a need not to assess African writers merely by the tastes and opinions of European critics and judges, rather than anything else. Similarly, Soyinka's statement from a few weeks ago (when the interviewer pressed him about the issue) about Achebe not being the "father" of modern African literature and there being no one father of modern African literature is not out of resentment of Achebe, but just how he sees things from his perspective as a prominent writer in his own right from the same generation.

Achebe felt that having a prize conferred on a Nigerian writer (Soyinka) by a European academy - even if it was an important prize, as he acknowledged - did not automatically make that person the leader (Ashiwaju) of Nigerian or African literature. Soyinka felt that having the title of "father of modern African literature" bestowed upon a writer (Achebe) by another prominent writer (Gordimer) did not make that claim automatically true and he felt that there was no one "father" of modern African literature. Yet writers in newspapers back then went on to speculate that Achebe's 1988 comment was born out of jealousy, bias or spite, rather than it simply meaning what it said and now people on the internet are trying to make Soyinka's comment from a few weeks ago into something rooted in jealousy, bias or spite, when it's clear that in both cases they really meant what they said and that these statements were not intended as attacks on the worth or achievements of the other writer. Achebe didn't see Soyinka as the leader of Nigerian literature just because he won the Nobel prize, and Soyinka didn't see Achebe as the "father of modern African literature" - which he clearly thinks has no one father - just because Gordimer said that it was so. This doesn't mean that either one of them was "jealous" or out to attack or denigrate the other - it's just how they saw things from their perspective. Take off the ethnic jingoist glasses, approach what these writers said with some degree of maturity, objectivity and some attempt at understanding nuances and maybe you'll better understand what both of these writers (Soyinka and Achebe) were saying. The real world is not NL, and not every interaction between people from another ethnic group and a person from your ethnic group is a chance to prove your valor as an ethnic defender or ethnic chauvinist. Sometimes, it is an opportunity for you to actually think. There might be important non-ethnic issues that these thinkers may have strong opinions about - such as whether Africans should think that a writer was the leader of African literature because he won a prize conferred by a European academy, or whether it actually made sense to consider a writer the "father" of a subject that may have had no one real parent.

Now I don't particularly care much about the Soyinka vs. Achebe stuff that's been going on on this forum for a few weeks now, but I decided to post that quote (which isn't even that hard to find) because you have made it a point to repeatedly attempt to impugn Soyinka's integrity on that Nobel prize/Ashiwaju quote of Achebe's because of your own laziness. It's far too easy to look for proof that a quote actually exists before rushing to accuse someone (Soyinka) of being a liar, yet you refused to expend even the slightest effort to do this. If you just don't like Soyinka because you're from an apparent "rival" ethnic group to his own, then I wouldn't even care, since that's just how you choose to see things, but stop trying to promote this idea of yours that Soyinka told or repeated a lie against Achebe after Achebe passed away by mentioning the Asiwaju quote as it it were unverified or false when the Ashiwaju quote is completely authentic. Just stop being lazy and make use of your brain.

That was a damn good game. Looking forward to Thursday.

By "state" she probably meant "country," not "province." The word state has multiple meanings. I don't know why some people go looking for fights/arguments where there are none.

Some typing errors I've caught so far from me above:

"not considered military strong(along with another kingdom" should be "not considered militarily strong (along with another kingdom"

and in one of the quotes from Isichei's book it should be

"more probable that statements about a common heritage rest on the accidental verbal similarity"


And "important pre-colonial written document (not Dapper)" should just read "important pre-colonial document (not Dapper)" since it's obvious that the document I was referring to would be something that was written

Also,

so the "n" there is not to far from an "l"

but that should be ' so the "n" there is not far from an "l" '

So there is not just a claim that "by the way, that kingdom is tributary to Benin" in the documents but a reference in Dapper's sources to the actual defeat of that group by Benin in another part of Dapper's publication.

but the parts I crossed out should be ignored because they are repetitive


Also,

and Bradbury's analysis (which he thought was had a very tenuous basis

and

However, I think it's unnecessary to assume that there is a connection between the two, and I think that that two separate conflicts - one involving Oyo and Benin that resulted in a stalemate, and an earlier conflict involving a Nupe state and Benin that resulted in Benin defeating that Nupe state - is are what actually occurred.

and "S.F. Nadel says" should be "S.F. Nadel said"

Also,

clearly the kings of the Beni/Bini subgroup of the Nupe and the king of the Isago were kings of distinct yet connected Nupe polities within a larger Nupe political confederacy

and "Leo Froebenius" should be Leo Frobenius

and where I wrote ' In that case "Lycosagou" would mean "king of Sagou/Osagaou." ' that should read "king of Sagou/Osagou"

Also,

a reference to the Igala kingdom - sometimes calles the Igarra, Igara, Gara, etc

that should be "called"

frequent use of the diphthong "ts" in the Nupe language

That should be "consonant cluster," not diphthong. The name for joined vowel sounds came to my mind there, when I meant the term for the joined consonant sounds.


Another thing that I stated wrongly above: Alonso de Sandoval uses the name "Mosiaco" rather than "Isago" as I originally stated, but these are definitely references to the exact same name, and the point I was making about what de Sandoval was really claiming (that at least two Nupe polities within the Nupe confederacy still held the Attah of Igala to be their 'emperor') remains unchanged since Mosiaco and Isago are definitely the same kingdom. My point about the quote in de Sandoval's text is still that it's a reference to the Beni group of the Nupe confederacy (called Benin in de Sandoval's book) and the Mosiaco/Isago state (a state that was probably led by the Zitako/Shitako/Zhitako group) holding the king of the Igala as their "emperor", a relationship which fits perfectly with the Nupe identity of these polities.


I'm sure there are some other typing mistakes, and I might catch them later when I finish responding. I'm not editing the long posts, because the anti-spam bot will just hide the posts and ban me unnecessarily

What a dumb excuse.

4. So, why Isago as a Nupe state? Well, the location matches (northwest of Benin), the description matches (powerful and using horses for warfare), a certain very telling statement in an important pre-colonial written document (not Dapper) matches well with the idea of it being a Nupe state, and strangely enough, the names (Isago, Mosiaco, Lycosagou) would also match up fine with a Nupe state.

I'm pretty certain that this "Isago" was the "Zitako" (also called Shitako or Zhitako) subgroup within the Nupe confederacy, but the answer may be a little more complex than just that. There are about 12 dialects of Nupe, but the "political" state of the Nupe confederacy apparently consisted of five groups:

(1) Ebe
(2) Beni/Bini
(3) Ebagi
(4) Bataci/Batache
(5) Zitako/Dibo

The Zitako/Dibo group spoke a distinct Nupe dialect which S.F. Nadel says (in A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria) "differs considerably" from a few other Nupe dialects and from the dialect of Nupe spoken by most of the rest of the Nupe. Other sources consider Zitako a sub-ethnic group of the Nupe, so given this linguistic separation, the idea that they could have had a separate/distinct political state, although possibly still politically connected with or interacting greatly with the larger Nupe confederacy, is definitely plausible.

However Zitako is a smaller group within Nupe (at least nowadays, anyway) and I would suggest instead that they were probably part of a larger state (although one which did not include the entire Nupe linguistic group) but that this larger Nupe state or the alliance of Nupe groups within the confederacy that made up this state was being called by the name of one smaller subgroup (Zitako) possibly because they were the most prominent group in that state or because it was the particular Nupe sub-ethnic group out of all the ones involved in the state that was known to certain peoples further south. Or the state/confederacy could really just have been named after his particular group, and what the informants kept referring to (Isago/Mosiaco) really was a rendition of the true name of the state while it existed.

Now the written evidence from a precolonial document besides Dapper: Alonso de Sandoval notes in De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute that the kings of "Benin" (but this is actually a reference to the Beni/Bini, a known subgroup of the Nupe, which Thornton, unfortunately - and this is pretty unfortunate considering the excellence of most of his other identifications in the book Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World - confuses for the Edo of Benin, sometimes called the Bini, whose kingdom was and is frequently referred to as the Benin kingdom) and the kings of "Isago" held that the ruler of 'Agare' (i.e. Igala), was their "emperor" - so clearly the kings of the Beni/Bini subgroup of the Nupe and the king of the Isago were distinct yet connected Nupe polities within a larger Nupe political confederacy, which at one time had held the Attah of Igala as their "emperor." And this idea of parts of Nupe formerly being tributary to the Attah of Igala is well attested to in later Nupe traditions collected in the early 20th century (for example, the accounts collected by Leo Froebenius, S.F. Nadel and some others).


Now there are a few European documents in which the "Beni" of the Nupe are confused with the Benin of the Edo and some scholars have noticed this:

"There are many literary references to links between Nupe and Benin; most, perhaps, rest on a misunderstanding, since a subgroup of the Nupe people are called Beni. Clapperton was told that 'Nyffe people and those of Benin were the same people', and Moloney noted in 1890 that 'The Benin kingdom was described to me as of the same family as the Tappas' (i.e. Nupe)." - Elizabeth Isichei, A history of Nigeria, Volume 2, p. 136

Obviously, "Nyffe people" (Nupe people) and the people of Benin (Edo) were not the same, and Clapperton's Nupe informant assumed that he was referring to the Beni of the Nupe, naturally. And of course, the Beni state was "of the same family" as the Tapas (Nupes), but the Benin kingdom definitely wasn't.

Some other quotes:

"If there was a real dynastic link with Nupe this seems doubtful. It seems more probable that statements about a common heritage rest of the accidental verbal similarity between Benin and Beni. It is noteworthy that Ryder, who questioned the Ife connection and argued the case for linkages with a northern kingdom, abandoned the line of argument in his later book, Benin and the Europeans" - Elizabeth Isichei, A history of Nigeria, Volume 2, p. 137

"Muslim traders in the early nineteenth century placed Benin in southern Nupe country, apparently referring to the Beni confederacy, from which the Nupe kingdom developed." - Werner Gillon, A short history of African art, p. 251


But unfortunately Thornton doesn't notice this, and although he rightly identifies Isago with the Nupe, he misses the fact that 'Isago' is only a part of the Nupe (the same way Oyo or Ijebu or Ketu were/are only parts of Yoruba land, and not kingdoms that encompassed the entire ethnic group), also misses the fact that the "Benin" referred to there is the Beni of the Nupe confederacy, not the Edo/Bini of the better known Benin kingdom, and because of these other two errors he misses the fact that two prominent Nupe groups (the 'Isago' group of the Nupe confederacy and the Beni/Bini subgroup of the Nupe confederacy) are what Alonso de Sandoval's sources were really claiming as places that were holding the king of Igala to be their "emperor." Obviously, there is nothing in Benin tradition which views the Attah of Igala in such a light, and in fact, some Benin traditions claim the first Attah of Igala came from Benin (something which some (but definitely not all) Igala traditions collected in the early 20th century actually agree with). So far from seeing the Attah of Igala as their "emperor" he would have been held by some in Benin to have an ancestor who was a prince from Benin, and in addition, they would have held that his kingdom was later conquered by Benin when they (Igala) lost that early 16th century war. And of course, there are several publications from non-Edo sources that also state that Igala had been tributary to Benin, besides just Dapper's mention of 'Istanna' (Igala). And for more on the Nupe connection with Igala, this relationship is touched on in the article "Kingship and the Mediators of the Past: Oral Tradition and Ritual Performance in Nupeland, Nigeria" by Constanze Weise, from the book Sources And Methods In African History: Spoken, Written, Unearthed (edited by Toyin Falola, and Christian Jennings).

5. Of course, some might assume that variations on the name Nupe or on the name "Tapa" or other ethnic designations are what we should encounter in instances where we come across intended references to the Nupe in written sources, but in the same way that we encounter references to a "Geebu" (Ijebu) kingdom in written documents without indications from the writers that the people there are ethnically "Yoruba" or "Lucumi" people, and in the same way that we encounter references to "Bornu" as a kingdom and "Bornouese" people in written documents without it always being stated that these Bornu people are Kanuri, Kanembu, "Kanike" "Beriberi" etc. it is certainly possible that we could come across references to a Zitako state or a Zitako led state without it being indicated by the writer that these people are ethnically Nupe. It would have been better if there had been an additional name to use to identify the ethnicity, but an ethnic name is not indispensable to make an identification here if one takes other things into account.

6. Now taking "Isago"/"Mosiaco" as a rendition of Zitako may look problematic at first, but it's not as much of a stretch as it might seem at first glance:

That "g" can change to "k" or vice versa (Zitako ----> Zitago) in some languages is already well known to linguists, but I'm not sure which particular languages within Nigeria may have altered the consonant here. The known "g" to "k" and "k" to "g" sound change is known to be observed in European languages and, as far as I know, in that context it is a change within a language, not necessarily a corruption that occurs when speakers of one language interpret words from another language. But then again, the fact that we have a mention of "Mosiaco" (with a 'hard' c sound = a 'k' sound) in addition to "Isago" does suggest that it could have originally been a "k" sound and that one of the European sources that heard the name mentioned may have corrupted it to a "g" sound themselves or in later communication with other Europeans (for comparable examples, consider the corruption of the word "Mandinka" to "Mandinga" in numerous European sources on that ethnic group and also consider the "Guabuu" instead of "Kaabu" that Pereira records in Esmeraldo de situ orbis). But of course, the name could have been corrupted by other non-Nupe groups even before it was mentioned to Europeans instead.

Now on "t" changing to "s" (Zitago ---> Zisago) that may just be an instance of lenition, on the part of the non-Nupe people pronouncing a foreign name. But alternately, or additionally, it may have something to do with the frequent use of the diphthong "ts" in the Nupe language. There might have been a possible gradual alteration of a t sound to a "ts" sound (by lenition) and the further alteration of this "ts" sound into an "s" sound through additional lenition, by speakers of a particular Nupe dialect. But even if these things didn't happen, the possibility that the "t" sound was just misheard or corrupted to an "s" sound is also a possibility.

If we take these two minor linguistic changes (g to k and t to s) as possible, then we can see how "Zitako" could be interpreted or called "Isago". Apart from these minor differences, there is certainly an exact correspondence in the number of syllables in the two names and in all of the vowels in the two names.

7. To the best of my knowledge, Thornton's belief that Isago is Nupe doesn't seem to be based on any similarities between the name of one of the Nupe subgroups and the name in the European documents, but just on the characteristics that describe this "Isago" in the written documents - Thornton apparently thinks these descriptions match up better with Nupe than other places. But as I said, I disagree completely with the idea that Isago is a reference to the entire Nupe confederacy/kingdom, so I don't agree entirely with Thornton on this issue.

But anyway, even if one rejects this basis of Thornton's identification (the descriptions) and goes with the 'Sango' argument that Bradbury noted as being "very tenuous", there is still the fact that the actual existence of a connection of 'Sango' (whether the deified king or the humanized deity) to Nupe is well known. So even if one takes "Licosaguou"/'Mosiaco'/"Isago" as meaning "Sango" rather than taking it to refer to Zitako (the Nupe subgroup), there could still be a plausible identification of Isago with a Nupe state.


8. If we go with the (extremely plausible, in my opinion) view that it was a Nupe kingdom, was this Nupe state within the larger Nupe confederacy really "paying tribute" to Benin? Maybe. But the idea that they were does not really require that Benin be "all-conquering" and certainly it doesn't require that Benin even attempt to conquer all of Nupe, but just that Benin press this "Isago" state (a state in which the Zitako Nupes presumably played a prominent part) in the Nupe confederacy enough in the war to where they settle for a peace on terms that are quite favorable to Benin.

9. The ruler is called "Lycosagou" in Pereira's Esmeraldo possibly suggesting that "Lyco" or "Lyc" is some sort of royal or kingly prefix - or an attempt at an interpretation of such a prefix on the part of the non-Nupe informants - which precedes the name of the actual kingdom "Saguou" or "Osaguou". Since "Mosiaco" and "Isago" are the names of the state and not the names of a king's title in later sources, it's entirely plausible that this "Lycosaguou" which is given as the title of a king, rather than the name of a state, may be a kingly title or an interpretation of such a title by people who don't speak the language of the Nupe or the Zitako group of the Nupe, and that this perceived title combines the name of the kingdom with a word "Lyc" or "Lyco" which is supposed to mean "ruler of" or "king of". In that case "Lycosagou" would mean "king of Sagou/Osagaou."

Now as some further speculation, although it's not really directly related to anything we were discussing, consider the following speculative scenario/interpretation: perhaps this particular Nupe state within the Nupe confederacy (in which the Etsu was or later became the principal ruler), which was already noted as being powerful in Pereira's time, later invaded Oyo, with some assistance from other Nupe groups within the confederacy, conquered Oyo (Oyo tradition claims a temporary Nupe conquest of Oyo happened, resulting in a period of several decades of exile of Oyo's leadership and soldiers in Borgu and other places - this period of exile is discussed in Robert Smith's article "The Alafin in Exile: A Study of the Igboho Period in Oyo History" (1965)), and later pushes further south, going into the Ekiti area, then tries to go even further south to invade Benin, only to be defeated, pushed back by Benin into the northern Ekiti area, then eventually a militant arm of this Nupe confederacy's operations in the south, the state called 'Isago' - presumably led by the Zitako group - loses the war to Benin, is defeated and settles for a stalemate on terms favorable to Benin for a while after defeat (hence their being tributary, although still mighty), and then later, Oyo, starting from their base in Borgu, regroups and reconquers its original territory in Oyo, and begins expanding. Then this Nupe state called "Isago", although still a "mighty kingdom" is reduced in prominence and importance in the south, and later (after the 17th century) it completely ceases to be mentioned by anybody in the southern part of Nigeria, while mentions of "Hio", "Awyaw", "Eyeo", "Ulkami" etc as powerful and other references to Oyo become more prominent.


10. Basically, the two roots of Thornton's confusion on this issue were

a) the terms 'Agare' (a reference to the Igala kingdom - sometimes calles the Igarra, Igara, Gara, etc. by some other ethnic groups in the past) by de Sandoval and others vs. the 'Oghene/Hooguanee/Ogane' (a ruler) referenced by the Edo,

and

b) the confusion about the term "Beni" (of the Nupe) vs. the Benin of the Edo. It's an easy mistake for anyone to make - even a historian as talented and knowledgeable as Thornton - and it took me quite a bit of reading to figure out what was going on there.

That's about all I have to say on Isago. I'll finish responding to this thread either later tonight or tomorrow.

Sorry, but I haven't read that much specifically about Kanem-Bornu, just some general descriptions and summaries of its early history in some books and a few things in some articles. So I can't be that helpful here.

TerraCotta: 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).

I didn't really want to get into this issue of "Isago" (although I guess it does fit into the very general topic of the thread), so as not to have to take this conversation in even more directions than it is already branching out to (a few too many, really), but I guess I should share what I think about the mention of Isago and what was really being said about 'Isago' and attempt to allay your suspicion that some outrageous claim was really being made (I can assure you that this isn't the case, but you have to read all the paragraphs below to understand why there's nothing outlandish about the claim).

1. The "Isago" reference is to a state described in the documents as a kingdom northwest of Benin which used cavalry (Thornton, like Ryder, thinks Isago is a Nupe state, partly because of its use of horses) that Benin had defeated "some years ago", and which had been paying tribute after some war.

"The Kingdom Isago, which is tributary to Benin, borders Benin on the west. It is rich in horses, which the inhabitants use for war. Some years ago the people of Isago were emboldened to invade the city of Benin with some thousand horsemen — but their attack failed and they themselves were defeated and made tributary." - Olfert Dapper, Description of Africa

This particular quote from Dapper only mentions it being "west" of Benin, but another part of Dapper's book (see the first excerpt from Dapper used by Law in his 1986 article on Ijebu) notes that it is not only west of Benin, but specifically northwest of Benin.

So there is not just a claim that "by the way, that kingdom is tributary to Benin" in the documents but a reference in Dapper's sources to the actual defeat of that group by Benin in another part of Dapper's publication. This quote above is not right next to the part of the publication where the other tributary places are listed and it is not usually the part you see in selections/excerpts from Dapper's Description of Africa that are quoted in books, so maybe you might have missed it. So the mention there of Isago in Dapper's publication also mentions an actual recent military conflict that went in Benin's favor. Now of course, if a person wanted to, they could certainly pretend that the Benin informants were also hallucinating about having fought this other polity, but I think at that point, the person making such an argument doesn't actually strain the credibility of the Benin informants as he would like to, but actually begins to strain his or her own credibility. Most scholars (Law, Smith, Bradbury, Talbot, etc.) have not tried to pretend a conflict did not happen here, but have accepted that one did, and have tried to use that to better explain what the possible identity of Isago is.

The other thing that is not mentioned in your statement about Isago is that Dapper also notes that although, like the other places listed, the king of Isago pays tribute to the king of Benin, "Isago is itself a mighty Kingdom and respects the King of Benin the least". Another translation from the Dutch gives it that Isago "fears the King of Benin less than all the others" (all the other tributary states).

In other words, contrary to the idea that Benin was claiming to be "all conquering" far into the interior, they actually informed the Dutch that were asking about these things that although "Isago" had recently been defeated in war by Benin and made tributary, they still "respected Benin the least" out of Benin's tributaries, because unlike those other tributaries they had considerable power themselves. That they included this (seemingly unnecessary) caveat about Isago should be a clear sign that they were not just bragging blindly before Europeans who had no idea of where the place was in order to con these Europeans, but were describing their perception of how things stood between Isago and Benin - Benin had recently defeated Isago, and the king of Isago paid tribute, but showed the least deference because he was actually the ruler of what Benin considered a "mighty kingdom" among those tributary places mentioned. The specifics of what the Benin informants were claiming as far as Isago "paying tribute" but "respecting the king of Benin the least" may have been lost in the attempt to summarize what was told, but it should be clear that the caveat would have been unnecessary for a claim about being "all conquering" and in fact, they would have messed up the supposed "con" job some might think they were trying to run by admitting how much less fear or how much less respect that king (of Isago) had for the king of Benin.

2. Now what is "Isago"? Isago/Mosiaco/Lycosagou is definitely a reference to a Nupe state, and is unlikely to be anything else, notwithstanding what other claims one may come across about the place in certain publications from some scholars.

Isago is very very likely to be a Nupe state, and very unlikely to be Oyo. I left the possibility that Isago in the European documents could still have been an Oyo reference in my comments only out cautiousness and openness to other possibilities, not because I actually believe it to be true - although I once thought it was Oyo in the past, when I had only really read Robin Law's take on the name.

Law assumes that Isago is probably Oyo, based on his reading of R.E. Bradbury's analysis of Isago as possibly being some European spelling of an Edo rendering of the word "Sango" (the name of the humanized deity or deified king that is a famous king of Oyo), even though we know from other later written sources that the proper name of the kingdom (Oyo) was actually known to some other Benin informants in later accounts and even though there are no other sources which show any evidence of the Edo using the word Sango (called Esago by the Edo) to refer to Oyo. Bradbury bases his analysis on Percy Talbot's guess that it could have been Oyo (probably because of the geographical location of Isago and because of the mention of that place being powerful and using horses for war). But Bradbury didn't necessarily go along with this idea - he wrote that one more readily identifies Oyo with the "Ulkami" kingdom mentioned in Dapper's text as being a mighty kingdom northwest of Benin, and said that the link between "Isago" and Oyo was "very tenuous". Bradbury says that there is only "a very slight justification" for identifying Isago with Oyo. Talbot also preferred to identify Ulkami with Oyo, but just suggested as an additional possibility that Isago could be an additional reference to Oyo .

Now if this were really Oyo, rather than the Nupe state or a sub-nation within the larger Nupe state called "Isago" or some variant of that name, I'm not sure why Benin informants would have called it something that other than Oyo (or 'Hio', 'Awyaw', 'Eyeo', etc.) when, in other instances, later Benin informants could accurately refer to Oyo by its real name and when it's still more likely that if they didn't call Oyo by it's real name then they would have just called Oyo "Ulkami" (Olukumi) or said that it was a significant part of the larger kingdom of "Ulkami". However, the possibility does exist that there was a conflation of Oyo and Nupe even back then because of the previous Nupe conquest of Oyo or some sort of possible Nupe political influence over Oyo's area (before Oyo reconquered its territory from the Nupe) at the particular time that this "Isago" was being mentioned.

Based on Talbot's conclusion that 'Sango' may be the informants' way of referring to "Oyo", and Bradbury's analysis of this conjecture (which he viewed as 'very tenuous'), Law goes on to note that Egharevba writes of a war between Benin and Oyo during Oba Ehengbuda's time that was settled in a stalemate in the northern Ekiti area while Oyo traditions note an invasion carried out by Oyo into that area (Ekiti or Ijesha) around the same time (17th century) and another tradition from either the Ekiti or Ijesha area (I'm not sure because I'm trying to recall this from memory) claims that there was an invasion by Oyo into that area in order to "recover the true Oduduwa crown" (what that means isn't clear). Another tradition from the Ekiti or Ijesha area cited by Law (in the same part of his book on Oyo) claims that there was an invasion by the Nupe into that area around that same time. If it can be assumed that the "Oyo" that Egharevba's informants claimed was fought to a stalemate in the Ekiti area around this time is the "Isago" of the European documents and is also the same as the "Nupe" that are said in that Ekiti or Ijesha tradition to have invaded that area around that time, then this might mean that whatever this "Isago" state really was, the confusion about whether it was Oyo or a Nupe state may have existed even in the past, not just the present. However, I think it's unnecessary to assume that there is a connection between the two, and I think that that two separate conflicts - one involving Oyo and Benin that resulted in a stalemate, and an earlier conflict involving a Nupe state and Benin that resulted in Benin defeating that Nupe state - is what actually occurred.

From the information cited by Law from the traditions of multiple groups, Law builds up an interesting scenario of direct competition/confrontation between Benin and Oyo. His conclusion is that Oyo and Benin were competing for control/territory in the Ekiti area for some reason or another. Now Benin and Oyo could indeed have been competing for control and influence in that area even if one ignores the "Isago" - Benin conflict mentioned in the 17th century European document and just focuses on the traditions collected in the 19th and early 20th century in Benin and Yoruba land. But in his book Law does use the reference to "Isago" in Dapper's book in the context of analyzing this apparent Benin-Oyo competition and sees the identification of "Isago" as Oyo as plausible.

Clearly Law suspects (or suspected, I don't know if he still holds that view) that "Isago" is Oyo (which is based on Bradbury's analysis - and Bradbury's analysis (which he thought was had a very tenuous basis) is based on Talbot's guess), and sees the Oyo traditions of incursions into the Ekiti area (or Ijesha area, I'm trying to recall this detail from memory, but not really succeeding) and the Benin tradition of incursion into the Ekiti area against Oyo as evidence of this being the war between "Isago" and Benin that was mentioned by Dapper's sources.

Now there really is no reason to assume the claim of Dapper's sources that this "Isago" was defeated and then made tributary (although still "respecting the king of Benin the least" even if paying tribute) is exactly the same as claiming direct conquest of the place or its capital. If the terms of the settlement of the war were very favorable to Benin, then the description of this place (wherever it was) as "paying tribute" would not be inaccurate - this is not necessarily the same as engaging in a full and direct conquest of the place. This is basically the argument that Law makes in that aforementioned section of his book on Oyo - that some form of restitution or some payments may have been made to Benin for a while by this defeated 'Isago' side as part of the settlement/peace after their defeat and the ensuing stalemate, although he disagrees with the idea that it would be accurate to characterize this as fully being "tributary" to Benin. Of course, he disagrees with the idea that this (tributary status) would be an accurate or even possible characterization based on his assumption that this place probably really was Oyo (and not some smaller but still somewhat powerful cavalry state within the larger Nupe confederacy).

However the idea that this place really was Oyo doesn't really seem warranted to me. I once thought Oyo could be plausibly identified as Isago back when I read Law's book on Oyo, but after doing some further reading, I think this is very unlikely. I agree with Thomas Hodgkin (in his introduction to Nigerian Perspectives) and J.D. Fage (in his article on Pereira's Esmeraldo de situ orbis) on their observations that there is really no basis for assuming that "Licosagou"/"Isago"/"Mosiaco" was really a reference to Oyo.


3. What was Oyo in Dapper's book then? It was "Ulkami."

Dapper mentions "Ulkami," and locates it as being northwest of Benin in one part of his book and in another sentence, locates the kingdom in this manner:

"The mighty Kingdom of Ulkami (or Ulkuma) stretches eastward of Arder, between the kingdoms of Arder and Benijn (Benin), but does not reach the coast." - Olfert Dapper, Description of Africa

So this is a "mighty kingdom" that is east of Allada ('Arder'/'Ardrah'), and is located between Allada and Benin but doesn't touch the coast (i.e. having a more interior location - there are Yorubas at the coast, so this "Ulkami" name is not just being used as a general ethnic designation but to refer specifically to a militarily powerful interior Yoruba kingdom). This Ulkami (Lucumi/Olukumi) is obviously some large Yoruba kingdom in the interior that is considered militarily mighty, and the idea that it is said to be east of Allada and not reaching the coast at that time suggests to me that it was Oyo. Other mentions of a kingdom with the same name of "Ulkami" in later European sources claim that it is next to Dahomey and south of "Houssa," which is more reason to think it was an early reference to Oyo.

.

TerraCotta: 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.

Ijebu is claimed as a tributary, yes, but it's also noted that the Ijebu kingdom is not considered military strong (along with another kingdom said in Dapper's book to be northwest of Benin called both "Odobo" and "Oedobo", which is presumably a Benin reference to the Ondo kingdom - "Odobo" being the name of a Benin military commander that Benin tradition associates with the defeat of the rebellion of the early Ondo kingdom, and Akotogbo, known originally as Eko-Odobo to the Edo, being the name of a war camp of this same Odobo) compared to places that are considered "mighty" in the wider region, such as 'Isago'. This appraisal of the military strength of different places is presumably based on the views of Benin informants, and consequently, it may or may not be accurate, depending on what assumptions one wants to make.

Isago is not really so unidentifiable, but I'll comment on Isago at greater length immediately below. First, "Gaboe" and "Istanna."

It's not the case that Gaboe is just listed as a tributary to Benin in Dapper's book. There is a bit more information in the book about Gaboe, which actually makes Gaboe quite easy to identify as Aboh. If there are professional scholars who claimed or who are claiming that they don't know what "Gaboe" refers to in that book, it's very likely that at the time those people put forward their theories/ideas about it being something else or about it not being Aboh, there was less information available to them about Aboh, so they had difficulty making the easy identification.

"Gaboe is situated near the Benin River. To reach this kingdom from Benin, it is necessary to ascend the river for eight days. It is a country of the Acori and Jasper. The Dutch acquire many slaves there. The inhabitants are friendly and rather like those of Benin." - Olfert Dapper, Description of Africa

First it says that "Gaboe" is situated near the Benin river - the first clue that it's Aboh. Then it claims that all one has to do to reach the kingdom of "Gaboe" from the Benin kingdom is to follow the Benin river for a certain number of days (eight days) to get to Aboh. Then there's a claim that beads ('acori and jasper') are prevalent there - and we know from other publications that Aboh was involved in either using or trading beads in the past (in fact, a later description of the king of Aboh from the 1800s (which can be found in the book Nigerian Perspectives by Hodgkin) mentions the numerous beads in his attire). Then it says Aboh was involved in the slave trade, which we also know to be true from other sources, although it's doubtful that they had much direct contact with Europeans in the slave trade. The perception that the people of Aboh were "rather like those of Benin" may have something to do with certain perceived cultural similarities between Benin and Aboh or it might just have been an assumption.

On Istanna, this is slightly less easy to identify (yet still easy), but there is actually only one kingdom it can possibly refer to, and like "Gaboe" there is more information that is given about the place by Dapper besides just claiming that it is a tributary of Benin. First it is claimed that this "Istanna" borders the Benin kingdom on the east. Note that the Igala kingdom is indeed northeast of the Bini, and that back then (early 17th century), when the Benin kingdom's borders were further northwards (when it was more powerful), reaching the northernmost part of the modern Edo state, the Igala kingdom would have been basically directly east of Benin's northern borders.

Second, Dapper also notes that Istanna had formerly been powerful and mighty until it was defeated by Benin and made tributary, which would perfectly match the account of Benin winning the Benin-Igala war (in the early 16th century) that one sees in the traditions collected by Egharevba in the early 20th century. But in addition to that it would also explain how the Igala kingdom went from having the power attributed to it in the era of the warrior Onoja Ogboni and the era when it (allegedly) held parts of Nupe tributary, to later being a less powerful kingdom that was tributary to the Jukun later on for a while and was not really imperial or prominent in conquests of other areas after its defeat by Benin.

And regarding the name itself, apart from the confusion of "g" and "st" in the name, "Istanna" strikes me as actually being closer to "Igala" than almost any of the other names in early written sources that certain scholars take as possibly indicating the Igala kingdom (such as the ones on maps or in documents that Thornton thinks refer to the Igala kingdom). For one thing, in this instance all of the vowels (the starting 'i' and the two 'a' sounds) are actually correct. Furthermore, regarding the consonant ('nn') in the last syllable, the change between the consonants "l" and "n" in various langauges is well known so I don't think I need to elaborate on that, and this well known variance between n and l occurs occasionally in Edo too (for example, Osanobua can also be called Osalobua in Bini land), so the "n" there is not to far from an "l" and an "l" sound may even have sounded like an "n" to a listener. So actually the n sound being there instead of the l is possibly not even some sort of error of transcription but simply what the peron that was listening thought that they heard. Really all that is wrong with the term "Istanna" is the probable transcription based error of "g' to "st", but other than that it is quite close to the real name of the kingdom it is meant to indicate. So for geographical, historical, and linguistic reasons, I think the identification of Istanna with Igala is pretty certain.

TerraCotta: Now--what reasons do we have of being suspicious of the Benin conquest story related by Dapper?

So, just to be clear, there isn't a "Benin conquest story" of Ijebu related by Dapper. The conquest claim comes from the Bini in later times. There is, however, a claim that the place is tributary to Benin in Dapper's book. A place being called tributary and a place being claimed to have been conquered are two different and not automatically/necessarily related things. For example, the place called "Forkado or Ouwerre" (meaning the kingdom of Warri) is listed as tributary to Benin in the same book by Dapper, but this does not mean that they (the Bini) claimed either back then or at any later time that this tributary relationship came about out of any sort of conquest of Warri. I'm not saying that the Bini back then (in the 1600s) were not claiming that they had conquered Ijebu in the past - actually, they probably were - but just pointing out what is actually stated in Dapper's book.

TerraCotta: 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).

So, if one reads this quote, and one reads what Law wrote in his other article from 1983, what becomes clear is that Law is not taking a definite stance either way in both articles. What he is actually doing is introducing an alternative explanation for the claim and a rationale/justification ('patriotic vainglory') for that possible alternative explanation.

Note that in the 1983 article Law writes:

"The kingdom of Ijebu, to the north of the Lagos lagoon, had surely escaped from whatever degree of Benin control it had earlier suffered by the eighteenth century,60 and also took over control of the land to the south of the lagoon, between Benin and Lagos.61"

[60 Although still described as a 'Viceroyalty of Benin' by one observer of the early nineteenth century: Robertson, Notes on Africa, 30I. In fact, Ijebu appears to have been incorporated into the sphere of influence of Oyo from the seventeenth century onwards: cf. Robin Law, The Oyo Empire, c.16oo - c.1836 (Oxford, I977), I35-7.
61 An account of the I840s states that Ijebu had 'long since' taken over control of this area from Benin: d'Avezac-Macaya, in Curtin, Africa Remembered, 239.] - Robin Law, "Trade and Politics behind the Slave Coast: The Lagoon Traffic and the Rise of Lagos, 1500-1800" (1983)

So he doesn't rule out that there could have been some degree of Benin control in the past in the 1983 article, he just has issues with the details (such as the time of the claimed conquest) and thinks that the claim should not be automatically accepted but treated with caution/reserve.

And in the 1986 article, what he is saying, as the quote itself shows, is that it may just reflect "patriotic vainglory" rather than "political reality," not that it necessarily does just reflect patriotic vainglory or even that it likely just reflects patriotic vainglory.

In both cases, he does not take a definite stance either for or against the truth of the claim. Law's decision to treat the claim with "reserve" without strong evidence for it is certainly reasonable, but that is still a different thing from saying the claim is false or even saying that it's probably false.

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.

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.

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.

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.

big-t:
Shinchan : Taught to enjoy my life

That was a pretty funny show.

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: 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.

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: 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.

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 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.

They should have used better looking people for this.

I doubt that the woman's claims are true. If they were true then it's much more likely that they would have tried to get in touch with the Clintons privately rather than running to the media and tabloids for attention first.

And that kid holding the picture of Clinton with a smiling face should calm down and not get his hopes too high. Somebody ought to tell that kid to check out some episodes of the Maury show: women are sometimes just completely wrong about who they think is the father of their children. I imagine that a hooker would be even more confused on that issue, since they sleep with far more men than normal women do.

I know I'm late to respond to this basically dead thread, but I still don't think I agree with your view on Mansa Musa, pleep. You definitely made some interesting points and I admit that he (Musa) could possibly have been a more impressive historical figure if he had expanded his empire outside of West Africa, but I'm still not convinced of the validity of your characterization of him. Of course I would also have preferred if he were not heavily caught up in a Middle Eastern religion, but I don't think he was really the failure you're portraying him as.

pleep: Those manuscripts are interesting, those are some good links. However, Songhai did not end the Malien tradition of learning at Timbuktu. All the great universities and schools were functional for the duration of both empires.

I was really talking about complacency vs. advancement/improvement. I know that learning didn't end at Timbuktu under Songhai, and in fact, it seems to have flourished precisely because of the earlier foundation set by Mali.

But what I mean is that if Mali made it a point to develop Timbuktu as a center of learning, and to staff the place with scholars in the first place, then it's probable that further initiatives like this would have occurred under Mali (if they had had good leadership once again). But I'm not sure if this practice of actually channeling the wealth of the state significantly into education was actually continued by Songhai. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, but if they did just let what Mali established in Timbuktu sit around and stay as it was or funded scholarship to a lesser degree, then this complacency would have prevented Timbuktu from reaching its full potential.

By the time Songhai fell in the 1600's, at Tondibi, there were still foriegn students living in the city, these foreigners were the only ones who were unable to flee back to their villages after they heard of the armies defeat.


That is why i find it so hard to believe that Timbuktu was this "great center of learning" for the whole middle east. If it was, they were not learning anything of concrete importance.

The great centers of learning for Muslims in the centuries before the European renaissance took off were located in certain cities in Iraq, Iran, Al-Andalus (the Muslim controlled part of Iberia), Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Mali, and Syria. Timbuktu was just one of multiple centers of learning.

By 1600 why had they not heard of gunpowder? the information was available since 1280! Musa made his pilgrimage in 1328 and founded his universities soon after.

That they had difficulty obtaining guns and gunpowder is not the same as them not knowing about the existence of guns or gunpowder. Guns spread from China to the rest of Eurasia and the Mongols and the Turks played a huge role in spreading them though warfare, but it's not the case that they were just handing them out to other groups on a platter. And after they got guns, Europeans had prohibitions against selling weapons to non-Christians and especially to Muslims, and Muslims were not just handing out guns freely and openly to rival Muslim states or non-Muslims either. It's wasn't like today where a gun is an regular item of trade which even an ordinary person, with no connections to a powerful government, can easily buy at will. It's also important to remember that guns were not the extremely powerful game-changing weapon that they eventually became, until later on. The first guns were not really decisive factors in warfare in Africa, as some historians have noted. So the enthusiasm for these new weapons would probably have been limited until the time when they improved significantly - but since states like Mali and Songhai were "out of the loop" in a sense in the spread of guns from Eurasia and in the improvements of the gun that were taking place in Europe and parts of Asia, they probably wouldn't have known how effective guns could be until it was too late.

The "great learning" done at Timbuku has stunningly little to show for it ... if you can explain this let me know.

From the information that I've come across regarding the manuscripts that have been studied so far (as I said earlier, most of them have not been studied thoroughly in modern times because of a lack of funding), with the exception of medicine, their focus was mostly on more abstract issues (astronomy, math, ethics, law, theology) and not on military technology.

But the additional factors to take into account are 1) the possibility that the Songhai state didn't invest as much into its centers of learning as Mali did and 2) the invasions, conquests, raids, etc. that disrupted important cities after Songhai's decline.

And i don't think it was possible for Musa to have been completely unaware of the feeling of racial inferiority held over black people in during the 1300th century. Keep in mind, Timbuktu itself was a slave route. While the Africans most certainly didn't see themselves as the same race, the Arabs did, a race marked by its black skin that sold itself into slavery.

By this time Arabs were already calling all black people abd, and the curse of ham was widely believed and written about. Many of the most famous arab scholars hypothesized on negro inferiority. The first racist descriptions of blacks by the Arabs date around 1000 years before Musas pilgrimage, and were widely considered fact by the time he arrived.

I don't see how he could have been acutely aware of what some Arab scholars who had never seen any black person other than the black slaves in their lands were writing about all black people. Even if he was somehow aware of such claims/beliefs (I don't see why he would have specifically sought out their publications that dealt with their view of the different races of men), I'm not sure if he would have taken them seriously, being surrounded as he was by highly organized and competent black people in his own kingdom and having highly organized and powerful rival black kingdoms all around him.

And while what you say here about Arab writers is true, black empires like Ghana and Mali that Arab writers were aware of were praised by some of these Arab writers at the very same time that some other Arab writers were putting forward their conjectures about the nature of black people. And in fact one of those writers who "hypothesized on Negro inferiority" - the famous Arab or Berber writer Ibn Khaldun - had high praise for the Ghana empire and the Mali empire in particular. Ibn Khaldun did not simply accept the idea of black inferiority (there is a section dealing with this topic in the Muqaddimah - which is an extraordinary book, by the way) because he felt that the idea (that it was true) was lacking in evidence and proof, but he was willing to speculate on it and consider the possibility based on what other people in the Arab world were saying about blacks. But if it were really viewed as an already established "fact" it's unlikely that he would have had to do all that analysis of the race inferiority claims only to reach the conclusion that the issue of whether it was true or false was unresolved and indeterminate.

You are forgetting the most probable reaction a man in Musas situation would have had to racsim from fellow muslim arabs.

d) Awknowledge the racism, and as a result become so extravagant and flamboyant in material displays as to rise above the low status of his racial group. This is the purest example of an inferiority complex and is the most common explanation for black peoples' material over-indulgence. Rappers who spend all their money on nice whips, flashy rims and gold chains, African rulers who cover themselves in medals while their people are starving.

They are trying to wash away their black-ness with money, and "buy" acceptance.

We need to stop pretending Mansa musa was any different. This is a man who came to Eygpt with something to prove, that is the only explanation for such behavior. He wanted to prove to the Arabs that he was not a nigga, and in so doing proved that he was.

That is not the most likely explanation for his behavior in my view. I still think the conclusion you reached does come from looking at this primarily from a modern day racial standpoint. He might have just gone there to make a name for himself while making his pilgrimage, but the idea that he was trying to impress them because they were non-black (rather than for the more plausible reason that they were closer to the center of the Islamic world that he was trying to make a name for himself in) is reading too much into racial dynamics which may have been non-existent for him. That Mansa Musa was trying to impress other Muslims in other important Muslim lands (possibly in order to recruit some of them for his civic projects back home), does not necessarily mean that his motivation in trying to impress them was because he was black and they were non-black. It probably had more to do with their being closer to the centers of great learning and religious influence in the Muslim world or the fact that he intended to recruit some of them for his projects back home.



The rest of what you said about gold and his possible short-sightedness is interesting, but regarding this part:

If he had simply recruited a mercenary army in the middle east, instead of giving it away he could have taken over west Africa....

Thank goodness he didn't even dream of that. That definitely would have been far worse for his credibility and his historical significance - especially from a racial standpoint - than anything you've criticized him for in this thread. And in fact, if he had done something like that and had been successful (which seems improbable to me, anyway) that would have been disastrous for the region and would have established numerous mini-states where the descendants of Arab mercenaries (who naturally, would have assumed the positions of governors of important outlying provinces of the mega-empire, as a reward for their loyalty and military support) would exert enormous power and influence over African states. And after this super-empire collapsed, the descendants of these Muslim Arab mercenary groups would probably still have retained significant influence and power in their areas.