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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
The history of the Yoruba, as is well known, is very poorly documented from contemporary European sources prior to the nineteenth century, in comparison with their neighbors Benin to the east and the states of the ‘Slave Coast’ (Allada, Whydah, and Dahomey) to the west. There is, however, one Yoruba kingdom which features in contemporary European sources from quite early times, and for which at least intermittent documentation extends through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is the kingdom of Ijebu in southern Yorubaland. The availability of contemporary European documentation for the early history of Ijebu is especially valuable since the historical traditions of Ijebu itself do not appear to be very rich.
Such, at least, is the impression given by published accounts of Ijebu history: although a large number of kings of Ijebu are recalled, thereby suggesting for the kingdom a considerable antiquity, and though there is some recollection locally of early contacts with the Portuguese, it does not seem that Ijebu traditions record much in the way of a detailed narrative of the kingdom's early history. At the same time, the European sources referring to Ijebu present considerable problems of interpretation, particularly with regard to establishing how far successive references to the kingdom constitute new original information rather than merely copying a limited range of early sources, and consideration of them helps to illuminate the character of early European sources for west African history in general. For these reasons, it seems a useful exercise to pull together all the available early European source material relating to Ijebu down to the late seventeenth century.
My thanks are due to Robert Smith and Alan Ryder, who read and commented on an earlier version of this paper. Alan Ryder also generously supplied relevant material.
1. Cf. Smith, Robert, Kingdoms of the Yoruba (2d ed., London, 1976), xiiGoogle Scholar; although Smith's observation that “barely a dozen unambiguous references to the Yoruba in written material before the nineteenth century are known” is much too pessimistic.
2. Cf. the king list in Odutola, O., Iwe Kini Ilosiwaju Eko Itan Ijebu (Ijebu Ode, 1946), 31–32Google Scholar, giving over forty names down to the nineteenth century.
3. It is claimed that Portuguese priests once resided in the Ijada quarter of Ijebu Ode: Lloyd, P.C., “Osifekunde of Ijebu” in Curtin, Philip D., ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1967), 227n156Google Scholar; cf. ibid., 218.
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5. For the problems created by plagiarism in the interpretation of contemporary European sources, cf. among others Ardener, Edwin, “Documentary and Linguistic Evidence for the Rise of the Trading Polities Between Rio del Rey and Cameroons, 1500-1650” in Lewis, I.M., ed., History and Social Anthropology (London, 1968), 81–126Google Scholar; Hair, P.E.H., “Barbot, Dapper, Davity: a Critique of Sources on Sierra Leone and Cape Mount,” HA, 1 (1974), 25–54.Google Scholar
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15. Archivo Nacional de Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Corpo Chronologico, Part II, ma¸o 79, doc. 66: this reference was supplied to me by Alan Ryder. The same document is cited by Vogt, John, “Notes on the Portuguese Cloth Trade in West Africa, 1480-1540,” IJAHS, 8 (1975), 644.Google Scholar The allusion to trade in Ijebu cloth on the Gold Coast “during the 1520s and 1530s” in idem, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast, 1469-1682 (Athens, Ga., 1979), 68, appears to be an imprecise citation of the same document, rather than an additional reference.
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33. Public Record Office, London: T.70/7, abstract of letter of Baldwyn, Mabyn, and Barlow, Whydah, to Royal African Company, 9 August 1723; cf. Law, “Trade and Politics,” 336. On the name Olukumi see esp. Hair, P.E.H., “ An Ethnolinguistic Survey of the Lower Guinea Coast Before 1700, II, African Language Review, 8 (1969), 248–49nn65–66.Google Scholar
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42. Sandoval did describe the scarifications of the “Lucumies,” i.e. Olukumi, a general name for the Yoruba, ibid., 65v-66r.
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49. “Carta de Frei Colombino de Nantes ao Prefeito da Propoganda Fide,” 26 Dec. 1640, in Brásio, , Monumenta Missionaria, 8: 464–65.Google Scholar Cf. Ryder, , Benin and the Europeans, 100.Google Scholar
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51. “A short account of the things that happened during the mission to Benin 1651-2” in Ryder, , Benin and the Europeans, 312.Google Scholar
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58. The earliest really substantial account of Ijebu is d'Avezac-Maçaya, A., Notice sur le pays et le peuple des Yébous en Afrique (Paris, 1845)Google Scholar, based on the recollections of an Ijebu slave who had been sold out of Africa in 1820. The bulk of this work is translated in Lloyd, P.C., “Osifekunde of Ijebu” in Curtin, , Africa Remembered, 217–88.Google Scholar
