What the Women Wrought

Abstract

In the wake of the Women’s War, British authorities in Nigeria faced the immediate problem of (re)pacifying the country and finding ways to prevent outbreaks of protests against them in the future. Women continued their demonstrations against British authority throughout 1930 even as patrols of police and soldiers took punitive action, imposed collective fines, seized property, and burned down whole villages, seeking through an extraordinary show of force both to punish wrongdoers and prevent any further attempts at resistance to British rule. Officials regarded the burning of houses as “the quickest, surest and the most humane [our italics] way of making the people see reason.” Under the Peace Preservation Ordinance, district officers and police officials utilized powers they did not ordinarily possess to act against areas thought to have participated in the Women’s War. This strategy was applied to a variety of transgressions ranging from the “sullen activity” of Africans and their hiding in the “bush,” to a delay in payment of fines, under the Collective Punishment Ordinance, levied on village inhabitants who may have had nothing to do with the disturbances. Authorities imposed exorbitant fines amounting to up to six times the annual tax assessment of a given settlement on villages, expecting them to be paid within 24 hours; failure to make the payment might result in the razing of the village.