Igbo History and Society

Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo is arguably the most renowned historian of south-eastern Nigeria's Igbo society. Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo is arguably the most renowned historian of south-eastern Nigeria's Igbo society. However, only two books by the ‘grand old man’ of Igbo historical studies are easily accessible: The Warrant Chiefs, his 1963 University of Ibadan Ph.D. thesis on colonial rule and chieftaincy in Igboland, published in 1972 by Longman, and Ropes of Sand, an inquiry into some of the exceedingly difficult and controversial issues of precolonial Igbo history, published jointly by the University Presses of Ibadan and Oxford in 1981. Several of Afigbo's works have been published in well-established academic journals, but there are many more that have appeared only as pamphlets with a very limited local distribution, or have remained unpublished. At the same time, Afigbo has exerted an enormous influence on Igbo historiography and Igbo historians, as he belonged to the early generation of historians that formed the ‘Ibadan school of African history’, taught as professor of history at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka (UNN) until the early 1990s, and became one of the moving spirits behind the creation of the Centre for Igbo Studies at Abia State University in Uturu later on. Afigbo also acted as advisor on Igbo cultural and political matters, for example in the mid-1970s, when the East-Central State government asked him to make recommendations for legislation on ‘traditional rulers’ in the Igbo-speaking areas, and more recently for Ohaneze, a pan-Igbo ethno-political organization. It would be hard to over-rate Afigbo's influence on today's thinking about Igbo history.

Archaeology · Colonialism · Ethnology · Historiography · Igbo · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science) · African history and culture studies · Anthropology · History · Law · Philosophy