Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail‐Order Matches. By Marcia A. Zug. New York: New York University Press, 2016.

• Published date: 01 September 2017
• Date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12291

References

Hirschl, Ran (2010) Constitutional Theocracy.Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

Schonthal, Benjamin & Matthew J. Walton (2016) “The (New) Buddhist Nationalisms?

Symmetries and Specificities in Sri Lanka and Myanmar,”17 Contemporary Buddhism

81–115.

***

Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches.By

Marcia A. Zug. New York: New York University Press, 2016.

Reviewed by Ronald C. Den Otter, Department of Political Science,

California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo

A book title with the phrase “buying a bride” implies that men still

purchase women, as if the latter were commodities. Buying a Bride

challenges this conventional wisdom by explaining why marriage,

for immigration purposes, has always been contingent upon multi-

ple factors far beyond the control of the participants. In doing so,

this book articulates the logic of such marriage, particularly from

the standpoint of a female marital immigrant, who believes that she

has more to gain than lose from entering such a legal relationship.

Buying a Bride is about why popular attitudes toward the prac-

tice, ranging from extremely positive to extremely negative, and

our laws and policies towards it, have changed over time. Marcia

Zug organizes her narrative to reflect the fact that initially, mail

order brides were not looked down upon the way that they too

often are today. From the very beginning, such women were not

passive. Rather, they used such marriage to improve their lives,

despite the uncertainty of moving to a new land and the risks of

marrying a stranger. In describing different cases in considerable

detail, the author focuses on something that has been neglected:

the benefits of being a female marital immigrant. In the Jamestown

Colony, such brides could escape the tyranny of coverture in

England (p. 23). Around the same time, in other colonies, they had

more wealth and power than women in England (p. 28). For others,

marital immigration enabled them to leave an unhappy marriage

when divorce was not an option (p. 39). In a marriage market char-

acterized by a low supply and high demand for female marital

immigrants, women had considerably more bargaining power and

used it to their advantage. Some of the women who left France for

Quebec to marry decided to remain single after their arrival (p. 42).

744 Book Reviews