Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba

"Peel is by training an anthropologist, but one possessed of an acute historicalsensibility. Indeed, this magnificent book achieves a degree of analytical verve rare in eitherdiscipline." --History Today "[T]his is scholarship of thehighest quality.... Peel lifts the Yoruba past to a dimension of comparative seriousness that no oneelse has managed.... The book teems with ideas... about big and compelling matters of very wideinterest." --T. C. McCaskie In this magisterial book, J. D. Y. Peelcontends that it is through their encounter with Christian missions in the mid-19th century thatthe Yoruba came to know themselves as a distinctive people. Peel's detailed study of theencounter is based on the rich archives of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, which contain thejournals written by the African agents of mission, who, as the first generation of literate Yoruba,played a key role in shaping modern Yoruba consciousness. This distinguished book pays specialattention to the experiences of ordinary men and women and shows how the process of Christianconversion transformed Christianity into something more deeply Yoruba.