Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: something old, something new? Conceptualizing forced marriage in Africa / Annie Bunting, Benjamin N. Lawrance, and Richard L. Roberts -- Colonial struggles -- Constrained consent: women, marriage, and household instability in colonial French West Africa, 1905-60 / Richard L. Roberts -- Forced marriage, gender, and consent in Igboland, 1900-1936 / Olatunji Ojo -- Debating "early marriage" in colonial Kenya, 1920-50 / Brett L. Shadle -- Italian weddings and memory of trauma: colonial domestic policy in southern Somalia, 1910-41 / Francesca Declich -- Postindependence transformations -- Ukuthwala, forced marriage, and the idea of custom in South Africa's Eastern Cape / Elizabeth Thornberry -- Concubinage as forced marriage? Colonial jawari, contemporary hartaniyya, and marriage in Mauritania / E. Ann McDougall -- Challenges and constraints: forced marriage as a form of "traditional" practice in The Gambia / Bala Saho -- Resisting patriarchy, contesting homophobia: expert testimony and the construction of forced marriage in African asylum claims / Benjamin N. Lawrance and Charlotte Walker-Said -- Contemporary perspectives -- Consent, custom, and the law in debates around forced marriage at the special court for Sierra Leone / Mariane C. Ferme -- Between global standards and local realities: Shari'a and mass marriage programs in northern Nigeria / Judith-Ann Walker -- Dreams of my mother: good news on ending early marriage / Muadi Mukenge -- "To be taken as a wife is a form of death": the social, military, and humanitarian dynamics of forced marriage and girl soldiers in African conflicts, c. 1990-2010 / Stacey Hynd -- Afterword: historicizing social justice and the longue durée of forced marriage / Emily S. Burrill.