A history of African women from 800 CE to 1900: Bold grandmas, powerful queens, audacious entrepreneurs

Abstract

This chapter begins with the rise of Islam and its impact on African gender dynamics especially during the integration of the West African and East African coasts into the Islamic trading networks beginning around 700 CE. The major trading empire of West Africa, Mali, was matrilineal, and in East Africa the original Bantu rulers of the Swahili city-states were women. The impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on gender relations on the continent is addressed next, and this chapter ends with an analysis of the status of African women prior to the arrival of European colonialism in the late nineteenth century.