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Event and Portent: the Fall of Old Oyo, a Problem in Historical Explanation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2012

Robert Smith
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Extract

Explanation, or the identification and assessment of the causes of events and situations, occupies the central place in nearly all historical writing in the present century. It is also the aspect of history which is most keenly debated by philosophers, and is the main issue today in the unending, wearisome, but seemingly inescapable controversy as to whether history belongs, or belongs more, with the sciences or with the humanities. The scientific or positivist school, numbering among its recent exponents Popper and Gardiner, emphasizes the extent to which historical explanation attains a regularity akin to, though not identical with, that found in the physical and other sciences, Hempel adding the contention that such explanation can always, and often should, be reduced to a ‘covering law’, or single universal statement subsuming the whole explanation. The idealists, among whom Croce, Collingwood, and most recently Oakeshott are prominent, stress conversely the uniqueness of history, and Dray has reinforced their position by his attack on the covering law thesis. The debate is one in which historians themselves have taken little part, and African historians none at all, despite its crucial importance for almost every aspect of their profession. Yet it is a debate which needs continuous illustration from the historiographical process, a need which historians are best able to meet. The aim of the present article is to contribute to the debate by examining as a problem in historical explanation the fall of Oyo, the powerful state of the northern Yoruba, in the early nineteenth century.

Résumé

UN PROBLÈME D'INTERPRÉTATION HISTORIQUE: LA CHUTE DE L'ANCIENNE VILLE D'OYO

Selon les philosophes de l'histoire, l'historien doit choisir, explicitement ou implicitement, entre les interprétations positivistes et idéalistes des faits. Ceci est valable également pour l'histoire de l'Afrique. L'auteur présente ici l'explication qu'il donna de la chute de l'ancienne Oyo, la capitale yoruba, vers 1835. Les causes de cet évènement peuvent être classées comme appartenant à trois niveaux d'explication, ‘ causes sous-jacentes ou lointaines ’, ‘ causes médiates ’, ‘ causes immédiates ou proches ’. Le type d'explication ‘ covering-law’ de la récente théorie positiviste peut être utilisé, reliant la chute d'Oyo au déclin et à la démoralization caractéristiques d'une structure politique ancienne. Malgré la platitude d'une telle explication, celle-ci présente l'avantage de clarifier le problème pour l'historien. Mais certaines reconstructions historiques de l'anthropologie sociale, fondées sur une soi-disant ‘ répétition’ dans le passé de l'Afrique, ne peuvent être retenues dans le cas d'exemples concrets tels que la chute d'Oyo.

En acceptant le concept idéaliste d'évènements historiques ‘ uniques ’ ou ‘ particuliers ’, l'historien n'est pas déchargé de sa responsabilité de classer et d'établir une hiérarchie entre les causes. Dans le cas de la chute d'Oyo, deux causes ont prévalu parmi les autres facteurs d'instabilité: une importante cause interne, le refus d'allégeance des principaux chefs envers l'Alafin, et un important facteur externe, l'expansionisme du mouvement religieux peul.

Le choix entre les écoles positivistes et idéalistes est l'un de ces ‘ concepts essentiellement contestés ’ identifiés par Gallier. Mais en ce qui concerne l'histoire, il ne doit pas y avoir de conflit entre les deux conceptions, l'historien ayant à la fois la possibilité et trouvant son intérêt à alterner et même à combiner les deux approches.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , July 1971 , pp. 186 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1971

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