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Poverty and Sacrifice in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland: A Critique of Iliffe's Thesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

J. D. Y. Peel
J. D. Y. Peel
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

John Iliffe has argued that the Yoruba, almost uniquely among African peoples not substantially affected by the world religions, had developed by the nineteenth century a syndrome of institutions – a culture of begging, the valorization of poverty, asceticism – more typical of literate, stratified societies with intensive agriculture.

It is agreed that the Yoruba towns of the nineteenth century knew poverty on a substantial scale, aggravated by the endemic warfare and social upheaval. However, the supposed ‘indigenous tradition of begging’ which Iliffe cites as evidence, is shown to rest on a cultural misreading of social practices reported by the missionaries, notably the offering of cowries to the devotees of gods, especially Esu. These acts were not almsgiving to beggars but sacrifices to deities, continuous with other forms of sacrifice. The ‘beggars’ were by no means always poor. Sociologically, offerings to the devotees of deities ranged from a ‘commercial’ mode, where material blessings were anticipated in return, to a ‘tributary’ mode (particularly common with devotees of Sango) where they were analogous to placatory sacrifices (etutu). So dominant was the notion of sacrifice that a concept of Islamic origin, saraa, originally meaning ‘alms’, came to take the meaning of ‘sacrifice’ in Yoruba (as in many other West African languages).

Other aspects of the alleged poverty/asceticism syndrome are shown to be equally invalid. The pronounced this-worldliness of Yoruba religious attitudes is incompatible with idea that the poor might enjoy special religious favour. Acts of self-mortification did not indicate an attitude of religious asceticism. There was no ideal that religious personnel should be poor. It is argued in conclusion that the changes which we can see in Yoruba religion arise from the active engagement of Yorubas with external influences, rather than purely from endogenous developments or purely reactive responses.

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Commentaries
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The Journal of African History , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , November 1990 , pp. 465 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 The archival research on which this paper is based has been supported by a grant from the British Academy. I am grateful to Dr B. Benedikz and his staff in the Heslop Room, Birmingham University Library, where the papers of the Church Missionary Society are kept. Tom McCaskie, Karin Barber and Paulo Farias deserve my warm thanks for helpful discussion on many occasions.

2 Iliffe, J., The African Poor: a History (Cambridge, 1988), 4–6.Google Scholar Mostly I shall be referring to Iliffe's earlier article, ‘Poverty in nineteenth-century Yorubaland’, J. Afr. Hist., XXV (1984), 43–57Google Scholar, since the argument and documentation is fuller than in the book (A review of The African Poor appears elsewhere in this issue.)

3 Goody, Jack, ‘Bridewealth and dowry in Africa and Eurasia’, in Goody, J. and Tambiah, S. J., Bridewealth and Dowry (Cambridge, 1973), 1–58Google Scholar, and Production and Reproduction (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar

4 Goody, , Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa (London, 1971).Google Scholar

5 Goody, , The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge, 1986), ch. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Goody, , Cooking, Cuisine and Class (Cambridge, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 The argument of this paragraph is a highly condensed statement of some of the major themes in Max Weber's Religionssoziologie, which is part of his Economy and Society (eds. Roth, G. and Wittig, C., Berkeley, 1978), 1, 399–634.Google Scholar See also Weber's, ‘Religious rejections of the world and their directions’, in Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. W. (eds. and trans.), From Max Weber (London, 1961).Google Scholar

8 Peel, J. D. Y., ‘The pastor and the babalawo: the encounter of religions in nineteenth-century Yorubaland’, Africa, LX (1990), forthcoming.Google Scholar

9 ‘Poverty’, 44–6. As Iliffe does not itemize all these cases, I cannot comment on the precise accuracy of his categories. I have not tried to identify the 100 from my reading of the C.M.S. papers, but, with possibly the exception of one area noted below (n. 56), I don't doubt the overall accuracy of his characterization of the incidence of poverty.

10 Crowther, S., Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language (London, 1843)Google Scholar; Bowen, T. J., Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba Language (Washington, 1858).Google Scholar On riches and poverty in Ibadan, see Falola, Toyin, The Political Economy of a Pre-Colonial African State: Ibadan 1830–1900 (Ibadan, 1984), 71–9.Google Scholar

11 ‘Poverty’, 43 n. 5.

12 This, incidentally, supports Goody's view that poverty's antithesis is riches (Cooking, Cuisine and Class, 194), against Iliffe's opposition of poverty and sufficiency (African Poor, 4 and 280, n. 17).

13 ‘Poverty’, 52.

14 There is a verb bè (=‘beseech’, ‘request’), which could translate other English senses of ‘beg’-as o bẹbẹ ki m funʾn l'owo ‘he begged me to give him money’. Abraham, R. C., Dictionary of Modern Yoruba (London, 1958)Google Scholar, s. vv. agbe, bè.

15 Townsend, journal, 16 and 21 August 1959, cited by Iliffe, ‘Poverty’, 52. References to the journals and letters of C.M.S. missionaries are listed in the archives under the code CA2, O series, by the name and number of the missionary, for the period up to 1879. From 1880, they are listed under the year, with the code G3 A2, O series. I shall here identify them merely by missionary's name and by the date to which they refer.

16 On Esu see Westcott, Joan, ‘The sculpture and myths of Eshu-Elegba, the Yoruba trickster’, Africa, XXXII (1962), 336–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Idowu, E. B., Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief (London, 1962), 80–5Google Scholar; Verger, P. F., Orixás: Deuses Iorubas na Africa e no Novo Mundo (Sãao Paulo, 1981), 76–85Google Scholar; Pelton, R. D., The Trickster in West Africa (Berkeley, 1980), ch. 4Google Scholar; Pemberton, J., ‘Eshu-Elegba: the Yoruba trickster god’, African Arts, IX (1975), 21–7, 66–70, 90–1.Google Scholar

17 ‘Poverty’, 52.

18 On cowries in relation to Esu, see Belasco, B. I., The Entrepreneur as Culture Hero: Preadaptions in Nigerian Economic Development (New York, 1980), 29ff., 122.Google Scholar

19 Townsend, journal, 9 January 1852; cf. S. Johnson, journal, 5 April 1874.

20 Maser, journal, 19 December 1856. Cf. S. Cole, journal, 13 January 1876, at Abeokuta, telling how he was urged to give cowries to an eleṣu, and was hooted at by a crowd sympathetic to her when he lectured them.

21 C. Phillips Sr., journal, 22 March 1855.

22 Olubi, journal, 13 February 1866, at Ibadan. Cf. George, journal, 26 August 1890: a discussion with a Muslim on the nature of peace— ‘efforts were made to show him that the peace consisted not in the possession and enjoyment of worldly goods, but in being reconciled to God…’.

23 Townsend, journal, 9 January 1852.

24 ‘Journal of an Ilesha Evangelist’ [it is in fact George Vincent, father of Mojola Agbebi], 6 April 1875, in the miscellaneous file CA2/011/76. Babaode (= Father of the Outside) is an epithet of Esu—as Vincent renders it, ‘Devil the father of the gates outside a House’.

25 On the identification of oriṣa and devotee, see Barber, Karin, ‘How man makes God in West Africa’, Africa, LI (1981), 724–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 W S. Allen, journal, 12 September 1867.

27 W. S. Allen, journal, 8 May 1859.

28 C. Phillips Jr., journal, 27 December 1877; C. N. Young, journal, 27 December 1877.

29 Iliffe, ‘Poverty’, 54.

30 The Charity Organization Society, whose leading founder (1869) was Octavia Hill, played a key role in British poverty policy over several decades, incuding the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws of 1905–9. They were strongly against indiscriminate benevolence towards the poor and made much use of the distinction between the deserving and undeserving poor. See Mowat, C. L., The Charity Organization Society 1869–1913 (London, 1961).Google Scholar

31 They were described by Young as coming ‘from the interior’ and by Phillips as ‘from a neighbouring town’ (ref. cited n. 28). On their return they insulted the missionaries ‘in the Yoruba language’ (i.e. in Oyo-Yoruba dialect, not Ondo); C. N. Young, journal, 3 May 1878. Okeigbo was the only neighbouring town on the interior side which had ‘Yoruba’ speakers. Though its warrior head, Aderin Ologbenla, was of the Ife royal house, its population was ‘from different tribes’ (Phillips, journal, 29 January 1877), including Oyo and Egba.

32 Young, journal, 2 May 1878. For other reference's to Obayoml's influence — he had been Governor Glover's messenger in earlier negotiations with the Ondos—see Ibid., 27 June and 1 July 1875, 30 May 1876.

33 Young, journal, 4 and 8 May 1878.

34 Muller, journal, 9 May 1850.

35 S. Johnson, journal, 7 June 1874.

36 Maser, journal, 17 December 1873. Maser preached his usual sermon about the wickedness of praying to the enemy of God. ‘One of [his hearers] remarked that the Devil [i.e. Esu] would bring them to God.’

37 Best description of the Iworo shrine is in Samuel Pearse's journal for 19 July 1861. In 1869 he visited the ‘once famous Elegbara of Woro and saw how much of his ancient glory has departed’ and commented on the presence of a police corporal there; journal, 3 November 1869. See too Maser, annual letter for 1872.

38 Iliffe, , ‘Poverty’, 52.Google Scholar

39 F. L. Akiele, journal, 10 September 1890.

40 Olubi, journal, 11 July and 15 October 1870. They go to greet newly installed chiefs and are offered gifts ‘since everyone at this time is expected purposely to come and eat and drink with them and also to get gifts’. These they decline saying ‘it is out of love and respect for them on their newly elevated posts and not for what we can get from them’ But one chief, wanting to be very friendly, was so earnest that they could not refuse his gift. Or S. Cole, journal, 9 December 1876, in an Egba village, is offered cowries and rum after the service by a local chief.

41 Olubi, letter to Parent Committee, 26 June 1871.

42 Kefer, journal, 3 September 1854.

43 Olubi, journal, 8 May 1867; cf. Okuseinde, journal, 27 February 1866.

44 Hinderer, journal, 12 March 1850, in Abeokuta.

45 Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776] (London, Everyman edn. 1910), 271.Google Scholar

46 Kefer, journal, 3 December 1854, in Ibadan: a babalawo ‘defending their Orisas compares the whole system with the government of this town. Balle the head chief over all, then Balogun, Otton, Osin, etc. they all get power, they all have their own people, Balle cannot claim any of their own children, but still they all submit to Balle. In like manner God the highest, but the Orisas have their power, they have their worshippers and no Orisa can allow any of his children to desert him…’ Cf. Ibid., 8 June 1853: Ifa as the one who ‘begs’ [i.e. bẹbẹ] ‘God for us. Or Hinderer, journal, 18 October 1855: ‘God is great indeed but like as Bale has towns under him and in all he has an Ajele (Consul), so God has his Ajeles. They are our Orisas…’

47 The specific quality of Ibadan rule—referred to in the last quotation in n. 46 — is evident in W. S. Allen's journal, 2 November 1873. Many strangers from the interior attend the service, because delegates from the subordinate towns have arrived to pay their tribute to Ibadan ‘as a ransom for their towns’. So afraid are they of the Ibadan army, that the Ejigbo delegates, after the service, want to look in Allen's copy of the Koran, to see if they will be visited and if there are any charms to keep them away. See further Awe, Bolanle, ‘The Ajele System: a study of Ibadan imperialism in the nineteenth century’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, III (1974), 47–71.Google Scholar

48 E.g. Pearse, journal, 3 August 1863; Townsend, journal, 28 May 1851.

49 Mann, journal, 29 June 1855.

50 Johnson, J., ‘Report on journey from Ibadan to Oyo and Ogbomoso’, 1877.Google Scholar

51 C. Phillips sr., journal, 17 October 1856.

52 Kefer, journal, 31 August 1853.

53 Okuseinde, journal, 9 May 1870.

54 Meakin, journal, 2 January 1860.

55 Muller, journal, 15 August 1849; for similar incident, Isaac Smith, journal, 19 April 1851, also Abeokuta. What the missionaries called ‘clubs’—oṣe—were carved rods, typically shaped like a double axe, emblematic of Sango's thunderbolt. For photographs showing their great variety, see Verger, , Orixáas, 159–61.Google Scholar

56 Meakin, journal, 7 January 1860. He'd earlier commented on the politics of Oyo in general terms in his annual letter (for 1858), 29 January 1859, where he says the Alafin actually maintained a band of robbers. Townsend, journal, 22–5 August 1859, commented on the robberies by royal slaves on the road from Ilorin to Ogbomosho.

57 C. Phillips sr., journal, 25 July 1854, at Ijaiye. Phillips has a confrontation with an onisango, who pulls back ‘since he knew me to be the person under white men.’ The bystanders then give the royal salutation to Sango—who has possessed his devotee— ‘This is custom’, observes Phillips.

58 Okuseinde, journal, 16 November 1869.

59 Okuseinde, journal, 2 March 1875.

60 Olubi, journal, 8 May 1867.

61 Gollmer, journal, 9 August 1859.

62 The historical-philological evidence is thoroughly presented by Reichmuth, Stefan, ‘Songhay-lehnwörter in Yoruba und ihr historischer Kontext’, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, IX (1988), 269–99.Google Scholar

63 As first noted by Morton-Williams, Peter, ‘Habitat and trade in Oyo and Ashanti’, in Douglas, M. and Kaberry, P. M. (eds.), Man in Africa (London, 1969), 92.Google Scholar

64 Koelle, S. W., Polyglotta Africana, new edn. with introduction by Hair, P. E. H. and word index by Dalby, D. (Graz, 1963), 76–77.Google Scholar

65 There may be an even more complicated story of cultural recapitulation behind this. Marcel Mauss in The Gift (trans. Cunnison, I., New York, 1967, 15–16, 76–76Google Scholar) presents ‘the beginning of a theory of alms’ by means of a brief examination of the Arabic sadaqa and its Hebrew cognate zedaqa. Both, he says, originally meant ‘justice’. Citing ethnographic data on the Hausa, he argues that alms ‘are the result on the one hand of a moral idea about gifts and wealth and on the other of an idea about sacrifice’. What went to the gods goes instead to the poor, whose destructive envy is thus assuaged; but its reward, in the Koranic passage he cites (Sura 64, 16–17), is still worldly success. Mauss fails to consider the sociological import of ideas of otherworldly reward, or the hard Christian ideal that charity should be disinterested, which he argued was a sociological impossibility.

66 Iliffe, , ‘Poverty’, 55.Google Scholar

67 Idowu, , Olodumare, 71–5Google Scholar; Verger, , Orixas, 252–63Google Scholar; Belasco, , Entrepreneur, 119–29.Google Scholar

68 William Allen, journal, 16 May 1859.

69 W. S. Allen, journal, 26 July 1867, Ibadan.

70 Economy and Society, 1, 541–4.

71 Iliffe, , ‘Poverty’, 55.Google Scholar

72 Olubi to Fenn, 18 December 1875. For another case—among Ijaiye people, i.e. Oyo Yorubas, at Abeokuta—see J. A. Sunday, journal, 31 August 1879. One girl, says Sunday, was bold enough to whip him ‘which she feigned herself having been excited by gods’. Ogiyan or Ogiriyan was a deity closely related to Obatala. See Verger, , Orixds, 170–6Google Scholar, on its festival at its chief town, Ejigbo.

73 A suggestion made to me by Karin Barber.

74 Olubi, journal, 10 January 1873, cited Iliffe, ‘Poverty’, 54.

75 Again a suggestion for which I am indebted to Karin Barber.

76 Townsend, cited in Iliffe, , ‘Poverty’, 54.Google Scholar

77 Idowu, , Olodumare, 79–80Google Scholar; Abimbola, ‘Wande, Ifa: an Exposition of If a Literary Corpus (Ibadan, 1976), 17–18Google Scholar, quoting Idowu. For how Ifa came to be viewed as ‘protoi-Christian’, see Peel, J. D. Y., ‘The religious origins of the modern Yoruba intelligentsia’, in Falola, Toyin (ed.), African Historiography: Essays in Honour of J. F. Ade Ajayi, forthcoming.Google Scholar

78 On Lijadu, Peel, ‘Religious origins’.

79 Iliffe, , ‘Poverty’, 55.Google Scholar

80 See Lijadu's letter to Bishop C. Phillips, 13 January 1900, outlining his scheme for self-support: ‘…in the native Yoruba idea, a minister of religion, call him a priest or some other name you please, is a lazy folk; one who sits idly upon his neighbour's shoulder and eats his fellow man's labour for nothing, and therefore you cannot pay him too little for his services.’

81 On Agbebi and Johnson, see Ayandele, E. A., A Visionary of the African Church: Mojola Agbebi (1860–1917) (Nairobi, 1971)Google Scholar and Holy Johnson: Pioneer of African Nationalism (London, 1970).Google Scholar

82 Ogunranti, A., ‘Pastor and politician: Isaac Akinyele, Olubadan of Ibadan’, in Isichei, Elizabeth (ed.), Varieties of Christian Experience in Nigeria (London, 1982).Google Scholar

83 See the diary entry quoted in Peel, J. D. Y., Aladura (London, 1968), 232.Google Scholar

84 Cf. Wole Soyinka's quasi-fictional study of the circle round his father in the 1930s and 1940s, Isara: a Voyage round Essay (London, 1989), 127–8Google Scholar, where he imagines his parents discussing the differences between saraa and ẹbọ (etutu). He glosses saraa as ‘ritual feast…a kind of thanksgiving’, now engaged in by Christians.