The Frontier States of Western Yorubaland: State Formation and Political Growth in an Ethnic Frontier Zone

First lines

In West Africa, as elsewhere in the world, ethnic boundaries are not easy to fix. Constant population expansion and the resultant socio-cultural contacts among different ethnic groups often frustrate such attempts; and it becomes difficult to decide where one ethnic group begins and where another ends. This problem is particularly difficult in a ‘frontier zone’ where two or more ethnic groups overlap and where inter-ethnic contacts over a fairly long time have blurred the ethnic differences among them.

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