Support H-Net | Buy Books Here | Help Support the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!
- African Studies
- African American Studies
- American Politics
- American Studies
- American South
- American West
- Asian American Studies
- Australian and New Zealand Studies
- British Studies
- Canadian Studies
- Caribbean Studies
- Central Asian Studies
- Chinese Studies
- East Asian Studies
- Eastern European Studies
- European Politics
- French Studies
- German Studies
- Iberian Studies
- India Studies
- Indian Ocean World
- Iranian Studies
- Irish Studies
- Israel Studies
- Italian Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Korean Studies
- Latino Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Mexican Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Native American Studies
- Pacific Studies
- Polish Studies
- Russian and Eurasian Studies
- Southeast Asian Studies
- South Asian Studies
- Turkish Studies
- Ukrainian Studies
- Western European Studies
- World Affairs
- Animal Studies
- Anthropology
- Archaeology
- Business, Management, and Marketing
- Media
- Critical Theory
- Disability Studies
- Drugs, Addiction and Recovery
- Education
- Economics
- Finance
- Geography
- Gender Studies
- Genocide Studies
- Higher Education
- Human Rights
- Journalism
- Language
- Law
- LGBTQ+ Studies
- National Security
- Philanthropy
- Philosophy
- Policing, Incarceration, and Reform
- Political Science
- Politics & Polemics
- Public Policy
- Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work
- Sociology
- Sound Studies
- Sports
- Urban Studies
- Big Ideas
- Celebration Studies
- Co-Authored
- Cover Story
- Historical Materialism
- History Ex Silo
- Interpretive Political and Social Science
- Invested Investor
- Landscape Architecture
- Late Antiquity
- Mormonism
- NBN Book of the Day
- NBN Seminar
- Postscript: Conversations on Politics and Political Science
- Practical History
- Preparing for Life After Grad School
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Syriac Studies
- The Chair: In The Room at the Fed
- New Books with Miranda Melcher
Jun 29, 2012
The Female King of Colonial Nigeria
Ahebi Ugbabe
Summary
When I saw Nwando Achebe's book The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011), I thought: "Really? A female king? Cool!" It turns out Ahebi Ugbabe was not only a female king, but also a female husband and father. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Ahebi Ugbaba was born late in the nineteenth century in Igboland, in present-day Nigeria. She fled home to escape her community's dedication of her in marriage to a deity to compensate for a crime her father had committed. The marriage would have reduced her to the status of a slave. After twenty years as a prostitute and trader in exile, she returned and established herself: first as headman, then as warrant chief, and finally as king. For a biological woman to transform herself into a social man was a familiar practice in Igboland. But for anyone to be chief or king was not. The Igbo had practiced communitarian rule by groups of elders; it was the British who imposed rule by a single person. It was perhaps inevitable that Ahebi's rule would be troubled. The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugabe is a fascinating exploration of the fluidity of gender and the nature of political authority. And it's a remarkable reconstruction not only of colonial rule at the local level, but also of pre-colonial life and post-colonial memory. I highly recommend
Nwando Achebe, Professor of History at Michigan State University, is the winner of both the Barbara "Penny" Kanner Prize and the Gita Chaudhuri Prize of the Western Association of Women Historians.
