The Nineteenth Century Wars

Between roughly 1817 and 1893 the Yoruba-speaking region fought a series of overlapping wars that destroyed its largest state, emptied and refounded its towns, moved its population centre of gravity a hundred kilometres south, produced captives in numbers large enough to reshape the Atlantic diaspora, and ended with the region under British authority. This is the period that made the modern Yoruba map. Ìbàdàn, Abẹ́òkúta and modern Ọ̀yọ́ are all products of it. So, in a real sense, is the idea of a single Yoruba people.

The wars are usually presented as a chaotic sequence of names. They are more legible as three phases with different logics. The first, from about 1817 to 1836, is the disintegration of the Ọ̀yọ́ empire under simultaneous pressure from an internal military rebellion and an external jihadist state. The second, from about 1830 to 1877, is the struggle among the successor states for the position Ọ̀yọ́ had vacated, won provisionally by Ìbàdàn. The third, from 1877 to 1893, is the coalition war against Ìbàdàn's dominance, fought to exhaustion and settled by British intervention.

Phase one: the fall of Ọ̀yọ́, 1817 to about 1836

Ọ̀yọ́'s collapse had internal causes that predate the jihad. The Bàṣọ̀run Gaha's capture of the constitutional check in the 1750s and 1760s, when four Aláàfin were forced to suicide in the space of months, had destroyed confidence in the system, and though Aláàfin Abíọ́dún executed Gaha in 1774 and restored order, the reign after his is the point where the empire visibly weakens 1.

The proximate trigger was Àfọ̀njá. As Aàrẹ Ọ̀nà Kakanfò, holding the office deliberately kept out of the capital so that no general could seize the palace, Àfọ̀njá commanded at Ilọrin and rebelled against the Aláàfin from 1817 2. To sustain the rebellion he recruited Muslim fighters, and here the Sokoto jihad enters.

The Islamic dimension needs to be stated carefully, because it is routinely misrepresented in both directions. Usman dan Fodio's jihad, launched in Hausaland in 1804, had established the Sokoto Caliphate to the north. Ilọrin already had a Muslim community. Sàlih Janta, known as Shehu Àlímì for his learning, had come to Ilọrin from the Ọ̀yọ́ area, and tradition holds that he moved because of pressure there, bringing Yoruba Muslims with him 3. Àfọ̀njá allied with Àlímì and with Muslim Yoruba, Hausa and Fulani fighters, including enslaved men who joined on the promise of freedom.

What follows is not a foreign conquest of Yorubaland by outsiders. It is a Yoruba general's rebellion that used Muslim military manpower and then lost control of it. Àfọ̀njá was killed by his own allies. By 1829 Àlímì's son Abd al-Salam was emir of Ilọrin, and Ilọrin was aligned with the Sokoto Caliphate 3. Ilọrin thereby became a Yoruba-majority emirate: its population was and remains largely Yoruba-speaking, its rulers were of Fulani descent, and its political affiliation was northern. That combination is the origin of Ilọrin's ambiguous position in Nigerian politics to this day.

Ọ̀yọ́ was then squeezed. Ilọrin hostile to the north, Dahomey freed from tribute and hostile to the south, and the horse supply that Ọ̀yọ́'s military system depended on running through territory it no longer controlled 3. Dahomey defeated Ọ̀yọ́ decisively in 1823 1. Around 1835, dates in the literature ranging from 1833 to 1836, Ilọrin forces destroyed Ọ̀yọ́-Ile, and the surviving population moved south to found Àgò d'Ọ̀yọ́, the present town of Ọ̀yọ́ 1.

Two points about Islam that the record supports. First, Islam was present in Yorubaland well before the jihad, spread by traders along the northern routes, and Yoruba Muslims, the ìmàle, were a recognised community in Ọ̀yọ́ towns. The jihad did not introduce Islam to the Yoruba; it politicised an existing presence. Second, the wars were overwhelmingly fought between Yoruba polities over political and commercial dominance, not as religious conflicts. Ilọrin fought Ìbàdàn for decades, but Ìbàdàn also fought Ìjàyè, Ijẹ̀bú, Ẹ̀gbá, Ìjẹ̀ṣà and Èkìtì, none of which had a religious dimension. Presenting the century as a Muslim assault on a Yoruba homeland is a later reading, and it is not supported by the pattern of alliances, which cut across religion repeatedly.

The Ọ̀wu war and the founding of the new cities

The Ọ̀wu war ran from about 1817 to 1822 and is the hinge event for the southern half of Yorubaland. Tension had built between Ọ̀wu and Ifẹ̀ over the Àpòmù market town, which Ọ̀wu took control of around 1810, and between Ọ̀wu and Ijẹ̀bú over a dispute at the same market with Ijẹ̀bú traders around 1821 4. Ifẹ̀ and Ijẹ̀bú allied against Ọ̀wu, joined by Ọ̀yọ́ soldiers displaced by the collapse in the north 4.

The siege lasted five years and Ọ̀wu fell in 1822 4. It is described as the first major Yoruba conflict whose outcome was determined by European firearms, which the Ijẹ̀bú had access to through their coastal position 4. After the fall, Ijẹ̀bú merchants took thousands of survivors and sold them through Lagos 4. Ọ̀wu was never rebuilt on its site.

The displacement cascade is what matters. Ọ̀wu survivors moved southwest toward Ìbàdàn from about 1826, then crossed the Ògùn river and reached Òkè Àtà, and around 1834 Ṣódẹkẹ́ persuaded them to settle at Abẹ́òkúta 4. Ẹ̀gbá towns in the path of the fighting were abandoned and their people went to the same place. Abẹ́òkúta was founded around 1830 by Ṣódẹkẹ́ at a defensible rock site, and it grew by absorbing these groups while keeping them institutionally distinct, with separate rulers for each Ẹ̀gbá section and one for the Ọ̀wu 5.

Ìbàdàn was founded in the 1830s on an earlier Ẹ̀gbá site by a mixed war force of Ọ̀yọ́, Ifẹ̀, Ijẹ̀bú and Ẹ̀gbá fighters 5. It is a war camp that became a city of around 100,000 in the nineteenth century, with no ọba, no hereditary ruling house, and a promotion ladder of non-hereditary war-chief titles won through military success and the size of a man's armed following 5.

Phase two: Ìbàdàn's ascendancy, about 1840 to 1877

Ìbàdàn stopped the southward expansion of Ilọrin, most decisively at Ọ̀ṣogbo around 1840, and this victory is the foundation of its prestige: it presented itself thereafter as the shield of Yorubaland. Whether Ilọrin intended a general conquest of the south or a limited advance is debated, but the strategic effect was real. Ilọrin's cavalry was checked at the forest margin, and the northern frontier stabilised roughly where it remains.

Ìbàdàn then expanded at the expense of other Yoruba states. It destroyed Ìjàyè in 1862, ending the rivalry with Kúrunmí; it sacked Ifẹ̀ in 1859 and Ilésà in 1870 5. Across the conquered east it installed ajẹ̀lẹ̀, resident agents, and this is the specific grievance that produced the final war. The eastern account of the ajẹ̀lẹ̀ is that they seized farmland and crops, destroyed produce, took wives by force, and levied continuous exactions, leaving the Èkìtì and Ìjẹ̀ṣà regions impoverished 6.

Phase three: the Sixteen Years War, 1877 to 1893

The Kiriji war, also called the Èkìtìparapọ̀ war, is named for the sound of gunfire at the main camp. It ran from 1877 to 1893, sixteen years, and is among the longest continuous wars fought anywhere in that century 6.

The war began on 30 July 1877 when the Aàrẹ Ọ̀nà Kakanfò Látòsisà, also called Latoosa, of Ìbàdàn attacked the Ẹ̀gbá 6. What made it different from previous conflicts was the response: the Èkìtì kingdoms, which had never combined politically, formed the Èkìtìparapọ̀, the Èkìtì joined together, in alliance with Ìjẹ̀ṣà. Ìbàdàn found itself fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously, with Ilọrin at Ọ̀fà to the north, the Èkìtìparapọ̀ and later Ifẹ̀ to the east, and the Ẹ̀gbá and Ijẹ̀bú to the west 7.

In August 1878 the confederate forces attacked Ìgbájọ, leading to the Battle of Ìkìrun, known as the Jalumi war, in which Ìbàdàn repelled the alliance 6. Ìbàdàn's Balógun Ajayi Ogboriefon died on 7 April 1879, after which Ògèdèngbé of Ilésà joined the confederates at Ìmẹ̀sí-Ilé and took command as the alliance's commander-in-chief, alongside Fabunmi of Òkè-Mèsí and Ogunmodede 6.

The military technology matters. The Lagos-based Èkìtìparapọ̀ Society, an association of Ìjẹ̀ṣà and Èkìtì people resident in Lagos, bought and shipped modern breech-loading rifles to the eastern camp, including Snider, Martini-Henry and Winchester weapons, introducing a level of firepower not previously seen in Yoruba warfare 6. Ìbàdàn could not obtain equivalent weapons despite Látòsisà's appeals to Lagos 6. This is a striking early instance of a diaspora community financing a homeland war, and it is the reason the eastern alliance could hold against Ìbàdàn's larger forces. The two camps faced each other in entrenched positions at Kiriji for years, which is closer to trench warfare than to the campaigns of earlier decades.

Látòsisà died in August 1885 and morale on both sides turned toward peace 6. A treaty was signed at Ìmẹ̀sí-Ilé on 23 September 1886, brokered in part by British and CMS intermediaries including Samuel Johnson himself, who was an active participant in these negotiations rather than only their historian 6. The camps did not disperse. The final dispersal came on 14 March 1893 under Captain Bower, after Governor Gilbert Carter's tour of Yorubaland making treaties with Ọ̀yọ́ and the Ẹ̀gbá and persuading the Ìbàdàn and Èkìtìparapọ̀ forces to disband 6.

What the wars did

The political map. Ọ̀yọ́ ceased to be a great power and became one town among several. Ìbàdàn became the largest Yoruba city and the dominant interior force, but its dominance was broken and it entered the colonial period as a British-supervised power rather than an independent one. Abẹ́òkúta became a substantial state with the region's most modernised administration. Ilọrin was permanently detached into the northern political sphere. Èkìtì and Ìjẹ̀ṣà secured their independence from Ìbàdàn and immediately lost it to Britain. Ijẹ̀bú, defeated separately in 1892, was the first interior state annexed.

The demographic map. Population moved decisively south and east out of the savanna into the forest. The old northern towns were abandoned. The new cities of the 1830s became the largest settlements in the region, which they remain.

The Atlantic connection. The wars supplied captives at exactly the point when Cuba and Brazil were the last large buyers, which is the mechanism behind the Yoruba presence in those countries and the survival of òrìṣà religion there.

British entry. Every phase of British advance follows a war. Lagos was taken in 1851 and ceded in 1861 out of a succession dispute entangled with the slave trade. Ijẹ̀bú was invaded in 1892 over its trade monopoly. Carter's 1893 treaties, presented as peacemaking, established British protection over the interior. The wars exhausted the states that might otherwise have resisted, and the peace was made by the power that then took the region.

Yoruba identity. The Èkìtìparapọ̀ is the clearest case of a wider identity being created by shared opposition. Sixteen kingdoms that had never combined did so under pressure. In the same decades the CMS mission and the Sàró were producing Yoruba-language print, a Yoruba Bible and Yoruba newspapers, giving the whole region a common written standard based largely on Ọ̀yọ́ speech. The wars and the mission press together are what turned a set of related polities into a people with a name for itself.

A note on the sources

Samuel Johnson is the principal source for this century and he was inside it. He was a CMS agent at Ọ̀yọ́ from 1881, he carried messages between the war camps, and he participated in the negotiations that produced the 1886 treaty 8. That makes his account exceptionally well-informed and also partisan in specific ways: he was working for peace, working from Ọ̀yọ́, and writing for a mission audience. Where he narrates events he took part in, he is a participant. Modern scholarship, including Robin Law's work on Ọ̀yọ́ and the extensive literature on Ìbàdàn, tests him against CMS correspondence, Lagos colonial records and other traditions. The broad sequence is secure; specific dates before 1860 are often approximate and vary by a year or two between sources.