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I
This paper explores the use of versions of the "Hamitic hypothesis" by West African historians, with principal reference to amateur scholars rather than to academic historiography. Although some reference is made to other areas, the main focus is on the Yoruba, of southwestern Nigeria, among whom an exceptionally prolific literature of local history developed from the 1880s onwards.1 The most important and influential work in this tradition, which is therefore central to the argument of this paper, is the History of the Yorubas of the Rev. Samuel Johnson, which was written in 1897 although not published until 1921.2
II
The concept of the "Hamitic hypothesis" appears to have been coined by the historian St Clair Drake, in 1959.3 In the historiography of Africa, it has conventionally been employed as a label for the view that important elements in the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, and more especially elaborated state structures, were the creation of people called "Hamites," who were presumed to be immigrants/invaders from outside, often specifically from Egypt or the upper Nile valley, and racially Caucasian (or "white"), who conquered the indigenous black African populations. One of the most influential proponents of this interpretation was C.G. Seligman, in a book originally published in 1930, which was reprinted down to the 1960s, and still formed part of the background reading of the earliest generation of academic historians of Africa (including myself). Seligman declared baldly that "the civilisations of Africa are the civilisations of Hamites," and that these Hamites were "European" (i.e., racially "white") pastoralists, who were able to conquer the indigenous agriculturalists because they were not only "better armed" (with iron weapons, which they are suggested to have introduced into sub-Saharan Africa), but also supposedly "quicker witted."4 The idea thus incorporated an explicit assumption of "white" racial superiority, and denied historical creativity to black Africans by attributing their cultural achievements to the impact of outsiders.
Although the overt racism of the "Hamitic hypothesis" was repudiated by the academic historiography of Africa which developed from the 1950s, the model of state formation through invasion and/or cultural influences from outside continued to exercise a powerful influence. The early works of the pioneer historians John Fage and Roland Oliver in the 1960s and 1970s, for example, continued to...