to Otta, forcing women to renegotiate their positions as traders and ritual experts, at which they had excelled in the absence of their husbands. During the colonial period, then, women increasingly enacted their influence on social and political life in general, including the role of masquerades, through their positions as wives and daughters of the male custodians of these societies. This, Willis argues, has not been fully recognized in the existing literature on Yoruba masquerades, and is essential for understanding the continued influence of women on present-day masquerades in this context. Masquerading Politics offers insight into the social and political significance of an institution that may otherwise be understood primarily in terms of its ritual and historical, or traditionalist, importance in Yoruba society. The narration and analysis bear the mark of an insider who has mastered the intricacies of Otta’s complex social history, but who nevertheless approaches the contradictory historiographies of its masquerades with remarkable diligence. Anyone who has conducted empirical research on a contested issue will know how difficult that balance is to achieve. Even without the specialist knowledge required to appreciate its contribution to the field of Yoruba history, I have no doubt that Willis’s work should be a must-read for students and established scholars alike. The study’s level of detail and specificity does make the book less accessible to a generalist reader, such as myself, which in turn makes Willis’s contribution to rethinking the complex roles of female actors in social and political life less obvious. One would hope that the author continues to pursue this important research theme in a more generalist spirit in future publications.

中文翻译：

---

Daniel B. Domingues da Silva，来自中西部非洲的大西洋奴隶贸易，1780-1867 年。剑桥：剑桥大学出版社（hb £75 – 978 1 107 17626 3）。2017，xv + 231 页。

奥塔，迫使妇女重新谈判她们作为商人和仪式专家的职位，她们在没有丈夫的情况下表现出色。因此，在殖民时期，女性通过担任这些社会男性监护人的妻子和女儿的身份，越来越多地对整个社会和政治生活产生影响，包括扮演化装舞会的角色。威利斯认为，这一点在关于约鲁巴人化妆舞会的现有文献中并未得到充分承认，这对于理解女性在这种情况下对当今化妆舞会的持续影响至关重要。伪装政治提供了对一个机构的社会和政治意义的洞察，否则可能主要根据其仪式和历史或传统主义在约鲁巴社会中的重要性来理解。叙述和分析带有内部人士的标志，他已经掌握了奥塔复杂社会历史的复杂性，但仍然以非凡的勤奋接近其伪装的矛盾历史编纂。任何对有争议的问题进行过实证研究的人都会知道要实现这种平衡是多么困难。即使没有欣赏其对约鲁巴历史领域的贡献所需的专业知识，我也毫不怀疑威利斯的作品应该是学生和知名学者的必读之物。该研究的详细程度和特殊性确实使像我这样的通才读者不太容易理解这本书，这反过来又使威利斯对重新思考女性演员在社会和政治生活中的复杂角色的贡献不那么明显。