The Female King Of Colonial Nigeria

While providing critical perspectives on women, gender, sex and sexuality, and the colonial encounter, she considers how it was possible for this woman to take on the office and responsibilities of a traditionally male role.

An unapologetically African-centered monograph that reveals physical and spiritual forms and systems of female power and leadership in African cultures. Nwando Achebe’s unparalleled study documents elite females, female principles, and female spiritual entities across the African continent, from the ancient past to the present. Achebe breaks from Western perspectives, research methods, and their consequently incomplete, skewed accounts, to demonstrate the critical importance of distinctly African source materials and world views to any comprehensible African history. This means accounting for the two realities of African cosmology: the physical world of humans and the invisible realm of spiritual gods and forces. That interconnected universe allows biological men and women to become female-gendered males and male-gendered females. This phenomenon empowers the existence of particular African beings, such as female husbands, male priestesses, female kings, and female pharaohs. Achebe portrays their combined power, influence, and authority in a sweeping, African-centric narrative that leads to an analogous consideration of contemporary African women as heads of state, government officials, religious leaders, and prominent entrepreneurs.

This is a brilliant and refreshing book, which gives ample and well-deserved voice to women...It is a book that will definitely be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of history, anthropology, political science, religion, and political economy. It is a must read for scholars and students in Women's Studies Programs. - Felix K. Ekechi; Professor Emeritus(History); Kent State University This orginal and insightful work's sensible and balanced view of Igbo women's power and authority is modulated by a profound understanding of the ways in which women negotiated indigenous cultural spaces and at the same time negotiated with and refashioned pre-colonial and colonial contexts. Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings is a major event in African gender studies publishing. - Obioma Nnaemeka; Professor of French, Women's Studies, and African/African Diaspora Studies; Indiana University, Indianapolis Nwando Achebe's book is rich in accounts of the life histories of recent powerful goddesses that were constructed by the Nsukka Igbo from the late 19th century... She] recounts these case studies with passion and fascination. This is another important addition to the growing literature in Igbo studies, gender studies and African historiography. - Ifi Amadiume; Professor of Religion and African and African American Studies; Dartmouth College A] landmark in African historiography. In the best tradition of the discpline, Dr. Achebe] reminds us after all that history, however academically grounded, should aim to delight as well as educate. Nwando Achebe is ahead of her generation not only in the depth of her sensibility but in the facility with which she represents the structures of feeling of her Igbo society. - Isidore Okpewho; Distinguished Professor of the Humanities; State University of New York, Binghamton There is an adage that the Igbo have no kings. Farmers, Traders, Warriors and Kings focuses on an area in Igboland where, contrary to this popular belief, Igbos not only have kings, but female kings. It is an area where women served as warriors and even married many wives. Because women in Nsukka Division served as prominent actors in a complex set of interactions, relationships and manifestations unmatched elsewhere in Igboland, the author argues that researchers cannot adequately analyze the landscape of Nsukka Division (or any other African society, for that matter) without investigating the central place of women and the female principle in the spiritual world of the society. The author examines the political, economic, and religious structures that allowed women and the female principle to achieve measures of power and looks at some of the ways they reacted and adjusted to the challenges of European rule. Such an investigation into the history of this gender dynamic yields important results for both African History and Women's Studies. Achebe focuses on the evolution of gender politics and female power in Nigeria's northern Igboland over the first six decades of the 20th century. This time period, approximately 1900-1960, is important because it allows for the exploration of continuity and change in Nsukka women's activities, as well as the female principle, over three periods: late pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Nigeria. Along the way, she raises and answers questions relating to scholarship on women, sex, and gender in Africa by uncovering the complexities of the Igbo gender construct, arguing, for example, that sex and gender did not coincide in northern Igboland. Consequently, women were able to occupy positions that were exclusively monopolized by men in other societies, and men, likewise, occupied positions that would have otherwise been monopolized by women. Expanding on this premise, the author calls for a revision of traditional classifications of African women

In 1929, tens of thousands of south eastern Nigerian women rose up against British authority in what is known as the Women's War. This book brings togther, for the first time, the multiple perspectives of the war's colonized and colonial participants and examines its various actions within a single, gendered analytical frame.

How did African women negotiate the complex political, economic, and social forces of colonialism in their daily lives? How did they make meaningful lives for themselves in a world that challenged fundamental notions of work, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, and family? By considering the lives of ordinary African women -- farmers, queen mothers, midwives, urban dwellers, migrants, and political leaders -- in the context of particular colonial conditions at specific places and times, Women in African Colonial Histories challenges the notion of a homogeneous "African women's experience." While recognizing the inherent violence and brutality of the colonial encounter, the essays in this lively volume show that African women were not simply the hapless victims of European political rule. Innovative use of primary sources, including life histories, oral narratives, court cases, newspapers, colonial archives, and physical evidence, attests that African women's experiences defy static representation. Readers at all levels will find this an important contribution to ongoing debates in African women's history and African colonial history.

Featuring contributions from some of the most accomplished scholars on the topic, Holding the World Together explores the rich and varied ways in which women have wielded power across the African continent, from the precolonial period to the present. Suitable for classroom use, this comprehensive volume considers such topics as the representation of African women, their role in national liberation movements, their experiences of religious fundamentalism (both Christian and Muslim), their incorporation into the world economy, changing family and marriage systems, impacts of the world economy on their lives and livelihoods, and the unique challenges they face in the areas of health and disease. Contributors: Nwando Achebe, Ousseina Alidou, Signe Arnfred, Andrea L. Arrington-Sirois, Henryatta Ballah, Teresa Barnes, Josephine Beoku-Betts, Emily Burril, Abena P. A. Busia, Gracia Clark, Alicia Decker, Karen Flint, December Green, Cajetan Iheka, Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Elizabeth M. Perego, Claire Robertson, Kathleen Sheldon, Aili Mari Tripp, Cassandra Veney

For more than half a century before World War II, black South Africans and “American Negroes”—a group that included African Americans and black West Indians—established close institutional and personal relationships that laid the necessary groundwork for the successful South African and American antiapartheid movements. Though African Americans suffered under Jim Crow racial discrimination, oppressed Africans saw African Americans as free people who had risen from slavery to success and were role models and potential liberators. Many African Americans, regarded initially by the South African government as “honorary whites” exempt from segregation, also saw their activities in South Africa as a divinely ordained mission to establish “Africa for Africans,” liberated from European empires. The Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, the largest black-led movement with two million members and supporters in forty-three countries at its height in the early 1920s, was the most anticipated source of liberation. Though these liberation prophecies went unfulfilled, black South Africans continued to view African Americans as inspirational models and as critical partners in the global antiapartheid struggle. The Americans Are Coming! is a rare case study that places African history and American history in a global context and centers Africa in African Diaspora studies.