Letters, Kinship, and Social Mobility in Nigeria (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780299344542)

In 2003, Olufemi Vaughan received from his ninety-five-year-old father, Abiodun, a trove of more than three thousand letters written by four generations of his family in Ibadan, Nigeria, between 1926 and 1994. The people who wrote these letters had emerged from the religious, social, and educational institutions established by the Church Missionary Society, the preeminent Anglican mission in the Atlantic Nigerian region following the imposition of British colonial rule. Abiodun, recruited to be a civil servant in the colonial Department of Agriculture, became a leader of a prominent family in Ibadan, the dominant Yor?b? city in southern Nigeria. Reading deeply in these letters, Vaughan realized he had a unique set of sources to illuminate everyday life.

Letter writing was a dominant form of communication for Western-educated elites in colonial Africa, especially in Nigeria. Exposure to the modern world and a growing sense of nationalism were among the factors that led people to begin exchanging letters, particularly in their interactions with British colonial authorities. Vaughan reconstructs dominant storylines, including themes such as kinship, social mobility, Western education, modernity, and elite consolidation in colonial and post-colonial Nigeria. He brings to life a portrait, at once intimate and expansive, of a community during a transformative period in African history.

Author: Olufemi Vaughan
ISBN-10: 0299344541
ISBN-13: 9780299344542
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Language: English
Published: 12/17/2024
Pages: 282
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.80d