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Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern Nigeria, 1925-1945“. The Foundations of Nigeria: Essays in Honor
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7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
18 · "Subsidizing the Merchants at the E x p c ~ s c ~ f t h cAdministration": Railway Tariffs and N1genanMaritime Trade in the I 920sAyodeji Olukoju 373
19. Road Transportation and the Economy ofSouthwestern Nigeria, 1900-1920Dipo 0/ubomehin
20. The Faulkner "Blueprint" and the Evolution ofAgricultural Policy in Inter-War Colonial NigeriaAyodeji 0/ukoju
21. Poverty and its Alleviation in Colonial NigeriaOgbu U Kalu
22. The Transformation of Eastern Nigeria:
From Self-sufficiency to Social Crisis
Andrew C. Okolie
23. The Colonial Joint Venture: An Interpretation of
"Indirect Rule" in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1940
G. Ugo Nwokeji
24. The "Colonial Hangovers" and the Collapse
ofNigeria's First Republic, 1960-1966
Raphael Chijioke Njoku
Part E: Identities and Colonial Ideology
25. Beyond Those Arbitrary BordersDesire Baloubi
26. The Ekiti ofNouthern Nigeria: Boundary Adjustment
as a Solution to Unequal Status, 1901-1936
R. T Akinyele
27. The Colonial Government and the Minority Question
0/ayemi Akinwumi
389
403
423
447
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
Women's Revolt in particular by emphasizing its root in the peasant
economy. I argue that the reaction of the women of Eastern Nigeria
in 1929 displayed their independent spirit, their intellectual ability to
articulate their demands at an important historical moment, and their
ability. as peasants to challenge the hegemony of the colonial state.
But the women were not fighting for gender equality or for the interest of their own sex; they were leading a popular movement that
prm-;ded the driving force for economic and political change. Addi
tionally, if the various revolts in Eastern Nigeria are examined as
peasant revolts, we can gain insight into the British colonial percep
tion of the local economy in this period, their perception of women
as invisible, and how women challenged such economic and gender
ideology.
WOMEN IN THE COLONIAL CONTEXT
Social and feminist historians of late have enhanced our under
standing ofthe impacts of colonialism on women. As many scholars
have shown. theories of colonialism relate a "dialectical world of the
colonizer ~ d the colonized that is often presumed as male."2
Oye
wumi argues that while it is not difficult to sustain the idea that "the
colonizer was predominantly male, the idea that the colonized was
uniformly male is less so."3 British colonial officials had a universal
patriarchal ideology which created new institutions based on Euro
pean notions of gender in the colonies. Their failure to recognize
existing local institutions transformed the roles women and men had
previously played in society and show the lack of "fit" between co
lonial ideological perceptions and African realities. As Annie Lebeuf
argues:
[By a] habit of thought deeply rooted in the Westernmind, women are relegated to the sphere of domestictasks and private life, and men alone are considered equalto the task of shouldering the burden of public affairs
4
Lebeuf calls for a broader perspective that allows for the under
standing of the manner in which activities are shared between men
and women, particularly in Africa.5 Sylvia Leith-Ross's classic, Afri-
can Women, was the first major attempt to study the Igbo women of
Eastern Nigeria. The major aim of the project was to understand "the
conditions of life of the women of Igboland."6This attempt was
made after women in Eastern Nigeria carried out mass demonstra
tions, revolts, and open confrontation against the British colonial
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
government in the 1929 Women's Revolt. Since the event in 1929,
lgbo women in particular became the focus of many historical and
feminist studies.7
Indeed, the role of Igbo women has been used to
critique what Chandra Talpade Mohanty calls "the production of
'Third World' women as a homogenous, powerless group of victims
in Western feminist discourse, robbing them of agency and historywhile sustaining the idea of the superiority of the West."8 Thus, any
attempt to place women's political and economic participation in
relation to the histories of imperialism entails the adoption of a criti
cal perspective on Western notions of women's subjectivity, espe
cially in the colonial context.
For the societies in Eastern Nigeria, women's responsibilities
and participation in the traditional sociopolitical and economic froc
esses can be examined in terms of both "structures and values." TheIgbo, for example, offer perhaps the most illustrative example of
women's participation in the political, social and economic lives of
their communities in pre-colonial times. The roles that women play
challenge the patriarchal representation of lgbo culture. In the for
ward to African Women, Fredrick Lugard, the first governor-general
of Nigeria, described the Igbo woman of Eastern Nigeria in particu
lar as "ambitious, courageous, self-reliant, hardworking, and inde
pendent, who claims full equality with the opposite sex and wouldseem indeed to be the dominant partner." 10 Leith-Ross described
lgbo women as "economically and politically equals of the men."11
Women in Nigeria, according to Leith-Ross, "are seldom of the chat
tel type and correspond little to the widely held idea of the down
trodden slave as unregarded beast of burdens." For Igb<1 women in
particular, Leith-Ross observed that their number, their industry,
their ambitions, their independence, would enable t h ~ m to play. a
leading role in the development of their country. 12 Victor Uchendumade similar observations about the position of the Igbo woman
among other African women:
The African woman regarded as a chattel of her husband,who has made a bride wealth payment on her account is
not an lgbo woman, who enjoys a high socio-economicand legal status. She can leave her husband at will, abandon him if he becomes a thief, and summon him to a tri
bunal, where she will get fair hearing. She marries in herown right and manages her trading capital and her profitas she sees fit."
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
resent local communities. British officials, whose perceptions of fe-
male roles were based on their European experience, worked through
male authorities and ignored their female counterparts. 18 Only malechiefs became salaried officials among the Niger Igbo where theOmu, the female counterpart of the male Obi existed. 19
Some men participated in the local administration as interpreters, messengers, policemen, and army recruits and traders. A few
were given warrants to act as the representatives of the administra
tion in their areas, and they exercised powers which were unprece
dented in the pre-colonial system. In the colonial setting, therefore,
the imposition of a new patriarchal ideology and a Victorian uni
verse of morality came together in a collaborative hegemony which
excluded women. The position of was a peculiar one. They were, to
a large extent, an invisible factor within the new administrative arrangement. Although women were virtually excluded from the ad
ministration, they nevertheless came under the surveillance of the
colonial regime. The colonial courts interfered with women's tradi
tional judicial responsibilities. Just as the local judicial authorities
were forbidden to take punitive action on offenders, so women were
not allowed to "sit on"20
anyone or to discipline offending members
of their associations.21
The indigenous governing structure which
validated or reinforced women in ways that normalized their pres
ence in the judicial, economic, and political spheres of life were to
tally eroded. Before colonialism, Igbo men could in fact accept the
"sitting on a man" mode of conflict resolution, together with its
graphic imagery of "being sat on," because, in these communities,
women adjudicated cases, established and enforced rules and regula
tions, and worked in concert with male authorities in the administration of the community. 22
The theoretical significance of the act of "sitting on a man,"
Nzegwu argues, is that it "forcefully reveals the existence of a soci
ety in which men lacked the sort of patriarchal authority that most
ethnographic literatures present as a universal, cross-cultural condi
tion for African societies."23 She argues that from a political stand
point, "this punitive force afforded women a powerful social check
on male excesses, and ensured that women's views were adequately
factored into policy decisions."24 Since political identity was a reality
for women, and in "their eyes nwayibuife (women are of signifi
cance), there could be no shame in acknowledging and abiding by
women's regulations."25
Nevertheless, this was unacceptable to the
colonial state despite the policy of indirect rule which sought to respect indigenous political systems.
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
The colonial e111 WBS also a period of fundamental chan e inlocal economy. The gradual expansion of the colonial e c o ~ o m ~ ~the begmnmg of the twent1eth cenlur)• stimulated peasant produc?t'ionof palm produce for export. The demand for 111w materials intro-duced fundamental changes in the local economy and in productionmethods. Unfortunately, w o m ~ n did not fare better economically.
The transformatiOn that came m the wake of the increased demandfor cash crops by European industries and the perception of colonialofficials that only men were farmers ensured that men took control
of cash crop production and marketing.26
The colonial development
ideology, the export potential of palm products, and the cash income
derived from sales encouraged men to participate actively in produc-
tion. The colonial government's interventionist approach created
boundaries of economic and social difference based on gender.
However, the government's agricultural and development policy, the
changes in the sexual division of labor, and control over and exploi-
tation of the local agricultural resource base did not often stimulate
increased production or revolutionize production methods. Since the
new economic structure was predicated on the patriarchal ideology
of the male farmer, the neglect of women farmers that intensified
with colonial exploitation of peasant agriculture is important in
understanding the political economy of colonialism, the impact on
women's autonomy, and the response of women in particular to the
crisis that colonial policy generated in the agricultural economy.
Nevertheless, the strategic role ofwomen as agriculturallaborers and
peasant producer subsidized the colonial state and peasant house-
hold. But the colonial authorities' development ideology, the neglect
of women farmers in particular, and colonial extraction measures,
stimulated an agricultural crisis in the region to which peasant
women responded through both peaceful and violent protests.
WOMEN AND ACTMSM
IN COLONIAL EASTERN NIGERIA
In response to the political and economic marginalization of
peasants as a result of British colonial policies in Eastern Nigeria,
peasants organized protests at different historical times. According to
Nzegwu, women increasingly organized protest rallies and picketed
the offices and residences of colonial officials to "wrest some form
of representation for themselves from the British."27
The women be-
lieved, like most colonial subjects, that they had been left out in the
new dispensation. They associated British colonialism with moral
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
laxity and decadence. Women also linked the decline in the worldmarket for export produce, especially palm produce, to colonial andimperial policy. Although some of the peasant resistance movementsin this period were dominated by women, men were not entirely onthe sideline.
The women's initial response was the \925 "Dance Movement"which originated in the Okigwe division of the Owerri province but
soon spread to a large portion of Igboland. The movement started asa result of a message said to have been received from God. It was"anti-Government, anti-Christian and anti-British in particular andcalled for a return to ancient customs."28 The women's demands in-cluded forbidding the use of European coins, the fixing of prices offoodstuffs in the markets, and regulating the style and quantity of
clothing worn by women.29 In Awgu division, women called for theexhortation of old customs, the exclusion of the men from cassava
farming, and the fixing of the prices of fowls, cassava, eggs, andother commodities in the market at certain rates?0 In their view, the
participation of men in the cassava trade reduced the profits the
women could make and undermined their economic independence.
Several colonial reports showed the authorities' apprehension of the
~ o m e n ' s protest and the need to stop its spread with the collabora
tion of the male warrants chiefs.31 How to stop the women's protest
was a perplexing problem. Both colonial officials and the African
warrant chiefs had firm assumptions about how women should be-have. For colonial officials, in particular, transgressing gender
boundaries was in itself seen as disruptive and unfeminine. What
both parties failed to understand was that women were particularly
affected by the political and economic transformations taking place
as a result of colonial policies.
In 192 7, another movement "The Spirit Movement" originated
among the adherents of the Kwa Ibo Mission in Uyo district. Unlike
the Dance Movement, the Spirit Movement was anti-pagan. 32 TheSpirit Movement was of a revivalist nature, affecting both men and
women, but chiefly the women. It was directed against paganism, but
later degenerated into a movement for the discovery and exorcism of
witches. In late 1929, women in Eastern Nigeria, pressured by the
economic crisis in the region, started a protest that spread throughout
most of Eastern Nigcria. 33 The low returns from palm oil and ker
nels, the general economic crisis resulting from the worldwided ~ -
pression, and the British taxation policy in the colony set off a cha.m
of events that brought the colonial administration into direct conflict
with peasant women in Eastern Nigeria. The most vocal criticism
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
Nevertheless. the Commission noted that the perception by thewomen that the government was beginning to be afraid of their demonstration and gradually yielding to pressure "must have been steadily grrming. and "ill undoubtedly embolden them to increase theirdemand and to go to greater and still greater length to get them satisfied."' In the Commission's view, this sense of surrender to what it
described as the mob in respect to Okugo was "the most importantcontributory factor to the spread of the disorder which followed."45
As noted earlier, the women's protests were carried out on a
scale that the colonial state had never witnessed in any part of Africa. Until the end of December 1929, when troops restored order,
ten native courts were destroyed, a number of others were damaged,
houses of native court personnel were attacked, and European facto
ries at Imo River, Aba, Mbawsi, and Amata were looted. Women
attacked prisons and released prisoners.46
But the response of the
colonial authority was also decisive. They authorities not only used
soldiers to disperse the women, they also used extra legal means to
achieve their goals. In an incident at Ikot Ekpene on 15 December
1929, colonial officials were forced to use leprosy as a weapon when
a British doctor let loose a horde of lepers on the women to disperse
them.47 By the time order was restored, about fifty-five women were
killed by the colonial troops.48 British troops left Owerri on 27 De-
cember 1929, and the last patrol in Abak Division withdrew on 9
January 1930. By 10 January 1930, the revolt was regarded as
crushed. Throughout late December 1929 and early January 1930,
more than thirty collective punishment inquiries were carried out. It
is generally believed, according to Nina Mba, that this event marked
the end of the women's activities because the new administration
under Governor Donald Cameron took into account some of the
women's recommendations in revising the structure of the Native
Administration. Thus, the Women's War is seen as the historical dividing point in British colonial administration in Nigeria with far
reaching implications.49
There is no uniform agreement on the immediate and remote
causes of the revolt. Historians and feminist scholars to date have
considered that the Women's War of 1929 was primarily inspired by
political grievances. Colonial officials and warrant chiefs were the
most overt symbol of the attack by colonialism on the local political
tradition and culture. However, the traditional interpretation fails toboth account for the agrarian roots of the revolt, the economic mo
tives, and to recognize why only women carried out the protest. Con
trary to the dominant historiography, economic rather than political
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
motives were paramount to these peasant women. The political and
feminist interpretations of the Women's War were by no means passive acts. They emerged partly from the concerns of nationalist historians who were interested in portraying African resistance to colonialism, and partly from feminism's attempts to use gender/women as
a u ~ c ~ u l ~ ~ t c g o r y for historical analysis and struggle within AfricanSOCiettCS.
Nzegwu, for example, argues that the Women's War was an at-tempt by the women to restore the erosion of their rights and showsthe working of a female-identified consciousness and the importanceof female solidarity.
51
Thus, Nzegwu argues that women's politicalconsciousness was directed toward the restoration of equitable gender relation that had been affected by the colonial patriarchal socialand political policies. The comparison between the "Women's War"
slogan Oha ndi inyom52
and the women's suffrage movement in Eng
land "where militant feminism committed breach of the law with a~ i e w to drawing the widest attention to what they believed to be the
mherent justice of their cause,"53 show the premium placed on the
1929 Women's War as a feminist movement.
Perham, Gailey, and Afigbo see the main causes of the
W o ~ e ~ ; s War as primarily political and only secondarily eco
nomtc. To them, the women's reaction was inevitable because the
colonial administration allowed them no other means of expressing
t?eir grievances. Perham, in particular, explains the revolt as a reaction to the "pathological condition" of the Eastern Provinces-that
is, the fact that the political system was so different from the rest of
the country that indirect rule could not succeed. She and Gailey be-
lieve that the women's exr:ression amounted to a rejection of an alien
system of administration. 5 Afigbo further argues that the Women's
War was another manifestation of the anti-colonialism expressed in
the nwobia la movement in 1925.56 According to Afigbo, "the
movement [nwobia la] was essentially anti-government ... [I]n
fighting for the old political and moral order, the women were asking
for the exodus of the British."57 In 1929, however, the women re
jected not just the system of administration but the whole colonial
order. According to Afigbo, 1929 was "the last of the conservative
revolts against the colonial regime in Nigeria."58
J. S. Coleman
places the Women's War in the context of "traditional n a t i ~ n a ~ -ism."59 Onwuteaka linked the Women's War to the system of mdtrect rule in Eastern Nigeria.
60Judith Van Alien also sees the cause of
the Women's War as primarily a political protest in which women
were using their traditional method of protest of "sitting on a man"
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
on a larger scale to regain the political participation they had in theprecolonial society.•1
The above commentators. however, agree that it was the wide-spread belief that women would be taxed that actually precipitated
the disturbances and the timing of the revolts.62This view does not
diminish the political weight given to the revolt. My argument is thatthe 1 9 ~ 9 Women's \\'ar \\ ' liS a peasant revolt with a primarily eco-
nomic objective, although it was dominated by women. The immedi-
ate cause of the revolt, as the Commission of Inquiry also acknowl-
edged. was the widespread belief throughout the affected areas that
the government was about to impose a tax upon women.63
The
Commission of Inquiry stated in its report that taxation, first of the
men and then the fear of it being extended to women, was the main
cause of the riots. Although women drew upon traditional forms of
political language and discourse to articulate their demands, the his-
tonography is deficient on the economic roots of the revolt. As Ste-
ven Feierman explains, "when peasants organize political move-
ments, or when they reflect on collective experience, they speak
about how politics can be ordered to bring life rather than death, to
bring prosperity rather tban hunger, and to bring justice rather than
i n e q u a l i t y . ' , & ~It is to the actions and behavior of the women that we must turn,
for the existing records are hopelessly deficient in recording their
voices, the range of their emotions, and their motives. The various
forms of resistance are a key to understanding their actions, which
also need to be more broadly understood within the context of the
exercise of colonial power but most importantly within the economic
dilemma that tbe region faced during the Great Depression of the
1920s and 30s.65
Ikodia, one of the women of Oloko, explains the
position of women:
We heard that women were being counted by their chiefs.Women became annoyed at this and decided to ask whogave the order, as they did not wish to accept it. As wewent to various markets, we asked other women whetherthey too had h e ~ d the rumor about the counting of
women. They rephed that they had heard it. We heardalso that Oloko Chiefs had counted their respectivewomen. We, women, therefore held a large meeting atwh1ch we dec1ded to wait until we heard defmitely fromone person that women were to be taxed, in which casewe would m ~ k e trouble, as we did not mind to be killedfor domg so. ·
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
nicts with the British were dominated by the men. The memories of
the Ah1ara Exped1t1on of 1905, for example, and the brutality of theBnt1sh towards the natives in Ahi8Jll were still fresh in the minds of
many in 1929. Many other communities throughout the area affectedby the Women·s War had witnessed the military force the Britishused to establish their authority. Both men and women believed that
the colonial officials would not use such force against women. Sec-ond. the uncritical presentation of the 1929 Women's War as female
reality ignores the prevailing ideology that war and violence is the
arena for men. In the attempt to push the Women's War as a feminist
political protest, there is little attempt to conceptualize the women's
action as a rural peasant protest.Evidently. the root of the Women's Revolt can also be found in
the severe economic depression of the late 1920s, characterized by
falling prices for export goods, especially palm oil and kernels. Theslump in palm produce prices coinciding with the imposition of taxa-
tion and coupled with the discontent caused by the taxation of men
helped to fuel the revolt. The Commission of Inquiry acknowledged
that women readily stated their grievances when a s ~ e d t ~ do ~ o . One
of such grievances was the low price of produce. Thts gnevance
was not an imaginary one. When the assessment of the income of
adult males was made in 1927 for the purpose of fixing the rate of
taxation, one of the principal sources of income taken into accountwas the proceeds of the sale of palm products.
77But while the prices
of export products were at their lowest, the prices of imported goods
were on the increase, a genuine complaint by the women.78
Political and social matters also featured in the women's de-
mands. The commission believed, and rightly, too, that discontent
over the "persecution, extortion and corruption by the native court
members (Warrant Chiefs) was another principal contributory cause"
of the women's discontentment.79
The women complained about theconstitution of the native court members. Women in Owerri prov-
ince, like their counterparts in other provinces, demanded that the
native court members be changed.
However, political grievances were secondary to the women's
demands. Even the demand to change the native court members was
e c o n ~ m i c in origin, and could be found in the severe economic op-
prcsston of peasants by a colonial capitalist structure. The warrant
chiefs were accused of corruption and bribery which directly si-
phoned the pockets of the rural peasants. As Nwanyeruwa of Oloko
1old the Commission of Inquiry:
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
Okugo became a rich man because of the money he gotfrom us. If he had not got money from us, he would nothave been able to provide for himself On one occasion,he called both men and women together and told themthat the District Orficer had ordered that money should becollected for him to build a house. We collected 20
pounds sterling and handed it to him. He made use of themoney in conjunction with his women and did not build ahouse as he had told us he was going to do. On anotheroccasion, he told us that the District Officer had been
worrying him for a young wife [that the District Officerwanted a young wife] and that both men and women
should collect money to pay the dowry of a young wifefor the District Officer. We collected the sum of 20pounds sterling and gave it to him as a dowry for the
young woman requtred for the District Officer . . . . We
are s u r e ~ e s e three women were not given to the DistrictOfficer.
637
How to attack the native authority system was a perplexing
problem for the natives. On this question there had been no con
certed effort in the past. And it appears that the colonial authority in
Eastern Nigeria was remarkably ignorant of the level of corruption in
the native authority system. The grievances against local officialgave rise to the destruction of native courts because they were the
instruments of the government and of the local administrative sys
tem.81 There was overwhelming evidence at the Commission of In
quiry hearings regarding the "persecution, extortion, bribery and cor
ruption in the native courts.',s2
Indeed the Commission of Inquiry
concluded in its report that "although allegations of corruption and
bribery was of a general nature, we heard enough to be satisfied that
persecution by native courts members and corruption in the nativecourts are a source of very considerable discontent among the peo
ple."83 The movement finally assumed the character of a revolt
against all fonns of established authority and control.84 For the gen
erality of women, it was a reaction against the severe economic con
ditions existing in their society at this period. As a group of women
stated:
We wish relations between us and government to be as
cordial as those existing between us and the Reverend Fa-thers. If there is co-operation between us and governmentwe shaH be able to select new men to t ~ e the place of
those chtefs who have been oppressmg us.
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
Tltc B ~ l \ " C stlltcn_tt."'nl u n d ~ , " o r r ~ _ m ~ ' " ~ I R i m that the \ \ 'omen's \\ 'ar
was nN ~ - e s s a n l ~ an a n t t ~ e > l < > m a l movement seeking to expel the
'"''' '"tal a u t h . . v i t ~ C " l ' N.1t a pt'&sartt ' " ' ' ' ~ m e n t or struggle against colomal exn-a.:n,,n ,,t pt'&..<Artt resoun."es and income.
l1lc ""''men's pn'f<'Sts in Eastern ~ i g e r i a continued after 1929
An,,ther SCl"ll'US pn">ll"St ....,,men over produce prices occurred
On,n. Calat>ar pnwin."e. in 1o_;3 when about fifteen hundred market""''rnl"n stag<--.l a b._,yce>n ,,f trade and hroke up surrounding markets
w enf,,n.·e the hcwe<'n. TheY demanded from the United African
C o m p a n ~ (l":\C) ~ n i n c r e a ~ in the price of palm oil.80
There was
another mass pn'fest against taxation by both women and men in
Okigwe and Bende divisions of Owerri province. This disturbance,
whi.;-h dcYeloped inte riots. spread over an area of more than five
hundred square miles.8• There was also a mass protest against market
cen!J\.'1 offcx'<l items in the local market in 1944 as a result of World
War I!. The protest centered mainly on the imposition of government
price cvntrol on the cost of garri (cassava flour), which was con-
trolled by women. In actuality, the various protests were a reaction to
the economic crisis in the !U1'111 economy. But the domination of
these protests by women raised a serious ideological dilemma for the
British administration regarding appropriate gender roles and the
women's response to their invisibility under colonialism.
COLONIAL IDEOLOGY,WOMEN'S
RESISTANCE, AND REPRESENTATIONS
Oyewumi has argued that the gender identity of the colonizers
is important in understanding how colonialism affected males and
females. Colonial policies and practices were largely shaped by cer-
tain ideologies and values which influenced the behavior of the
colonizer and the system of colonial domination.88
Colonial gender
ideology and perceptions of what women could do informed the way
the event of 1929 was presented in the commission's report. Colonial
observers distorted the women's participation in the uprising. "Riot,"
the term used by the British, V an Alien argues "conveys a picture of
uncontrolled, irrational action, involving violence to property or per-
son or both." 'Aba Riots,' neatly removed women fiom the picture
while "Women's War" conveys an action bl women and an elaborate
application of the act of "sitting on men."8
Indeed, the British adap-
tation of the term "Aba Riots" to describe the women's revolt instead
of the "Women's War'' as the women called it was an attempt to be-
linle women's opposition to the colonial state structure and put
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …
"'''""'" in their "proper place." The colonial reports and inquiries
1,JI,ml·d this pallcm. a glaring example of the misrepresentation of
thl' "'''men· s goals and ideology.l'n understand onicial Rrilish position, however, one needs to
''"'"-closely at the reports of the Commission of Inquiry and the tes-timony of many colonial officials. The commission held public sit-
tings for thirty-eight days at various locations in the Owcrri and
Calabar Provinces and interviewed 485 witnesses. Of this total num-ber of witnesses, only about I 03 were women. The rest consisted of
local men and British administrative officials who were either called
to explain their role in the revolt or why they could not stop the
women. The commission was continuously looking for the men be-
hind the scene or the instigator of the women.9Q The residents of the
Calabar and Owerri provinces, to mention a few, were of the opinion
that men were behind the women's movement. Mr. Falk suggested,
with regard to the burning of the Utu Etim Ekpo and Ika NativeCourts by the women, that the real conspirators were the men who
remained outwardly disinterested and used the women as a eat's
paw.91
Mr. Ingles went further and said that in his "opinion the trou
ble was engineered by agitators outside the Province who had pre-
pared a very efficient and thorough organization which only awaited
a pretext for the machinery to be put in motion."92 The efficiency of
the women's organization persuaded Mr. Weir ofOkigwe division in
theOwerri province
that there must have been a "master mind" atthe back of the movement.93 Mr. Hughes was convinced that the
men who were equally dissatisfied encouraged or at least did "noth
ing to discourage the women in their lawless behavior,"94
while Mr.
Jackson considered that following the rumor that women were to be
taxed, "there was seditious agitation among the men to induce the
women to demonstrate against the Native Court system."95
Although some residents had reservations regarding men's im-
plication in the revolt, the report reveals a general f e e l i ~ g that even .if
the men were not behind the movement, they did nothmg to stop tt.
Mr. Cochrane, however, thought that the movement was organized
entirely by women.96 This sentiment was supported by the testimony
of Akulechula of Obowo, a female witness, and perhaps summed up
by the views of many women:
I t has been suggested here that men encouraged women tomove about. I deny that statement; it is not true. We werenot encouraged by men . . . It is against the native custom
for women to leave their houses without the permission oftheir husbands but in this case, men had been made to pay
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ing to the 1929 Women's Revolts in Eastern Nigeria demonstratesthat assessments of resistance to colonialism and British gender ideology are inadequate without examining the link between the capitalist nature of the colonial economy and the economic roots of
women's agitation. Both colonialism and the commercialization of
agriculture speeded up the rate of social and economic change. Although opportunities for women remained limited, the evidence doesnot support the 1929 Women's Revolt as a feminist movement. The
women's domination of the peasant resistance could be analyzed as a
marker of their important roles in the economy in general and the
agricultural sector in particular. However, the women protested
a g a i ~ s t market regulations and price controls, and demanded eco
nomic autonomy not because they were fighting for women. Their
engagements are a reflection of the crisis in the agrarian economy of
thei_r society and the marginalization of local people in the colonialSOCiety.
NOTES
There are a number of studies on women in Eastern Nigeria in general
and lgbo women in particular. See, for example, Nina Mba, Nigerian
Women Mobilized: Women's Political Activity in Southern Nigeria,
1900-1965 (Berkeley: University of California, 1982) and "Heroinesof the Women's War," in Nigerian Women in Historical Perspectives
"Beyond Comp'.idty ~ ~ r . > u s Resistance: Recent Work on Gender andEuropean 1mpenahsm. Journal ofSocial History· (Spring 1995): 629.641. For an overview. see also Oyeronke Oyewumi, The Jrrvention of
Women: Mahng an African Sense of Western Gender Discourse(MinneJ!jXl1is: Univer.>ity of Minnesota Press, 1997), 121; He1en Ca1-
1away. Gender. C"lture and Empire: European Women in Colonial
Nigeria (Urbana: Uni\·er.;ity of Illinois. 1987); and Nupur Chaudhuriand Margaret Strobe!. eels. Western Women and Imperialism: Com
plicity and Resistance (B1oomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1992).Oyewumi, The /m-ention of Women, 121. See also Chima J. Korieh,"The Imisible Farmer' Women, Gender, and Colonial AgriculturalPolicy in the lgbo Region of Nigeria, C. 1913-1954," African Eco
nomic Historr 29 (2001): 1-37 (forthcoming).Annie L e b e ~ f , "The Role of Women in the Political Organization of
African Societies.'' in Women of Tropical Africa, ed. Denise Paulme
(Berkeley: Universityof
California Press, 1963), 93.Ibid.Leith-Ross, forward to, African Women, 5. .See Tamale Sylvia, "Taking the Beast by Its Horns: Formal Reststance
to Women's Oppression in Africa," African D ~ e l o p m e n t 21, no 4
(1996): 5-21; Van Alien Judith, '"Aba Riots' or Igbo ' W o m . ~ n ~ sWar?' Ideology, Stratification, and the Invisibility of Women, m
Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, ed. Nancy
J. Hafkin and Edna G. Bay (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1976); Ward Kathryn, "Female Resistance to Marginalization: Thelgbo Women's War of 1929," in Racism, Sexism, and the World Sys-
tem, ed. Joan Smith (Greenwood, 1988); Wipper Audrey, "Riot and
Rebellion Among African Women: Three Examples of Women's Po
litical Clout," in Perspectives on Power: Women in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America, ed. Jean O'Barr (Durham, NC.: Duke University Cen
tre for International Studies, 1982), 50-72.
See C. T. Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
Colonial Discourse," in Third World Women and the Politics ofFemi-nism, ed. Chandra T. Mohanty, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991 ), 51-80. Cited in Clare
Midgley, "Anti-Slavery and the Tools of 'Imperial Feminism,"' in
Gender and Imperialism, ed. Clare Midgley (Manchester UniversityPress, 1998).
Ibid., 62.
Leith-Ross, African Women, 19.
Ibid.
/bid ' 19-20.
Victor Uchendu, The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria (New York: HoltRineha.rt & Winston Inc., 1965), 87. '
7/29/2019 Korieh, Chima J. „Gender and Peasant REsistance: Recasting the Myth of the Invisible Women in Colonial Eastern …