African Women 
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| Title: | 'The Daughter She Will Eat Agousie in the World of the Spirits': Witchcraft Confessions in Missionised Onitsha, Nigeria |
| Author: | Bastian, Misty L. |
| Year: | 2002 |
| Periodical: | Africa: Journal of the International African Institute |
| Volume: | 72 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 84-111 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Nigeria Great Britain |
| Subjects: | missions colonialism slavery witchcraft Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) History and Exploration Cultural Roles Historical/Biographical |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3556800 |
| Abstract: | This article deals with witchcraft, missionization by the Church Missionary Society (CMS), domestic slavery and social life on the emerging colonial 'frontier' of Onitsha, Nigeria, during the last years of the nineteenth century. The analysis centres on the confession in 1890 of an accused witch and former domestic slave in the Waterside area of the town. It uses the document as a springboard for a discussion of the intersecting lives of Africans and Europeans in this marginal location at a moment when social relations there were undergoing radical transformation. The author argues that by addressing such a text, taken down verbatim at the time of the confession, insight can be gained into women's unofficial religious practice as well as the everyday lives of persons - notably female domestic slaves - who ordinarily receive little notice in the African colonial record. Furthermore, the event highlights how the increasing flows of commodities and new forms of colonial authority along this mercantile border were changing African women's labour as well as their religious power. App., bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |
