Aribidesi Usman is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. He is co-editor of Movements, Borders, and Identities in Africa (2009) and the author of The Yoruba Frontier (2012).

List of figures; Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Geography and society; Part I. Long Historical Formations: 2. Prehistory and protohistory; 3. The growth of complex societies; 4. States and small-scale polities, AD 1400-1600; Part II. Yoruba Polities and Entry into the Atlantic World: 5. The seventeenth century: the age of empire building; 6. The eighteenth century; Part III. The Nineteenth Century: Wars and Transformations: 7. Yorubaland in the nineteenth century: the height of trouble; 8. The nineteenth century: the internecine wars and consequences; 9. The nineteenth century: slave trade and slavery; 10. The nineteenth century: new agencies of transformation; Part IV. Economic, Social, and Cultural Practices over Time: 11. Precolonial economy; 12. Religion and world view; 13. Creativity: arts, body adornment, and music; Part V. Colonial Yoruba: 14. Colonial rule, economy, education, and identity; 15. Politics and identity in the late colonial era; Part VI. Postcolonial Yoruba: 16. Politics and identity: the post independence era; 17. Politics and identity at the close of the twentieth century; 18. Contemporary politics and identity; 19. Contemporary sociopolitical, economic, and cultural transformation; 20. Summary and conclusion; References; Index.