A History of the Igbo People

Elizabeth Isichei was a historian of West Africa, and this academic book, published by Macmillan, is a comprehensive history of the Igbo people of Nigeria from the precolonial period through the colonial era, drawing on oral tradition, archival colonial records and archaeological evidence together. Its strength is exactly that combination of sources, taking Igbo oral historical tradition seriously as evidence alongside written colonial records rather than privileging one over the other. Its limit is its age, published in 1976, so later Igbo historical and archaeological scholarship has continued to develop since, and any claim sensitive to more recent research, particularly on precolonial religious practice, benefits from being checked against more current specialist work.