The Fall of Old Oyo and the 19th-Century Wars
The weakening of Oyo after 1789, Afonja's revolt and the Ilorin emirate under Sokoto, the abandonment of Oyo-Ile around 1835, the rise of Ibadan, Abeokuta and New Oyo, the Owu and Egba wars, the battle of Osogbo (1840), the Ijaye war (1860-1862), the Kiriji or Ekitiparapo war (1877-1886), firearms and the slave trade in the wars, and the 1886 peace.
A century of war
The 19th-century wars reshaped Yorubaland. Old towns were destroyed and new ones founded by refugees; war chiefs rose to rival kings; captives were sold to the Atlantic trade until it closed (part 9 follows them to the Americas). Ibadan's system, where power came from military success rather than royal descent, was itself a political innovation.
Contested accounts: Oyo and Ilorin traditions tell the fall of Old Oyo differently: Oyo accounts stress Afonja's betrayal and Fulani ambition; Ilorin accounts present the emirate's founding as a religious and political renewal. Historians such as Robin Law weigh both with European records.
Robin Law (1977); S.A. Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics in Yorubaland 1840-1893 (1971); J.F. Ade Ajayi and Robert Smith, Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (1964); Bolanle Awe on the rise of Ibadan; Toyin Falola, The Political Economy of a Pre-colonial African State: Ibadan, 1830-1900 (1984).
The map of the wars
New and old centres of the 19th century. Oyo-Ile in the north was abandoned; power shifted south to Ibadan, Abeokuta and New Oyo, while Ilorin pressed from the north.