European imperialism involved the introduction of new labour regimes and the transformation of existing systems, with profound and lasting consequences for colonised societies, imperial centres and the global economy. Imperial powers sought to harness and exploit the labour of colonised men, women and children, initially through the enslavement of indigenous peoples in the Americas and Africa, later, as industrialisation and anti-slavery campaigns gathered pace during the nineteenth century, through wage labour and indentured servitude. Colonial labour regimes transformed social and cultural landscapes, introducing new hierarchies rooted in race and class and inequalities which continue to scar post-colonial societies. Colonised workers resisted exploitation in subtle and overt ways, including by forming labour movements that challenged and ultimately helped to defeat European colonialism. This seminar explores these processes through a range of African case studies.

Seminar Questions 

1. How did European imperial powers secure and exploit the labour of colonial subjects?
2. Discuss the spectrum of unfree to ‘free’ labour practices used by imperial powers.
3. How did race shape colonial labour relations?
4. How were colonial labour regimes gendered?
5. How did worker resistance challenge European imperialism?

Core Reading

Choose three:

• Kelly Brignac ‘African Indentured Labor in Senegal and Ste. Marie, Madagascar, 1817–1830Link opens in a new window’, Slavery and Abolition, 4 (2022), pp. 779-797.
• Charles Van Onselen, Chibaro: African Mine Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1900–1933Link opens in a new window (London, 1976), particularly chapters 2 and 8.
• Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry, ‘The Loads Are Heavier Than Usual: Forced Labor by Women and Children in the Central Province, Gold Coast (Colonial Ghana), ca. 1900-1940Link opens in a new window’, African Economic History, 30 (2002), pp. 31-51.
• Beverly Grier, ‘Pawns, Porters, and Petty Traders: Women in the Transition to Cash Crop Agriculture in Colonial GhanaLink opens in a new window’, Signs, 17 (1992), pp. 304-328.
• Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British AfricaLink opens in a new window (Cambridge, 1996), particularly introduction and chapter 11. E-Book.

 

Further Reading

Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790-1920 (Cambridge, 2012).

Rana P. Behal and Marcel van der Linden (eds), Coolies, Capital and Colonialism: Studies in Indian Labour History (Cambridge, 2006).

Yann Béliard and Neville Kirk (eds), Workers of the Empire, Unite: Radical and Popular Challenges to British Imperialism, 1910s-1960s (Liverpool, 2021).

Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene and Martin A. Klein (eds), African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade: Volume 1, The Sources (Cambridge, 2013).

Alice Bellagamba, Sandra E. Greene and Martin A. Klein (eds), African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade: Volume 2, Essays on Sources and Methods (Cambridge, 2016).

Emily S. Burrill, ‘Wives of Circumstance’: Gender and Slave Emancipation in Late Nineteenth-century Senegal’, Slavery and Abolition, 29, 1 (2008), pp. 49-64.

Carolyn A. Brown, “We Were All Slaves”: African Miners, Culture, and Resistance at the Enugu Government Colliery, Nigeria (Portsmouth NH, 2003).

Frederick Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925 (New Haven CT, 1980).

Frederick Cooper, On the African Waterfront: Urban Disorder and the Transformation of Work in Colonial Mombasa (New Haven CT, 1987).

Jeff Crisp, The Story of An African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners’ Struggles, 1870-1980 (London, 1984).

Leigh Gardner and Tirthankar Roy, The Economic History of Colonialism (Bristol, 2020).

Beverly Grier, Invisible Hands: Child Labor and the State in Colonial Zimbabwe (Portsmouth NH, 2006).

Patrick Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c.1860–1910 (Portsmouth, NH, 1993)

Richard Hart, Towards Decolonisation: Political, Labour, and Economic Developments in Jamaica, 1938-1945 (Kingston, 1999).

Martin Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (Cambridge, 1998).

Benjamin N. Lawrance, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts (eds), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison WI, 2006).

Lisa Lindsay, Working with Gender: Wage, Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria (Portsmouth, NH, 2003).

Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge, 1983).

Tracey Banivanua Mar, Decolonisation and the Pacific: Indigenous Globalisation and the Ends of Empire (Cambridge, 2016).

Elisabeth McMahon, ‘Trafficking and Re-enslavement: Social Vulnerability of Women and Children in nineteenth century East Africa’, in Richard Roberts and Benjamin Lawrence (eds), Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa (Athens OH, 2012).

Elias Mandala, Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, 1859–1960 (Madison WI, 1990).

David Northrup, Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge, 1995).

Gyan Prakash, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1990).

Benedetta Rossi, ‘An Abolitionist Vicious Circle: Slaving, Antislavery, and Violence on the Shores of Lake Tanganyika at the Onset of Colonial Occupation’, Slavery and Abolition (2024). Online first.

Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (Austin, 2010).

Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry (Cambridge, 1999).

Jerome Teelucksingh, Labour and the Decolonization Struggle in Trinidad and Tobago (Basingstoke, 2015).

Luise White, Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago, 1990).