This thesis is a micro-history of gender relations in nineteenth-century Yorùbáland (present-day south-west Nigeria) using the town of Abẹ́òkúta as a case study. It investigates the lived experiences of men and women in a time of radical and sweeping political, economic, social and cultural changes characterised by violent and debilitating intra-ethnic wars that lasted almost a century; the advent of Christian missionaries and their corresponding influences; the spread of Islam; and the dawn of British colonialism. It challenges existing frameworks for understanding gender in Africa, which often considers sex categories only, by exploring how the intersections of sex, age and socio-economic status shaped the pre-colonial gendered experience. Since nineteenth-century Yorùbáland was essentially a gerontocratic society, it analyses gender from a lifecycle perspective, illuminating how the lived experiences of males and females transformed from childhood, to youth to adulthood and then old age and eventually death. The study engages with current discourses about the highly contested notion of the presence of gender categories in Yorùbá society. Decades of research have either confirmed or contested the idea that gender categories based on biological sex existed in pre-colonial times. While some feminist authors, such as Oyeronke Oyewumi, have argued that sex-based gendered categories are strictly a western invention in Yorùbáland and most of Africa, others, including Bolanle Awe and Oyeronke Olademo have taken a more middle road. They claim instead that although sexed categories were present in precolonial times, Africans did not view sexual difference in western terms of male superiority and female subordination, neither was sex a significant contributor to a person’s life trajectories. They have argued that Western and African experiences had marked differences and that the relationship between men and women in Yorùbáland were complementary. Using nineteenth- and early twentieth-century written sources and oral traditions and building on the works of certain social historians who contest these constructions of the past, this thesis counters the gender complementarity arguments and contends instead that sex played a more significant role in the nineteenth century than previously realised. It maintains that although age hierarchies played a substantial role in social differentiation, sex was also an important factor in determining a person’s quality of life and future aspirations. Although the study is focused on women, a significant portion of the thesis discusses men in order to contextualise women’s experiences. It argues that since gender relations permeated all aspects of society including non-discursive practices, to study the experience of only one sex would give an incomplete and perhaps distorted view of society.

This thesis discusses how the gender dynamics and religious festivals of the Yoruba people in Isaga Orile were not affected by colonialism. The study draws on various accounts, particularly from the Church Missionary Society’s journals, to attest to colonialism's restructuring of male political hegemony. Focusing on two major festivals, Gelede and Oro, the study argues that men's inclusion in Gelede reinforces female supremacy, while the Oro society shows men's hegemony and restrains women from its activities. The study found that gender dominants in these festivals played complementary roles by mirroring female and male roles within the Isaga Orile political system. The study concludes that these festivals strengthened political and gender dynamics in pre-colonial times and continued to do so during the British colonial regime, providing opportunities for women and men to assert their dominance and complement each other's roles in society, despite the restructuring of male political hegemony by colonialism.

Studies on empire have shown that colonialism generated new disease environments and complicated old disease experiences in Africa. These conditions necessitated a mission to sanitize Africans and their environment in British West Africa since the colonies had to be conducive for European colonial officials and their African labor, especially given the region’s image as the “white man’s grave.” However, colonial administrations lacked the skills, adequate personnel, and materials to transform territories like western Nigeria into desired healthy locations for European personnel or colonized Africans. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, most Africans resisted the preventive health measures introduced in Yoruba towns, including environmental sanitation projects to reduce mosquito breeding spots. This was not simply because the initiative threatened African livelihood but rather because many Africans were too poor to pay the cost of the British modernizing projects, including pipe-borne water and odor-proof latrine buckets. As most Africans resisted some of these initiatives and negotiated others to improve their health and social conditions, their politics of resistance shaped public health development in western Nigeria. This is significant to African history because it reveals how the administrative policing of environmental sanitation and health adds nuance to our understanding of empire, particularly the complex relationship between Africans of different social classes and between Africans and the colonial governments in Western Nigerian towns. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation is about the history of British preventive health in western Nigeria from the late nineteenth century to the end of the second world war. It contributes to the social history of medicine, health, and environment as it explores Africans’ experience of British imperial hygiene and public sanitation programs. Specifically, the study focuses on how public health projects such as potable water, public latrine, and waste management shaped people’s lives and how Africans shaped the health initiatives in return. The study argues that most of the preventive health programs the British colonial authorities introduced in western Nigerian towns during the period under review had a minimal impact on African health. This was because the colonial government and most Africans had opposing views on how public health initiatives should be executed in an environment of budget restraints and poverty. The study thus shows how Africans resisted some public health initiatives and negotiated others in an attempt to improve their health and social conditions. By exploring major colonial initiatives that sought to transform the Nigerian environment into a more healthy place and the people into environmentally responsible subjects, the study argues that colonized Africans were not passive onlookers during the transformation of their public health system. Rather, their politics of resistance shaped colonial health development.