Political Organization in Nigeria since the Late Stone Age: A History of the Igbo People by John N. Oriji (review)

In Political Organization in Nigeria since the Late Stone Age: A History of the Igbo People, John Oriji forcefully demonstrates that Igbo political systems have never been static—they have gone through processes of aggregation and fragmentation since the Late Stone Age (LSA). He argues that the Igbo began to live in mini-states with the genesis of agriculture, and some Igbo communities of the Lower Niger that engaged in international trade such as Igbo Ukwu (ninth and tenth centuries c.e.), and later, Onitsha, Aboh, Oguta, and Ossomari (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries c.e.), further evolved into mega-states. However, the Aro (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries c.e.) did not achieve a mega-state structure because their trading network lacked central organs of law making and command, the network's components maintained a high degree of local autonomy, and the network proliferated political fragmentation that pitted traditional authority holders against nascent ogaranya (wealthy persons). The fast pace of social change occasioned by legitimate commerce and the New Imperialism in the nineteenth century transformed the structure of wealth and power in Igboland, intensified social stratification, and generated ogaranya who undermined traditional authority holders. This fragmentation of political authority began in the 1890s and continued into the 1970s, and literate elites emerged as de facto rulers of Igboland.

Reconciling oral traditions and micro-historical studies, with archaeological and linguistic evidence, Oriji argues in chapter 1 that the diverse cultures, economies, and politico–religious organizations of Igbo people are a product of the intersection of internal factors such as technological innovation, ecological changes, and demographic movements, and external factors like the changing Atlantic economies of the slave trade, legitimate commerce, and colonialism. He uses this diachronic approach to emphasize the internal dynamism, structural complexity, and hierarchical stratification of Igbo political systems in order to critique the synchronic approach, which privileges the ethnographic present, by presuming that Igbo egalitarianism meant that they lacked chiefs/kings and centralized state structures. In chapter 2, Oriji fits Igbo political systems within a state formation model, arguing that Igbo societies attained different political systems and technocultural complexity as they shifted from foraging to agriculture during the LSA. The neolithic revolution and iron technology precipitated ecological degradation and migrations to the frontiers, and introduced economic and politico–religious systems centered on gods and sacred authority holders, which proliferated and enabled the emergence of a common Igbo cosmology. Although priestly chiefs ruled mini-states (villages and village-groups), their authority was checked by elaborate taboos, titleholders, and gender as well as the lineage-based distribution of political office. These various Igbo political innovations culminated in the Igbo-Ukwu mega-state.

Historicizing the diverse traditions of the origin of the peoples of southern Nigeria, Oriji argues in chapter 3 that intergroup relations between the Igbo and their Efik-Ibibio, Ijo, Bonny, Edo, and Igala neighbors resulted in the development of common frontier cultures, similar cosmologies, and parallel sociopolitical systems. In the fifteenth century, the strategic location of some of these mini-states and their ability to participate in international trade enabled them to become mega-states. In chapter 4, he contends that during the early Atlantic period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the encounter between the Igbo and the mega-states of Benin and Igala transformed Igbo sociopolitical systems. Whereas Benin's expansionism undermined the supremacy of the Igbo-Ukwu, forced emigrations into western Igboland, displaced indigenous Igbo communities, overthrew existing political authorities, and introduced new political institutions such as the Omu, the rise of the Igala mega-state and its Niger Igbo counterparts shifted the trans-Atlantic slave trade from the Bight of Benin to the Bight of Biafra, which led Igala to increasingly raid slaves from Igboland, and in turn resulted in Igala and Ijo perception of "Igbo" as synonymous with slavery.

The rise of the Aro trade network correlated with...