Abolitionists Abroad

Lamin Sanneh. Abolitionist Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999. 

Lamin Sanneh’s transnational approach to abolition focuses on who he refers to as Black Americans, those who either escaped from slavery or freely chose to emigrate to new colonies in West Africa. The convergence of American, European, and African history makes Sanneh’s focus on the role of religion in the abolition movements easy to understand. Sanneh’s thesis is that evangelicalism and colonization of Africa allowed American Blacks to create an antistructural society, simultaneously free from and controlled by the racial expectations forced upon them in American and European societies.

Antistructure is equated with antislavery because the antislavery movement in Africa challenged both the structural power of caste and chieftains, disrupting preexisting African (read slave-trading) power structures. In a similar vein Evangelicalism is equated with antistructure because it disrupted the preexisting power structures in European societies that suppressed the power and agency of individuals, as demonstrated by Sanneh through the rhetoric of the American Revolution and writers such as Locke and Milton. Sanneh emphasizes the importance of religion in the creation of West African colonies, and the eventual end to the slave trade in the region. It is this emphasis on religion that is Sanneh’s greatest contribution to the discussion of colonial West Africa. As one of the first attempts to connect the interwoven histories of American Blacks, European antislavery sentiment, and colonization in West Africa Sanneh’s Abolitionists Abroad is  a landmark exercise in transatlantic studies that look beyond the slave trade, and focuses on abolition and the consequences of colonization in Africa with the purpose of abolition.

Sanneh’s analysis of the antislavery actors whom he focuses centers on the role they played in promoting humanitarianism and antislavery in Europe, rather than the transatlantic slave trade. While he does explore the continental slave trade that became disrupted by colonists and missionaries in Africa, he largely ignores the colonial structures that replaced the disrupted African power structures and the move to “legitimate” trade. Additionally Sanneh does not distinguish power structures that were already in existence in Africa, assuming all cultures to be chiefdoms that depended on slavery as the only viable commercial asset they possessed. Both of these notions are faulty.

The assumption that Evangelical Christianity disrupted preexisting power structures by undermining the monarchical power of chiefdoms is much more complicated than Sanneh indicates, as many indigenous cultures acted as Terence Ranger stated: “Almost all recent studies of nineteenth-century, pre-colonial Africa have emphasized that far from there being a single ‘tribal’ identity, most Africans moved in and out of multiple identities, defining themselves at one moment as subject to this chief, at another moment as a member of that cult, at another moment as part of this clan, and at yet another moment as an initiate in that professional guild (Robert O. Collins and James M. Burns, “Problem III: Colonial Rule in Africa,” Historical Problems of Imperial Africa, 139).”  While evangelicalism did play a significant role in the colonization of Africa and the creation of later ethnic identities, it should not be considered the largest motivator in the abolition of slavery in West Africa.

Similarly, Sanneh ignores palm oil, lumber, and other raw materials that Africans were producing and trading to Europe in addition to or instead of trading in slaves. The increased demand for these goods, primarily palm oil, had as much of an impact on the end of the slave trade in West Africa as the abolition efforts from Europeans and Black colonists (see Martin Lynn, Commerce and Economic Change in West Africa: The Palm Oil Trade in the Nineteenth Century).

Twentieth-Century Women in Africa

Iris Berger. Women in Twentieth-Century Africa: New Approaches to African History. University of Cambridge Press, 2016.

Iris Berger sets out to overturn preconceptions that African women in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries were victims of a continent that was violent and particularly dangerous for women. Berger approaches the subject by breaking-down the role of women in twentieth century African history into eight themes; colonial challenges to family relationships; new religious and cultural movements; the cult of domesticity; gendered nationalisms; postcolonial struggles; changes in sexuality and intimate relationships; the women’s human rights movement; and new forms of repression and empowerment. Berger creates a compelling historical narrative of African women through the use of micro-histories that bolster her larger arguments about the ways women found agency and authority in the colonial and post-colonial world which they lived.

Berger begins her book by exploring the ways that women were both burdened with, and able to take for themselves, new economic opportunities such as cash cropping. Berger emphasizes the traditional role of women as co-producers and laborers in African societies and the ways that colonial intervention threatened the independence of women as producers when Victorian gender norms were enforced. The unintended consequences of enforcing monogamous patriarchal family structures was a decline in birth rate, which colonial administrators believed threatened the labor force, resulting in the first healthcare clinics aimed at women’s health. Berger’s account of the politics of tradition and “modern” medicine in these healthcare clinics is fascinating and demonstrates the multiple ways women worked with and against colonial forces; this is one topic that hopefully is more fully explored in another monograph or two.

Berger argues in chapter two that the colonial attempts to impose religious and administrative control over African societies strengthened rather than weakened the resolve of African women to contribute to the evolution of their societies. To protest colonial marginalization and to carve out new space for themselves women found ways to create religious authority for themselves- through bori rituals for example.[1]Such attempts at self-reassertion of course only increased the ire of the colonial masters, which manifested itself in oppressive legislation, such as forced venereal disease screenings. The description of these screenings was reminiscent of a description of body searches in Algeria given in Marnia Lazreg’s book, Torture and the Twilight of Empire, when French officials would check all men in urban settings for explosive devices; in Berger’s case the threat was immorality and sexually transmitted disease.[2]The account of one of the women who had undergone such an examination highlights the dehumanizing nature of such colonial laws. Women resisted these wanton laws through diverse forms-peacefully through new religious movements, or in direct confrontation against the White rulers such as in the Aba Women’s War in Igbo land in 1929.[3]

One of the main themes that is repeated throughout the book is that as colonial states consolidated, missionaries and colonial officials “intervened more aggressively in women’s personal lives through efforts to transform and regulate coming-of-age ceremonies, marriage and childbirth practices…”[4]As the colonial governments solidified, so did the regulation of women’s lives. During the postwar period the increase in the enrollment of girls in schools, and in women directly resisting colonial policies that were anti-women, Berger argues created a sense of change and a new era of equity for women. Berger explains the shift during the 1950s from “practical” and religious education for girls to more robust education because “in part, to address fears…that educated men would want wives with comparable learning.”[5]The changes in education were part of a colonial agenda, meant to further educate women on how to be good wives and mothers in the fashion of European women, yet many women were able to take their education beyond learning domestic tasks. Berger emphasizes just how important literacy was to the identity of modern womanhood in African colonies, and to the decolonization movement.

In her discussion of religion and nationalism, Berger highlights the authority which women still often found within religion. The Roho Church in Kenya allowed women to hold leadership positions, travel to proselytize, and work as healers, teachers and pastors.[6]The Lumpa Church in Zambia is another example that Berger chose to use as a way of highlighting the way that equality within a religious setting allowed men and women to become more vocal and assertive, setting aside domesticity ideals in favor of protesting colonial rule. Importantly Berger points out the way that women “often cited their responsibilities as mothers to justify their political engagement,”[7]which simultaneously politicized the family and drew attention to the role of European concepts of domesticity and the related morality laws governing family life. It seems a shame that this is a survey of women in twentieth-century Africa, because Berger provides so many vivid and engaging micro-histories that the reader is both excited to move on to the next, but hesitant to leave behind the woman which Berger has introduced.

Berger’s analysis of women’s role as “mothers of nationalism” is a great introduction into nationalist movements, as well as the way that including women into the dialogue expands the understanding of decolonization in mid-century Africa. Berger does an excellent job of highlighting women of different regions and class in her chapter that emphasis that the decolonization movements were popular protests and not simply the actions of a few elite African men. The continued disenfranchisement and inequity of women within the newly formed independent states brings the reader deeper into Berger’s analysis as she attempts to answer some of the larger questions surrounding the independence movements.

According to the data that Berger provides, the majority of women during the 1970s and 1980s worked to supplement their husband’s income in some form of agricultural or domestic labor. Many of the policies of the newly independent states created further laws restricting women’s agency. Berger writes, “by the end of the 1980s, while women’s opportunities had improved somewhat since independence, they still trailed men substantially in their access to resources; in addition, discriminatory laws governing marriage and inheritance remained common, and laws that protected women were rarely enforced.”[8]Despite these restriction on women’s lives, a growing international women’s movement began to take shape.

Perhaps the most interesting theme to run through the second half of the book is the growing international movements which often had their roots within armed liberation groups such as the African National Congress, Eritrean People’s Liberation Front, and Zimbabwe African National Union.[9]Berger traces the ongoing struggle of African women to shape better policies and laws on critical issues like marriage, sexuality, and the Aids pandemic from these early nationalist organizations to the international movements which reached their zenith in the mid-1990s with elections of women to African parliaments and international women’s conferences either held in African cities or featuring intellectual African women. The goal of these organizations was to increase political representation of women within national governments, as well as create a framework that would promote gender equity and safety. Berger states that by 2003, “women…held more than 30 percent of seats in Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, Uganda, and Burundi,” in addition to the 49 percent of Rwandan parliament seats held by women.[10]

Berger’s research goes a long way in debunking preconceptions of African women as victims, or as weak. While Berger spends a great deal of time emphasizing the empowering features from the lives of the women she highlights in her survey, it is clear that there remains an arduous road ahead for women to gain the equity and safety which they desire. That is not something that is unique to African gender studies, as this remains a global struggle for women. Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, is a wonderful survey of modern African history through a gendered lens. Of particular interest to me is the suggestions for further reading, as Berger’s writing worked like a large cup of coffee and energized me to read more on many of the subjects which she introduced.

[1]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, pp 35-36.

[2]Marnia Lazreg, Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad, Princeton University Press, 2008.

[3]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa,p 40.

[4]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, p 10.

[5]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, p 53.

[6]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, pp 61-62.

[7]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, p 65.

[8]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, p 104.

[9]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, pp 105-117.

[10]Iris Berger, Women in Twentieth-Century Africa, p 160.