Marrying Well: Marriage, Status and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos

by Kristin Mann

This pioneering work investigates the history of marriage among the educated elite in colonial Lagos. It analyses the far-reaching economic, political and social changes that produced the elite and shaped its subsequent development. After contrasting two types of marriage practised by the elite, Yoruba and Christian, and setting out their distinctive and often conflicting legal rights and duties, domestic relationships and roles, and attitudes towards polygamy and monogamy, Dr Mann concludes that the sexes responded quite differently to marriage, because Christianity, Western education, and colonial legal and economic changes affect the roles and opportunities of women and men differently. Marrying Well builds on a wealth of archival and oral evidence and brings insights from prevalent historical and anthropological research to bear in the analysis of the data, to reveal a drama of striking relevance to post-colonial Africa.

204 pages, Hardcover

First published December 27, 1985