Ṣàwárí

The courtyard compound and its rain-catching impluvium, the palace as the same building at maximum scale, the town laid out around palace and market, the Afro-Brazilian houses of Lagos, and how little of it is still standing.

The market as an economic, social and political institution, the four-day cycle, women's control of trade and what it bought them, guilds, esusu credit, family land, apprenticeship and the cocoa century.

An examination of the Yoruba market as a nexus of civic governance, trade regulation, female political authority, and sacred civic peace.

How market authority was structured, how trade wealth converted into political leverage and where that conversion was blocked, the credit system that financed women's trade, and the twentieth-century associations that turned market organisation into a political instrument.

Sourced Yorùbá proverbs about the ọjà, the market, as an economic institution and a public stage, and about the traders, buyers and sellers who work it.

The spatial organization, periodic cycles, political hierarchies, and regulatory institutions of Yoruba marketplaces.