Women in African Colonial Histories

Jean Allman teaches African History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is author of The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana and co-author (with Victoria Tashjian) of "I Will Not Eat Stone": A Women's History of Colonial Asante. Her research on gender, colonialism, and social change has appeared in numerous journals.Susan Geiger is Professor Emeritus of Women's Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is author of TANU Women: Gender and Culture Change in the Making of Tanganyikan Nationalism, 1955-65. She has published over a dozen articles on African women's history and the uses of life history in historical research. She serves on the editorial board of SIGNS.Nakanyike Musisi is Director of Makerere Institute of Social Research at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. She has authored many chapters and articles on Baganda women. Her research interests include state formation, customary law, education, and environmental issues.

"This volume is a good example of what can be learned from and about a previously mute and oppressed constituency: native women in colonized sub—Saharan Africa. As is common in anthologies, the quality of the essays is uneven, although (or because?) the editors conscientiously strove for breadth in terms of topics, regions, and nationality of the colonial powers. The introduction neatly summarizes the theme and something of the evolution of the volume. The authors set their chapters in temporal and cultural context, and ample endnotes are helpful but do not interfere with the generally clear and well—organized exposition. Specific topics range from women's roles in a grass—roots army of national liberation, loss of queen—mothers as checks on tribal regents, linguistic play as part of a local rebellion against political corruption, midwifery as a new and culturally conflicted role, and compulsory examination of travelers for sexually transmitted diseases, among others. Recurrent is the pattern that traditionally dominant local males acceded to (or encouraged?) economic and other domination of women on the part of European colonizers. This is an interesting and revealing exploration of an important population that has long been neglected. All levels and collections."—D. B. Heath, Brown University , Choice, December 2002"This is an interesting and revealing exploration of an important population that has long been neglected. All levels and collections.December 2002"—Choice"Readers of this volume will find a number of real gemes in each section. . . . Instructors can not only expose their students to the latest researchbut also provide a primary source that the students can use to hone their own reading and analytical skills."—Journal of African History

• Preliminary Table of Contents:AcknowledgmentsIntroduction Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike MusisiPart 1. Encounters and Engagements1. "What My Heart Wanted": Gendered Stories of Early Colonial Encounters in Southern Mozambique Heidi Gengenbach2. Dynastic Daughters: Three Royal Kwena Women and E. L. Price of the London Missionary Society, 1853-1881 Wendy Urban-Mead3. Colonial Midwives and Modernizing Childbirth in French West Africa Jane TurrittinPart 2. Perceptions and Representations4. The Politics of Perception of Perception as Politics?: Colonial and Missionary Representations of Baganda Women, 1900-1945 Nakanyike Musisi5. "The Woman in Question": Marriage and Identity in the Colonial Courts of Northern Ghana, 1907-1954 Sean Hawkins6. Colonialism, Education, and Gender Relations in the Belgian Congo: The Évolué Case Gertrude Mianda7. Virgin Territory?: Travel and Migration by African Women in Twentieth Century Southern Africa Teresa Barnes8. "When in the White Man's Town": Zimbabwean Women Remember Chibeura Lynette JacksonPart 3. Power Reconfigured/Power Contested9. Queen Mothers and Good Government in Buganda: The Loss of Women's Political Power in Nineteenth Century East Africa Holly Hanson10. Marrying and Marriage on a Shifting Terrain: Reconfigurations of Power and Authority in Early Colonial Asante Victoria Tashjian and Jean Allman11. "Vultures of the Marketplace": Southeastern Nigerian Women and Discourses of the Ogu Umunwaayi (Women's War) of 1929 Misty Bastian12. "Emancipate Your Husbands!": Women and Nationalism in Guinea, 1953-1958 Elizabeth Schmidt13. Guerrilla Girls and Women in the Zimbabwean National Liberation Struggle Tanya LyonsAfterword Susan GeigerContributorsIndex