Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 (review)

This study of female power among northern Igbo of the old Nsukka Division of southeastern Nigeria contains many features of a model feminist historical analysis. Achebe examines women's spiritual power, female economics, and political power during three historic periods—precolonial, early colonial, and late colonial to postcolonial. In addition to drawing on archives, dissertations, government reports, and the diverse publications on the northern Igbo, she makes extensive use of taped life histories and other oral accounts. Copious footnotes include numerous interviews, mostly of women, with all of her interviewees and assistants acknowledged over the lengthy periods of research in 1996 and 1998. Achebe calls those interviewed "collaborators," a better term than the older anthropological "informants," with its hegemonic implications.

The book is enriched with sometimes lengthy excerpts from her collaborators, and it is delightfully sprinkled with Igbo proverbs and sayings in Igbo with English translations; there is a strong sense of the African voice. While Achebe is not from the northern Igbo area, but from farther south, she spent a good many years at Nsukka and has full control of the northern dialect. Certain key themes appear again and again: that of female husbands, either dedicated to a female shrine or married to other females, as well as the distinction between gender as cultural behavior and sex. Another theme is that androcentric colonialism and Christianity limited women's roles beyond the family, though not always successfully. To counter this tendency, Achebe adopts an "African/female-centric methodology" (98).

The introductory chapter explores Achebe's field experiences, her scholarly background, and issues that arise in feminist historical studies. She views herself as both insider and outsider in her research. The following chapter offers a good critique of previous literature on the area, supporting the charge of androcentricity. Northern Igbo is complex, with a mixed cultural history. There were early influences from the Igbo civilization of Nri to the southwest, Igala pressure from the northwest, the impact of the Idoma area in the north, and of Arochukwu to the southeast. As a consequence, many of the cases of female activities are specific to the village or village group. Achebe points out that the major northern Igbo spiritual forces have been female. She details women's relationships to these—including the warrior goddess, Nimu Kome, and the women-marrying spirit Efuru and her female dedicatees—and she writes of four female diviners and healers. I wonder why it is that in a patrilineal society so many spiritual forces are female, but Achebe does not discuss this. She writes little, too, of ancestral spirits, in contrast to their importance in most Igbo societies. Is there no belief, as elsewhere in Igboland, in female reincarnation through ancestors?

Achebe then traces northern Igbo economy through time. She shows that while men mostly grow yams, the basic foodstuffs for the family and for trade have been the products of female labor. Women kept the proceeds of the sale of crops and crafts for their family and their own use, not turning them over to husbands. There is a good section on northern Igbo women's weaving, leaving me to wonder why both northern Igbo and Akwete Igbo weaving is done by females and on vertical looms, while virtually all other Nigerian weaving is by males on horizontal ones, a question the author does not deal with. Women also play a major role in pottery production and trade, both of which loom large in the female economy. As in the case of weaving, in recent years both males and commercial products have intruded into this sphere.

Northern Igbo markets have been controlled by women. Achebe describes women long-distance traders, starting in the colonial period; she says nothing about precolonial times, perhaps because warfare and slave raiding made such trade perilous. She offers valuable data on the northward trade from Nsukka Division (most published accounts...