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A review by bahareads
When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900-1958 by Saheed Aderinto
informative
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Saheed Aderinto is concerned with the sexual and national politics in Nigeria. Delving into the idea of 'dangerous sexuality’ and how it intersects with the broader issues of colonial progress and civilisation, the time frame for the study is from the beginning of the 20th century to 1958, when the age of consent in Nigeria was raised from 13 years old to 16 years old (20). Aderinto says “Prostitution is not just about the secret ‘sinful’ affairs between consenting adults of sexual exploitation of underage girls. It was about nation-building."
Aderinto emphasises that historians should place sex in Nigerian colonial encounters and more imperatively he encourages those specializing in other colonial sites to rethink existing approaches to the story of prostitution. In the histography, there is a gap in the present literature, at the time of the publication of this book. There was no book-length study on any Anglophone West African country in the colonial era when Aderinto started writing his work (24). There was and still is silence on the topic to uncover. To create a framework for how to approach and think about prostitution in colonial Nigeria, Adertino turned to other literature on sexuality in other regions of the British Empire. Besides the historiography in other British colonies, Aderinto was inspired by Luisa White’s early work, The Comforts of Home.
In When Sex Threatened the State, Aderinto moves beyond mentioning race and sex to show how the matters manifested in the day-to-day interactions between colonizer and colonized. It demonstrates the history of sexuality in Nigeria could have taken a completely different turn without the colonists’ rigid construction of prostitution, positing it as a moral crime for Nigerians and a threat to the White colonizers.
Saheed Aderinto is writing sexuality into Nigeria’s past. He shows the deep analyses around the ideological line of sex and perversion by numerous groups and historical individuals along multiple social, racial, and power divides at various levels including the local, regional, and international.
The three-pronged argument that follows throughout the whole book is that first, sexuality as a component of human behaviour cannot be understood in isolation from wider historical processes; second, the age of females who practised prostitution played a significant role in moulding the perception and institutional attention towards sex work, exemplifying the constructed difference between child and adult sexualities and lastly, the intersection between sexuality nationalism in Africa is far more complex than the present literature would suggest. ). Overall Saheed Aderinto accomplishes what he sets out to do with When Sex Threatened the State.
Aderinto emphasises that historians should place sex in Nigerian colonial encounters and more imperatively he encourages those specializing in other colonial sites to rethink existing approaches to the story of prostitution. In the histography, there is a gap in the present literature, at the time of the publication of this book. There was no book-length study on any Anglophone West African country in the colonial era when Aderinto started writing his work (24). There was and still is silence on the topic to uncover. To create a framework for how to approach and think about prostitution in colonial Nigeria, Adertino turned to other literature on sexuality in other regions of the British Empire. Besides the historiography in other British colonies, Aderinto was inspired by Luisa White’s early work, The Comforts of Home.
In When Sex Threatened the State, Aderinto moves beyond mentioning race and sex to show how the matters manifested in the day-to-day interactions between colonizer and colonized. It demonstrates the history of sexuality in Nigeria could have taken a completely different turn without the colonists’ rigid construction of prostitution, positing it as a moral crime for Nigerians and a threat to the White colonizers.
Saheed Aderinto is writing sexuality into Nigeria’s past. He shows the deep analyses around the ideological line of sex and perversion by numerous groups and historical individuals along multiple social, racial, and power divides at various levels including the local, regional, and international.
The three-pronged argument that follows throughout the whole book is that first, sexuality as a component of human behaviour cannot be understood in isolation from wider historical processes; second, the age of females who practised prostitution played a significant role in moulding the perception and institutional attention towards sex work, exemplifying the constructed difference between child and adult sexualities and lastly, the intersection between sexuality nationalism in Africa is far more complex than the present literature would suggest. ). Overall Saheed Aderinto accomplishes what he sets out to do with When Sex Threatened the State.