‘The facts stated do not seem to be true’: The Contested Process of Repatriation in British Colonial Nigeria

This article will examine requests for repatriation submitted by Nigerian subjects in the last decade of colonial rule in Nigeria. Requests for repatriation from this time provide insights into the motives, outcomes and impact of a growing trend among Nigerians to travel abroad for work, studies, pilgrimages and adventure. This mobility reflected both easier access to the means to travel and the empowerment of Nigerians to realise their economic, social and cultural aspirations beyond the borders of Nigeria. Once abroad, many became destitute and unable to pay for their return back home, and requests for their repatriation were then made to the colonial administration in Nigeria. A review of the files regarding the process of repatriation exposes divergent perceptions between colonisers and colonised of the rights and obligations structuring the colonial relationship. It will be seen that a very limited range of options was available to the British administration in Nigeria in dealing with those who defied, ignored or reinterpreted rules aimed at monitoring and regulating the identities and movement of Africans. Thus, the history of repatriations reveals both the impotence of the colonial regime in imposing limits on the mobility of its African subjects, and the various ways in which Africans imposed their own notions of flexibility and ambiguity in response to colonial policies.     

Political and Socioeconomic Indicators of State Restrictiveness Toward Abortion

We compare the relative impacts of political and socioeconomic factors on state restrictiveness toward abortion during the pre-Roe, pre-Webster and post-Webster time frames. This analysis tests the value of cycle theory, where shifting epochs dominated by liberalism and conservatism enhance the role of political variables in shaping policy formation. It also tests the explanatory value of public opinion theory which holds that bimodal issues which cut across party lines accentuate the role of socioeconomic variables in shaping issue evolution. The results of this analysis lend support to cycle theory and public opinion theory, although public opinion theory receives stronger support. When socioeconomic independent variables are regressed against our dichotomous measures of state restrictiveness toward abortion, they explain more variance than political independent variables. Political variables were more important in the conservative era (1989) than in the liberal era (1972).     

Containers and mobility in West Africa

In West Africa, containment practices have long been localized in their production, moulded by environmental forces, and scaled to the human body. In the twentieth century, fossil fuels have changed how people keep and carry things. But newer technologies have tended to alter, rather than eliminate, older forms of storage.     

Women’s Costume and Feminine Civic Morality in Augustan Rome

Augustus claimed that the moral decay of the Roman Republic was especially due to Roman women who had forsaken their traditional role of custos domi (‘preserver of the house/hold’). In reforming feminine morality, Augustus created a new pictorial language that troped the feminine body as a ‘moral sign’ of civic morality and authorized a distinctive costume for women. Sebesta investigates the relationship between women’s garments, the female body and the Roman concept of feminine civic morality.     

The Ideology of the Eunuch Priest

Roller explores the evidence for eunuch priests who castrated themselves to honour the Great Mother Goddess Cybele. While the custom of sacred eunuchism originated in Phrygia (in central Turkey), such priests are best attested in Greek and Roman society, where they were viewed with disgust and loathing because of their asexual condition and because they adopted the dress, hairstyles and mannerisms of women. The negative reactions to the eunuch priest rest on an unspoken assumption of the superiority of masculine appearance and of the inviolability of appropriate gender roles for men and women.