Our New Husbands Are Here: Households, Gender, and Politics in a West African State from the Slave Trade to Colonial Rule (New African Histories) by Emily Lynn Osborn

Author:Emily Lynn Osborn [Osborn, Emily Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-08T00:05:00+00:00

HOUSEHOLDS, WOMANHOOD, AND STATECRAFT IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

At some level, French ideas about gender roles and politics were not incongruent with how many African societies operated. In most African precolonial states such as Bate, men held a lock on leadership positions, and women were charged with fulfilling domestic duties. Where African and French ideologies and practices diverged, however, is in the way that these different groups of male political elites treated their households. In precolonial Africa, the marriage that a chief entered into was as important to the integrity of his household as it was to his state. When the state of Bate was small and pacifist, for example, its male leaders had used their households as a foundation of statecraft. Samori did not rely on his household to build his state-he derived his immense power from his wars, not from his wives-but he also placed great value on the work that his household could do to reinforce his state. Indeed, Samori's many dependents reveal that Samori took seriously the dictum that, as one French observer noted, "a man is judged" by the quantity of his wives and slaves.

It is useful to push the contrast further and consider the different models of womanhood that emerge over time in the historical record by comparing Mama, the young wife of Dussaulx, with some from the precolonial era. In Bate's founding years, for example, motherhood and menopause had generated narrow possibilities for women to achieve and exert, via their successful and loyal adult male sons, some political influence. Such authority typically came to well-connected older, postmenopausal women who possessed admirable interior qualities and earned the respect of others over a lifetime of fulfilling various domestic responsibilities. Mama traveled a very different pathway to prominence. She gained her position as temporary wife to Dussaulx not because of her political connections, social standing, or character-young Mania was not from an elite family of any great Rather, Dussaulx picked her because he thought that she seemed "virginal" Unlike women in the precolonial era who achieved influence because of their comportment and age, the women who achieved any degree of informal political authority in the colonial era typically did so because, willingly or unwillingly, they had sex with French men.

For a woman such as Mama, becoming the temporary wife to the local commander no doubt generated tangible material and social benefits.'1 French colonial officials typically compensated the family of their spouse with a bridewwealth payment, just as Dussaulx extended to Mama's relations. It is also likely that, for as long as she lived with Dussaulx, Mama was shown a degree of deference and respect by local populations that otherwise would not have been extended to someone of her age and status. But the rewards to Mama and other women involved in these relationships, as for their families, were predictably fleeting. The political and material benefits that came with being associated with a local French official typically lasted only as long as his tour of duty. Chiefs and other

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.