ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book The book examines three principal interests: ethnology, method, and theory. It shows that although the Fulani conquerors of Zazzau initially sought to preserve the Habe constitution so far as this was consistent with their religious and administrative ideas. They were constrained to abandon or alter many of the most distinctive and significant institutions of the Habe government under the pressures produced by their own internal political competition, and this process continued until the original structure had been thoroughly transformed. Diachronic analysis presupposes comparative methods. The book begins by ignoring the specific processes of change, and seeks to define the common and singular structural conditions of successive stages in the continuum, by their inductive comparison. It explores three major categories of development: unplanned changes which were institutionalized; planned changes which were institutionalized; planned changes which failed to persist.
