The fall of the Oyo Empire

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The fall of the Oyo Empire

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Abstract

The Oyo kingdom is located in the south of the actual territory of Nigeria. It expanded from the 16th to the 18th century to become the Oyo Empire, reaching its peak (around 47570km2) in the middle of the 18th century. Less than a century later, in 1836, its capital, Oyo Ile, had been abandoned, and the new Alafin (literally "owner of the palace", the King, or the Emperor) was struggling to get his Empire back: The Oyo Empire had completely fallen. How did an empire, that was known to be the most stable and prosperous one in Western Africa for the preceding two centuries, fall so suddenly? History indicates that the beginning of its collapse took place just as the Empire was reaching its peak. Could this then be seen as just another case of over-expansion that was not viable in a traditional political system? The collapse also coincided almost perfectly with the arrival of a reformist, jihadist, Islam. Could it be that the empire fell because its traditional, simplistic, system of belief could not ever compete against the more complex and organized Islam? The third coincidence was the corresponding end of the Atlantic slave trade. At the first glance thus, everything seems to indicate, that the Oyo Empire was bound to collapse and that little of what they did had any real impact on their fate.

he political expansion and stability of the Oyo Empire was achieved through a powerful army and a complex balance of political power. Such a growth didn't go without consequences, and led to a change in the balance of power
At about the same time, during the 18th century, Islam became more and more important in the Oyo Empire until it finally became one of the reasons of its fall

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[...] Afonja returned to Ilorin, declared its independence and began attacking the Empire to conquer it . Thus, the Empire's crumble was not so much caused by its expansion, but by a mistake committed by the Alafin: centralisation for his own profit, creating and accentuating the tensions between him and the Oyo Mesi . At about the same time, during the 18th century, Islam became more and more important in the Oyo Empire until it finally became one of the reasons of its fall. [...]

[...] The Alafin, controlling the messengers, the baba kekere and the ilari, and the spies, ajele , had a firm grasp on the Empire. He also nominates (from the reign of Ajagbo, i.e., the mid/late seventeenth century, on ) the commander of the province army, the Are Ona Kakamfo, and could thus balance the Oyo Mesi's army. The alliance of the military supremacy and the political stability allowed for a continuous and exponential growth of power and expansion. Such a growth didn't go without consequences, and led to a change in the balance of power, which, accentuated by a sudden intolerance when faced by a wave of Islam reformism, finally led to the fall of the Empire. [...]

[...] After a while came the “adhesion” or “mixing” phase, with Oyo integrating and transforming Islam to conform to their own “pre-paradigmatic” , in Kuhn's sense, view of the world (facilitated by the expansive nature of the state, and by illiteracy during this stage, Islam is mainly used to fulfil some define purposes, i.e. to cure faith-healing, victory in war . Islam was transmitted through the written word, and was therefore coherent through time and space. Its successes could then have a cumulative effect and gain more and more “believers”. It is then, at the end of the 18th century, that the third stage, reform or tawbah in Arabic, took place. [...]

[...] The political expansion and stability of the Oyo Empire was achieved through a powerful army and a complex balance of political power. The Oyo Empire expanded throughout the 17th and 18th century thanks to its military victories. What advantage could they have to defeat their enemies so regularly? It seems that their use of cavalry was the main factor of their preponderance , even more so when used in coordination with archers. They would then have been able to compete against their neighbours from the North, the Nupe, and even to conquer them, or at least to receive a tribute from them, as well as to conquer rather easily the flat South-East . [...]

[...] If Oyo had been faced by either one of those, things might have gone back to normal. But the conjunction of both made it almost impossible to escape. The end of the Atlantic Slave-Trade acted more as an amplifier of an existent crisis than as a 3 direct cause. The fall of Oyo was not caused by a tragic fate, but by the conjunction of mistakes and error when faced with new phenomena. The Yorubas living in Oyo were not the passive spectators of their own History, as my first assumptions implied, but were its actors. [...]

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