Early Colonial Sexuality and Fertility
Early Colonial Sexuality and Fertility
This chapter examines why Buganda and Buhaya's population crisis was regarded by European observers as resulting much more from sub-fertility rather than excess mortality. The perception that urbanization, the cash economy, Christianity, and the legal protection of women's rights discouraged the young from marrying and undermined sexual restraint provoked a series of interventions aimed at reforming marriage, gender relations, and sexual behaviour, and so curbing syphilis, the presumed cause of these societies' low birth rates and high miscarriage and stillbirth rates. These reforms though were marked by ambiguity and inconsistency, tending to undermine the institutions that they aimed to support. The chapter also analyses the contrasting experience of Ankole, where the chiefly hierarchy was relatively successful in its attempt to stabilize marriage and maximize fertility.
Keywords: Tanzania, Uganda, Ankole, Buganda, Buhaya, sexuality, fertility, syphilis, gender, marriage
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