‘Their reckless and dissipating husbands’: Property, marriage, and intercolonial trade in the British West African Settlements 1860-1888

In 1885 the Married Women’s Property Act was passed in British Gambia. Scholars have generally interpreted the passage of this law as a form of state feminist intervention. These accounts, however, provide very little context for why the Women’s Act passed when it did. As such, the narrative around this very important law is one in which British officials are positioned as saviors of African women from their greedy husbands and male relatives. This article is an attempt to contextualize the passage of the Women’s Act within the important political and social transformations of the late 19th century in British West Africa. This was a period in which; African women conducted intercolonial trade between British colonies that had been politically reconfigured into the British West African Settlements with its headquarters at Sierra Leone. African women from Sierra Leone as a result, owned significant amounts of properties in different British West African colonies and enter multiple marriages in each of those colonies. The marriages and properties of these women traders brought into tension the different marriage laws and women’s property rights in these colonies, and women’s ability to move and conduct prosperous business between them. This article shows the Married Women’s Act as a successful attempt of women traders in resolving those tensions through the state. Further, the article explores how African commercial communities understood the passage of this law outside of a state feminist formulation. Finally, the article shows the urgency of the Women’s Act to be rooted in the Great Depression of the late nineteenth century and the predatory credit practices of European merchants in British Gambia.


Lamin Manneh is a historian of West Africa with interest in Black diaspora, colonial politics, urban infrastructure and environment. His research examines Liberated African political formation in relation to wetland drainage and land reclamation in the post-emancipation era of British Gambia. Lamin is one of the IHR Past & Present Fellows for 2023/2025.

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