A History of African Motherhood The Case of Uganda, 700}}}1900 [Paperback]

This is the first book-length treatment of the history of motherhood in pre-colonial Africa.This is the first book-length treatment of the history of motherhood in precolonial Africa. This book takes a new approach to longue dur?e African history through a focus on a highly gendered social institution, and changes our understanding of social and political organization in a region depicted as intensely patriarchal. It argues that even for times when we cannot identify individual actors, we can still trace historical agency in the way people reformulated and mobilized ideologies of motherhood to sustain their communities.This is the first book-length treatment of the history of motherhood in precolonial Africa. This book takes a new approach to longue dur?e African history through a focus on a highly gendered social institution, and changes our understanding of social and political organization in a region depicted as intensely patriarchal. It argues that even for times when we cannot identify individual actors, we can still trace historical agency in the way people reformulated and mobilized ideologies of motherhood to sustain their communities.This history of African motherhood over the longue dur?e demonstrates that it was, ideologically and practically, central to social, economic, cultural, and political life. The book explores how people in the North Nyanzan societies of Uganda used an ideology of motherhood to shape their communities. More than biology, motherhood created essential social and political connections that cut across patrilineal and cultural-linguistic divides. The importance of motherhood as an ideology and a social institution meant that in chiefdoms and kingdoms queen mothers were powerful officials who legitimated the power of kings. This was the case in Buganda, the many kingdoms of Busoga, and the polities of Bugwere. By taking a long-term perspective from c.700 to 1900 CE and using an interdisciplinary approach  drawing on historical linguilÓ.