The book, is the first transdisciplinary study of the two-thousand-year journey of the Yoruba people, from their origins in a small corner of the Niger-Benue Confluence in present-day Nigeria to becoming one of the most populous cultural groups on the African continent.
The author, Akinwumi Ogundiran is Chancellor’s Professor and Professor of Africana Studies,
Anthropology & History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
He is co-editor of Materialities of Rituals in the Black Atlantic, named a Choice magazine 2015
outstanding book.
Weaving together archaeology with linguistics, environmental science with oral traditions, and material culture with mythology, Ogundiran in his new book examines the local, regional, and even global dimensions of Yoruba history.
The Yoruba: A New History offers an intriguing cultural, political, economic, intellectual, and social history from ca. 300 BC to 1840. It accounts for the events, peoples, and practices, as well as the theories of knowledge, ways of being, and social valuations that shaped the Yoruba experience at different junctures of time. The result is a new framework for understanding the Yoruba past and present.
The following personalities have these to say about the new work:
“In this brilliantly conceived and successfully executed project, Akinwumi
Ogundiran deploys a cultural-historical approach to pose new questions on how the Yoruba as historical subject created their own epistemology, new eras of
aspirational values and principle, and conceptions of honor and respectability.”
— Saheed Aderinto, author of Guns and Society in Colonial Nigeria
On his part,
“An exquisitely detailed and evocative portrait of the Yorùbá “community
of practice” that will change the ways we think about Yorùbá history and
culture and become a seminal source for present and future scholars.”
—Henry John Drewal, Evjue-Bascom Professor Emeritus of African
and African Diaspora Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“This book will command the attention and respect of scholars, students,
researchers, and the general reader in the fields of history, archaeology,
anthropology, sociology, and culture for a long time. It is an excellent
addition to the literature and reference works on African Studies.”
—Olutayo C. Adesina, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
The Yorùbá: A New History is the first transdisciplinary study of the two-thousand-year
journey of the Yorùbá people, from their origins in a small corner of the Niger-Benue
Confluence in present-day Nigeria to becoming one of the most populous cultural groups
on the African continent.
Segun Akanni, Toronto, Canada 
