man could offer him a female dependent as a wife.38 By the age of three or four, and sometimes at birth, some girls were already betrothed.39 Prepubescent brides lived in their husbands’ households, where they assisted and were raised by the mothers or senior wives of their husbands. Mothers could also play a key role in selecting their daughters’ husbands. For women married at or after the age of puberty, some sources relay that the bride’s consent was necessary, while other sources indicate that a father could marry his daughter with or without her consent.40 A woman was at liberty to engage in sexual relations with chosen suitors until her family had entered into a marriage agreement for her and she left her birth family to live in her husband’s household.
Contrary to functionalist interpretations of nineteenth-century marriage—the “trade and politics” paradigm that focuses on the “customary” use-value of sexual access to women—gender roles and sexual relationships were negotiated and renegotiated in the context of dynamic lived experiences.41 Prior to the nineteenth century, marriage between Mpongwé took place by the exchange of women (mipenda) between two clan groups or by the groom’s family remitting bridewealth consisting of iron bars (ikwèliki). But by the mid-nineteenth century, marriage by bridewealth was more prevalent than marriage by exchange and consisted almost entirely of imported goods. The incorporation of imported goods into bridewealth changed the universal attainability of marriage.42 Bridewealth costs increased along the Gabon coast. Thus, heads of households could expand their wealth in goods in addition to their wealth in people through the marriage of female dependents. Bridewealth negotiations were a man’s domain, and representatives from both parties debated the amount to be remitted based on the age, physical appearance, and work habits of the bride-to-be.43 European observers recorded bridewealth transactions as including items such as liquor, guns, ammunition, knives, tobacco, china, cutlery, and European clothing, with a total value of 100–300 francs.44 It is challenging to quantify what 100 francs was worth in the late nineteenth century, yet missionaries indicated that the amount was an astronomical sum that took a man many years to amass. Additionally, an Mpongwé fiancé had to furnish his bride with a dwelling and two years’ worth of cloth.45 Escalating bridewealth costs meant that some Mpongwé men delayed marriage well beyond postpuberty rites until they could collect enough goods.46
Marital ties could be tenuous. Husbands did not appear to exercise absolute power over their wives, nor was it certain that marriage severed ties between a woman and her family of origin. The most frequent node of conjugal conflict was adultery, defined as the act of a married woman engaging in extramarital sex without her husband’s authorization.47 A wife’s adultery could result in corporal punishment and public shaming. Armed conflicts between groups of Mpongwé men from different villages were often sparked by a dispute between two men over who had rights to a specific woman.48 Married men could have lovers other than their wives with social and legal impunity. By all accounts, divorce occurred frequently. Either husbands or wives could initiate divorce proceedings, but wives did so more often.49 A husband could repudiate his wife or demand a divorce if she failed to produce offspring or if she was too infirm to perform domestic tasks.50
Male and female kin and elder men assessed and made the final judgment on the validity of women’s requests for divorce, thereby maintaining elders’ social control over women’s maneuverability in dissolving their marriages. A woman seeking to depart from her marriage would often take refuge with her family of origin to air her grievances and request a divorce.51 Her husband would then approach her father or male guardian and request her return. If the woman’s kin conceded, the husband would pay her father a penalty, usually in bottles of alcohol, to make amends for ill treatment.52 If the woman’s kin agreed to consider divorce, they convened a public discussion, presided over by clan elders, in which the husband and the wife’s male representatives could both make their cases.53
Justifiable grounds for a divorce appeared to include the indication of ill-treatment between spouses or a physical ailment that hampered biological reproduction. Elders seem to have granted a divorce if a husband’s drunkenness or physical abuse was excessive, and, following this decision, the husband and the wife’s male kin debated over the reimbursement of bridewealth. At stake were both the reimbursement of goods and the custody of children. In cases in which the husband had not yet paid bridewealth, the woman’s family retained custody of children born during their cohabitation. The reimbursement of bridewealth was not absolute. Under certain conditions, women’s kin did not have to reimburse the bridewealth; for example, if children born during the marriage were to remain in the husband’s custody or if the husband was found at fault for ill-treatment of his wife.54 If a man’s impotence was the grounds for divorce, then reimbursement by a woman’s family was not necessary. If the elders judged that a man had repudiated his wife without cause, not only was her family exempt from reimbursing bridewealth, but they also retained custody of her children.55
With their husbands’ approval, married women could have sexual relationships with men other than their husbands, and these extramarital sexual encounters were not considered to be adultery. In nineteenth-century Mpongwé societies, men could accord to male visitors sexual access to Mpongwé women—their wives, slaves, and daughters—as a gesture of hospitality, in exchange for compensation, and to solidify commercial and political alliances.56 While doing fieldwork in Gabon in 2001, I asked Mpongwé chiefs—individuals who self-identified as being knowledgeable about customs “before the time of the white man,” which the Gabonese call the years prior to French rule—about these practices. Joseph Lasseny Ntchoveré, an Mpongwé chief, elaborated, “These were old systems which existed. Sometimes it occurred for security reasons, sometimes when one arrives at a friend’s home in a foreign land, to avoid you having to go elsewhere, he would allow you to go with his wife, to ensure your well-being.”57 Husbands could also recognize a wife’s lover as her legal lover (nokndyè) on the condition that the lover remitted the agreed-upon compensation to the husband.58 These occurrences of married women engaging in extramarital sex with impunity could occur only if the husband granted permission. Husbands sanctioned their wives’ extramarital sex within the context that the husband chose the lover and that the relationship would benefit his own material wealth or cultivate political or economic alliances.
Sexual and domestic relationships between Mpongwé women and white men of varied nationalities shaped sociality, economics, and politics in precolonial Gabon. Mpongwé women of varied statuses played a crucial role in facilitating the transatlantic trade via short- and long-term sexual-domestic relationships with European men. Historian Owen White argued that European men sought out “African women as companions from the earliest days of their presence” in Africa.59 Yet African societies in Libreville also negotiated and benefited from interracial relationships. As African and European communities encountered each other along the coast, the Mpongwé adapted conjugal-sexual practices to incorporate interracial unions, and European men seeking partnerships with African women adapted to these conditions. As early as the 1600s, European traders docking in Gabon noted the commonplace occurrence of women from Mpongwé societies, who could have been slaves or other low-status women, boarding European vessels to engage in sex in exchange for goods.60 Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European visitors recorded that Mpongwé traders would offer wives, likely slave wives, as pawns to European traders for receiving a cargo of imported goods. European traders could have sexual access to female pawns until Mpongwé traders returned with the amount of forest goods that they had agreed to furnish in exchange for the European goods.61
By the late nineteenth century, it was common for European traders and Mpongwé women to engage in long-term relationships, often sealed with a bridewealth bundle of goods or a cash payment from the European companion. Unlike previous centuries in which Mpongwé women in relationships with European men were often low-status women, women in interracial relationships in the nineteenth century were often the daughters of elite families. Some Mpongwé and Europeans alike referred to these relationships as marriages.62 European merchants trading along the coast could
