LAUSR

Constructing ‘a history of Africa with women as the starting point’ (p. xi), which Kathleen Sheldon’s bookAfricanWomen: Early History to the 21st Century sets out to accomplish, is a formidable and necessary task considering the absence of a comprehensive textbook that covers African women to date and the persistence of a predominantly androcentric meta-narrative of the continent’s history. Using a wide range of examples highlighting women’s experiences and histories from different locales and time periods, African Women powerfully demonstrates the centrality of women to the making of the continent’s history. Going beyond the recuperative aim of inserting African women as agentive actors in the narrative, Sheldon successfully shows how factoring in women’s physical and affective labour within their families and communities, and the myriad ways in which their actions were shaped by evolving patriarchal and structural forces, enriches our understandings of Africa’s past and present. Including an introduction and nine chapters, Sheldon’s account follows a chronological narrative from the pre-1700 era to the twenty-first century. The first three chapters chronicle women’s ‘everyday lives and elite politics’ (p. xiii) in the centuries prior to the formalization of colonial rule. The chapters examine women’s and men’s distinct and overlapping roles in the household and community and how these roles shifted as a result of critical episodes such as slavery and the expansion of Islam and Christianity. Throughout the chapters, Sheldon meticulously discusses the range and limitations of available sources, reminding readers how much we still do not know about women’s lives in pre-colonial Africa and the possibilities and limits of historical production more generally. Although chapters two and three focus heavily on ‘elite women and women who came into contact with Europeans’ (p. 34), primarily because they are the most accounted for women in documentary sources, particularly European ones, Sheldon painstakingly provides information on women from all socio-economic and political backgrounds by showing ‘how women’s work was at the centre of the daily functioning of an African society’ (p. 31). Chapters Four and Five examine ‘the period of intense colonialism’ (p. xiv) in Africa. Chapter Four deftly charts the differential impact of colonial rule on African men and women, with particular attention to how the changing gendered household division of labour, and larger political economy, marginalized women’s socio-economic position and heightened their vulnerability. The chapter also discusses colonial concerns driven by varying ‘moralistic’, economic and political agendas centred on women’s bodies, health and sexuality, which led to the construction and implementation of invasive policies targeting women. Mindful of not homogenizing women’s experiences of colonialism and the changes that came with it, Sheldon argues, ‘While there were arenas where women suffered and were oppressed, there were also some women who benefitted from the expanded opportunities that came with increased urbanization and work possibilities’ (p. 92). Sheldon provides many examples showing women’s ingenuity in adapting to their changing worlds and enhancing their material security and overall well-being. Chapter Five details women’s diverse and powerful modes of resistance to encroaching colonial policies and their rapidly changing circumstances, including women’s political mobilization and activism. The theme of women’s resistance to, and protest against, colonial bureaucracy and governance that endangered their individual and dear ones’ welfare, is further explored in Chapter Six through women’s