Introduction: States of marriage in colonial West Africa -- Locating gendered knowledge and authority in Sikasso at the turn of the century -- Contesting slavery and marriage in early colonial Sikasso -- Returned soldiers and runaway wives : defining the African family in the French Sudan, 1912/30 -- Wealth in women, wealth in men : the global depression of the 1930s, competing labor obligations, and the Mandel Decree -- Defining the limits and bargains of patriarchy : narratives of domestic violence -- Gender justice and the marriage legibility projects of late colonial French Sudan -- Conclusion: "There are always laws that are not practiced."
Summary
States of Marriage shows how throughout the colonial period in French Sudan (present-day Mali) the institution of marriage played a central role in how the empire defined its colonial subjects as gendered persons with certain attendant rights and privileges. The book is a modern history of the ideological debates surrounding the meaning of marriage, as well as the associated legal and sociopolitical practices in colonial and postcolonial Mali. It is also the first to use declassified court records regarding colonialist attempts to classify and categorize traditional marriage conventi