Ṣàwárí

How nineteenth-century Yoruba warfare remade society, through refugee city-founding, the economics of captive and pawn labour, the Ajele resident-administrator system, and new patterns of stratification and gender.

Why the nineteenth-century Yoruba wars read differently depending on whether the source is oral tradition, academic history, or a colonial missionary account, illustrated with the Battle of Òsogbo's tactics and the record's treatment of Òwú's origins.

How Yorùbá warfare was bound up with the worship of Ògún, pre-campaign Ifá divination, herbal and spiritual war medicine, and iron oaths sealing military alliances, and how tradition, academic history and colonial missionary sources read that ritual dimension three different ways.

A comparative look at the nineteenth-century Yoruba war leaders, what set the Ọ̀yọ́-derived Kakanfò autocrats apart from Ìbàdàn's achieved-title men, and the frontline commanders below the top rank who do not have their own dedicated file.