The increase in trade as the primary economic activity of Mpongwé men, particularly young men, altered their roles within their communities.28 As more Mpongwé men turned toward trade as their primary economic activity in the nineteenth century, their contributions to agricultural production and community labor decreased and the numbers of slaves increased.29 Some free men continued to clear the fields during the dry season, while women and slaves planted, cultivated, and harvested plantations located several kilometers from the towns.30 Crops included indigenous and imported produce such as cassava, plantains, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and beans cultivated for subsistence and trade with local communities. Mpongwé also maintained small livestock such as goats and chickens, and men hunted and fished to add to their diets.31 Historian K. David Patterson suggests that by the early nineteenth-century Mpongwé societies had achieved a prosperous way of life.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the region that was to become Libreville was cosmopolitan. The Mpongwé viewed their societies as superior to surrounding African communities due to their wealth in imported goods, their knowledge of white languages and cultures, and access to formal education. Americans established a Protestant mission in 1842, under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, in the area of King Glass that was also the center of German, American, and British commercial activity. Within two years the Catholic French Spiritan Fathers constructed the Saint Mary mission in the region of King Louis, and the Soeurs Bleues arrived to work with Gabonese women. Both missions included houses of worship and small medical dispensaries. Beginning in 1844, French missionaries operated a primary school, to which Mpongwé political leaders sent their sons for basic education in the French language and math. In 1850, the Soeurs Bleues opened a school for Mpongwé girls. Though families sent more sons than daughters to missionary schools, the daughters of wealthy families attended school. Nuns administered courses in the French language and domestic arts in addition to directing the girls’ labor in growing manioc and other food staples to feed the mission. American Protestants also opened a school and taught in English in the village of Baraka. Protestant and Catholic missionaries struggled with each other to convert Libreville residents toward their respective faiths. By the end of the nineteenth century, a small group of literate elite—nearly all men, but including some women—Mpongwé existed.32 That some Mpongwé women also received formal education in the mid- to late nineteenth century would set a precedent for girls of future generations to attend school and for the subsequent unfolding of renegotiations of gender, political influence, and wealth.
Women played key roles in constituting wealth and power in Mpongwé societies. There is no evidence that women held formal political roles or were active traders. However, women’s agricultural production was crucial to the sustenance of Mpongwé communities and the increased numbers of foreigners living along the coast, as they were the primary farmers of manioc and other produce on plots located several kilometers from villages.33 In more affluent households, nonslave women removed themselves from farming, labor undertaken by women of lower status and male and female slaves.34
Access to European goods was an indication of elite social status and wealth, but power in mid- to late nineteenth-century Equatorial Africa also depended on a person’s wealth in people, including slaves and other dependents, but particularly in wives, both slave and free.35 As outlined by Jan Vansina, in the political tradition of big men in West-Central Africa, to acquire honor and to become rich required having many wives.36 Marriage, which was a crucial yet contested practice for nineteenth-century Mpongwé societies, established reciprocal obligations of assistance and networks of allies among affines that household heads could tap into for the purpose of strengthening social, commercial, and political status.37 Since marriage conferred adult status, single men and women remained rare. An Mpongwé man seeking to crystallize alliances with a more powerful man could offer him a female dependent as a wife.38 By the age of three or four, and sometimes at birth, some girls were already betrothed.39 Prepubescent brides lived in their husbands’ households, where they assisted and were raised by the mothers or senior wives of their husbands. Mothers could also play a key role in selecting their daughters’ husbands. For women married at or after the age of puberty, some sources relay that the bride’s consent was necessary, while other sources indicate that a father could marry his daughter with or without her consent.40 A woman was at liberty to engage in sexual relations with chosen suitors until her family had entered into a marriage agreement for her and she left her birth family to live in her husband’s household.
Contrary to functionalist interpretations of nineteenth-century marriage—the “trade and politics” paradigm that focuses on the “customary” use-value of sexual access to women—gender roles and sexual relationships were negotiated and renegotiated in the context of dynamic lived experiences.41 Prior to the nineteenth century, marriage between Mpongwé took place by the exchange of women (mipenda) between two clan groups or by the groom’s family remitting bridewealth consisting of iron bars (ikwèliki). But by the mid-nineteenth century, marriage by bridewealth was more prevalent than marriage by exchange and consisted almost entirely of imported goods. The incorporation of imported goods into bridewealth changed the universal attainability of marriage.42 Bridewealth costs increased along the Gabon coast. Thus, heads of households could expand their wealth in goods in addition to their wealth in people through the marriage of female dependents. Bridewealth negotiations were a man’s domain, and representatives from both parties debated the amount to be remitted based on the age, physical appearance, and work habits of the bride-to-be.43 European observers recorded bridewealth transactions as including items such as liquor, guns, ammunition, knives, tobacco, china, cutlery, and European clothing, with a total value of 100–300 francs.44 It is challenging to quantify what 100 francs was worth in the late nineteenth century, yet missionaries indicated that the amount was an astronomical sum that took a man many years to amass. Additionally, an Mpongwé fiancé had to furnish his bride with a dwelling and two years’ worth of cloth.45 Escalating bridewealth costs meant that some Mpongwé men delayed marriage well beyond postpuberty rites until they could collect enough goods.46
Marital ties could be tenuous. Husbands did not appear to exercise absolute power over their wives, nor was it certain that marriage severed ties between a woman and her family of origin. The most frequent node of conjugal conflict was adultery, defined as the act of a married woman engaging in extramarital sex without her husband’s authorization.47 A wife’s adultery could result in corporal punishment and public shaming. Armed conflicts between groups of Mpongwé men from different villages were often sparked by a dispute between two men over who had rights to a specific woman.48 Married men could have lovers other than their wives with social and legal impunity. By all accounts, divorce occurred frequently. Either husbands or wives could initiate divorce proceedings, but wives did so more often.49 A husband could repudiate his wife or demand a divorce if she failed to produce offspring or if she was too infirm to perform domestic tasks.50
Male and female kin and elder men assessed and made the final judgment on the validity of women’s requests for divorce, thereby maintaining elders’ social control over women’s maneuverability in dissolving their marriages. A woman seeking to depart from her marriage would often take refuge with her family of origin to air her grievances and request a divorce.51 Her husband would then approach her father or male guardian and request her return. If the woman’s kin conceded,