Ibadan

Ibadan came into existence in 1829, in the turmoil that then characterised Yorubaland. Old Yoruba cities such as Old Oyo (Oyo-ile), Ijaye and Owu disappeared in those years, and newer ones, Abeokuta, New Oyo (Oyo Atiba) and Ibadan, rose to replace them. According to local historians Lagelu founded the city, and it was intended at first as a war camp for warriors coming from Oyo, Ifẹ and Ijebu. The site was a stretch of forest holding several ranges of hills, from about 160 to 275 metres above the sea, which offered strategic defence, and it lay at the fringe of the forest, close to the boundary with the derived savanna; the name, coined from 'Eba-Odan', means 'by the edge of the meadow'.

That position made the camp a trading centre for goods and traders from both the forest and the grassland, and it was drained by rivers, the Ona to the north and west, the Ogbere to the east, the Ogunpa and the Kudeti through the centre, with Lake Eleyele to the north-west. The military sanctuary grew quickly: by the end of 1829 Ibadan dominated the Yoruba region militarily, politically and economically, and it expanded further as refugees arrived in large numbers from northern Oyo after raids by Fula warriors. Having lost the northern part of their region to the Fula, many Oyo people retreated deeper into the Ibadan country. Parts of the protective walls the city built still stand.

Ibadan's society was shaped by war. The warrior class was the dominant population of the city and its most important economic group, and military success offered the main opportunity for individual advancement; a man could rise through the ranks of a system in which the three principal civic offices were open to all freeborn males. This unusual organisation earned Ibadan the derision of other Yoruba, for whom hereditary kingship was the norm. The city's wealth came from its position between the two ecological zones: it emerged as a trade centre for traders and goods from both the forest and the grassland areas.

The population swelled with refugees from northern Oyo, and the city grew into an impressive and sprawling urban centre whose extent in the twentieth century was still unmatched in sub-Saharan Africa. Compounds such as that of Balogun Alli Iwo held civic and defensive authority within a network of ancestral lineages. Christianity arrived in 1852, when the Church Missionary Society sent David and Anna Hinderer, the first Europeans to settle in the city; they built a church and the first two-storey building in Ibadan, which still stands at Kudeti, and opened its first Western school, where Anna Hinderer taught. Its first pupils were Yejide and Akinyele Olunloyo, the daughter and son of an Ibadan high chief. Cocoa, which became the main produce of the region, belongs to the colonial period after a small rubber boom of 1901–1913.

Ibadan began as a military state and kept its martial character until the last decade of the nineteenth century. Its founding purpose was war: a camp for the warriors of Oyo, Ifẹ and Ijebu set among defensible hills, whose location at the forest's edge let it draw on both the forest and the savanna. It was nicknamed 'idi-Ibon', 'gun base', for its unique military character, and the title 'Aare', borne by its commander-in-chief or generalissimo, survives in the name of Oke Aàre, the Aare's hill, which can be seen from almost any point in the city. Protective walls enclosed the settlement, and parts of them still stand.

The city's armies carried the Yoruba resistance to the Fula. After Fula warriors raided northern Oyo and the Oyo people lost the northern portion of their region, refugees poured into Ibadan, and when the Sokoto Caliphate attempted to expand further into the south of what is now Nigeria it was decisively defeated by the armies of Ibadan in 1840, which eventually halted its progress. Military success was also the engine of the state's politics: the warriors were the dominant class and the most important economic group, and victory in war was the road to office and wealth. Between the 1860s and the 1890s this war machine made the city-state the centre of an empire extending over much of northern and eastern Yorubaland, the most powerful state of contemporary Yorubaland, until the treaty of 1893 placed it under British protection.

Historians have described Ibadan as a military republic, in contrast to the hereditary kingship practised by most Yoruba cities. The city was administered by four chiefs: three of these offices could be attained by any freeborn male, and the fourth was reserved for the city's female residents. The warrior class dominated the state, and advancement came through military success rather than birth, an organisation that drew the derision of other Yoruba. Among the city's historic military quarters, the Balogun Alli Iwo compound traditionally held significant civic and defence authority within the ancestral lineage network.

The city's head in the 1890s bore the title Baale: it was Fijabi, the Baale of Ibadan, who signed the treaty with the British acting Governor of Lagos Colony, George C. Denton, on 15 August 1893, by which the Ibadan area became a British protectorate. The title of Aare, commander-in-chief, named the military head. Women held an office of their own, and the city counts its Iyalodes among its notable people, Aminatu Abiodun the thirteenth and Laduntan Oyekanmi the fourteenth. The state, known as the Ibadan Republic, had the city itself as its capital, and the colonial period reinforced its place in the Yoruba urban network: it became the headquarters of the Western Provinces in 1939, and the Olubadan of Ibadan lands remains the head of chiefs in Oyo State.

Ibadan's empire of the 1860s to 1890s made it one of the most powerful states of contemporary Yorubaland and the leading power of the forest's edge. Its defeat of the Sokoto Caliphate's southward expansion in 1840 halted the jihad's progress into the south of what is now Nigeria, and its walls sheltered the Oyo refugees driven out of the north by Fula raids. Its form of government, a republic of warriors in which offices were earned rather than inherited and one was held by women, stood apart from the kingships around it and has drawn the attention of historians as an unusual Yoruba polity.

The city it built outlasted the state. Its central location and accessibility from Lagos were the main reasons for choosing it as headquarters of the Western Provinces in 1939, and it was the administrative centre of the old Western Region from the early days of British rule. At Nigeria's independence in 1960 Ibadan was the largest and most populous city in the country and the second most populous in Africa after Cairo; until 1970 it was the largest city in sub-Saharan Africa by surface area. The mission founded by the Hinderers in 1853 began Western schooling there, and the city went on to hold Nigeria's first university, the University of Ibadan, opened as a college of the University of London in 1948, its first teaching hospital, Africa's first television station in 1959 and the Cocoa House, the first skyscraper in West Africa.

Ibadan retained its martial character until the last decade of the nineteenth century, when the British advanced inland from Lagos. On 15 August 1893 Fijabi, the Baale of Ibadan, signed a treaty with George C. Denton, the acting Governor of Lagos Colony, and the Ibadan area became a British Protectorate. The empire the city-state had held over much of northern and eastern Yorubaland since the 1860s ended with its independence, and the warrior republic became a provincial centre of colonial Nigeria.

The colonial period reinforced rather than reduced the city's place in the Yoruba urban network. After a small boom in the rubber business from 1901 to 1913, cocoa became the main produce of the region and drew European and Levantine firms as well as traders from Lagos, Ijebu-Ode and Kano, and Ibadan became a major point of bulk trade. In 1939 it was chosen as headquarters of the Western Provinces, and it remained the administrative centre of the Western Region. Colonial monuments mark the old hills: Mapo Hall, the colonial-style city hall on Oke Mapo, and Bower's Tower, built in 1936 on Oke Aàre and named after Robert Lister Bower. The chiefly titles survived: the Olubadan of Ibadan lands is today head of chiefs in Oyo State, and the Iyalode's office continues. Of the state itself, the walls, the titles and the memory of 'gun base' remain in a city of more than four million people.