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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | European Explorers and Aspects of 19th Century Nupe History |
Author: | Kolapo, Femi J. |
Year: | 2000-2001 |
Periodical: | Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (ISSN 0855-3246) |
Issue: | 4-5 |
Pages: | 105-122 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | biblio. refs. |
Geographic terms: | Nigeria Ghana West Africa |
Subjects: | slave trade Nupe polity travel historiography historical sources History and Exploration colonialism Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History, Archaeology Explorers history slavery |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/41406659 |
Abstract: | Historical explanations have related the current low population density of the Middle Belt of Nigeria to precolonial slave raiding. In a 1969 article in 'Journal of African History' (p. 551-564) Michael Mason contested the applicability of the term 'slave raiding' to the 19th-century military activities of the Nupe emirate in the Nigerian Middle Belt. He argued that the only slave raiding that took place were justifiable attempts on the part of this Muslim State to periodically enforce tribute collection due to it for the protection it gave to its non-Muslim subjects. Mason posited that academics had uncritically accepted the exaggerated accounts given by European explorers such as H. Clapperton and Richard Lander of military events of which they did not have first-hand observation. The present author reviews the credibility and reliability of the primary evidence supplied by Clapperton and Lander relating to widespread slave raiding in early 19th-century Nupe. He concludes that, as travellers and eyewitnesses of events they described, they are a source of some factual and credible information that should not be dismissed. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |