| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 281 words from this article are provided below; about 598 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sub-Saharan Africa

Toyin Falola and Ann Genova, editors. Yorùbá Identity and Power Politics. (Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora.) Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press. 2006. Pp. x, 370. $75.00.

The Yorùbá comprise one of Africa's largest and most visible ethnic groups. In Nigeria, the roughly 30 million Yorùbá include prominent government officials, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, musicians, and a Nobel prize-winner; in the diaspora, large numbers in Brazil and Cuba claim Yorùbá descent and culture. Yet as the contributors to this volume emphasize, "Yorùbá" identity is complicated. "The Yorùbá since time immemorial have occupied a region located in present-day southwestern Nigeria commonly referred to as Yorùbáland" (p. 1), editors Toyin Falola and Ann Genova write in their introduction. However, the region's people rarely thought of themselves as more than loosely connected before the late nineteenth century, and their primary geographic and political loyalties often were and are to their towns or subregions rather than Yorùbáland writ large. Indeed, the term Yorùbá itself apparently derives from the name more northerly peoples called the inhabitants of the Òyó Empire, whose heyday was in the eighteenth century. United by a common creation myth, Òyó imperialism, and the work of nineteenth-century cultural nationalists, "Yorùbá" people have most often overlooked their considerable differences and rivalries (and continue to do so) when in competition for power in an enlarged political sphere. It is this intersection of ethnic identity and politics that forms the focus of the volume, and although it seems primarily useful for specialists in Nigerian history and politics, the essays in this book may yield insights to those interested in ethnicity and colonial and postcolonial states more generally.

. . .

There are about 598 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.