The dominant intellectual ideology of the British Empire was liberalism, which had many variations. In the Eastern Cape, liberal humanitarianism was slowly replaced by imperial liberalism. Both variants of liberal thought critiqued African marriage as a form of slavery and sought to impose “civilized” colonial law in Xhosaland. Their vision was never fully realized. The colonial state did not engage in large-scale marriage reform efforts and accommodated customary law in the sphere of civil law. Colonial criminal law was, however, imposed across Xhosaland, introducing a new definition of rape, which identified individual consent as the primary criterion of criminal sex. Relatively few rape cases resulted in convictions. Colonial officials were skeptical of both black and white women’s complaints of rape, especially when women did not conform to British standards of respectability. Outside the courtroom, however, social purity reformers pressured the state to enforce liberal standards of consent by repealing the Contagious Diseases Acts and raising the age of consent. African women participated in these efforts and used liberal understandings of consent to claim autonomy over marriage. Some African men saw a link between women’s claims to sexual autonomy and their own claims to political rights, including the franchise.