This work is a reconstruction of the Pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial history of the Yakurr of South Eastern Nigeria. It is primarily, based on Yakurr Oral Sources. The Study provides a historical foundation hence its title. It is hoped that future historians shall build upon that foundation. However, the work examines the collapse of the Wukari Empire (Jukun/Kororofa) and the development of the Atlantic Slave trade as the principal causal factors of the migrations of the various peoples who now occupy the middle and upper Cross River Regions. Such people include the Yalla, Ukelle (upper Cross River), Boki, Agbo, Bahumono, Mbembe and Yakurr (middle Cross River) region.

From about the middle of the seventeenth century, Calabar emerged as a vibrant entrepot where Europeans traded with coastal merchants to purchase enslaved people and raw materials destined for the Americas and Europe. Referred to as 'Old Calabar' in the historical sources, this busy port was located on the eastern side of the Calabar River at the confluence with the Cross River and was the centre of a vast network of international trade extending to the Grassfields region of Cameroon and to the Benue River valley directly north.

Introduction, Masquerade as an Artistic Pulse of the City -- "Face No Fear Face:" Unmasking Youths -- "If they Burn it Down, We will Build it Even Larger:" Confrontations of Space -- "People Hear at Night:" Sounds and Secrecy of Nocturnal Performance -- "Idagha Chieftaincy was Nothing like what it is today:" The Spectacle of Public Performance -- "We Call it Change:" An Artistic Profile of Artist Ekpenyong Bassey Nsa -- "Look at it, Touch it, Smell it-this is Nnabo:" Trajectories and Transformations of "Warrior" Societies -- "For this Small Money, I No Go Enter Competition:" Masquerade Competition on a Global Stage -- "I know Myself:" Masquerade as an Artistic Transformation -- Coda: "I Think About my Kids and Feeding Them".

An eye-opening investigation of the emergence of complex purchasable associations in the Cross River region of southwest Cameroon and southeast Nigeria. These associations emerged in the context of the growing transatlantic hinterland and were disseminated from the direction of the Atlantic coast to the hinterland. Associations form a substantial part of the prestige economy in the Cross River cultures up until the present.

Local histories, written and published by non-academic historians, constitute a rapidly expanding genre in contemporary non-Western societies. However, academic historians and anthropologists usually take little notice of them. This volume takes a comparative look at local historical writing. Thirteen case studies, set in seven different countries of sub-Saharan Africa, India and Nepal, examine the authors, their books and their audiences. From different perspectives, they analyse the genre's intellectual roots, its relationship to oral historical narratives, and its relevance and impact in local and wider arenas. Local histories, it turns out, pursue a variety of agendas. They (re)construct local and communal identities affected by rapid social change. Often, they (re)write history as part of cultural and political struggles. Openly or implicitly, all of them place local communities on the map of the world at large.