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How did African women negotiate the complex political, economic, and social forces of colonialism in their daily lives? How did they make meaningful lives for themselves in a world that challenged fundamental notions of work, sexuality, marriage, motherhood, and family? By considering the lives of ordinary African women - farmers, queen-mothers, midwives, urban-dwellers, migrants, and political leaders - in the context of particular colonial conditions at specific places and times, Women in African Colonial Histories challenges the notion of a homogeneous "African women's experience." While recognising the inherent violence and brutality of the colonial encounter, the thirteen essays in this lively anthology show that African women were not simply the hapless victims of European political rule. Innovative use of primary sources, including life histories, oral narratives, court cases, newspapers, colonial archives, and physical evidence, attests to the diversity of African women's lives and reveals them as active agents whose experiences defy static representation. Readers at all levels will find this an important contribution to ongoing debates in African women's history and African colonial history.