ABSTRACT
The arrival of the British in Zaria after 1900 did introduce a new ethnic group and a new status element; but the British were not incorporated into Zaria society and remained outside the Hausa-Fulani status system. Government and society are quite distinct systems, although they are interrelated; and we should gain very little indeed by undertaking to analyse the governmental changes of Zazzau within the wider framework of social change. Simultaneous changes which arise as effects of other antecedent developments may or may not be governed by asymmetrical relations. If such changes are in fact an empirically asymmetrical series, then their basis will also be a set of categories arranged in an order of logical priority. To infer changes of content from a structural analysis of changing forms, we need an adequate structural analysis of governmental systems. The government of Zazzau having developed the structure it had, thereafter functioned in a particular manner.
