2 - Trans-local Connections and Precolonial Spheres of Influence: Nri “Hegemony” and Arochukwu

Summary

Igbo local communities, as analyzed in the preceding chapter, display autonomy in many respects. But, of course, they are not isolated units; nor were they in the precolonial period. They were embedded in a variety of networks establishing translocal, regional, and even more far-reaching connections, without any overarching governing institutions. The present chapter focuses first on the variety of practices and institutions that connected communities in general, such as military alliances, trade, secret societies, oracles, and the institution of the “traveling agent.” Later, it looks more closely into the two extended spheres of influence that have become associated with the names of Nri and Arochukwu.

The segmentary structure of Igbo society provides, in principle, a basis for the creation of larger, albeit temporary, units for specific functions and in specific instances. In a society without clearly defined borderlines for the local community, the instruments and institutions of integration within the community may, to a certain extent, be also employed to create larger contexts. “Clan” affiliations could play such a role, but so could crosscutting institutions not based on kinship, such as associations (Uchendu 1965: 76–83). Military alliances, for aggressive and defensive purposes, emerged from time to time. The best-known example is that of the “Abam warriors”—a nineteenth-century alliance among the Ohafia, Abam, and Edda communities of the Cross River area that kept a special relationship to Arochukwu. These communities did not fight wars against each other, but they developed a marked warrior ethos, involving the need to “take a head” as a part of male initiation (McCall 2000: 73–75, 92). They have often been called “mercenaries” of the Aro, whose commercial slaving interests they served well by long-range military activities. “[A]t its height this alliance . . . had succeeded in altering to a large extent the military map of Igboland. In the Cross River, Okigwe, Nsukka and Anambra areas where their warriors showed remarkable activity, certain towns were regarded as friendly and inviolate while others could be warred against” (Ukpabi 1986: 23). Other Igbo communities formed military alliances and confederacies during the nineteenth century largely in reaction to this military threat posed by Abam warfare (ibid.: 23–25). No such military alliances seem to have achieved long-term stability, nor do they appear to have been institutionalized in any way.