Contribution short abstract:

The paper addresses labor relations in the new colonial possesions of late 19th century Sub-Saharan Africa. Using forms of forced labor the colonizers aimed at integrating their colonies into the growing capitalist world economy. Africans tried to resist through uncommoning and commoning practices.

Contribution long abstract:

The African colonial state of the late 19th century strove to form an agrarian working class of African peasants by ‘educating’ them and pressuring them into wage labor. However, subsistence farming was still a feasible alternative, many Africans were unwilling to perform poorly paid work and local labor systems were still dominant. Colonial officials and European plantation owners constantly complained about the low labor supply since plantations, mines, and colonial infrastructure were extremely labor-intensive. The result was the imposition of forced labor in most African colonies. Besides other measures, head and hut taxes were introduced to force people to work for cash. In German East Africa from 1900 onwards, Africans were pressured to cultivate cotton, and taxes forced them to work on plantations. In Cameroon, the exploitative plantation economy was introduced in the 1890s around Mount Cameroon, where the local population was displaced and forced to work for low wages. However, workers tried to escape from these schemes by uncommoning - e.g. by withdrawing, avoiding headhunters or deserting from plantations. They also used commoning practises e.g. by negotiating for shorter contracts with more leeway or by drawing on local labor systems. The paper will focus on these African workers who were to form the workforce of the growing capitalist colonial economy. It will try to analyse their concrete agency. Using various archival materials and published memoirs of plantation owners and overseers, the paper will address examples from the two German plantation colonies of German East Africa and Cameroon.