The story so far has been that of a regional history of local communities in Igboland, their construction of themselves and by external forces and influence. Illustrated by numerous local examples, it has largely been told from the “top-down” perspective of a regional history. This concluding part takes the opposite, “bottom-up” approach. It is composed of three case studies that present exemplary processes of Igbo community construction within their local historical contexts. They by no means claim to be representative for Igboland as a whole—no manageable set of case studies could probably be that. While exploring common themes, they also provide a window into local diversity. Going beyond “common” or “typical” experiences, the three case studies address locally specific ones— remarkable stories worth telling in their own right.

Three common themes run through all the case studies. The first is the issue of the boundaries of the community: In all three cases, external borderlines shifted considerably over the twentieth century, though to different extents and for different reasons. Many of the larger units, created by colonial rule for administrative convenience, broke down again when communities gained a greater degree of autonomy to pursue their own definitions of belonging from the 1950s onward. The process continued, fueled by the dynamics of the Nigerian federal system, and has resulted in a fragmentation of local units, that have become smaller today than they were in colonial days, and sometimes even smaller than their precursors were in the late nineteenth century.

A second common theme concerns the forms of institutionalization of the modern Igbo local community. First, colonial rule created warrant chiefs; then it disowned them. Town unions emerged early in two of the three communities studied here, playing major roles in local society and politics. Postcolonial Nigeria allowed the creation of traditional rulers in Igboland who gained a sometimes surprising relevance in local affairs and began to contest the power of older local institutions. The three case studies show that the relative weights of the various local institutions can differ considerably, and that struggles between them have often been fierce. A shift of local power relationships in favor of traditional rulers appears to be a major trend of recent years.

The third common theme is the role of local historical knowledge. Discourses about history, in both oral and written forms, turn out to be highly relevant in community self-definition and local politics.