Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba

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Indiana University Press, Feb 21, 2003 - History - 440 pages

"Peel is by training an anthropologist, but one possessed of an acute historical sensibility. Indeed, this magnificent book achieves a degree of analytical verve rare in either discipline." —History Today

"[T]his is scholarship of the highest quality. . . . Peel lifts the Yoruba past to a dimension of comparative seriousness that no one else has managed. . . . The book teems with ideas . . . about big and compelling matters of very wide interest." —T. C. McCaskie

In this magisterial book, J. D. Y. Peel contends that it is through their encounter with Christian missions in the mid-19th century that the Yoruba came to know themselves as a distinctive people. Peel's detailed study of the encounter is based on the rich archives of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, which contain the journals written by the African agents of mission, who, as the first generation of literate Yoruba, played a key role in shaping modern Yoruba consciousness. This distinguished book pays special attention to the experiences of ordinary men and women and shows how the process of Christian conversion transformed Christianity into something more deeply Yoruba.

 

Contents

NARRATIVES OF RELIGION AND OF EMPIRE
1
YORUBALAND AT WAR
27
LIVING IN AN AGE OF CONFUSION
47
MAKING COUNTRY FASHION
88
THE MISSION AND THE POWERS
123
PREACHING THE WORD
152
ENGAGING WITH ISLAM
187
THE PATH TO CONVERSION
215
LEAF BECOMES SOAP
248
THE MAKING OF THE YORUBA
278
LOOKING BACK
310
NOTES
319
SOURCES AND REFERENCES
393
INDEX
409
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About the author (2003)

J. D. Y Peel is on the faculty of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He is author of Aladura and Ijeshas and Nigerians, for which he won the Herskovits Award. He has been editor of Africa and is former president of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom.

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