Speaker: Akin Ogundiran
Time: 12:00 pm- 1:00 pm
Venue: 206 Ingraham Hall
Talk Description
The Little Ice Age significantly contributed to the political and ecological instability that rocked West Africa between 1380 and 1850. Within the first half-century of the crisis, several polities that anchored the region’s political landscape in the 9th-14th century collapsed, atrophied, or witnessed dynastic change. The Oyo Empire emerged in the late 16th century as part of the recovery from the first phase of the crisis. Assembling fragmentary evidence from documentary sources, oral texts, ritual archives, and archaeological findings, this presentation examines the multiethnic coalition and motives that brought the Oyo Empire into existence and the strategies the agents of the empire deployed to cope with the instability, especially during the long tail of the Little Ice Age. By juxtaposing climate history with political, economic, labor, gender, religious, and cultural history, Ogundiran hopes to shed new light on the questions of state and identity formation in post-14th century West Africa and why the Yoruba mainland engaged the Early Modern Period in specific ways.
Description of photo Ogundiran’s work
Priestesses and drummers, singing the praises of Sango, the patron deity of the Oyo Empire in Ede-Ile, July 2024. This event was likely the first time a Sango performance took place in Ede-Ile since the town was evacuated ca. 1830-1839. Ede-Ile was a colony of the empire and it has been a focus of archaeological and historical research since 2004. The priestesses and the drummers claim Ede-Ile as their ancestral home.
Speaker’s Bio
Akin Ogundiran is a professor archaeology and history of Africa in the Department of History at Northwestern University. He is the president of the Society of Africanist Archaeologists. His research interests focus mainly on Yoruba cultural history, 500 BC to AD 1840. Ogundiran’s publications include The Yoruba: A New History (Indiana University Press, 2020), recipient of the 2022 Vinson Sutlive Book Prize and the 2022 Isaac Oluwole Delano Prize for Yoruba Studies. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a member of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.