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Forced Labor in Colonial West Africa
Author(s) -
Ash Catherine B.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
history compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.121
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1478-0542
DOI - 10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00327.x
Subject(s) - coercion (linguistics) , colonialism , rhetoric , economic shortage , wage , political science , colonial rule , work (physics) , labour economics , political economy , economics , law , engineering , mechanical engineering , philosophy , linguistics , government (linguistics)
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.