Conjugal Rights by Rachel Jean-Baptiste sku-38541212

Rachel Jean-Baptiste's Conjugal Rights, in the New African Histories series, is a hardcover in the African History Books category, SKU sku-38541212. It examines marriage and other relationships between men and women in Libreville, Gabon, from the mid-nineteenth century through 1960, during the French colonial era.

The book argues that women's emotional, social, legal, and physical relationships helped shape urban life, challenging accounts that portray women as few in number and of limited influence in African colonial towns. It describes how bridewealth drove economic activity as people promised, earned, borrowed, transferred, and absconded with money.

Under colonial rule, chiefs and civil servants oversaw multiple courts, giving residents a choice of where to bring disputes over relationships as customary marriage law became more fluid. Relationships with European men gave some African women greater economic and social mobility.

As marriage rates declined, women and men reconsidered pleasure, respectability, and legality in sex outside kin-sanctioned marriage. Jean-Baptiste also examines how marriage and sexual relations shaped urban identity and Libreville's physical landscape.

Despite French efforts to enforce racial boundaries, interracial relationships persisted, and some Black and métisse women gained economic and social capital through them.