Economies of Coercion: Forced Labor and the Power of the State

• Forced labor was often used to meet the demands of the colonial state 🡪 Examples:

  • Building railroads

  • Constructing government buildings

  • Transporting goods

• Most infamous cruelties of forced labor = in the Congo in the early 1900s

  • Governed by King Leopold II of Belgium

  • Forced villagers to collect rubber 🡪 they had daily rubber quotas

  • If rubber quotas were not met, villagers were tortured and/or killed

    • Shot, ears/limbs cut off, tied up with ropes around their necks, dragged away, etc.

• Several colonial states used “cultivation systems”

  • Peasants were required to cultivate 20% or more of their land in cash crops such as sugar or tobacco to meet their tax obligation

  • Cash crops sold to government contractors at fixed, low prices

  • Cash crops are resold in the world market for a very high profit

Economies of Cash-Crop Agriculture

• In some places, colonial rule created conditions that facilitated and increased cash-crop production to the advantage of local farmers

• Example: British authorities in Burma encouraged rice production among small farmers

  • Ended the prohibition on rice exports

  • Provided irrigation and transportation facilities

  • Passed laws that encouraged private ownership of small farms

• Results of these policies in Burma:

  • Population boomed 🡪 in Burma AND in other parts of Asia

  • Rice exports soared

  • Small farmers able to buy their own land, build nice homes, buy imported goods, etc.

  • Standards of living improved sharply

• Profitable cash-crop farming = in the southern Gold Coast

  • British territory in West Africa

  • Modern-day Ghana

  • African farmers themselves developed this export agriculture

  • Planted cacao trees in huge quantities and became the world’s leading supplier of cocoa by 1911

• Problems with this success:

  • Labor shortage = led to employment of former slaves who were exploited

  • Labor shortage = led to migration of workers from the interior of Africa to the Gold Coast 🡪 caused ethnic and class tensions

  • Some men married women for their labor power, but didn’t take care of them

  • Many colonies only specialized in one or two cash-crops 🡪 hurt them when world market prices dropped

Economies of Wage Labor: Working for Europeans

• Millions of colonial subjects across Asia and Africa sought employment in European-owned plantations, mines, construction projects, and homes

  • Needed money

  • Lost land they needed to support their families

  • Sometimes forced by colonial authorities

• European-financed plantations in Southeast Asia that grew sugarcane, rubber, tea, tobacco, and so on employed hundreds of thousands of workers

  • Workers = subject to very strict control

  • Often housed in barracks

  • Paid very little (and women made even less)

  • Disease was common 🡪 high death rates

• Even more land taken from local people in Africa than in Southeast Asia

  • Ex: South Africa in 1913 🡪 whites were 20% of the population, but controlled 88% of the land

• “Squatters” = Africans who stayed and worked for the new landowners as the price of remaining on what had been their own land

• Another source of wage labor for many = mines

• Major tin mines in Malaysia

  • Miners = mostly impoverished Chinese workers

  • Worked on strictly-controlled 3-year contracts

  • Horrible living conditions

  • Rampant diseases

  • Dangerous work = many accidents

  • High death rates

Major gold and diamond mines in South Africa

• Workers = mainly impoverished Africans

• Recruited on short-term contracts

• Lived in all-male prison-like barracks surrounded by barbed wire

• Forced to return home periodically so they didn’t establish a permanent family life near the mines

Large Colonial Cities

• Examples: Nairobi, Cairo, Singapore, etc.

• Racially segregated

• Often unsanitary

• Greatly overcrowded

• Seen as meccas of opportunity for people all across the social spectrum

• Western-educated people found opportunities as: teachers, doctors, professional specialists, clerks in European business offices, workers in European government bureaucracies, etc.

• Working-class elite = skilled workers on railways or in ports

  • Also included workers in factories that processed agricultural goods or manufactured products such as beer, cigarettes, furniture, etc.

• Urban poor worked as: construction workers, rickshaw drivers, food sellers, domestic servants, prostitutes, etc.

African Women and the Colonial Economy

• In pre-colonial times African women:

  • Were active farmers

  • Were responsible for planting, weeding, and harvesting

  • Prepared the food

  • Cared for the children

  • Were allocated their own fields with which they could feed their families

  • Were involved in local trade activity

  • Enjoyed some economic independence

• Under colonial rule = men moved into wage labor or cash-crop agriculture

• This put A LOT more responsibility on women:

  • Total responsibility for domestic food production

  • Had to also supply food to men in the cities

  • Took over traditionally male tasks 🡪 breaking the ground for planting, milking cows, supervising the herds, etc.

• Result = many men and women began to live separate lives and develop different cultures

  • Men in the cities working for wages

  • Women in the villages focusing on subsistence agriculture

• Many married couples no longer lived together

  • Women started to build closer relationships with their own family instead of their husband’s

• Many women became the heads of their households

Assessing Colonial Development

• Clear results of economic development within European colonies in the 19th-20th centuries:

• (1) Colonial rule facilitated the integration of Asian and African economies into a global network of exchange

  • More land and labor = devoted to production for the global market

• (2) Nowhere did a breakthrough to modern industrial society occur

• (3) The appearance of some elements of modernization

  • Modern administrative and bureaucratic structures

  • Schools 🡪 used to train the intermediaries that were so crucial to colonial rule

  • Communication and transportation 🡪 railroads, motorways, ports, telegraphs, postal services

  • Modest health care provisions 🡪 part of the “civilizing mission”