Forced Labor in Colonial West Africa

During the colonial period in West Africa, European officials and businessmen faced a perennial shortage of labor; their response was to rely on coercion. Despite their rhetoric of "free wage labor," colonial officials thought Africans needed encouragement to understand time and work disci...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Ash, Catherine B. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2006
In: History compass
Year: 2006, Volume: 4, Issue: 3, Pages: 402-406
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:During the colonial period in West Africa, European officials and businessmen faced a perennial shortage of labor; their response was to rely on coercion. Despite their rhetoric of "free wage labor," colonial officials thought Africans needed encouragement to understand time and work discipline. Africans continually resisted, making forced labor inefficient and costly. West Africans incorporated the European rhetoric of the abolition of slavery, free wage labor and workers’ benefits into their protests against colonial labor practices. By the late 1940s, most forms of forced labor had been abolished.
ISSN:1478-0542
Contains:Enthalten in: History compass
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00327.x