174 AFRICAN POLITICAL SYSTEMS
development of the country, moreover, has attracted Kede emigration to places far outside the orbit of their political organization: thus at the busy trading-place on the confluence of Niger and Benue, Lokoja, a large and prosperous Kede colony has grown, which combines all the 'stages' of Kede settlement, permanent and semi-permanent houses in which Kede families have made their home as well as a large encampment on the river bank for the Kede canoemen from the north. But it seems that even in pre-British times the territorial expansion of the Kede had to leave certain 'gaps' in its network of settlements and political outposts. Thus the large Nupe town of Eggan on the right bank of the Niger, flanked to the north and south by (presumably old) Kede settlements, remained a powerful, independent political unit, placed directly under the King of Nupe. It is this characteristic scheme of Kede expansion which allows for territorial gaps and the founding of (at least temporarily) isolated outposts that justifies our speaking of Kede 'colonies' and 'colonization'.
V. Political Organization
The political system of the Kede corresponds in all important points to the concept of the State. On its small scale, it fulfils the essential conditions of State organization: its dominion is territorial and non-tribal (or inter-tribal); its administration is centralized ; its machinery of government is monopolized by a special ad hoc appointed or selected body, which is separated from the rest of the population by certain social and economic privileges.1 The first of these three features we have discussed already; as regards the second, we have learned that Muregi, the traditional home of the tribe, is at the same time the political centre of the country; and as regards the last point, we have seen that in a broad sense the Kede themselves represent, corporatively, the ruling group of the country. But among the Kede we find another, more precisely defined 'privileged group', in whose hands the government of the country is concentrated. This ruling group, in a narrow sense, consists of the Kede chief and his titled councillors and emissaries.
1 With regard to this definition of the State, see Africa, vol. cit., and my forthcoming Nupe book. R. Lowie, The Origin of the State (1927) (chaps, iii and iv), recognizes territorial sovereignty and centralized authority as essential to the structure of the State; the factor of the special 'ruling group' has been elaborated by F. Oppenheimer, The State (1926).