A German Collection of Non-European Women's History

Notices and Abstracts of Books Aussereuropäische Frauengeschichte: Probleme de Forschung Adam Jones, ed., (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus-Verlag.) Frauen in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Vol. 25,1990,192 pp. This coUection of essays in German on non-European women's history is concerned primarily with the difficulties which the sources for such history raise. The essays deal with different parts of the world (China, India, the Caribbean, the Islamic world, West Africa, Northeast Africa and East Africa), different periods (mülennia in the case of China, a few years in that of India) and different kinds of sources: in some instances they rely entirely on the 'external' observations of European men, whüe in others there exist 'internal' sources. The eight essays may be roughly grouped into four pairs. The first two discuss the whole range of sources avaüable for the history of women in a particular region. Gudula Linck's paper on China emphasizes problems assodated with the identity of the historian (male and female interpretations , academic discourse, subjectivity etc.) and the male point of view that dominates the majority of the sources. She also offers some suggestions as to how these disadvantages may be overcome. Harald Motzki's article discusses the different kinds of sources for women's history in the Islamic world. Those dating from before the eighteenth century, he argues, are limited in value by their normative charader and their concentration upon the upper social strata; for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, as the example of Egypt shows, a more differentiated picture can be drawn. The next two essays each deal with one particular genre of sources. Vasudha Dalmia-Lderitz discusses the light which controversy about the immolation of Indian widows (satt) sheds upon the ideological opposition between the Hindus and their British rulers. She dtes the major source on this subjed dating from the early nineteenth century, the British Partiamentary Papers, to a critical examination, showing how in the eyes of most British men the Indian woman was nothing but an innocent victim, without a will of her own or the capadty to form an independent opinion. In her artide on Eritrea, Friederike Kemink assesses the value of legal codices as a source of women's history. Each sub-group, she points out, had its own statutes, which were written down at different times (in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) in Italian or Tegrenna. In order to minimize the dangers of misinterpretation, it is essential to compare aU variants of a statute and the various statutes of different areas. © 1991 Journal of Women's History, Vol 2 No. 3 (Winter) 144 Journal of Women's History Winter Moreover, the very process of setting down in writing what had hitherto been oraUy transmitted (and therefore flexible) may tend to give a misleading historical picture. In the foUowing two essays the key theme is sexuality. Ariette Gautier examines the references to sexual relations between white men and black slave women in the Caribbean. Is it true that many of these women eventuaUy feU in love with their owners? Did they have the option to choose what sort of sex Ufe they led? Can we deduce from the number of manurnissions the extent to which having sexual relations with a white man constituted a realistic strategy by which a woman might improve her status? Given the nature of the sources, such questions can only be answered in part. Adam Jones's paper deals with the same period and is likewise concerned with unfree black women who were regarded as sexual objeds. Their owners, however, were not Europeans but the inhabitants of vülages on the West African coast. In order to understand this situation, it was necessary for Jones to examine the power relations that existed in these viUages and the ritual through which the women described in the sources as "whores" were integrated into the community. The last two articles dealt with women's own testimony concerning the past. Mamadou Diawara discusses the hierarchical sodety of the Soninke in West Africa, among whom each group possesses its own oral traditions. Women belonging to the servüe part of the population play a central role in...