Women, Family, and Landed Property in Nineteenth-Century Benguela

Abstract

In past decades, new studies have explored the role of gender in the shaping of colonial societies on the African continent. Yet, most of the scholarship has focused on the twentieth century and not much attention has been paid to previous periods. Records from Benguela allow us to see the role of African women in an earlier era, their access to land and labor, and to explore the impact of new forms of production and control. In this study, I explore mechanisms through which women had access to land and accumulated property and wealth in Benguela during the nineteenth century. The study explores the lives of African women, analyzing their family connections and commercial partnerships in order to understand land access, wealth accumulation, and social mobility. Colonial sources, including parish and land records, allow us to investigate how women built their wealth, established social networks, created new kinship relationships, and had access to property. In the process they claimed new social and economic positions in the colonial setting, accumulating dependents and properties. While processes of claiming land and developing agricultural exploitation were not available to all, some women managed to capitalize on their social connections. Gender, or the negotiation of relational identities with other social actors, became a key factor in this process. Land, perceived as genderless in the historiography, became a space for economic gain and the assertion of agency by local African women. Caught between shifting politics among the colonial power and local rulers, women negotiated new social and economic spaces.