ABSTRACT

Yoruba towns evolved from the rich complexity of Yoruba ways of life. In many fields the Yoruba shared skills of their neighbours in forest farming, iron-smelting, brass-work, cotton-weaving and valuable handicrafts. High among Oyo’s successes in the main period of expansion was the domination of Dahomey. The beginnings of the state of Benin, like those of the Yoruba states, lie deep in the forgotten past. It seems that the first rulers of Benin, a trading settlement and afterwards a city of the Niger Delta, acquired their power soon after the forming of the first Yoruba states, or soon after about ad 1000. The power of the obas of Benin, at least outside their city and its neighbourhood, diminished slowly after about 1650. The history of the Delta peoples may be said to have begun in the sixteenth century. As these Delta states continued to develop, new methods of government took shape.