Welcome • Sponsors • Conference Schedule •Panelist Handbook • Abstracts and Bios • Contact Us

Abstracts and Bios

Migrating Subjects, Frontier Process, and Cultural Transformations in Yorubaland, Seventeenth Century

Akin Ogundiran, Dept. of History, Florida International University, Miami, FL

The seventeenth century was a period of major transformations in Yorubaland, as in other parts of West Africa. The drought episodes of the century created conditions for massive intra-regional migrations, the thrust of the new imperial age caused population reshuffling, and the economic opportunities and challenges from the Atlantic coast shifted the routes and directions of interactions across the region. The fluidity of migrations during the century not only "remapped" the sociopolitical boundaries of the previous era but, most importantly, new frontier communities evolved. The Upper Osun area of central Yorubaland was constituted into perhaps the most important frontier zone in the region during the seventeenth century. This area has recently become the focus of archaeological, ethnographic, and historical investigations. The agency of hunters, ambitious traders- men and women, and upstart political scions in the making of this frontier territory; and the implications for understanding the Yoruba cultural transformations during the century will be the focus of the paper. I will examine the characteristics of migrations, the dynamics of frontier process, and the development of new forms of identities, social relations, cultural institutions, and sociopolitical transformations during the century. Rather than being backwaters of regional development, I will argue that the frontier communities of the seventeenth century were in fact crucibles of cultural and institutional innovations, the arena where old ideas were contested and oftentimes reshaped. The paper will conclude that the cultural innovations in Upper Osun region during the seventeenth century have had far-reaching impacts on the making of Yoruba cultural identities in West Africa and in the Americas.