Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa

Domestic Violence and the Lau, in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa reveals the ways in which domestic space and domestic relationships take on different meanings in African contexts that extend the boundaries of family obligation, kinship, and dependency. The term domestic violence encompasses kin-based violence, marriage-based violence, and gender-based violence, as well as violence between patrons and clients who shared the same domestic space. As a lived experience and as a social and historical unit of analysis, domestic violence in colonial and postcolonial Africa is complex.

Using evidence drawn from sub-Saharan Africa, the chapters explore the range of domestic violence in Africa's colonial past and its present, including taxation and the insertion of the household into the broader structure of colonial domination.

Histories of domestic violence demand that scholars and activists pay attention to the historical legacies of contemporary problems. This collection brings into conversation historical, anthropological, legal, and activist perspectives on domestic violence in Africa and fosters a deeper understanding of the problem of domestic violence, the limits of international human rights conventions, and local and regional efforts to address the issue.

"This is a fascinating and extensively researched exploration of a range of forms of gender-based violence that combines historical, anthropological, and legal perspectives. One of its strengths is the way it juxtaposes studies of the legal regulation of violence in the colonial era with that of the postcolonial human rights era."uSally Engle Merry, author of Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Lam into Local Justice

Emily S. Burrill is an assistant professor of women's studies and history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Richard L. Roberts is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History and director of the Center for African Studies, Stanford University.

Elizabeth Thornberry is a doctoral candidate in African history at Stanford University.