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Conjugal Rights
NEW AFRICAN HISTORIES SERIES
SERIES EDITORS: JEAN ALLMAN AND ALLEN ISAACMAN AND DEREK R. PETERSON
Books in this series are published with support from the Ohio University National Resource Center for African Studies.
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Abosede A. George, Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development in Colonial Lagos
Alicia C. Decker, In Idi Amin’s Shadow: Women, Gender, and Militarism in Uganda
Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon
Shobana Shankar, Who Shall Enter Paradise? Christian Origins in Muslim Northern Nigeria, c. 1890–1975
Conjugal Rights
Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon
Rachel Jean-Baptiste
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701
© 2014 by Ohio University Press
All rights reserved
To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at (740) 593-1154 or (740) 593-4536 (fax).
“ ‘A Black Girl Should Not Be with a White Man’: Sex, Race, and African Women’s Social and Legal Status in Colonial Gabon, c. 1900–1946.’ ” Copyright © 2010 Journal of Women’s History. This article was first published in Journal of Women’s History 22, no. 2 (2010): 56–82. Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press.
“ ‘The Option of the Judicial Path’: Disputes over Marriage, Divorce, and Extra-Marital Sex in Colonial Courts in Libreville, Gabon (1939–1959).”
This article was first published in Cahiers d’études africaines 187–88 (2007): 643–70.
Reprinted with permission.
“ ‘These Laws Should be Made by Us’: Customary Marriage Law, Codification and Political Authority in Twentieth-Century Colonial Gabon.” This article was first published in the Journal of African History 49, no. 2 (July 2008): 217–40.
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission.
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jean-Baptiste, Rachel, author.
Conjugal rights : marriage, sexuality, and urban life in colonial
Libreville, Gabon / Rachel Jean-Baptiste.
pages cm. — (New African histories)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8214-2119-2 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-2120-8
(pb : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8214-4503-7 (pdf)
1. Marriage—Gabon—Libreville—History. 2. Divorce—Gabon—Libreville—History. 3. Sex—Gabon—Libreville—History. 4. Customary law—Gabon—Libreville—History. 5. Gabon—History—1839–1960. I. Title. II. Series: New African histories series.
HQ694.9.J43 2014
306.8096721—dc23
2014014964
In memory of Lumen and Emanuel Georges and Melanie and Pierre Jean-Baptiste
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