[en] Using divorce cases and involuntary homicide cases from the tribunal de province and tribunal de cercle of the 1930s, this paper examines the ways in which corporal punishment of wives was characterized as either acceptable correction or unacceptable domestic abuse in court narratives from the large market town of Sikasso, French Soudan. I argue that the two sets of cases reveal distinct, gendered articulations of the corporal punishment of wives, the contested place of such punishment in the maintenance of a moral economy in marriage, and the different roles that men and women played in supporting and contesting the physical punishment of wives. How­ever, the testimony from these cases reveals more than the contested meanings of wife punishment in the marriages that were put on trial in Sikasso in the 1930s. I argue that the evidentiary tools used in the court cases–autopsy, physical examinations, and witness testimony–were all part of the shifting legal terrain of the 1930s. Whereas women in the early years of colonial Sikasso successfully argued for divorce in the colonial tribunals, the 1920s and 1930s marked a period where women were required by the courts to provide more proof to support their claims for divorce. This reflected the pressure that chiefs and male heads of households placed on the local colonial government officials to uphold their patriarchial authority, but it also revealed an increasingly codified notion of customary practice. African marriage lay at the center of so many studies on customary law, and by the 1930s there existed published studies on customary African marriage that influenced colonial court assessors and African legal intermediaries in their appraisal of marriage-related legal claims. By this time, the French colonial legal system in the French Soudan had established categories of behavior that were considered either "contrary to French civilization"–a term used often in writings on colonial judicial systems–or "customary practice". However, I contend that claims of abuse, and the protracted debates and witness testimony concerning the physical punishment of wives in divorce cases reveal that abuse remained in a legal liminal state for the colonial civil court. This was for at least two reasons. First, while writings on customary law in French Soudan in the 1930s did not recognize physical punishment as a legitimate claim for divorce, women continued to claim divorce on grounds of excessive abuse, and they crafted their own testimony and evidence to support these claims. Second, physical abuse of wives was considered, by colonial adjudicators and African elites who served as court assessors, to be both "contrary to French civilization" and within the boundaries of "customary practice". Work on domestic violence, where female bodies are the object of violent acts, is historically useful because it not only helps scholars understand the role of power and authority in relationships between African men and women, but also because it reveals the central role of women and control over female bodies and sexuality in the debates on customary law between colonial administrators and African male leaders. It is also a significant contribution to the growing corpus of academic work on African marriage and law. Research on these forms of gender violence reminds scholars that because acts of domestic violence are ultimately political in nature and linked to larger socio-cultural values, we should look more closely at the links between brutality directed towards women in their conjugal relationships and families, social and economic strife, and challenges to local political authorities and issues of state power dispute. Such conclusions and observations are suggestive of new directions that Africanist scholars can take in understanding domestic violence in the colonial period.

[fr] La maltraitance des femmes mise en question : comptes rendus de tribunaux sur le châtiment corporel des femmes à Sikasso dans les années 1930. – En s'appuyant sur des affaires de divorces et d'homicides involontaires jugées par le tribunal de province et le tribunal de cercle dans les années 1930, cet article examine comment le châtiment corporel des femmes était considéré soit comme une forme de correction acceptable soit comme une maltraitance conjugale inacceptable dans les comptes rendus de tribunaux de la ville de Sissako, au Soudan français. L'article montre que les deux types de cas révèlent à la fois des articulations distinctes dans le châtiment corporel des femmes, la place contestéed'une telle forme de châtiment dans la pré­servation d'une économie morale dans le mariage, et enfin les différents rôles joués par les hommes et les femmes dans le soutien ou la contestation d'une punition physique des épouses. Ces récits révèlent toutefois davantage que la signification contestéedu châtiment corporel des femmes, et l'auteur avance que les types de preuves utilisées dans les procès – autopsies, examens physiques et témoignages – reflètent les évolutions juridiques des années 1930.