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Igbo Worlds by Elizabeth IsicheiReview by: G. I. JonesThe International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1982), pp. 106-108Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/218460 .

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106 BOOK REVIEWS

IGBO WORLDS. By Elizabeth Isichei. London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1977. Pp. iv, 355. ?4.95 paper.

I am not sure what is meant by the term "worlds," but under this title Elizabeth Isichei has brought together a mass of oral hist- ories, excerpts from travellers' descriptions, missionaries' and government officers' reports, from field notes and tapes. There is also a brief section on Igbo religion, a collection of Igbo pro- verbs, a glossary of Igbo words and a guide to the amateur histor- ian on how to collect oral history. These are arranged under seven headings (parts) of very unequal size, namely, Part 1, Glimpses from afar (20 pp.); Part 2, Igbo communities seen from within oral histories (170 pp.); Part 3, A world of Religion (34 pp.); Part 4, Igbo communities seen from without: historical descriptions (75 pp.); Part 5, Vignettes (4 pp.); Part 6, A world of social values:

proverbs collected 1857-1859 (4 pp.); Part 7, Private worlds: some autobiographies (13 pp.). The guide to the collection of oral hist- ories forms a postscript and the remaining forty pages contain notes on the various parts and the Igbo glossary. There are also four pages of plates of very indifferent artifacts, some of which (for example, the so-called bells) are typically Igbo while the rest could have been made in most parts of southern Nigeria. We look in vain for any examples of the masks and other carvings and of the pottery for which Igbo craftsmen were formerly so renowned.

The real value of the work lies in the oral histories and in the quotations from historical sources which are contained respect- ively in parts 2 and 4. Those on religion and the proverbs are out of place here and might well have been published separately where their contents could be better appreciated. We need a treatise on Igbo proverbs, and there is enough nineteenth-century, early twen- tieth-century (N. W. Thomas's material) and, if Isichei's research workers have been properly briefed, contemporary material to make a useful comparative study. Apart from these digressions the material brought together in this anthology falls into two contrasted sec- tions, oral and archival. The former consists of material communi- cated by local Igbo elders and is embodied not only in part 2 but also in the autobiographies of part 7 and in much of part 3. The latter is taken from archival sources and represents the views and opinions of expatriate European visitors, and is to be found not only in part 4 but also in part 1 and 5 and on page 198 of part 3. The material in the oral section was collected by Isichei and her team of field research workers and is published here for the first time. That in the archival secion consists of selections made by Isichei from government, mission, and other archival sources.

The great mass of recorded statements collected from African elders on the past history of their towns and villages remains for the most part inaccessible to the ordinary student, dispersed and hidden away in the field notes of anthropologists and other resear- chers, or in the uncatalogued files of the universities and other institutions where they have been deposited. Much the same is true of a great deal of the archival sources even where attempts have been made to bring them together in national and state departments and libraries. Here for the first time we have a determined and

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BOOK REVIEWS 107

successful attempt to publish a considerable amount of local oral history relating to a particular and important part of Nigeria and to set it against the more-or-less contemporary description of Eur- opeans travelling or working in the area. In so doing, Isichei has given us a book that will be invaluable to students and one that should be in the library of every historian and anthropologist concerned with the early history of Eastern Nigeria.

Most of the oral histories refer to the end of the nineteenth or beginning of the twentieth century or to earlier events that cannot now be dated with any accuracy. It should also be remembered that the old men from whom they were collected were born during the colonial period, and were very young when their areas were brought under effective government control. They have therefore no personal experience of some of the events they talk about and in some cases their impressions are far from clear. Thus, for example, Joseph Nwosu's account of the slave trade in Alor town mixes up pawning with selling into slavery (p. 50). In the former institution the money transferred amounted to a loan and the borrower handed over to the lender one of his household in lieu of interest on the loan. This person, the pawn, remained a member of the creditor's house- hold until the loan was repaid. Selling into slavery was an out- right sale for a much higher sum of money and the slave had to be sold out of the community. There were ancestral and other prohibi- tions against the selling of a relative or pawn into slavery though there were of couse some men who were powerful enough to defy these sanctions or poor enough to be forced to do so.

There are again difficulties in the translation of Igbo terms into English, thus the rendering of opia as hand axe is misleading (p. 128). The weapon is neither the coup de poing of the archaeol- ogist or an axe in any accepted sense. It is a straight, heavy- headed, two-edged machet, the typical fighting weapon of the Cross River. Most other Igbo use the longer, curved, and single-edged type of the lower Niger area. Igbo place names can be most confus- ing and more help could have been given in the notes to clarify some of them. Thus ohuhu in some parts is a name used by Ngwa and Umuahia Igbo on the east side of the Imo River to designate those on the western side; it is also applied by the Ngwa Igbo of the Aba division to the tribes living to the north of them in the Umuahia area, while in the Umuahia area it is a nickname given by their neighbors to a particular tribe (clan) which prefers to call itself Igbo. The section in part 2 entitled "The Southern Igbo" (pp. 80- 94) refers to these various ohuhu. The subsection "Land and Live- lihood in Mbaise" is about the tribes living on the west side of the Imo River in the Owerri division who are now known as Mbaise. The subsection entitled "The Economic Life of Ohuhu" refers to the Umuahia tribe of this name which also called itself Igbo. The sub- section on the Okonko Society refers to the other Umuahia tribes of Umuopara and Olokoro. The section which succeeds the southern Igbo and which is entitled "The Owerri Igbo" refers to the Oratta tribe of southern Igbo who, like the Mbaise, are in the Owerri adminis- trative division. Isichei is correct in saying that Ford and Jones were wide off the mark when they said that there were no secret organizations and similar masked dancers and the like among the

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108 BOOK REVIEWS 108 BOOK REVIEWS

Southern Igbo (p. 91). This was one of the many errors that should have been and were not corrected in the second edition of the Igbo and Ibibio Peoples., It should have referred to the Oratta alone. Had Isichei read further in this work, however, she would have seen that we specifically stated that the Ohuhu and the Ngwa have secret societies of the Cross River type which we named as Okonko, Akang and Ekpo (p. 44).

Some of the place names that appear in the early historical descriptions can be equally confusing. European visitors and no doubt their local coastal African informants were most unreliable about places in the hinterland and how to reach them and it is very unwise to try and identify them with modern places. Pereira's Opuu ("A Hundred Leagues upstream towards the source of the Rio Fermo- so") quoted on page 9 is more likely to be in the Urhobo/Sobo area than in the western Igbo country as claimed in note 1 of page 309. Dapper's Gaboe ("situated near the Benin river . . . a country of Acori and Jasper") quoted on page 10 is more likely a rehash of Pereira's Geebuu (vide page 124 of the Hakluyt edition) which Pereira says was approached by the Rio de Laguo. Kimble, Pereira's translator in that edition, claims that Geebuu was Abeokuta, the Egba capital city which only came into being in or about 1830. Isichei follows Talbot and makes it Aboh on the Lower Niger (note 4, p. 310).. But there is no record of Aboh being directly involved in the overseas trade: its slaves were mainly sold to the trading state of Nembe (Brass), and it was never associated with the Akori or Jasper of the Benin trading area. If one must try and locate this place, what is wrong with Ijebu-Ode? It is still reached by way of the Lagos lagoon and it was also in trading contact by water with Benin.

These are all minor criticisms of detail. However much one may cavil at the author's uncritical acceptance of some of her material or at her Igbo ethnocentricity, one must first congratulate her on her achievement in bringing together so much useful and valuable source material and in presenting it in such a succinct and stimulating manner.

G. I. JONES Cambridge University

BLACK RELIGIONS IN THE NEW WORLD. By George Eaton Simpson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Pp. ix, 415. $25.00.

In Black Religions in the New World, George Eaton Simpson has taken on a monumental task: to survey the various religious systems influential throughout the Western African Diaspora, including North America, the West Indies, Latin America and, to a much lesser extent, Northern Europe. Similar projects have been attempted by Roger Bastide1 and Leonard Barrett.2 Bastide's African

Roger Bastide, African Civilizations in the New World (New York, 1971).

Leonard Barrett, Soul-Force (New York, 1974).

Southern Igbo (p. 91). This was one of the many errors that should have been and were not corrected in the second edition of the Igbo and Ibibio Peoples., It should have referred to the Oratta alone. Had Isichei read further in this work, however, she would have seen that we specifically stated that the Ohuhu and the Ngwa have secret societies of the Cross River type which we named as Okonko, Akang and Ekpo (p. 44).

Some of the place names that appear in the early historical descriptions can be equally confusing. European visitors and no doubt their local coastal African informants were most unreliable about places in the hinterland and how to reach them and it is very unwise to try and identify them with modern places. Pereira's Opuu ("A Hundred Leagues upstream towards the source of the Rio Fermo- so") quoted on page 9 is more likely to be in the Urhobo/Sobo area than in the western Igbo country as claimed in note 1 of page 309. Dapper's Gaboe ("situated near the Benin river . . . a country of Acori and Jasper") quoted on page 10 is more likely a rehash of Pereira's Geebuu (vide page 124 of the Hakluyt edition) which Pereira says was approached by the Rio de Laguo. Kimble, Pereira's translator in that edition, claims that Geebuu was Abeokuta, the Egba capital city which only came into being in or about 1830. Isichei follows Talbot and makes it Aboh on the Lower Niger (note 4, p. 310).. But there is no record of Aboh being directly involved in the overseas trade: its slaves were mainly sold to the trading state of Nembe (Brass), and it was never associated with the Akori or Jasper of the Benin trading area. If one must try and locate this place, what is wrong with Ijebu-Ode? It is still reached by way of the Lagos lagoon and it was also in trading contact by water with Benin.

These are all minor criticisms of detail. However much one may cavil at the author's uncritical acceptance of some of her material or at her Igbo ethnocentricity, one must first congratulate her on her achievement in bringing together so much useful and valuable source material and in presenting it in such a succinct and stimulating manner.

G. I. JONES Cambridge University

BLACK RELIGIONS IN THE NEW WORLD. By George Eaton Simpson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978. Pp. ix, 415. $25.00.

In Black Religions in the New World, George Eaton Simpson has taken on a monumental task: to survey the various religious systems influential throughout the Western African Diaspora, including North America, the West Indies, Latin America and, to a much lesser extent, Northern Europe. Similar projects have been attempted by Roger Bastide1 and Leonard Barrett.2 Bastide's African

Roger Bastide, African Civilizations in the New World (New York, 1971).

Leonard Barrett, Soul-Force (New York, 1974).

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