Brett L. Shadle

Bridewealth and female consent: Marriage disputes in African courts, Gusiiland, Kenya

From the early 1940s Gusiiland (Kenya) underwent a series of transformations that pushed bridewealth to unheralded levels. As a result, many young couples could not afford a proper marriage and eloped. Some fathers forced their daughters into marriages with men wealthy enough to give cattle; many of these women ran off instead with more desirable men. In the hundreds of resulting court cases, Gusii debated the relative weight to be given to bridewealth, parental approval and female consent in marriage. Young people did not reject marriage, but fought against senior men who would ignore womens wishes. Gusii court elders usually agreed with fathers and husbands but also believed that female consent did carry some significance.

Going their separate ways : agrarian transformation in Kenya, 1930-1950

From 1930-1950, Vihiga and Gusiland, relatively similar regions of western Kenya, went their separate ways and in opposite directions. This account of the contrasting experiences of the Vihiga and Gusiiland provides a framework for enhanced understanding of the history of agrarian change in Africa.

The souls of white folk: White settlers in Kenya, 1900s–1920s

1. Introduction: The souls of white folk 2. Race, civilization and paternalism 3. Prestige, whiteness and the state 4. Chivalry, immorality and intimacy 5. The law and the lash 6. Conclusion Select Bibliography Index

White settlers and the law in early colonial Kenya

Abstract This article examines settler attitudes toward the law and the legal system in early colonial Kenya. Settlers believed that English law was the culmination of centuries of evolution and was unsurpassed for its justice and logic. Nonetheless, they insisted English law and legal procedure were supremely ill-suited for the African context. When courts released Africans on “technicalities” it only encouraged more crime; insufficient punishments did the same. Settlers argued that the state – administrators and the judiciary – must twist the legal system to fit settler needs. The law must be a tool used on behalf of whites to bend Africans to their will. It must be personal and racially biased, the punishment swift and sharp. In many ways, settlers held an older, cruder understanding of the law, one more suited to manorial estates or Jim Crow America.

Rape in the Courts of Gusiiland, Kenya, 1940s–1960s

Abstract: This article examines the history of rape prosecutions in the African courts of Gusiiland, Kenya, from the 1940s through the first years of independence. Drawing on transcripts from African courts, it demonstrates that Gusii court elders were quite sympathetic to women who lodged rape claims. Elders handed down stiff punishments to rapists, were willing to entertain a wide definition of “indecent assault,” and did not require the extensive evidence of rape so commonly demanded by judges in Western courts (and in British courts in Kenya). Perhaps most surprisingly, men who admitted to having had sex but claimed it had been consensual were forced to prove their claims. This article advances both the historical study of rape in Africa and suggests that we reassess—or at least reserve judgment—on the nature of sexual violence in the non—West.

Reluctant Humanitarians: British Policy Toward Refugees in Kenya During the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1940

ABSTRACT Following the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, several hundred Eritrean deserters from the Italian army and several thousand Ethiopian officials, soldiers, and civilians fled to Kenya. British officials on the border, in Nairobi, and in London found themselves deeply conflicted over how to deal with these refugees. Sheltering refugees was costly, and it antagonised the Italians whose friendship (or at least neutrality) the British hoped to win in Europe and in eastern Africa. But vocal critics in London watched for any signs of mistreatment or forced repatriation of the refugees. Government officials themselves expressed a revulsion at the possibility of turning away or repatriating refugees who feared for their lives. Because of this humanitarian sentiment, Kenya sheltered the refugees until the liberation of Ethiopia, much to the dismay of government officials.

Madness and marginality: the lives of Kenya's White insane

1. Joanne Barker, Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Brian Klopotek, Recognition Odysseys: Indigeneity, Race, and Federal Tribal Recognition in Three Louisiana Indian Communities (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011); Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).