² July, R. W., The Origins of Modern African Thought (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Afigbo, A. E., The Poverty of African Historiography (Lagos, 1977)Google Scholar; also Afigbo, , Ropes of Sand (Nsukka, 1981), 5–6Google Scholar; Crowder, M., ‘The outsider and African culture: the case of E. H. Duckworth and Nigeria Magazine’, in July, R. W. and Benson, P. (eds. ), African Culture and Intellectual Leaders and the Development of the New African Nations (New York and Ibadan, 1982), 79.Google Scholar For the focus on recent writing, see Adeoye, A. O., ‘Understanding the crisis in Nigerian historiography’, History in Africa, XIX (1992), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saulawa, A. M., ‘A history of historical writings in Nigeria since c. 1960 A. d.’, Savanna, x (1989), 76–85Google Scholar; Neale, C., Writing ‘Independent’ History (Westport and London, 1985)Google Scholar; Lovejoy, P. E., ‘The Ibadan school of historiography and its critics’, in Falola, T. (ed. ), African Historiography (Longman, 1993), 195–202Google Scholar; Ofonagoro, W. I., ‘Re-appraisals in history: The West African context’, in Uya, O. E. and Erim, E. O. (eds. ), Perspectives and Methods of Studying African History (Enugu, 1984), esp. 17–19.Google ScholarKapteijns, L. treats the early period more insightfully but very briefly in African Historiography Written by Africans, 1955–1973. The Nigerian Case (Leiden, 1977), 9–13.Google Scholar

³ Most of this work concerns the Yoruba. A valuable recent collection is Falola (ed. ), African Historiography. See also Falola, , ‘The minor works of T. O. Avoseh’, History in Africa, xIx (1992), 237–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Falola, , ‘“Alternative History”: the world of Yoruba chroniclers’, Passages, vi (1993), 2–3, 6Google Scholar; Falola, (ed. ), Yoruba Historiography (Madison, 1991)Google Scholar; Falola, (ed. ), Pioneer, Patriot and Patriarch: Samuel Johnson and the Yoruba People (Madison, 1993).Google Scholar Robin Law's interest in early historiography is more long-standing. See his ‘Early Yoruba historiography’, History in Africa, III (1976), 69–89Google Scholar; and ‘Constructing’ a real national history’: a comparison of Edward Blyden and Samuel Johnson’, in Farias, P. F. de Moraes and Barber, K. (eds. ), Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in West Africa, (Birmingham, 1990).Google Scholar Also Doortmont, M. R., ‘The invention of the Yorubas: regional and pan-African nationalism versus ethnic provincialism’, in Farias and Barber (eds. ), Self-Assertion, 101–8Google Scholar; Peel, J. D. Y., ‘The Pastor and the Babalawo: interaction of religions in nineteenth-century Yorubaland’, Africa, lx (1990), 338–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ Law, R., ‘How truly traditional is our traditional history? The case of Samuel Johnson and the recording of Yoruba oral tradition’, in Falola (ed. ), Pioneer, 47–63Google Scholar; ‘The Heritage of Oduduwa: traditional history and political propaganda among the Yoruba’, J. Afr. Hist., xIv (1973), 207–22.Google Scholar

⁵ T. O. Ranger's rethinking of ‘invention’ as ‘imagining’ admirably addresses the intricacies of social thought in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Africa which I am attempting to capture in the realm of historiography: ‘The invention of tradition revisited: the case of colonial Africa’, in Ranger, T. O. and Vaughan, O. (eds. ), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa (London, 1993), esp. 78–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶ Sanders, E. R., ‘The Hamitic Hypothesis; its origin and function in time perspective’, J. Afr. Hist., X (1969), 521–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Drake, Saint-Clair, ‘Détruire le myth chamitique, devoir des hommes cultivés’, Présence Africaine, numéro special (Paris, 1959), 215–30.Google Scholar Many studies show the image of Africa changing with European needs, notably Hammond, D. and Jablow, A., The Myth of Africa, (2nd ed., New York, 1977)Google Scholar, and Curtin, P. D., The Image of Africa (Madison, 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the confusion concerning the curse, and a critique of Sanders for rooting its racism in the Babylonian Talmud, see Isaac, E., ‘Genesis, Judaism, and the “Sons of Ham”’, in Willis, J. R. (ed. ), Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, (2 vols. ) (London, 1985), i, 75–91.Google Scholar On the removal of Egypt (and especially a black Egypt) from classical history more generally, see Bernal, M., Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (2 vols. ) (London, 1987), i, 30, 240–6, and passim.Google Scholar

⁷ J. A. Atanda provides a useful sketch of various colonial-era European and Nigerian schools of thought about Nigerian origins, but without adequate attention to motivation, context, or transformations: ‘The historian and the problem of origins of peoples in Nigerian society’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, x (1980), 63–77.Google Scholar

⁸ Afigbo, A. E., ‘Traditions of Igbo origins: a comment’, History in Africa, x (1983), 2–3Google Scholar

⁹ Afigbo, , ‘Colonial historiography’, in Falola, (ed. ), African Historiography, 39–51.Google Scholar

¹⁰ By colonial intelligentsia I mean those members of the western-educated community who addressed the problems of Nigeria as a colonial entity. My observations about the composition and situation of the colonial intelligentsia throughout this article are based on Zachernuk, P. S., ‘Intellectual life in a colonial context: the Nigerian intelligentsia, 1860–1960’ (Ph. D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1991), esp. chs. 2 and 3.Google Scholar

¹¹ On this theme see Said, E. W., Orientalism (New York, 1978)Google Scholar, and Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Mudimbe, V. Y., The Invention of Africa (London, 1988)Google Scholar; Inden, R., Imagining India (Oxford, 1992).Google Scholar

¹² Peel, J. D. Y., ‘The Cultural Work of Yoruba Ethnogenesis’, in Falola, (ed. ), Pioneer, 65–75.Google Scholar

¹³ For examples of Blyden's influence on the Lagos intelligentsia, see the Lagos Weekly Record, 14 Apr. 1917; Lagos Daily News, 8 Feb. 1932.

¹⁴ I have drawn on a variety of sources for my treatment of changing European ideas, including Barker, A. J., The African Link (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Bolt, C., Victorian Attitudes to Race (Toronto, 1971)Google Scholar; Curtin, Image; Gossett, T. F., Race: The History of an Idea in America (Dallas, 1963)Google Scholar; Kuklick, H., The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology, 1885–1945 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar; Stepan, N., The Idea of Race in Science (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Stocking, G. W. Jr, Victorian Anthropology (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Grégoire, H. B., De la littérature des nègres (Paris, 1808; repr. 1991)Google Scholar; Prichard, J. C., Researches into the Physical History of Man (London, 1813; repr. Chicago, 1973).Google Scholar Ham's curse had long competed with environmental and other explanations for African physical differences; by 1800 it was losing ground: Jordan, W. D., White over Black (Chapel Hill NC, 1968), 17–20, 243, 525.Google Scholar During the scramble for Africa the Roman Catholic church re-thought the curse of Ham to clear the ground for evangelization of Africans: Mudimbe, , Invention, 46.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Armistead, W., A Tribute for the Negro (Manchester, 1848; repr. Miami, 1969), 120.Google Scholar Armistead's book was a popular restatement of this tradition set against a rising challenge. Volney asserted the black African roots of ancient Egyptian civilization: Volney, M., The Ruins; or a Survey of the Revolution of Empires (London, 1822), 29.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Bernal, , Black Athena, i, 1.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Wilberforce, W., A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (London, 1807), 74–5.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Wilson, J. L., Western Africa (New York, 1856; repr. Westport, 1970), 13–21Google Scholar; Koelle, S. W., Polyglotta Africana (London, 1854; repr. Graz, 1963), iiiGoogle Scholar; also Armistead, , Tribute, 123–43.Google Scholar T. E. Bowdich's 1821 Essay on the Superstitions, Customs, and Arts Common to the Ancient Egyptians, Abyssinians and Ashantees, which Curtin calls the ‘first full-length study of West African culture history’, traced the Asante aristocrats’ culture through Ethiopia to Egypt: Curtin, , Image, 257.Google Scholar

²⁰ Bowen, T. J., Adventures and Missionary Labours in Several Countries in the Interior of Africa from 1848 to 1856 (2nd ed., London, 1968), 310Google Scholar; Clarke, W. H., Travels and Explorations in Yorubaland, 1854–1858 (Ibadan, 1972), 276–7Google Scholar; Tucker, C., Abbeokuta; or, Sunrise Within the Tropics, (3rd ed., London, 1853), 192n.Google Scholar

²¹ See the authorities making these arguments assembled by Crummell, Alexander, ‘The Negro Race Not Under a Curse’ (1850), in Crummell, , The Future of Africa (New York, 1862; repr. 1969), 327–32.Google Scholar

²² Mills, Arthur, ‘Our colonial policy’, Contemporary Review, xi (1869), 230.Google Scholar See Stepan, , Idea of Race, 47–82Google Scholar; Stocking, G. W. Jr, ‘The persistence of polygenist thought in post-Darwinian Anthropology’, in his Race, Culture, and Evolution (New York, 1968), 42–68.Google Scholar

²³ Bovven, , Adventures, 14–18, 267–9, 276–80.Google Scholar

²⁴ Burton, R. F., Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains (2 vols. ) (London, 1863), i, 176–7, 206, 231Google Scholar; also his Wit and Wisdom from West Africa (London, 1865; repr. New York, 1969), xxii-xxiv.Google Scholar Even a missionary journal, while accepting that some African history was unknown rather than non-existent, insisted that foreigners had made all history in Africa, without much affecting ‘the negro race’: ‘The negro’, Church Missionary Intelligencer, n. s., Ix (1873), 226–8.Google Scholar

²⁵ Garnet, H. H., The Past and Present Condition, and the Destiny, of the Colored Race (Troy, New York, 1848; repr. Miami, 1969), 6, 9Google Scholar; Easton, H., A Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States (Boston, 1837; repr. Philadelphia, n. d. ), 9Google Scholar; Brown, W. W., The Black Man: his Antecedents, his Genius, and his Achievements (2nd ed., New York, 1863; repr. 1968), 31–50.Google Scholar

²⁶ Crummell, , ‘Negro race’, 325–54.Google Scholar

²⁷ I. Geiss reviews this writing in the context of the birth of Pan-African demands for equality in The Pan African Movement, trans. Keep, A. (New York, 1974), 96–131Google Scholar; see also Thorpe, E. E., Black Historians (New York, 1971).Google Scholar

²⁸ Easton, , Treatise, 5–20.Google Scholar Re-interpretations of the curse of Ham appear in African American journals from at least the 1820s: Moses, W. J., Alexander Crummell (Oxford, 1989), 81.Google Scholar

²⁹ Brown, W. W., The Rising Son; or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race (Boston, 1874; repr. Miami, 1969), 45–7.Google Scholar

³⁰ Garnet, , Past and Present, 12.Google Scholar

³¹ Crummell, , ‘The progress of civilization along the west coast of Africa’ (1861), in his Future of Africa, 106–7, 113.Google Scholar

³² Brown, , Rising Son, 36–48Google Scholar and passim. Brown asserts on the one hand that ‘Negroland’ proper ‘abounds in the arts of civilization’ (66), but on the other accepts that the stone ruins of Zimbabwe were built by foreigners, as ‘No native tribes dwelling in mud huts could ever have conceived its erection’ (77).

³³ Concerning the African-American mission to uplift Africa, see Blackett, R. J. M., ‘Return to the motherland: Robert Campbell, a Jamaican in early colonial Lagos’, Phylon, XL (1979), 375–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thorpe, E. E., The Mind of the Negro (Westport, 1970), 22–3; 07, Origins, 103–9.Google Scholar

³⁴ Law, ‘How truly traditional’; Law, ‘The “Hamitic Hypothesis” in indigenous West African historical thought’, Paper presented at the Centre for Non-Western Studies, Rijkuniversiteit Leiden, 12 November 1993; also Stevens, P. Jr, ‘The Kisra legend and the distortion of historical tradition’, J. Afr. Hist., xvi (1975), 185–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Afigbo notes Islam might also have provided an inspiration among the Igbo, although he is sceptical about this, and does not explore the possibility:‘Traditions’, 2. Ideas of oriental origins taken from Bello and found in many southern Nigerian oral traditions, whatever their derivation, also served to reinforce European researchers in their Hamitic Hypotheses, as for example Farrow, S. S., Faith, Fancies and Fetich, or Yoruba Paganism (London, 1926; repr. New York, 1969), 166–7.Google Scholar

³⁵ Equiano, O. (c. 1745–97), The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustava Vassa the African (2 vols. ) (London, 1789; repr. 1969), i, 30–44, esp. 37–42.Google Scholar

³⁶ Crowther, S. (c. 1809–1891), A Grammar and Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language (London, 1852), i–iiGoogle Scholar

³⁷ Although J. O. George (c. 1850–1915) suggests both that biblical elements in Yoruba myth came through Muslim influences, and that the Yoruba religion shares certain fundamental elements with Christianity, he does not invoke any clear Hamitic Hypothesis as a background to his essay on recent Yoruba history: Historical Notes on the Yoruba Country and its Tribes (Lagos, 1895), 3, 44–66Google Scholar; also, e. g., Rev. Reindorf, C. C. (1834–1917), The History of the Gold Coast and Asante [1889] (2nd ed., Accra, 1966), 17–23.Google Scholar

³⁸ Horton, J. A. B. (1835–1883), West African Countries and Peoples, British and Native (London, 1868; repr. Nendeln/Lichtenstein, 1970), 41, 183–9.Google Scholar

³⁹ Ibid, ii, 28, 4.

⁴⁰ Blyden, E. W. (1832–1912), ‘The negro in ancient history’, Methodist Quarterly Review, li (1869), 72, 87, 81.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Blyden, , Liberia: Past Present and Future (Washington DC, 1869), 21, 23–4.Google Scholar

⁴² Blyden, , Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (London, 1888).Google Scholar

⁴³ ‘The Reverend Esiere’ [Pseud, for E. E. Ukpabio] As Seen Through African Eyes (London, n. d. [1916 or 1920?]), esp. 49–64.Google Scholar As his career in the Presbyterian mission in south-eastern Nigeria ran from the 1850s to 1900 I assume he was born in the 1830s. For the claim of uncommon African resilience, see Crummell, , ‘Hope for Africa’ (1852), in Future of Africa, 283–323.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See, for example, Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture (2 vols. ) (London, 1871), i, 34Google Scholar; Spencer, H., The Principles of Sociology, (3 vols. ) (2nd ed., New York, 1897), iii, 164.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Kuklick, , Savage Within, 125–33Google Scholar; Kuper, Adam, Anthropology and Anthropologists (rev. ed., London, 1983), 4–5.Google Scholar For a defence of diffusion, see Smith, G. Elliot, Malinowski, B., Spinden, H. J. and Goldenweiser, A., Culture: The Diffusion Controversy (London, 1928)Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Kuklick, , Savage Within, 216–25.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Bois, W. E. B. Du, Black Folk (New York, 1939; repr. 1975), 221.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ SirJohnston, H. H., A History of the Colonisation of Africa by Alien Races [1899], 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1913), 151Google Scholar; Johnston, , ‘A survey of the ethnography of Africa’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, xliii (1913), 381–90, 414.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Johnston, H. H., The Opening up of Africa (London, 1911), 25.Google Scholar This book was reprinted in 1925, 1928 and 1937.

⁵⁰ Seligman, C. G., Races of Africa [1930], (3rd ed., London, 1957), 10.Google Scholar All four editions have this passage, e. g. 18 (1939), 8 (1966). See also, Dixon, R. B., The Racial History of Man (New York, 1923), 190–1.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Burns, A. C., History of Nigeria (London, 1929), 29, 33, 44, 53Google Scholar; in the 7th ed. (1969), 29. By the 6th edition (1963), however, Burns also incorporated observations about the antiquity of Nok culture and its potential as a foundation for an indigenous high civilization (25–6), and admitted Benin brasswork might predate Portuguese influence (67). See also the Egyptian roots for the Jukun in Meek, C. K., A Sudanese Kingdom (London, 1931), xi–xii.Google Scholar

⁵² Macmillan, A., Rhodesia and Eastern Africa (London, 1931), 25.Google ScholarMacmillan, had earlier compiled The Red Book of West Africa (London, 1922; repr. 1968).Google Scholar My thanks to John Ezard of The Guardian for making me aware of this poem, and helping specify the source.

⁵³ Ellis, A. B., The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London, 1894), 293–4.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Mann, K., Marrying Well (Cambridge, 1985), 20–8.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Blyden, , African Life and Customs (London, 1908; repr. 1969).Google Scholar For a more elaborate version of this thesis by a black West Indian, see Scholes, T. E. S., Glimpses of the Ages or the ‘Superior’ and‘Inferior’ races, so-called, Discussed in the Light of Science and History (2 vols. ) (London, 1905), i, 312–45.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Blyden seeks and finds much support in this ‘Nineteenth century negritude’ from a growing number of Europeans who sought in Africa human values they feared industrial Europe had lost, notably the ethnographer Mary Kingsley in whose memory the African Society was founded in 1901. He was also in the company of many African-American writers who sought in Africa a distinctive cultural legacy which they could contribute to American life: July, R. W., ‘Nineteenth century negritude: Edward Wilmot Blyden’, J. Afr. Hist., v (1964), 73–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On African-American uses of African difference, see Berghahn, M., Images of Africa in Black American Literature (London, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Magubane, B. M., The Ties that Bind: African-American Consciousness of Africa (Trenton NJ, 1987).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Blyden, , African Life, 10, 29–33, 39.Google Scholar Blydenesque assertions of a racially unique civilization that needed to be preserved and understood in its own terms echo especially in Lagos writers with connections to the black Atlantic world, such as Liberian J. P. Jackson (1847–1915). See, for example, editorials in his Lagos Weekly Record, 12 Nov. 1892, 21 May 1904.

⁵⁸ See Appiah's, K. A. analysis of a similar 1897 argument by Bois, W. E. B. Du as ‘the antithesis of a classic dialectic in the reaction to prejudice’: In My Father's House (Oxford, 1992), 30–4.Google Scholar For more extended treatment of the dilemma constructed by Blyden's racial history, see Zachernuk, , ‘The Lagos intelligentsia and the idea of progress, ca. 1860–1960’, in Falola, (ed. ), Yoruba Historiography, 152–4.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Johnson, S., The History of the Yorubas, ed. by Johnson, O. (London, 1921; repr. 1966), 4–15, 30, 79, no, 154.Google Scholar Samuel Johnson first drafted this book in 1897. Also Johnson, O., Lagos Past [1901]. (repr. Ibadan, 1985), 1–2.Google Scholar For more detailed treatments of Johnson's Hamitic Hypothesis, see Zachernuk, ‘Johnson and the Victorian image of the Yoruba’; also J. A. Atanda, ‘Samuel Johnson and the origins of the Yoruba people’; Law, ‘How truly traditional’, all in Falola (ed. ), Pioneer. There were other sketches of oriental origins for the Yoruba at this time, for example in Sierra Leone by Sibthorpe, A. B. C., Bible Review of Reviews: The Discovery of the Lost Ten Tribes, Yorubas or Akus (1909)Google Scholar, discussed in Fyfe, C., ‘A. B. C. Sibthorpe: a tribute’, History in Africa, xix (1992), 347.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Gibson, A. E. M., ‘Slavery in western Africa,’ Journal of the African Society, III (1903), esp. 43–7.Google Scholar

⁶¹ See, for example, Boas, Franz, ‘Fallacies of racial inferiority’, Current History, xxv (1927), 676–82Google Scholar; ‘What is a race?’, The Nation (1925)Google Scholar, reprinted in Boas, , Race and Democratic Society (New York, 1946), 27.Google Scholar

⁶² Kuklick also notes systematic differences between anthropology written in Britain and in the colonial field: Savage Within, 182–241.

⁶³ Temple, C. L., Native Races and their Rulers (Cape Town, 1918), 2–9.Google Scholar Temple's citation of O. Johnson alone regarding the oriental roots of the Yoruba illustrates the mutual reinforcement of Nigerian and imperial historiography.

⁶⁴ Lugard, F., The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (London, 1922; repr. 1965), 64–93;Google ScholarWestermann, D., The African To-Day and To-morrow (London, 1934).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ This paternalist empathy with African societies has strong roots in the writing of Mary Kingsley. See her Travels in West Africa, (2nd ed., London, 1900)Google Scholar and West African Studies, 2nd ed. (London, 1901).Google Scholar It was carried on after her by R. E. Dennett, E. D. Morel and the African Society. See Dennett, R. E., Nigerian Studies (London, 1910)Google Scholar, and At Back of the Black Man's Mind (London, 1906).Google Scholar It was also followed, of course, by the relativist spirit of functionalist anthropology, which like Kingsley was rather unconcerned with the question of ultimate origins and very much concerned with contemporary cultural complexities.

⁶⁶ For some of the special recognition given the Yoruba in the mid-nineteenth century, see Zachernuk, , ‘Johnson’, 38–9.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Smith, G. Elliot, The Ancient Egyptians and the Origins of Civilization (rev. ed., London, 1923), 77–82Google Scholar; Rawlinson, G., A History of Ancient Egypt (2 vols. ) (New York, 1880), i, 48.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Shaw, F. L., A Tropical Dependency (London, 1905), 17–18Google Scholar; Talbot, D. Amaury, Woman's Mysteries of a Primitive People (London, 1915), 4–5.Google Scholar For the marginal status of these ideas, see Wissler, C., Man and Culture (New York, 1923), 36.Google Scholar The debate is apparent in the responses appended to Johnston's, ‘Survey’, 414–19.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Talbot, P. Amaury, ‘Some foreign influences on Nigeria’, Journal of the African Society, xxIv (1925), 178–201Google Scholar; also The Peoples of Southern Nigeria (5 vols. ) (London, 1926), i, 7–30.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Roth, H. Ling, Great Benin: Its Customs, Art and Horrors (London, 1903; repr. 1968), 233–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷¹ Williams, J. J., Hebrewisms of West Africa (New York, 1930; repr. 1967), 1–23, 319–56Google Scholar; Basden, G. T., ‘Notes on the Igbo country’, The Geographical Journal, xxxix (1912), 246–7Google Scholar; Basden, , Niger Ibos (New York, 1938; repr. 1966), 411–23, esp. 414–15Google Scholar; Farrow, , Faith, Fancies and Fetich, 166–8.Google Scholar See also Leonard, A. G., The Lower Niger and its Tribes (London, 1906), i, 43–5.Google Scholar

⁷² Frobenius, L., The Voice of Africa, trans. Blind, R. (2 vols. ) (London, 1913), i, 8.Google Scholar

⁷³ Ibid, ii, 672–6. The relative complexity of Frobenius's history is represented by a map (ii, 496). P. A. Talbot also deemed the primitive West African indigenes deeply religious, ‘more clearly alive to spiritual conditions and truths than other, more materialistic, races’: ‘Foreign influences’, 184; also Talbot, P. A., Mysteries, 5.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Frobenius, , Voice, i, 65, 320, also 148–9.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Ibid, i, 319–49. Frobenius is not explicit, but apparently white Atlantic colonists ruled at IIe-Ife. He suggests the early Yoruba were not ‘negro’ (95), hints at racial parallels between the ancient and modern colonial missions (43), and clearly believes in a hierarchy of races (145)

⁷⁶ Ibid, i, 146, 148.

⁷⁷ Ibid, i, 98, 41, 107, also 143.

⁷⁸ For example, Bois, W. E. B. Du, The Negro (New York, 1915; repr. Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar and Black Folk, 39–53 and passim; Woodson, C. G., African Background Outlined (Washington DC, 1936), 181–3Google Scholar; Ferris, W. H., The African Abroad (2 vols) (New Haven CT, 1913; repr. New York, 1968), ii, 565–605Google Scholar; Ellis, G. W., Negro Culture in West Africa (New York, 1914; repr. 1970), 17Google Scholar; Washington, B. T., The Story of the Negro (2 vols) (1909; repr. Gloucester MA, 1969), i, 36–81Google Scholar; Boas, F., ‘What the Negro has done in America,’ [1904], reprinted in his Race, 54–60.Google Scholar G. Shepperson's introduction to The Negro provides a good introduction to this literature.

⁷⁹ In a somewhat exceptional essay, William Leo Hansberry selected evidence from Frobenius and Ling Roth to reject foreign roots for Ife and Benin, art: ‘The Material Culture of Ancient Nigeria’, Journal of Negro History, vi (1921), esp. 290–5.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Okonkwo, R. L., ‘The Garvey movement in Nigeria’, Calabar Historical Journal, 11 (1978), 98–113.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Lucas, J. O. (b. 1897), The Religion of the Yorubas (Lagos, 1948), 3–7, 365.Google Scholar This was accepted in 1942 at the University of Durham as a Doctor of Divinity thesis.

⁸² Ibid. 14–18, 352–4. Herbert Macaulay cited African-American authors on the same point, for example in Henry Rawlinson Carr [1924], (2nd ed., ed. by Ojugbele, A., Ebute Metta, 1983), 23.Google Scholar

⁸³ Lucas, , Yorubas, 7–11, 354–8Google Scholar; Religions in West Africa and Ancient Egypt (Lagos, 1970), 10–11.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Lucas cites Burns, Ellis, Westermann and Dennett: Yorubas, 7–11. See also Ojocole, J. (1903–1938), ‘A glimpse of Yoruba civilization’, WASU, Nos. 3&4 (1927), 16–19.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Lucas, , Yorubas, 348.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ L. Solanke (1884–1958) was a leading Yoruba and West African intellectual heading the West African Students’ Union in London. Solanke, , United West Africa (or Africa) at the Bar of the Family of Nations (London, 1927; repr., 1969), 7–14Google Scholar; also his ‘Unity and co-operation among West African ancients as disclosed by history and tradition’, WASU, No. 5 (1927), 18–21.Google ScholarSolanke, reviews Williams's Hebrewisms in WASU, 11 (1933), 40–1.Google Scholar Solanke's references include Samuel Johnson as well as such standard colonial works as P. A. Talbot, Dennett and Ellis.

⁸⁷ Solanke, , United, 13, 21.Google Scholar He cites (7) an African-American reiteration of this argument based on Scripture: Webb, J. M., The Black Man (Seattle, 1910).Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Solanke, , United, 8, 10.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Ibid. 7; also his Yoruba Problems and How to Solve Them (Ibadan, 1931), 11.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Solanke, , United, 14, 21.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Solanke, , Lectures Delivered at the Abeokuta Centenary Celebrations (Lagos, 1931), 2–5Google Scholar; Solanke, , A Special Lecture - addressed to Mr. A. K. Ajisafe (Lagos, 1931), 75–6.Google Scholar

⁹² Trevor-Roper, H., ‘The rise of Christian Europe’, Listener, lxx (1963), 871.Google Scholar

⁹³ The Ghanaian case would seem to have many parallels which would reward a companion study to the southern Nigerian case. Peter Shinnie recalls that in 1958 many western-educated Ghanaians accepted Hamitic Hypotheses such as Williams's Hebrewisms, and notes that while historical scholars have since abandoned such ideas they persist in some circles. He also notes a varied tradition of speculation about oriental connections, from Bowdich's 1821 Essay, through Williams's Hebrewisms, Danquah's, J. B.The Akan Doctrine of God (1944; repr. London, 1968)Google Scholar, and the books of Meyerowitz, E. L. R., such as The Divine Kingship in Ghana and Ancient Egypt (London, 1960).Google Scholar Letter, Peter Shinnie to the author, 24 Feb. 1994.

⁹⁴ Epelle, S. (6. c. 1929), The Promise of Nigeria (London, 1960), 15.Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Arikpo, O. (b. 1916), Who are the Nigerians? (Lagos, n. d. [1957?]), 32Google Scholar; also Mbadiwe, K. O., ‘Nigeria in the new commonwealth’ (London, 1956), 3Google Scholar, in Fabian Colonial Papers, Rhodes House, Oxford, Box 83/2.

⁹⁶ Biobaku, S. O. (b. 1918), The Origin of the Yoruba (Lagos, 1955; repr. 1971), 22.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ Biobaku claimed that his profession owned the tools to rise above the myth and distortion permeating existing oral and written Yoruba historiography. See his ‘The problem of traditional history with special reference to Yoruba traditions’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, I (1956), 43–7.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Biobaku, , Origin, 6, 20.Google Scholar Biobaku also notes (13) physical resemblances between the Yoruba and north-east Africans to support his theory. We should note that in the context of Yoruba rather than West African history, Solanke also suggested that his ancient ‘Ife culture’ was imported rather than homegrown: Lectures Delivered, 2–3.

⁹⁹ The lectures were broadcast on radio in the 1950s, reproduced for visitors attending the Independence celebrations in 1960, and reprinted by popular demand in 1971: Biobaku, , Origin, 3–4.Google Scholar For similar claims about the special roots of the ‘Yoruba race’ and the common background of all Nigerians, cf. Ojo, S., The Origin of the Yorubas, Part I (3rd ed., Ibadan, 1953), 7–12.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁰ Ughulu, E. O. (b. 1906), The Short History of (Esan) Ishan-Benin (Lagos, 1950), 2–11.Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ Umo, R. Kano, History of Aro Settlements (Yaba, n. d. [1950?]), 1–2Google Scholar; also Oji, B. A. (b. 1907), Social and Political History of Nigeria for Schools and Colleges (Aba, 1951), 28–31.Google Scholar

¹⁰² Ike, A. (b. 1918), The Origin of the Ibos, (2nd ed., Aba, n. d. [1951]), 8.Google Scholar See also Ijeomanta's, E. K. account discussed in Afigbo, ‘Traditions’, 2.Google Scholar

¹⁰³ Numa, F. Y. (b. 1916), The Pride of Urhobo Nation (Lagos, 1950), 6–13.Google ScholarEgharevba, J. U. (b. 1897) traced Benin roots through Ife to Egypt: A Short History of Benin (2nd ed., rev. and en I., Benin, 1953), 1.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁴ Aye, E. U., Old Calabar Through the Centuries (Calabar, 1967), 30.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁵ Kenyo, E. A. (b. 1902), Origin of the Progenitor of the Yoruba Race (Lagos, 1950), 9, 12–14.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁶ Fajemisin, R. A. (b. 1897), Primacy in Post-Oduduwa Yorubaland (IIesa, 1984), 1–15.Google Scholar Fajemisin's writing reflects his membership in Lucas's generation.

¹⁰⁷ IIuri (b. 1917) is discussed in Falola, , ‘Alternative History’, 6Google Scholar; and Farias, P. F. de Moraes, ‘“Yoruba origins” revisited by Muslims’, in Farias and Barber (eds. ), SelfAssertion, 134–43.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁸ Fagg, B. E. B., ‘The Nok culture in prehistory’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, I (1959), 293.Google Scholar Fagg was Director of the Nigerian Department of Antiquities.

¹⁰⁹ Armstrong, R. G., ‘The development of kingdoms in negro Africa’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, 11 (1960), 27–39Google Scholar; Greenberg, J. H., Studies in African Linguistic Classification (Branford CT, 1955)Google Scholar; Drake, ‘Detruire le myth’.

¹¹⁰ Wescott, R. W., ‘Ancient Egypt and modern Africa’, J. Afr. Hist., 11 (1961), 311–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This largely reiterates his ‘Did the Yoruba come from Egypt?’, Odu, Iv (1957), 10–15.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ Losi, J. B., for example, traces the Egba only to Oduduwa, identified as a native of ‘the Niger territory’: History of Abeokuta (Lagos, 1924), 1.Google Scholar

¹¹² Ademakinwa, J. A. (b. 1897), I fe, Cradle of the Yoruba (2 vols. ) (Lagos, n. d. [1965? ]), i, 3Google Scholar and passim. Biobaku wrote the foreword as the Director of the Yoruba Research Scheme.

¹¹³ Dosumu, G. A. (b. 1899), ‘Oduduiva’ The Origin of Mankind (Ibadan, 1951);Google Scholar ‘Queen of Sheba’ ‘Balkis’ ‘Eteye’ ‘Makeda’ ‘Sungbo’ Wife of King Solomon; a native of Oke Eri, Ijebu Province, Western Nigeria, (W. A. ) (n. p., [1955]).

¹¹⁴ For example, Idigo, M. C. M., A Short History of Aguleri (Yaba, 1955), 5–6Google Scholar; Ekeghe, O. O., A Short History of Abiriba (n. p., 1955), 7–16.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Okafor, A., ‘West African Background’, in Davidson, B. and Ademola, A. (eds. ) The New West Africa (London, 1953), 24–5Google Scholar; also Adeniyi, A. (b. 1926), My Duties Toward Nigeria (Sapele, 1963), 7–12.Google Scholar

¹¹⁶ See Omer-Cooper, J. D., ‘The question of unity in African history’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, III (1964), 103–12Google Scholar; Horton, R., ‘Ancient Ife: A reassessment’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigeria, ix (1979), 69–149Google Scholar; Afigbo, , Ropes of Sand, 1–30Google Scholar; Obayemi, A., ‘The Yoruba and Edo-speaking peoples and their neighbours before 1600’, in Ajayi, J. F. Ade and Crowder, M. (eds. ), History of West Africa (2 vols. ) (3rd ed., New York, 1985), i, 255–322.Google Scholar For rejections of Johnson's theory in particular, see Atanda, ‘Johnson’, and B. Agbaje Williams, ‘Samuel Johnson, Yoruba origins, and archaeology’, both in Falola (ed. ), Pioneer.

¹¹⁷ Aderigbe, A. B., ‘Biobaku: the scholar and his works’, in Olusanya, G. O. (ed. ), Studies in Yoruba History and Culture (Ibadan, 1983), 15Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Afigbo, ‘Traditions’.

¹¹⁹ Afolayan, F., ‘Reconstructing the past to reconstruct the present: the nineteenth century wars and Yoruba history’, Passages, vi (1993), 12–13.Google Scholar