Overseas trade, regional politics, and gender roles: Southern Mozambique, ca. 1720 to ca. 1830.

Abstract

Through examining gender roles inside trading transactions and related agricultural activities this project demonstrates that women's work was a vital component of overseas trade in Southern Mozambique between 1720 and 1830. By analyzing gender in the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, this study goes beyond the assumption that African gender history is limited to the twentieth century. I focus on how husband and wife interacted economically. Therefore the category married women is vital to this study as it is relevant to explore the role of women in agricultural production and trading transactions. I explore roles that women performed, which were often almost invisible but which nonetheless were essential to production, consumption, and commerce. The thesis uses sources that appear along the edge of African history---traders', travelers', missionaries', and governors' chronicles---to get at intimate sides of African history, particularly family and gender relations. Shipping records provide quantitative evidence, which aids in qualitative analysis, and the thesis also uses oral testimony to examine a number of social practices including the interaction of men and women and the gender division of labor. The dissertation explores two main topics: how the production, preparation, consumption, and sale of agricultural items largely performed by women was incorporated into domestic and international trade, and how the relationships of men and women inside regional and intercontinental commerce affected the slave trade and import-export business generally. Additionally, the thesis explores the social disruptions caused by slave trade. During this period trade and agriculture were interrelated. In both activities the role of wives and other women was important: underpinning trade negotiations, supplying ships, and deciding which imported commodities to purchase.