Societal, Religious and Political Structures

This chapter presents a model for the understanding of the “traditional” societies of the Slave Coast and, in fact, of most of West Africa. It explores concepts which are not prevalent in the anthropological literature, and much less so in historical literature: “owners of the land” in the ritual sense; earth-priests; water priests; “ritual control of the land”; “contrapuntal paramountcy” (very central for our purpose and explained later); “sacred kingship”; stranger-kings; ancestor worship; fertility cults, etc. These all have marked religious connotations, implying that these were so-called sacred kinship societies, and that everything had to be explained and legitimized in religious or supranatural terms.