"This dissertation focuses on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Islamic, colonial, and gender history of the Senegambia region of West Africa. It combines the use of oral sources with a largely unstudied body of archival records generated by Muslim courts since their creation by the British in 1905 to explore the establishment and maintenance of multiple and often competing legal terrains and judicial traditions. The study reveals the complications and contradictions of British colonialism in the Gambia through the everyday lives of women and men in the colonial city of Bathurst. It also demonstrates how the creation of the Muslim court by the British brought changes to relations within Gambian households as women took advantage of opportunities provided by the British colonial administration to challenge existing systems of patriarchy, marriage, divorce, child custody, maintenance, and property rights issues."--Abstract.
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