Description
Book SynopsisConjugal Rights is a history of the role of marriage and other arrangements between men and women in Libreville, Gabon, during the French colonial era, from the mid–nineteenth century through 1960.
Trade Review“Through a judicious use of archival material from all levels of the empire…and oral interviews with approximately one hundred Gabonese, the author demonstrates that the growth of the city and the French empire cannot be convincingly written without a full account of the women and men who lived there, their struggles to form intimate relationships, and the strains that resulted from those relationships. …
Conjugal Rights has much to offer readers, more than can be discussed here. Those interested in sexuality, gender, marriage, law, colonialism, and urban history— and not just in an African context—will be richly rewarded by the book.” * American Historical Review *
“[Jean-Baptiste] eloquently describes how the ‘sexual economy’ of emotional, social, legal and
physical relationships between women and men shaped urban life… Her book is an important
addition to many debates in African studies.”
* Journal of African History *
“As a study of Francophone Africa written in English,
Conjugal Rights is doubly valuable. Bringing together cutting-edge urban studies, gender history and the history of emotions, Jean-Baptiste’s work insists that the shape of Libreville owed as much to the shifting fortunes of marriage and sexual relationships as to any set of commodity imports and exports. It points us toward a new and much fuller understanding of the lives of African women and men in cities where personal and political constructions regularly flowed over the boundaries planned for them by colonialism.”
“Richly documented and highly readable,
Conjugal Rights illuminates the complex interplay between marriage, sexuality, economy and authority in a colonial African city. Moving beyond conventional narratives of colonial power and African agency, Jean-Baptiste argues persuasively that limits on both left spaces of manoeuver and debate in which women and men sometimes managed and sometimes failed to realize their emotional and material aspirations, and apparently rigid rules of church and state proved to be unstable and inconclusive in practice.”
“This remarkable study draws upon an impressive array of sources to recast the historiography of African urbanization in ways that belie conventional narratives.”
