Yorùbá - History, Identity and the In-Between

Ọ̀rọ̀ tó bá dùn l'ẹnu, á dùn l'etí — words that are sweet in the mouth are sweet in the ear. But printed words do something the proverb doesn't mention: they outlive the mouth that spoke them.

Lagos, June 1945: the trains stop running, the docks go silent, and for over a month the busiest city in British West Africa doesn't move — not because of an army or a colonial decree, but because of words set in metal type, printed on paper, and read aloud in markets and compounds from Lagos to Ibadan. This episode traces the fifty years of Yoruba print culture that made that strike possible.

In this episode:

How Henry Townsend's 1859 Iwe Iroyin — meant to make converts, not revolutionaries — proved that Yoruba-language print worked, and how Eko Akete, Eleti Ofe, and Akede Eko filled the gap it left behind

Why Yoruba's tonal structure and dialect diversity made typesetting a political act, and how Samuel Ajayi Crowther's diacritical system and Bible translation quietly built a shared reading public

Inside Oje Market, Ibadan, 1928: a teacher named Afolabi reads an editorial aloud under a tree, and five hundred printed copies reach ten thousand listeners

The 1927 letters-to-the-editor feud between "Concerned Father" and "Progressive Mother" — and why historian Benedict Anderson's term "imagined community" describes exactly what these pages built

D.O. Fagunwa's serialized fantastical novels, the 1903 Newspaper Ordinance, Ernest Ikoli's libel suits, and Nnamdi Azikiwe's 1937 West African Pilot

How forty years of reading the same pages let a scattered public organize the 1945 general strike together

Timestamps:00:00 1945 Lagos Strike01:12 Print Builds A Public01:58 First Yoruba Newspapers02:45 Market Tree Readings03:46 Tones Dialects Standardization05:02 Letters And Imagined Community06:28 Literature Censorship Nationalism07:32 Newspapers Organize The Strike08:12 From Type To Self Rule09:26 Next Episode And Wrap Up

The central question of this episode:
Print built a Yoruba public that had never physically met but could still act together. What's the modern equivalent — the thing that lets scattered strangers today believe the same thing on the same day? Drop your answer below, I'm reading every one.

If you're new here:
YHIB is a source-cited documentary series on 19th- and 20th-century Yorùbá history. Season 2 opened with the 1914 amalgamation of Nigeria, then traced the mission-school generation raised inside it — this episode follows what that generation did with its literacy.

Go deeper on Patreon:
Extended source notes on Yoruba newspaper history, the Crowther orthography project, and the full 1927 letters-page exchange live at → patreon.com/ZackShittu

Follow for Season 2 updates: → @ZackShittu · withzackshittu.com

Sources for this episode include Fred I.A. Omu's "Press and Politics in Nigeria, 1880–1937" (Cambridge University Press review), Karin Barber's "Much Matter in a Penny Paper: Early Yoruba Print Culture in Lagos, 1910–1930" (Ohio University Press), the Wikipedia entry on the1945 Nigerian general strikeand theWest African Pilot, and Benedict Anderson's "Imagined Communities." Full bibliography on Patreon.

#YorubaHistory #NigerianHistory #WestAfricanHistory #Colonialism #NnamdiAzikiwe #YHIB

March 1949: ten thousand market women surround the palace of the Aláké of Abeokuta. Within weeks, he abdicates. The woman who organized it — Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti — was trained by British missionaries to be the ultimate English lady, and turned that exact education against the Empire.

This episode traces the mission-school generation that colonial Nigeria built to produce loyal, compliant clerks — and the fatal miscalculation at the heart of it: once you teach a child to read, you lose control over what they choose to read. Two portraits anchor the story: Samuel Akinola, the convert who thought he'd abandoned his heritage but had only translated it, and Wole Adetoro, educated just enough to want power and barred from ever reaching it. Inside CMS Grammar School, Lagos, 1928, students caned for speaking Yorùbá develop double lives — and one classroom exchange turns a British schoolmaster's own logic back on him.

Along the way: Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther's mission to standardize written Yorùbá, and how it accidentally built a literate, media-savvy public ready to print and circulate anti-colonial newspapers.

Hosted by Dr. Zack Shittu. Bonus episodes, full source notes, and extended cuts are available at patreon.com/ZackShittu. Follow @ZackShittu and visit withzackshittu.com for the full archive.

Topics: Yoruba history, colonial education, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, mission schools, CMS Grammar School, Nigerian colonial history, Abeokuta Women's Union, African history

Season 2 opens. Same day, January 1st 1914 — three Yorùbá cities lived three completely different realities. A proverb about distance asks whether any of them were really safe.

Full episode description:

A tree doesn't snap in the forest and kill someone at home — so the Yorùbá say. On January 1st, 1914, in a government building in Lagos, the British grafted two colonies into one and called it Nigeria. That's a tree falling in a very distant forest. This episode asks whether the proverb held.

This is the Season 2 premiere of Yorùbá — History, Identity & The In-Between. We follow the same January morning through three Yorùbá cities — a Lagos clerk who got a new letterhead and nothing else, an Ìbàdàn that barely noticed, and an Ọ̀yọ́ that performed welcome while quietly planning to wait the British out — before tracing what amalgamation actually flattened administratively, and the one thing that reached every single household regardless: the Native Revenue Ordinance of 1917, and the tax that turned customary tribute into a fixed colonial demand.

Along the way: a 1918 tax revolt in Ẹkìtì, the 1930s cocoa-price collapse, and the slow, quiet way "Nigerian" began layering on top of Yorùbá identity without ever replacing it.

Season 1 is complete. Season 2 starts here.

Hosted by Dr. Zack Shittu. Bonus episodes, full source notes, and extended cuts are available at patreon.com/ZackShittu. Follow @ZackShittu and visit withzackshittu.com for the full archive.

Topics: Yoruba history, 1914 amalgamation, Nigerian colonial history, Native Revenue Ordinance, Ibadan, Oyo empire, Ekiti, colonial taxation, African history

In 1906, a British officer told the Aláàfin of Ọ̀yọ́ that his authority was intact — he merely needed to "advise." The Aláàfin's answer became the line that defines this entire episode: the crown was hollow, the throne was borrowed, the ceremonies were theater for someone else's administration.This is the Season 1 finale of Yorùbá — History, Identity & The In-Between. Six episodes have built to this moment. Today we open the robe.In this episode:Frederick Lugard's "Dual Mandate" — the doctrine of ruling through existing chiefs, and the real (cheaper, safer) reasons Britain adopted itWhy Yorùbá political authority never fit Lugard's Northern Nigeria template — and what the British did when reality didn't match the org chartHow chiefs became "clerks with crowns": salaried tax collectors and labor recruiters, bound by British approval, hollowed of the authority that once made them legitimateThe Olubadan of Ìbàdàn — the traditional ruler title invented by the colonial administration in 1936 for a city that had deliberately rejected kingshipHobsbawm & Ranger's "invention of tradition," applied directly to Yorùbá historyResistance from every direction: the 1916 Iseyin tax revolt, the 1918 Abẹ́òkúta/Ẹ̀gbá riots, market women's boycotts, the Aladura churches, and Herbert Macaulay's press campaignsThe 1955 deposition of Aláàfin Adeniran Adeyemi II — removed not by the British, but by Nigerian politicians using the very tools colonialism built00:00 Oyo Under Britain02:03 Facade Of Indirect Rule02:53 Lugard And The Doctrine04:16 Yoruba Politics Clash05:19 Chiefs Rewritten Roles06:17 Economic Leash Trap07:39 Invented Tradition Ibadan08:59 Olubadan Created10:13 Everyday Resistance11:50 Adeyemi II Warning13:39 Legacy And Season TwoThe central question of this episode:The Olubadan title was invented in 1936 and is now treated as ancient. If an institution is believed traditional, functions as traditional, and carries traditional authority in people's lives — does its actual age change what it is? Drop your answer below. I'm reading every one.If you're new here:YHIB is a source-cited documentary series on 19th- and 20th-century Yorùbá history. Start from Episode 1 to walk the full arc this finale closes.Season 1 is complete. Season 2 picks up exactly here — colonialism deepens, nationalism sharpens, and a generation raised between two worlds starts asking what to build next.Go deeper on Patreon:The full "Dual Mandate" walkthrough, the customary-law codification mechanics, the expanded women's resistance material, and the complete legacy segment cut from this episode live at → patreon.com/ZackShittuFollow for Season 2 updates: → @ZackShittu · withzackshittu.comSources for this episode include Lugard's "The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa" (1922), Atanda, Hobsbawm & Ranger's "The Invention of Tradition," and James Scott's "Weapons of the Weak." Full bibliography on Patreon.#YorubaHistory #WestAfricanHistory #AfricanHistory #Colonialism #Nigeria #YHIB

An Ifa oracle told his parents he would serve none of the 400 Yoruba deities. It was right — he served something harder to name.

Samuel Ajayi Crowther was enslaved at twelve, freed at sea by the Royal Navy, and rebuilt himself through language. He wrote the first grammar of any African language authored by a native speaker, translated the Bible into Yoruba, and became the first African Anglican bishop — received by Queen Victoria, honored by Oxford. His translation work helped weld the Oyo, Egba, Ijebu, and Ekiti into a single "Yoruba" identity that didn't fully exist before him.

He also walked into sacred shrines and destroyed Yoruba carvings with his own hands.

This bonus episode holds both truths at once — the man who gave the Yoruba people their written language, and the man who helped an empire that would later strip him of everything. No flattening. Just the paradox.

🔗 Full research brief (30 sources) + companion Visual Guide PDF, free for Patrons: patreon.com/ZackShittu

Yoruba — History, Identity & the In-Between (YHIB) | Written & narrated by Zack Shittu

This is the pivot episode of Season 1. Everything YHIB has built — the collapse of Oyo, the rise of Ibadan, the construction of Yoruba identity, the mechanics of trade and civil war — comes to bear on this moment.In this episodeHow European trade was balanced and peripheral to Yorubaland for centuries — and when that changedThe real forces behind Britain's 1807 abolition of the slave trade (it wasn't only morality)Palm oil, industrial capitalism, and how an entire regional economy was reoriented in a generationThe 1851 bombardment of Lagos — a humanitarian intervention or a commercial calculation?Samuel Ajayi Crowther: the first African Anglican bishop, Yoruba linguist, and the most important contradiction in 19th-century West African historyHow Christian missions created the very generation that would later challenge colonialismThe Ijebu War of 1892 — defeated in days, not weeks — and the strategic message it sent to every remaining Yoruba kingdomWhy resistance, collaboration, and adaptation were not fixed identities but situational calculations made by the same people in the same yearWhat Yoruba people preserved underneath colonial compliance — and what it means for understanding this history honestlyTimestamps00:00 Lagos 1851 Shockwave00:41 Redirected Not Replaced02:04 Episode Setup And Thesis04:48 Coastal Trade Balance06:09 Abolition And Palm Oil Pivot08:12 Lagos Coup To Annexation09:31 Missions And New Intermediaries10:34 Crowther And Contradictions14:40 Treaties War And Conquest17:29 Survival Arithmetic Responses20:04 Cultural Continuity Under Rule20:44 Lagos 1900 What Was Gained23:11 Wrap Up And Next EpisodeThe central question of this episodeWas European arrival in Yorubaland transformation or destruction? Redirection or obliteration? And does the answer depend entirely on whose experience you center?Drop your answer in the comments. I'm reading every one.If you're new here:YHIB is a long-form documentary series on 19th-century Yoruba history — told with cinematic visuals, primary sources, and none of the simplifications that usually flatten this story. Start from Episode 1 to follow the full arc of Season 1.If you've been here from Episode 1This is the episode the whole season has been building toward. The season finale — Episode 7: Indirect Rule — is coming next.Go deeper on PatreonMembers get early access to every episode, extended source notes with the full bibliography behind each claim, and the community conversations that happen between releases.→ patreon.com/ZackShittuFollow for season finale updates:→ @ZackShittuSources for this episode include: Law (1991), Hopkins (1973), Ajayi (1965), Peel (1968, 2000), Smith (1979), Atanda (1973), Ayandele (1966), Lovejoy (2012), Ajayi & Smith (1964). Full bibliography available on Patreon.

The Ogboni weren't just a secret society. They were a constitutional check on the king — and they could remove him.In this bonus episode of Yoruba History, Identity & the In-Between, we explore the Ogboni (also known as Òsùgbó among the Ijebu and Egba Yoruba) — the earth-veneration society that served as a third organ of Yoruba government alongside the king and the Oyo Mesi.We cover:– The Iledi: the sacred lodge built on the earth they governed– The Edan: paired brass figures that sealed verdicts no king could overturn– How the Ogboni could — and did — compel abdication through ritual sanction– Why women were constitutive members, not peripheral ones– The 1949 Abeokuta Women's revolt: how 10,000 women used this same accountability tradition outside the lodge to remove the Alake of EgbalandThis is not primitive governance. This is constitutional design.🎙️ Series: Yoruba History, Identity & the In-Between (YHIB) — Bonus Supplement📚 Covers Episodes 1–5🔔 Subscribe for documented Yoruba history:  @YorubaHistorych 

🎧 Listen on podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3JDmrs5fpaCheUrdaqMC6B?si=486A_8PlTdi9LMRjWkUC4A

📖 Support the research on Patreon: patreon.com/zackshittu

📷 Follow on Instagram: @zackshittu

Chapters:

00:00 Hidden Elders of Power

00:57 Ogboni as Third Branch

01:27 Earth as Moral Witness

02:09 Edo Symbols and Oaths

02:40 Women in Ogboni Authority

03:10 The Power to Depose Kings

04:09 Colonial Tax Revolt in Egba

04:41 Abeokuta Women Remove the Alake

05:42 What Was Lost and Why It Matters

06:04 Closing and Call to Action

References and Source notes: patreon.com/zackshittu

In 19th-century Yorubaland, rival kingdoms fought for sixteen years — and traded with each other the entire time. This is the story of how the Kiriji (Ekitiparapo) War reveals a system of rivalry that was brutal, sophisticated, and governed by rules we still haven't fully understood.Episode 5 of Yoruba History, Identity & the In-Between examines the most analytically demanding question of the season: how did a stateless network of competing Yoruba kingdoms manage sustained, high-stakes conflict without collapsing into total war — and what was actually lost when the British froze that system in place in 1893?We get into:— Why Ibadan and the Ekitiparapo coalition arranged trade routes specifically so they could keep fighting— How market women sustained commerce across active battle lines— The diplomatic machinery of envoys, oaths, neutral mediators, and proverbs-as-strategy— Why destroying a rival completely made no economic sense— How British intervention didn't end the rivalry — it froze itThis episode draws on Ajayi & Smith's Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century, Robert Smith's Kingdoms of the Yoruba and Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa, A.G. Hopkins' An Economic History of West Africa, and Samuel Johnson's The History of the Yorubas — among others. Full source list below.⏱️ CHAPTERS00:00 Trading While at War02:27 Structured Rivalry Explained02:43 Episode Setup and Thesis04:53 Post Oyo Power Struggle05:57 Resistance to Ibadan07:01 War With Limits08:41 Why Trade Never Stops10:17 Border Markets and Women Traders11:41 War Economy and Captives12:50 Diplomacy Rituals and Envoys14:11 Mediators and Saving Face15:17 Proverbs as Negotiation Tools16:44 When Diplomacy Fails18:48 War Camps as Mobile Cities20:54 Firearms and Coastal Leverage21:50 British Entry Changes the Game22:56 The Paradox of Rivalry25:23 Pacification Freezes Competition26:41 1893 Peace Imposed27:56 What Was Lost With Peace29:16 Next Episode and Farewell🔔 SUBSCRIBE for the full Season 1 arc — each episode builds on the last:https://www.youtube.com/@UCXzeoFtjJIzeRgGLlclby5w 🎧 LISTEN on your podcast app — search "Yoruba History, Identity & the In-Between"✊🏾 SUPPORT THE SERIES on Patreon — early access, extended notes, bonus episodes (Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Lugard's The Dual Mandate), and the research conversations behind each episode:https://patreon.com/ZackShittu📩 THE IN-BETWEEN newsletter — companion essays on the gaps between myth and record in Yoruba history:https://withzackshittu.com/newsletter🌐 More work: https://withzackshittu.com💬 Drop a comment: Did British intervention free the Yoruba system, or freeze it before it could finish? I want your read.📌 SOURCESAjayi, J.F.A. & Smith, R. (1964). Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press.Smith, R.S. (1988). Kingdoms of the Yoruba (3rd ed.). James Currey.Smith, R.S. (1989). Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa (2nd ed.). James Currey.Hopkins, A.G. (1973). An Economic History of West Africa. Longman.Law, R. (1977). The Oyo Empire c.1600–c.1836. Clarendon Press.Johnson, S. (1921). The History of the Yorubas. CMS Bookshops.Sudarkasa, N. (1973). Where Women Work. University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology.Delano, I.O. (1966). Owe L'esin Oro: Yoruba Proverbs. Oxford University Press.#YorubaHistory #AfricanHistory #KirijiWar #Ibadan #PrecolonialAfrica

After the Oyo Empire collapsed, Yoruba kingdoms fought each other for sixty years. There was no center. No empire. No state holding things together. And yet — the culture held.

How?

Episode 4 of Yorùbá — History, Identity & the In-Between examines the seven mechanisms that kept Yoruba people connected across hostile political borders during the 19th-century civil wars. Shared language and ritual grammar. Trade networks and the market women who kept them running through wars that should have ended them. Kinship and inter-regional marriage. The sacred authority of Ile-Ife. The trans-regional networks of babalawos and craftspeople. Festivals as technologies of connection. And the shared origin narratives that insisted — quietly, persistently — that all of this belonged to one world.

This is unity without empire. Connection without control. Cohesion built from the bottom up. The kind of question that's just as alive in 21st-century systems design as it was in 19th-century Yorubaland.

Hosted by Dr. Zack Shittu.

—

In this episode:

- Why political fragmentation didn't produce cultural collapse

- Language, proverbs, and Ifa as shared frameworks across enemy lines

- Market women as the most resilient diplomatic network in Yorubaland

- Kinship, divided loyalties, and the personal stakes in peace

- Ile-Ife as sacred center above politics

- Festivals and professional networks as cross-boundary infrastructure

- What survives when empires don't

Chapters 

00:00Border Market in Wartime

01:49Unity Without Empire

03:53Why Culture Held

05:34Language and Proverbs

06:59Ifa and Oriki Networks

08:46Markets and Trade Circuits

09:44Market Women and Interdependence

13:25Kinship Across Borders

16:19Ife Festivals and Guilds

20:13Networks Outlast Kingdoms

23:20 Wrap Up and Next Episode

Sources include J.D.Y. Peel's Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, Robin Law's The Oyo Empire, Ajayi & Smith's Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century, Karin Barber's I Could Speak Until Tomorrow, Wande Abimbola on Ifa, Niara Sudarkasa on market women, and Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities.

Companion newsletter, full source notes, and bonus episodes — including deep dives on Samuel Ajayi Crowther and Frederick Lugard's Dual Mandate — at withzackshittu.com and patreon.com/ZackShittu.

Season 1 is a continuous arc. Start with Episode 1 if you're new.

The word “Yoruba” is everywhere today — in language, diaspora culture, and political identity across three continents — yet in the early 19th century it barely existed as a shared label. Most people understood themselves through kingdom, lineage, or town, not as members of a single Yorùbá people.

This episode asks the question at the heart of the entire series: how does a people become a people? It traces how “Yoruba” shifted from a Hausa external label into an identity consciously claimed, reshaped, and institutionalized by Lagos intellectuals, Christian missionaries, and political actors under the pressure of colonialism.

We examine the foundational Ilé-Ifẹ̀ origin narrative, not to test its literal truth, but to understand the work it performs: how it weaves together scattered histories, legitimizes authority, and offers a common beginning for different communities. Using Hobsbawm and Ranger’s idea of “invented tradition” and Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities,” the episode shows that collective identity is always constructed through stories, institutions, and power.

Far from making it fake, that constructed nature is precisely what makes Yorùbá identity powerful, adaptable, and real in the lives of millions who now claim it.

Researched & Written by Zack Shittu | Produced by Femi ShittuFull list of sources → patreon.com/zackShittu

Yorùbá — History, Identity & the In-BetweenEpisode 2Season 1The Rise of Ibadan

Out of the ruins of Oyo’s collapse came one of the most extraordinary political experiments in 19th-century West Africa. Ibadan began as a temporary war camp — a gathering point for refugees, soldiers, and displaced communities with nowhere else to go. Within decades, it had become the largest city in Yorubaland and its dominant military power.

This episode examines how Ibadan developed a radically different political model: authority earned through military achievement rather than inherited by lineage. No hereditary ruler. No fixed nobility. A system that was unstable, brutal, and, in its own way, honest.

But Ibadan’s meritocracy had limits. What happens when a culture built entirely on survival has to become something more? That question would follow Ibadan all the way to the colonial encounter.

From refugee camp to military state — Ibadan rewrote the rules of Yoruba power.

Researched & Written by Zack Shittu  |  Produced by Femi Shittu

Yorùbá — History, Identity & the In-BetweenEpisode 1Season 1The Fall of Oyo

The Oyo Empire was one of West Africa’s most powerful political formations — a cavalry state that dominated the region for over a century, commanding trade routes, vassal kingdoms, and tribute networks stretching across the savanna. But by the early 19th century, it was hollowing from within.

This episode traces the structural collapse of Oyo: the constitutional tensions between the Alaafin and the Oyo Mesi council, the unchecked rise of Afonja and the military faction, the Fulani jihad pressure from the north, and the slave trade’s corrosive effect on internal loyalty.

This wasn’t a story of defeat by superior enemies. It was a story of a system that stopped maintaining itself — and the catastrophic displacement it unleashed across Yorubaland.

The fall of Oyo is the engine that drives all of Season 1.

Researched & Written by Zack Shittu  |  Produced by Femi Shittu