Related Papers
African Studies Review
Nwando Achebe. Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2020. 224 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $16.95. Paper. ISBN: 978-0-8214-2407-0
2021 •
Bright Alozie
Have you ever heard of small but mighty? Female Monarchs aptly fits that description. Traveling through time and across the African continent in a roughly chronological order, Nwando Achebe uses a slew of case studies to (re)frame and (re)tell the African-gendered narrative in solidly Africancentered and gendered terms. Breaking from Western perspectives and relying on distinctly African-derived sources and methods, she weaves together the worlds and experiences of African females who occupied positions of power, authority, and influence. In Female Monarchs, the author not only restores voice and dignity to a people but also places elite African women at the center of ancient and contemporary history. At the core of her thesis is the phenomenon of “gendered males” and “gendered females,”which refers to the way that the interconnected universe allows biological males to transform themselves into females and biological females to transform themselves into males. Achebe argues that “th...
Journal of Black Studies
The Queenmother, Matriarchy, and the Question of Female Political Authority in Precolonial West African Monarchy
1997 •
MulletMaster9000 • 27 years ago
Cahiers d'études africaines
Achebe, Nwando. — The Female King of Colonial Nigeria
Marc Epprecht
Women in West African History Women in West African History
Barbara M Cooper
and Keywords Across West Africa up to the 19th century, titled positions for women ensured that women's interests could be voiced and their disputes regulated. Women often had major roles as brokers and intermediaries in trade centers along the Saharan and Atlantic lit torals, contributing to the emergence of powerful Euro-African families. Nevertheless, women were particularly vulnerable to the depredations of the trans-Saharan and At lantic slave trades. Because female labor was so highly valued, female slaves were more expensive than male slaves. The history of women in West Africa has been characterized by marked differences by ecological zone. Those differences have been deepened by Is lamic influences in the North and by different experiences under French, British, and Por tuguese rule. With the decline in the Atlantic trade and the growing emphasis upon com modity production, the demand for female labor in agriculture and in processing rose. Under colonial rule, the loss of slave labor was partially offset by increasing demands up on the labor of wives. Women mediated demands upon their labor through colonial courts, with some success in the early decades of the 20th century. Later courts and ad ministrators supported patriarchal controls upon women in the interests of order and a smoothly running economy. Women's control over their traditional means of accumulating wealth through farming, cloth production, and specialized crafts was typically under mined as economies shifted to emphasize cash crop production and tree crops in particu lar. Women nevertheless could flourish in market trade and could sometimes gain control over new niches in the economy. The growth of colonial infrastructure had contradictory implications. Women's traditionally important roles as queens, priestesses, and ritual spe cialists declined in importance. At the same time, schooling gave some women access to new means of gaining income and prestige as teachers and medical practitioners.
Beverly B. Mack - Concubines and Power: Five Hundred Years in a Northern Nigerian Palace (review) - African Studies Review 49:3
2006 •
beverly mack
“Legacies of Colonialism and Islam for Hausa Women: An Historical Analysis, 1804 to 1960
Kari Henquinet
UNIVERSTY OF IBADAN POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY COURSE TITLE: WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT (HIS 704) TOPIC: COLONIALISM AND AFRICAN WOMEN PRESENTED BY: OGIDAN BOSEDE
Bosede Ogidan
American Historical Review
Review of The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe. By Nwando Achebe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. In American Historical Review 117, 1 (February 2012): 308-09.
2012 •
Lorelle Semley
Ketu Myths and the Status of Women: A Structural Interpretation of Some Yoruba Myths of Origin
1983 •
Emmanuel Babatunde
Modern literature on the status of Yoruba women of South Western Nigeria has corrected the view that Yoruba women were suppressed, by throwing into relief areas of their prominence. B. Awe has drawn attention to the prominent part women like Iyalode played in traditional Yoruba politics (1977, 1979). J.A. Atanda (1979) and S.O. Babayemi (1979) have stressed the significant roles of women in the palace organization of Oyo. N. Sudarka (1973) and Karanja (1980) have explored the interesting area of Yoruba market women, showing that the economic strength which such economic enterprises confer made Yoruba women not only prominent but independent. Karanja, on the other hand, accepted that although economic enterprise brought a considerable measure of strength and prominence to the Yoruba woman, her relationship with her husband may not be interpreted as one marked with complete independence. In drawing attention to the role of women as mothers and as occupiers of the innermost and sacrosa...
AFRICAN WOMEN IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
UZOAMAKA NWACHUKWU
The focus point of this paper is to examine the historical role and contribution of the African women in fostering development within the context of time and space. The paper will objectively analyse the social, political, cultural and economic status of the African women within the time-frame of the pre-colonial, colonail and postcolonial periods. The paper highlights the fact that in spite of the overwhelming socio-cultural and psychological restrictions on African women, they have recorded tremendous achievements in various fields of developments particularly in agriculture and in business.
