Bondarenko Dmitri M. Homoarchy

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be perceived as the legal “continuation” of that of the rulers of the First
dynasty. Owe to this the feeling of the changes gravity was to deaden in
people’s hearts and minds. However in reality the evolution of political and
social institutions during the Oba period has resulted in a meaningful
transformation of the Benin society. In the time of the Obas the same sociopolitical
components – chiefdoms and autonomous communities (as before,
equal to each other in terms of rights and obligations towards the supreme
authorities of the time [Egharevba 1949: 79; Bradbury 1973: 177]) formed parts
of a multipolity of another type. Communities (including autonomous) and
chiefdoms preserved all the initial characteristics of their internal organization
and went on obeying the all-Benin authorities, now much more strictly: the
homoarchic trend in the socio-political organization became much stronger and
more visible than in the Ogiso time. The all-Benin power center and political
institutions (the dynasty first and foremost) became stable and did not depend
on the relative might of the local chiefdoms any longer, now surmounting them
unreservedly. The head of a socio-political unit represented its population in
higher instances, but leaders of families, communities, and chiefdoms had
direct access only to one, immediately next to theirs, level of political
hierarchy. Heads of families and non-autonomous communities could reach the
highest instances only through those who occupied intermediate stairs. The
more powerful all-Benin political institutions were becoming the more effective
their control over chiefdoms and communities, as well as over the relations
between them, was (Bradbury 1973: 149, 171). In particular, the increase of
the society’s integrity under the Second dynasty resulted in the fact that the
interunit relations basically did not develop by the principle “our – alien” any
longer, as the all-Benin level of realizing their unity by the population of the
country formed.
Nonetheless, as has been stated above, the elements of heterarchy were
neither a decoration nor a kind of Tylorian “survival” within the framework of
the Oba-time socio-political system. Quite the opposite: they were an essential
part of the system. In the way typical of African kingdoms (Vansina 1992: 21),
the all-Benin authority did not intervene in the communities and chiefdoms’
internal affairs and reminded of itself only when the interests of the whole
country (associated with those of the political center) were infringed, like in the
cases of dependencies’ attempts to break away in the imperial period of Benin
history (mid-15 th – 19 th centuries). What is especially noteworthy is that there
is no evidence that those units’ internal composition could be changed under
any circumstances (Bondarenko 1995a: 183–193; 2001: 257–264). Thus, in the
time of the Obas the political center still had substantially limited possibilities
for exercising coercive authority because violence from its side could not be
considered as legitimate if it were aimed directly at the society’s component
units. The real power of a chiefdom or autonomous community head (onogie
or odionwere respectively) still was as greater as farther his chiefdom or