“The White Wife Problem:”

Becoming Nigerian: African Seamen, Decolonisation, and the Nationalisation of Consciousness

“…As has been well‐documented by several scholars, the effort to limit immigration of African seamen to Britain was fundamentally linked to growing unease with the social and sexual liaisons between white women and black seamen. According to Carina Ray (2009), the anxiety over interracial sexual relations was at the root of a massive repatriation campaign for black seamen in the interwar era. Jacqueline Nassy Brown's work depicts the political backlash against black seamen within England at this time, having been identified as the root of the ‘colour problem’ and the degeneration of white women's morality.…”

“…Testimonies revealed that many of the Liverpool wives were of Irish descent, but one seaman claimed his wife was an Egyptian immigrant to England (Eros 2007). 7 Ray (2009) has shown that the lower class status of seamen and their white wives exposed them to increased discrimination and harassment at the hands of British authorities, a fate that African elite men who married white women were more immune to. It is therefore significant that seamen's descriptions of their marriages abroad made little or no reference to official disapproval of interracial sexual relations.…”