The Igbo are an example of a merchant minority, like both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, Armenians, Parsis and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Lebanese in West Africa, Latin America and elsewhere and Yankees in the US South. There’s always hostility to merchant minorities from the majority population but the degree of difference modulates the hostility. No Yankee enclave was ever burned in a pogrom in the South whereas Jews everywhere in the Old World, various Christians in the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese in SE Asia all dealt with those regularly enough. The Igbo tried to secede from Nigeria after independence and it was an utter bloodbath.
We know this is at least partly cultural because genetically Turks in Turkey are over 90% Greek or Armenian with some additional Balkan and Caucasus contribution and after mutual ethnic cleansing rid Turkey of Christians and the rest of the Balkans of Muslims Turks eventually filled those socioeconomic niches. Until Erdogan it looked like Turney would be richer than Greece pretty soon.
Any Chua wrote a great book on merchant minorites, World On Fire.
Wikipedia articles *do very little to accurately convey cultures/situations one doesn't actually have experience with. The clear majority of Igbo people live in their homeland in Southeastern Nigeria. Even with the quarter to a third of Igbos that live in other parts of Nigeria I find the Western arrogance in calling people living in their own country a "merchant minority" rather dull.
(For more context, there are three dominant ethnic groups in Nigeria, and none of them form a majority. The largest group - the Hausa - doesn't make up even 30% of the population, and the Igbo make up over 20% in current estimates)
> The Igbo tried to secede from Nigeria after independence and it was an utter bloodbath.
This was far, far more complicated than is being made out here.
I’m sympathetic to the claim that it’s complicated, most things are, but the Igbo are clearly a merchant minority, and they’ve clearly been subjects of mob mass killings, aka pogroms as well as government sponsored mass killings based on their ethnic identity. Like every other merchant minority they also emigrate disproportionately looking for economic opportunities. If you guessed the ethnic makeup of Nigerians based on US or British populations you’d think Igbo were at least half of the population, not a minority.
The 1966 anti-Igbo pogrom was a series of massacres committed against Igbo people and other people of southern Nigerian origin living in northern Nigeria starting in May 1966 and reaching a peak after 29 September 1966.[1] These events led to the secession of the eastern Nigerian region and the declaration of the Republic of Biafra, which ultimately led to the Nigeria-Biafra war . The 1966 massacres of southern Nigerians have been described as a holocaust by "Greene -1975 . The Struggle for Secession 1966–70: A Personal Account of the Nigerian Civil War by N. U. Akpan. The Nigerian Civil War 1967–70. The Royal African society in January 1975 and others have variously been described as genocide.
Persecution of Igbo Edit
From June through October 1966, pogroms in the North killed an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Igbo, half of them children, and caused more than a million to two million to flee to the Eastern Region.[77] 29 September 1966, was considered the worst day; because of massacres, it was called 'Black Thursday'.[78][79]
Ethnomusicologist Charles Keil, who was visiting Nigeria in 1966, recounted:
> The pogroms I witnessed in Makurdi, Nigeria (late Sept. 1966) were foreshadowed by months of intensive anti-Ibo and anti-Eastern conversations among Tiv, Idoma, Hausa and other Northerners resident in Makurdi, and, fitting a pattern replicated in city after city, the massacres were led by the Nigerian army. Before, during and after the slaughter, Col. Gowon could be heard over the radio issuing 'guarantees of safety' to all Easterners, all citizens of Nigeria, but the intent of the soldiers, the only power that counts in Nigeria now or then, was painfully clear. After counting the disemboweled bodies along the Makurdi road I was escorted back to the city by soldiers who apologised for the stench and explained politely that they were doing me and the world a great favor by eliminating Igbos.
Do you actually have anything to back this up that isn't a cursory read of Wikipedia? Who exactly of the over four hundred ethnic groups in Nigeria do you think is the majority to the Igbo "minority"? How on earth are you classifying populations in diaspora to people who, again, are living in their own country?
> they’ve clearly been subjects of mob mass killings, aka pogroms as well as government sponsored mass killings based on their ethnic identity
Ethnic discrimination does not automatically equal "merchant minority" (or a minority at all, in fact). The ethnic discrimination against the Igbo in Nigeria is a more complex situation than "foreigners bad" or "minorities different"; it's rooted more in colonialism than in anything else. Which is understandably difficult for people in the West to understand, but it would probably be easier if they stopped trying to fit everything into the boxes they know and actually engaged with what was before them.
> If you guessed the ethnic makeup of Nigerians based on US or British populations you’d think Igbo were at least half of the population, not a minority.
And the other half would almost entirely be Yoruba, but I don't see you leaping to call the Yoruba a merchant minority.
The Igbo may have many different subgroups but they’re conscious of their own existence and other groups are conscious they exist. I’m sure there are liminal groups who are Igbo enough to be discriminated against in Hausa or Fulani areas but different enough that in majority Igbo areas they wouldn’t be considered “real” Igbo. Having fuzzy boundaries doesn’t disqualify an ethnic group from existence or we wouldn’t have any. This consciousness marks them as different and in areas where they’re a minority that makes them a minority.
They’re also clearly disproportionately involved in commerce. As you said
> there's an ethnic group in my country - the Igbo - that are so pervasively, aggressively[0] entrepreneurial that it's become a meme.
If they’re a minority that’s disproportionately involved in trade that makes them a merchant minority.
They also have non-central features of being a merchant minority, like being subject to pogroms but as I said previously Yankees are another example which were never subject to that experience. In Ireland the Protestant minority used to fill a similar role.
> And the other half would almost entirely be Yoruba, but I don't see you leaping to call the Yoruba a merchant minority.
If the Hausa, Fulani and Yoruba had been put into one state by the British, the Igbo had not abc there was enough inter-state hostility to prevent migration the Yoruba would be that *Nigeria’s merchant minority. The Yoruba are clearly more commercial than either of the other groups. But that didn’t happen and the Igbo are Nigeria’s merchant minority.
Classification as a merchant minority is a matter of degrees. Protestants in Ireland, Yankees in the US, Germans along the historic borderlands with the Slavs, all of these groups were a lot more involved in trade than the majority popular but they also engaged heavily in primary production. Classic merchant minorities like Jews, Armenians or Parsis didn’t. Igbo are clearly closer to the first group than the second in those areas where they’re a majority.
Have you considered that looking up things on the Internet is not exactly a suitable proxy for actually having experience with a situation? When I mentioned Western arrogance, I wasn't anticipating that I was going to run full-tilt into it immediately.
> The Igbo may have many different subgroups but they’re conscious of their own existence and other groups are conscious they exist.
I don't quite see how that has anything in the slightest to do with what I said - I mentioned nothing about fuzzy boundaries, and what you are "sure of" unfortunately (or fortunately) has no actual bearing on what is real. The barest real knowledge of Nigerian history would have informed you that the Igbo have been in the north of the country for less than a hundred years, which is pretty much no time at all when talking about ethnic groups.
> As you said
>> there's an ethnic group in my country - the Igbo - that are so pervasively, aggressively[0] entrepreneurial that it's become a meme.
If you did not understand what I said, you might as well have said so rather than go on a Wikipedia binge to seem knowledgeable. That statement was referring to the society-wide master-apprentice system that the Igbo have, undeniably capitalist but inherently prioritizing the success of the collective over the success of the individual.
> If they’re a minority that’s disproportionately involved in trade that makes them a merchant minority.
They are not a minority, but I am rather tired of trying to explain that to somebody who apparently thinks US/European-type demographics are the only kind that exists. How, exactly, do you call one of three major groups that each make up twenty-something percent of a population a minority without falling over the cognitive dissonance?
> They also have non-central features of being a merchant minority, like being subject to pogroms
They were not subject to pogroms because they were a "minority", jesus christ. The '66 pogroms in Northern Nigeria were part of a countercoup in disproportionate response to a coup d'etat earlier the same year which had ended the lives of (amongst others) two especially beloved Northern political leaders - Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa and the Northern premier/Sokoto's crown prince Ahmadu Bello - and placed Easterners in power instead. The pogroms and the ensuing civil war, which Western Nigeria took opportunistic advantage of, were largely an attempt to reconsolidate power in the North.
Oh actually never mind me, it was just "'minorities' bad" and not a complex political situation in a newly independent country.
> But that didn’t happen and the Igbo are Nigeria’s merchant minority.
Or consider that of the Igbo are not among the ethnic groups in Nigeria that could possibly be called merchant minorities - but that would actually require knowing more than a quick Google about the country. For example, it's rather clear that you're unaware of the history between the Yoruba and the Hausa both prior to and during the colonial era, or that the Fulani are an actual minority ethnic group both in Northern Nigeria and in the country as a whole and would actually be fairly classifiable as a "merchant minority" if we cared to apply political labels made for populations in diaspora to people living in their own country - the Fulɓe are semi-sedentary, widely dispersed, tend to live in ethnic enclaves, and have formed several ethnic subgroups throughout West Africa due to integration with clear majority populations.
>> The Igbo may have many different subgroups but they’re conscious of their own existence and other groups are conscious they exist.
> I don't quite see how that has anything in the slightest to do with what I said - I mentioned nothing about fuzzy boundaries, and what you are "sure of" unfortunately (or fortunately) has no actual bearing on what is real. The barest real knowledge of Nigerian history would have informed you that the Igbo have been in the north of the country for less than a hundred years, which is pretty much no time at all when talking about ethnic groups.
You spoke of Nigeria’s 400 ethnic groups as if this was dispositive of the Igbo existing. Having subgroups does not mean the Igbo do not exist. Being in what is now Nigeria for less than a hundred years is equally irrelevant.
> As you said >> there's an ethnic group in my country - the Igbo - that are so pervasively, aggressively[0] entrepreneurial that it's become a meme.
If you did not understand what I said, you might as well have said so rather than go on a Wikipedia binge to seem knowledgeable. That statement was referring to the society-wide master-apprentice system that the Igbo have, undeniably capitalist but inherently prioritizing the success of the collective over the success of the individual.
If you meant to write something different that’s fine but what you wrote is obviously true. Without regard to master apprentice models the Igbo do more buying and selling as middlemen, whether in wholesale or retail trade than other Nigerian ethnic groups. They are more educated and set up more businesses.
>> If they’re a minority that’s disproportionately involved in trade that makes them a merchant minority.
>They are not a minority, but I am rather tired of trying to explain that to somebody who apparently thinks US/European-type demographics are the only kind that exists. How, exactly, do you call one of three major groups that each make up twenty-something percent of a population a minority without falling over the cognitive dissonance?
It’s entirely possible for a state not to have a majority ethnic group. That means all ethnic groups are minorities. If one of those groups is disproportionately mercantile they’re a merchant minority. If they’re disproportionately likely to enlist in the military that makes them a military minority. The Hausa are way over represented in the Nigerian military compared to their share of the population, like Southerners in the US. They’d be a military minority.
>> They also have non-central features of being a merchant minority, like being subject to pogroms
>> They were not subject to pogroms because they were a "minority", jesus christ. The '66 pogroms in Northern Nigeria were part of a countercoup in disproportionate response to a coup d'etat earlier the same year which had ended the lives of (amongst others) two especially beloved Northern political leaders
>> Oh actually never mind me, it was just "'minorities' bad" and not a complex political situation in a newly independent country.
A complex political situation in a newly independent country is entirely compatible with pogroms. People were killed for being Igbo in large numbers, by civilians and the state. This happened in part because of the assumed political loyalties of Igbo people. I imagine we can both agree on that.
> But that didn’t happen and the Igbo are Nigeria’s merchant minority.
> Or consider that of the Igbo are not among the ethnic groups in Nigeria that could possibly be called merchant minorities
Then which ethnic groups are better candidates? Is there a group that is almost entirely engaged in trade with minimal involvement in primary production, and that does so for the market when it does?
> For example, it's rather clear that you're unaware of the history between the Yoruba and the Hausa both prior to and during the colonial era, or that the Fulani are an actual minority ethnic group both in Northern Nigeria and in the country as a whole and would actually be fairly classifiable as a "merchant minority" if we cared to apply political labels made for populations in diaspora to people living in their own country - the Fulɓe are semi-sedentary, widely dispersed, tend to live in ethnic enclaves, and have formed several ethnic subgroups throughout West Africa due to integration with clear majority populations.
The Fulani are a terrible candidate for a merchant minority. They’re pastoralists who are widely dispersed across West Africa because they kept on conquering other people as nomads who can move their wealth and people large distances in short amounts of time are wont to do. Semi-sedentary herders of cattle, some of whom have settled permanently in towns, with insignificant numbers of settled farmers of crops are not merchant minorities under any understanding of the term. Even less so when they were the pre-colonial ruling class in the areas of Nigeria where they’re a minority. And being in one’s own country is hardly dispositive of being a merchant minority. The Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and Jews in inter-war Poland were merchant minorities in their own countries. If the Igbo were predominantly concentrated in their own country they’d be a merchant majority there, like Jews in Israel.
We know this is at least partly cultural because genetically Turks in Turkey are over 90% Greek or Armenian with some additional Balkan and Caucasus contribution and after mutual ethnic cleansing rid Turkey of Christians and the rest of the Balkans of Muslims Turks eventually filled those socioeconomic niches. Until Erdogan it looked like Turney would be richer than Greece pretty soon.
Any Chua wrote a great book on merchant minorites, World On Fire.