THE KEDE: A RIVERAIN STATE IN NORTHERN NIGERIA 193
in areas to which political rule could never be expected to follow. Common interests and culture, community life, intermarriage stretch as far as these outposts. Moreover, cultural assimilation and intensified contact have removed some of the barriers wrhich formerly separated the Kede from neighbouring groups. The facts of common culture, economic co-operation, and community life thus no longer converge to cement the solidarity of a ruling group, but merely outline the much vaguer unit of a scattered ethnic group which has abandoned all claims to political self-realization.
IX. The Evolution of the Kede State
Our examination of the Kede State and its history does neither support nor refute the theory of the origin of the State which, accepted to-day by many students of society, derives every State organization from an original invasion and eventual conquest of one ethnic group by another.1 Our data have shown political domination of one ethnic group by another to be a factor of paramount importance; they also revealed the occurrence of clash and conquest—though not on the comprehensive scale implied in this theory of the State; but they do not prove an original group invasion, beyond that which we must relegate to the era of mythical and thus unverifiable events. Our data can, in fact, also be taken as evidence for an 'internal diversification'8 and a gradual emergence to political supremacy of one out of a number of ethnic groups.
Our data relating to Kede expansion in recent times, on the other hand, tend to confirm another sociological theory which concerns itself with social origins—namely, the theory which holds that migration and colonization are never a result of over-population, but rather an expression of that 'spirit of hope* and 'enterprise* which is absent in countries with over-population.* Can we accept this description of the growing Kede society as a final statement ? Is the emergence of a tribal section to a dominant political role folly explained by this reference to psychological characteristics ?
Our analysis of Kede political organization has emphasized a somewhat different aspect; it outlined the political system in its
1 See F. Oppenheimer, op. cit.
2 R. Lowie, op. cit., p. 40.
* A. M. Carr-Saunders, The Population Problem (1922), PP- 299 n.