The Great Upheaval

This social and intellectual history of womens political activism in postwar Nigeria reveals the importance of gender to the study of nationalism and poses new questions about Nigerias colonial past and independent future. In the years following World War II, the women of Abeokuta, Nigeria, staged a successful tax revolt that led to the formation first of the Abeokuta Womens Union and then of Nigerias first national womens organization, the Nigerian Womens Union, in 1949. These organizations became central to a new political vision, a way for women across Nigeria to define their interests, desires, and needs while fulfilling the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship. In The Great Upheaval, Judith A. Byfield has crafted a finely textured social and intellectual history of gender and nation making that not only tells a story of womens postwar activism but also grounds it in a nuanced account of the complex tax system that generated the upheaval. Byfield captures the dynamism of womens political engagement in Nigerias postwar period and illuminates the centrality of gender to the study of nationalism. She thus offers new lines of inquiry into the late colonial era and its consequences for the future Nigerian state. Ultimately, she challenges readers to problematize the collapse of her female subjects' greatest aspiration, universal franchise, when the country achieved independence in 1960.