The nineteenth century was in many ways a revolutionary one among the Yoruba of western Nigeria. The Yoruba civil wars caused much social and political disorganization of the existing entities in Yorubaland. Among other effects, the wars caused the uprooting of conquered and devastated peoples from their original homes to new lands. The Egba people were one of these. From their original homeland they moved south to settle at Abeokuta in 1830. They were later to be joined by other displaced peoples including the Ijaiye and the Owu, thus making Abeokuta a federation of sorts. The initial decades of settlement at Abeokuta were devoted to the consolidation of the new settlement against the attacks of the stronger and older kingdoms of Ijebu and Dahomey, to continued participation in the ongoing civil wars, and to the challenges of domestic political and economic reorganization. From 1839 liberated slaves from Sierra Leone began to settle in Abeokuta, soon to be followed by European missionaries.