Ojigi
Yoruba · mortal · oyo empire · mortal
Ojigi is what Oyo looked like when the system worked. A neighbouring state expands, the states it is eating appeal to Oyo, Oyo's cavalry goes four times and the aggressor ends up paying tribute in people, guns and cowries — a hundred and fifty years of institutional design, Ajagbo's field marshal included, doing exactly what it was for. Within a decade of his death the same institutions were being used to kill kings. The Dahomean side of this, Agaja and Tegbesu, is absent from the registry under any tradition and is not written here: it belongs to a Fon pass, and this record names them without pretending to hold them.
Domains
- sovereignty
- conquest