Explanation, or the identification and assessment of the causes of events and situations, occupies the central place in nearly all historical writing in the present century. It is also the aspect of history which is most keenly debated by philosophers, and is the main issue today in the unending, wearisome, but seemingly inescapable controversy as to whether history belongs, or belongs more, with the sciences or with the humanities. The scientific or positivist school, numbering among its recent exponents Popper and Gardiner, emphasizes the extent to which historical explanation attains a regularity akin to, though not identical with, that found in the physical and other sciences, Hempel adding the contention that such explanation can always, and often should, be reduced to a ‘covering law’, or single universal statement subsuming the whole explanation. The idealists, among whom Croce, Collingwood, and most recently Oakeshott are prominent, stress conversely the uniqueness of history, and Dray has reinforced their position by his attack on the covering law thesis. The debate is one in which historians themselves have taken little part, and African historians none at all, despite its crucial importance for almost every aspect of their profession. Yet it is a debate which needs continuous illustration from the historiographical process, a need which historians are best able to meet. The aim of the present article is to contribute to the debate by examining as a problem in historical explanation the fall of Oyo, the powerful state of the northern Yoruba, in the early nineteenth century.

The Igala-speaking peoples of Nigeria live in the middle belt zone of that country, close to the confluence of the river Niger and the river Benue. Ancestor cults of various kinds are central to their religious system, but there is also an important cult of the earth as well as cults of diverse spirits known collectively as ẹbọ. The latter includes the spirit of smallpox, Iye, spirits associated with water, called Alijenu, and other spirits inhabiting the fringes of cultivated land. Culturally the Igala have many close affinities with the Yoruba from whom they are separated geographically by the intervening Niger and the settlements of other peoples. But the main emphases of Igala religion are slightly different from those of Yoruba religion. Thus the cult of ẹbọ which in a rudimentary way resembles the cult of orisha among the Yoruba occupies a more marginal place in Igala religion than the orisha cults do in the Yoruba system of belief. Ancestors and the earth cults play a more direct and central role in Igala than in Yoruba. One belief which appears to be basic to both systems of thought, however, is the belief in medicine, called ogwu in Igala. Yoruba beliefs about medicine have not been published in enough detail to make systematic comparison possible. But it is hoped that the account given here of the Igala side of the picture may stimulate further work on this potentially interesting comparison.

In one of the few essays on drama in non-literate societies, Melville J. Herskovits pointed out that the subject had been little studied, and what we knew must ‘be gleaned from ethnographic accounts of rituals and dances of various sorts, descriptions whose primary intent is to explain other phenomena’ (Herskovits, 1944, p. 685). To Herskovits, as to most other anthropologists, drama among primitives was manifested only in religious ceremonialism—‘ritual drama’—and the formal recitation of prose narratives—‘secular drama’. It may be admitted that theatre in our sense appears to be rare in the non-literate world, but it is found among the Ibibio-speaking peoples of south-eastern Nigeria, where the ‘arena theatre’ (Brockett, 1969, pp. 470-4), professional actors, plots with memorized dialogues, rehearsals prior to public presentation, and props, costumes, and make-up are present.

L'une des caractéristiques fondamentales de la société toucouleur traditionnelle est, assurément, la chasteté imposée à l'individu pendant une période prolongée de son existence. Car il apparaît que la sexualité, hormis dans le cadre pour ainsi dire exdusif du mariage, se présente généralement en termes de prohibition formelle. Peut-être convient-il de voir en cela l'effet naturel de la très stricte obédience islamique toucouleur, aux termes de laquelle tout contact sexuel illicite – done extra-conjugal – est une souillure si grave, que son expiation appelle l'Enfer et la carbonisation littérale du pécheur.

The question as to who are the Swahili has long been controversial. Captain C. H. Stigand is responsible for the most widely accepted definition,

A Swahili … in the more confined sense of the word, is a descendant of one of the original Arab or Persian-Arab settlers on the East African Coast. In the broader sense of the word it includes all who speak a common language, Swahili.