Ojigi
Yoruba · mortal · oyo empire · Recorded classification
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
Sources
- Ojigi is the Alaafin of Oyo of c. 1724-1735 who made four incursions against Dahomey and brought Agaja's kingdom to terms in 1730, on an annual tribute of forty men, forty women, guns and four hundred loads of cowries and corals.: Reference treatments of Ojigi's reign and of the Dahomey campaigns and the 1730 tribute. (secondary)