Department - Author 1
History Department
Degree Name - Author 1
BA in History
Date
6-2016
Primary Advisor
Andrew Morris
Abstract/Summary
In his narrative, colonial administrator Harold Ingram describes the perspective that many missionaries and colonial executives held towards the African peoples. The notion of the ‘White man’s burden’ to save the world from uncivilized, and animalistic customs coupled with the theory of Africa as the Dark Continent, is one of the main reasons why early explorers and missionaries placed women in subordinate positions. This move thus overlooked the critical significance of contributions that pre-colonial African women contributed to the political, economic and social developmental structure in African communities. Missionary C.W. Hattersley confirmed the same notion towards pre-colonial Baganda women when he jotted in his 1908 book, The Baganda at home, that Ganda women had invariably occupied a place of subordination in society. Thus African women’s history was either overlooked or placed in positions of inferiority in preference for their male counterparts.
URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/histsp/36