The Colonization of African Marriages

In British colonies such as Kenya, missionaries who were offended by female circumcision worked hard to create laws that would eliminate it. The Gikuyu were a Kenyan cultural group particularly affected by this law in the 1920's and '30's. For two decades, anthropologists, missionaries, British officials and the Gikuyu fought over the meaning of clitoridectomy. Western apologists saw it as a cosmetic operation similar to ear-piercing or filing teeth (Robertson, "Grassroots in Kenya", 623). The Gikuyu saw it as an essential rite to teach young women their adult responsibilities as wives and mothers. It signaled readiness for marriage and motherhood.

To the Gikuyu, colonial legislation against clitoridectomy was an attempt to control their sexuality and reproduction rights. Their reaction against it was fierce, at times violent. On January 3, 1930, a woman missionary who had been particularly outspoken about her opposition to clitoridectomy was found murdered at her home in Kijabe. Vaginal wounds on her body suggested her attackers had attempted to "circumcise" her (Pedersen, 662).

This crime is indicative of the deep pain and protest that Africans felt over British attempts to control their marital and child-rearing customs. The rift had an important consequence -- many Gikuyu left the church and developed their own schools. This response sent a message to the missionaries about who was in charge of rearing African children.

During the twentieth century, ideals of the individual and marriage based on love created a different overall approach to courtship customs. While this latter change may have been viewed as positive, it nevertheless resulted in tensions between older generations who planned to arrange marriages, and younger generations, who wished to play a larger role in choosing a husband. These European romantic ideals and notions of the importance of the individual, as well as economic systems that created African poverty, changed the customs of arranged marriages, alliances between kin groups, and bridewealth.

In her study of women traders in Kenya from 1890-1990, Claire Robertson describes the changes in marriage during the twentieth century. She argues that "the struggle over women's profits is also a struggle over their bodies; both are contested terrain" (Robertson, 238). The changes in colonial policies that affected women economically would have affected their marriage and child-bearing capacities as well.

Robertson discovered that women born around the 1950's were a transitional generation, marking the changes that occurred. Prior to that time,

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