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Panelist Hetty ter Haar |
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.
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