Abstract

AYIDA, Allegra. Pre-Colonial Lusophone Kingship and Elite Migrations: A Case Study of the Warri Kingdom. e-JPH [online]. 2022, vol.20, n.2, pp.30-46.  Epub Dec 31, 2022. ISSN 1645-6432.  https://doi.org/10.26300/zzm1-km21.

This paper examines how African kingship changed as a result of cross-cultural interaction due to the Portuguese presence in the Niger Delta on the Gulf of Guinea in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The early modern Warri Kingdom had connections to the wider Lusophone world and Europe through the diplomatic missions and migrations of its princes. The Warri Kingdom’s dynasty is composed of twenty-one olus (kings) with the most recent olu being crowned in 2021. This paper examines the biographies of three successive olus who reigned between the late-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries and approaches the lives of these olus as a coeval prism through which to view and better understand the entanglements of religion, commerce, and elite migration.

Keywords : African kingship; Christianity; religious syncretism; Warri; Itsekiri.

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