History

The kinds of evidence historians use to reconstruct the Yoruba past, what each kind can and cannot prove, and how one 1921 book shaped everything written since.

The Odùduwà traditions and the versions that compete with them, the argument over migration versus indigenous development, and what excavation at Ilé-Ifẹ̀ has actually dated.

Ilé-Ifẹ̀ between roughly the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, its sculpture in copper alloy and terracotta, the industries that paid for it, and its relationships with Benin, Ọ̀wọ̀ and the Niger.

How Ọ̀yọ́ rose to dominate the western Yoruba region and beyond, the constitutional machinery that constrained its king, the cavalry that made it work, and why both eventually failed.

Ijẹ̀bú, Ẹ̀gbá, Èkìtì, Ìjẹ̀ṣà, Ondó, Ọ̀wọ̀, Kétu, Sábẹ̀, Ìbàdàn, Abẹ́òkúta and Lagos, each with its own institutions rather than as branches of Ọ̀yọ́.

Farming, iron, cloth and glass; the market system and the women who ran it; cowrie money; and the routes that tied Yorubaland to the Sahara and the Atlantic.

How the collapse of Ọ̀yọ́ and the wars that followed fed the last decades of the Atlantic trade, why so many Yoruba ended up in Cuba and Brazil, and what returned.

The fall of Ọ̀yọ́, the Ilọrin and Sokoto dimension, the Ọ̀wu war, the rise of Ìbàdàn, the Sixteen Years War at Kiriji, and the political map they left behind.

The CMS mission and Crowther, how and why Yoruba people converted to two world religions, the British annexation, indirect rule and what it did to kingship, and the making of "Yoruba" as one identity.

Cultural nationalism and the African church movement, the Abẹ́òkúta women's revolt, Awólọ́wọ̀ and the Western Region, the Yoruba in the Nigerian federation, and the present revival of interest in traditional knowledge.

A dated timeline of Yoruba history in which every entry is marked for how well the date is actually established, since much early dating is contested.