The Bluest Hands

These women offer a rich tapestry of events and personalities that illustrate how colonialism transformed their lives and livelihood.

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By the second decade of the twentieth century in Abeokuta, a Yoruba town in southwestern Nigeria, most dyers were producing adire cloth, which featured a variety of patterns created by resist dyeing with indigo onto a primarily European manufactured cloth. The author highlights the dynamic way in which these women engaged with the colonial economy, taking full advantage of its infrastructure and credit, as well as the new technologies and the availability of imported European cloth. Reveals how the women dyers constantly adapted to changes in the market, technology, political and economic conditions, consumer tastes and competition from other imported goods so that the industry not only survived but thrived as the town of Abeokuta was increasingly incorporated into the international economy.

North America: Heinemann