I would also like to thank Tara Reylets, James Blackwell, Chioma Uchefuna, and Eric Kesse, who served as graduate assistant researchers for me. Their help in locating source material for this book is very much appreciated. Thanks also go to Harry Odamtten and Peter Alegi, who provided Asante-Twi and isiZulu translations.
My heartfelt thanks extend to the two anonymous reviewers who read this manuscript closely and provided comments and suggestions for improvement. To Rick S. Huard, acquisitions editor of Ohio University Press, I say another dalu so, for his steadfast support and encouragement of my vision for this project.
I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the love and support of my family and friends. Immeasurable thanks go to my mother, Professor Christie Chinwe Achebe, whose love and support have been a constant in my life. She has had faith in me, even when I have not. She has carried me when I have faltered. She is my rock. My daughter, Chino, my heart, my life. I have watched you grow into a beautiful, intelligent, and poised woman; I hope you find inspiration in the lives and worlds of these powerful and influential African women. Last, but not least, my friends Pero Dagbovie and LaShawn Harris, Melissa McDaniels, Carl Taylor, Dee Jordan, Dawne Curry, Deborah Johnson, Dave and Lorraine Weatherspoon, Shawna Forester, Linda Kahler, and Philip Effiong deserve special mention. Each has been an attentive and supportive ear for me during this difficult past year and a half. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I hope that this book serves to introduce my readers to the fascinating and compelling worlds of elite African women. As an African woman myself, I can attest to the fact that these [her]stories of powerful and influential African women, and the female principle, give me a sense of pride in whence I have come, and who I am.
Introduction
The Preamble
In a 2014 newspaper story, “Women Arrest Boko Haram Fighters in Borno,” Hausa journalist Hamza Idris reports on a mysterious incident that throws light on the conviction held by African peoples about the interconnectedness of the human and spiritual worlds, and the forces therein.1 Illustrating the belief in the ability of human beings to tap into this unseen world of spirits and channel their extraordinary powers to influence activity in the visible human world, the article captures the interconnectivity between the two worlds:
Some women in Gwoza town of Borno State are said to have arrested seven Boko Haram2 fighters who wreaked havoc in the town on Sunday. Shortly after their arrest[,] angry youth and vigilantes in the town rallied and lynched [the terrorists]. . . . Some residents who spoke to Daily Trust attributed the daring arrest by the women [to] mystical powers. Sources in Gwoza said many insurgents had earlier in the day intercepted a vehicle loaded with bread, slaughtered four of the occupants[,] and drove the vehicle towards Sambisa Forest. . . . A witness from Gwoza, who did not want his name mentioned, said, “After seizing the vehicle conveying the bread and other valuables in Gwoza . . . some of the insurgents moved towards the Sambisa (Forest) and met some women on the way[:] “The insurgents wanted to attack the women but their guns did not work. They tried hitting them with the boot [sic] of their guns but mysteriously, all the hands of the insurgents hung until youth and vigilantes in the area mobilized and killed them.” . . . Mohammed Gava, the chairman of local vigilantes in Borno State[,] confirmed the incident[:] “When the gunmen were moving out of Gwoza, most people fled to safety but those women refused to flee. I think the insurgents were angry and wanted to attack them but met their waterloo.”3
Ascribing the women’s brazen arrest of the Boko Haram terrorists to “mystical powers,” directed by these women, to paralyze the insurgent’s guns and immobilize their hands is an attribution that reads true for the over three thousand nations of people who inhabit the African continent. It is this belief in the interconnectedness between the human and spiritual worlds and in the viability of power flowing from spirits to humans that we witness in the explanation of the Gwoza women’s action. And it is these various elucidations, conceptualized from an African-centered perspective, about the ways in which African women and/or the female spiritual principle exhibit power, influence, and authority that Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa seeks to highlight.
Methods, Focus, and Definitions
One of the central features of African historiography has been the fact that Africans produced fewer documents that historians have traditionally considered to be “evidence”—government reports, letters, diaries, travel logs, wills, and property records. This has meant that until recently the voices and the worldview of Africans were completely excluded from major works of African history—a fact compounded in reconstructions of African women and gendered worlds.
With limited access to the traditional sources that scholars typically use to document their work, African-centered gender historians have necessarily had to find new methods to explore the voices of people who have historically been denied a voice. This text is part of that intellectual odyssey, functioning as a corrective while utilizing, where available, African-derived sources, including language/linguistics, the meaning and significance of names, metaphors, symbolism, cosmology, chronicles, songs, folktales, proverbs, oral traditions, and traditions of creation, to record the worldview and experiences of African women who did not leave written evidence of their lives in their own voices.
Regrettably, this African-/gendered-centered source material is not evenly or consistently distributed across the continent. Thus, this narrative, in places, may seem to privilege one African region—for instance, the privileging of West Africa in the “Merchant Queens” chapter—over some others. When documenting early African women and gendered worlds, this lacuna is further amplified by an unevenness of available source material across time and space, resulting in histories that may appear incomplete and regionally fractured or unbalanced.
The chapters within this book have been thematically and roughly chronologically organized, with reference to regional space and time. When and wherever possible, I have sought to establish sustained change over time within reconstructions of particularized narratives. However, due to the regional- and time-specific porosity of certain source material, this has not always been possible. Thus, in those instances, I work to establish change over time by reading and analyzing one regionally based and time-defined case study against another, and in the process, pooling to completeness, an overall historical narrative.
While paying homage to the diversity of lived experience on so vast a continent, I have necessarily, in this short history, had to generalize certain African gendered realities that read true across regions and periods. I have done this not to be reductionist about the complexities of African realities but rather to present an overall narrative that is uncompromised in its accessibility and scope.
From Amma4 to inkosazana,5 Sobekneferu6 to Nzingha,7 Nehanda8 to Ahebi Ugbabe,9 the kandakes of Meroë10 to Omu Okwei,11 and the daughters or umuada of Igboland, Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa documents the worlds and life histories of elite African females, female principles, and (wo)men of privilege. It centers the diverse forms and systems of leadership, as well as complexities of female power at the highest level, in a multiplicity of distinct African societies.
I use the terms “female principle” and “female spiritual principle” to speak to—and give voice to—the totality of leadership and authoritative roles occupied by female entities in Africa. These terms are inclusive and speak to the manifestations of all dimensions of femaleness in society, be they in the human, seen, world (female principle) or the spiritual, unseen, world (female spiritual principle). In the human world, the female principle is embodied in women’s roles as overseers and females of privilege, including women leaders of their people or wives of male leaders. These women exercise great power, authority, and influence publicly, temporally, and in spiritual/religious spheres. My focus on the female spiritual principle (i.e.,