Women and Rural Protest in Colonial Eastern Nigeria: The 1929 Women’s Revolt (Ogu Umunwanyi) Reexamined

Abstract: This article explores the economic roots of the 1929 Women’s War in colonial Nigeria. It analyzes the dynamics of women’s social mobilization and its link to the imposition of British indirect rule and the economic crisis of the Great Depression. It relates how the Great Depression, colonial economic structure and organization, political culture, and gender ideology provide a more complex understanding of the causes of the revolt. The article suggests that these factors informed the tactics women employed in mass mobilization and protests against the British colonial institutions and their African agents. The article argues that the conjuncture-based articulation of resources and political opportunity underlying the movement set the case of women in Eastern Nigeria apart, but it occurred in the context of the global dynamics of colonial transformation of rural societies and the Great Depression, which squeezed rural income in the period.