ABSTRACT
Kingship has existed among the Yoruba of Western Nigeria for many centuries, perhaps for a millennium. Several of the kingdoms extant today had been founded before the first Portuguese visits to the Guinea Coast. For many of these there is little evidence, available today, of any sudden or radical changes in political structure. The kingdom of Oyo, however, did grow into a mighty empire controlling the trade route from the Habe kingdoms of the savana to the coast; and a far more complex political structure developed. But the empire collapsed in the early nineteenth century through civil wars and Fulani attacks. The people of the destroyed towns fled southwards to settle in existing small towns along the forest margins, vastly expanding their size and creating new problems – the government of settlements of fifty or a hundred or more thousand people.
