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Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi, eds. Women in African Colonial Histories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. 338 pp. Photographs. Notes. Maps. Index. $54.95. Cloth. $24.95. Paper.
Reaching into the interior spaces of African social life, the authors of the thirteen chapters in this volume of pathbreaking research reveal the lengths to which the agents of colonialism were willing to extend their authority. The great distinction of the collection, however, lies in its central problematic: women's modes of adjustment, negotiation, and resistance. Maintained throughout, this theme permits a close view of women's encounters with colonialism in the various regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The scrutiny the authors bring to bear on these encounters, the wide range of resources they employ, the attention they devote to context, and the combination of methodologies they apply, all underscore the complexities of women's experience in colonial Africa and provide a link to contemporary scholarly issues. As the editors explain, "The specific topic of a chapter becomes the door through which the reader encounters an overarching theme in the literature" (4). Not the first historical study of African women, the anthology is located within "a burgeoning historiography" (2) which...