Gender: a World History

Book excerpt: "On November 24, 1929, rumors that British colonial officials planned to tax Igbo women reached the village of Oloko in southeastern Nigeria. Mark Emeruwa, instructed by the local warrant chief, Okugu, to carry out a census of women in preparation for their taxation, entered the compound of a woman named Nwanyeruwa and told her to begin counting her animals. She replied angrily that people had died from colonial counting, and insulted him and his mother by demanding of him, "Was your mother counted?" Emeruwa, enraged, grabbed her by the throat and tried to throttle her. She, her hands wet with oil from the palm nuts she had been pounding, smeared his Western-style suit with the red sticky stuff. He ran off to Okugu's compound to tell him of the events. The warrant chief summoned her to his dwelling and insisted she would pay the tax, threatening her with deep trouble and promising that "when the District Officer comes, he will take charge of you." To a woman uncertain of what lay in store under the British legal system, his threat could well have meant she would be executed. Upon hearing of Okugu's treatment of Nwanyeruwa, a large crowd of women surrounded his compound. There they "sat on" him, a locally recognized practice undertaken when men committed offenses against women. When "sitting on a man," women danced and sang until the object of their grievance acknowledged his offense and promised to make restitution. In this particular instance, the chief not only refused to admit to any wrong-doing, he set male members of his compound on the women, causing injury to eight of them. In response to Okugu's transgressions-entirely out of step with the expectations of his office-and owing to the persistent rumors of taxation of women circulating in other towns and villages, enormous crowds of women-amounting to tens of thousands-attacked native courts, looted banks, and stormed a number of European warehouses in a variety of towns and villages in southeastern Nigeria"--