Women in African Colonial Histories:

353 Pages·2002·2.65 MB·English

by  Jean Marie Allman

Women in African Colonial Histories

JEAN ALLMAN, SUSAN GEIGER,
editors
AND NAKANYIKE MUSISI,
Women in African
Colonial Histories
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Women in African colonial histories / edited by Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-253-34047-0 (hard) — ISBN 0-253-21507-2 (pbk.)
1. Women—Africa—History. 2. Africa—Colonial in®uence. I. Geiger, Susan. II. Musisi, Nakanyike.
III. Allman, Jean Marie.
HQ1787 .W655 2002
305.4′096—dc21
2001003447
1 2 3 4 5 07 06 05 04 03 02
Nenda salama, Susan . . .

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Women in African Colonial Histories: An Introduction 1
Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi
part one: encounters and engagements
1. “What My Heart Wanted”: Gendered Stories of Early Colonial
Encounters in Southern Mozambique 19
Heidi Gengenbach
2. Dynastic Daughters: Three Royal Kwena Women and E. L. Price
of the London Missionary Society, 1853–1881 48
Wendy Urban-Mead
3. Colonial Midwives and Modernizing Childbirth in French West
Africa 71
Jane Turrittin
part two: perceptions and representations
4. The Politics of Perception or Perception as Politics? Colonial and
Missionary Representations of Baganda Women, 1900–1945 95
Nakanyike Musisi
5. “The Woman in Question”: Marriage and Identity in the
Colonial Courts of Northern Ghana, 1907–1954 116
Sean Hawkins
6. Colonialism, Education, and Gender Relations in the Belgian
Congo: The Évolué Case 144
Gertrude Mianda
7. Virgin Territory? Travel and Migration by African Women in
Twentieth-Century Southern Africa 164
Teresa Barnes
8. “When in the White Man’s Town”: Zimbabwean Women
Remember Chibeura 191
Lynette A. Jackson
part three: power reconfigured/power contested
9. Queen Mothers and Good Government in Buganda: The Loss of
Women’s Political Power in Nineteenth-Century East Africa 219
Holly Hanson
10. Marrying and Marriage on a Shifting Terrain: Recon¤gurations
of Power and Authority in Early Colonial Asante 237
Victoria B. Tashjian and Jean Allman
11. “Vultures of the Marketplace”: Southeastern Nigerian Women
and Discourses of the Ogu Umunwaanyi (Women’s War) of
1929 260
Misty L. Bastian
12. “Emancipate Your Husbands!” Women and Nationalism in
Guinea, 1953–1958 282
Elizabeth Schmidt
13. Guerrilla Girls and Women in the Zimbabwean National
Liberation Struggle 305
Tanya Lyons
Contributors 327
Index 331
viii Contents
Acknowledgments
This project has accumulated many debts since its inception in 1996—far too
many to list individually here. We would, however, like to take the opportunity
to express our sincere gratitude to those whose essays make up this volume. As
the project moved from a collection of short abstracts to a ¤nal copyedited
manuscript, our contributors were endlessly patient and extraordinarily gener-
ous with their time and understanding. Over the past several years, the project
encountered more than its fair share of obstacles, and it was their enthusiasm
and support that always kept us on track.
We would also like to acknowledge the crucial support of Joan Catapano,
former senior editor at Indiana University Press, and that of her successor, Dee
Mortensen, who provided so much encouragement in the ¤nal stages. Marissa
Moorman took care of many of the mechanical and editorial obstacles inherent
in transforming thirteen essays into a uniformly formatted manuscript text. We
are very grateful to Marissa and to the University of Minnesota for funding
Marissa’s work. The maps for the anthology were drawn by the expert hand of
Jane Domier, director of cartographic services at the University of Illinois. Fi-
nally, we wish to thank the two anonymous readers whose careful comments
and constructive criticisms helped us chart our way through one last round of
revisions, and our very patient and expert copyeditor, Shoshanna Green, whose
enormous skills have made this a much better book.