Chapter 11 Sex Drives, Bride Prices and Divorces: Legal Policy Concerning Gender Relations in German Cameroon, 1884–1916

Imperial debris, intimate partnerships and family law reform in Cameroon

“…A rich body of scholarship emphasizes the centrality of the regulation of the family and, more specifically, intimate partnerships to colonialism and, in turn, to the constitution of (Western) modernity (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997: 276-7;Stoler 2002;McClintock 1995;Sheik 2014;Bruner 2014). Some of the literature pays particular attention to the impact of missionary (and local convert) activities (Awoh 2012;Comaroff and Comaroff 1991;Nkwi 2015;Walker-Said 2018;Orosz 2002;, while other research focuses primarily on the work of colonial administrators (Schaper 2014;Burrill 2015;Sheik 2014). Taken together, the literature demonstrates that the debates over intimate partnerships were not simply about the supposed suitability of certain local customary engagement and marriage practices in light of the colonial 'civilizing mission' (mission civilisatrice); rather, they had to do with morality, labour, the extraction of wealth and the maintenance of colonial domination, as well as meaning-making and power struggles within local communities (Hunt 1991;Sheik 2014;Chuku 2018;Burrill 2015).…”