Peasants or Proletarians? 1890s-1940s HI177 | A History of Africa since 1800 Term 2 | Week 2 | Dr Sacha Hepburn

Today’s lecture Making colonialism pay The settler model The extractive economy Migrant labour African workers, farmers and entrepreneurs Gendering the colonial economy Women and work Female (labour) migrants

Making colonialism pay (i): the settler model Settler colonialism was highly uneven Europeans were vulnerable to tropical diseases Physical presence was restricted: southern Africa, highlands of Kenya Whites benefitted from policies of racial exclusion Land Africans forced to work for whites Taxation Forced labour policies ‘A welfare state for whites’ - Phimister

Large European settler home in colonial Kenya European domesticity in the colonies – Karen Blixen at home in Kenya, c. 1920s White farmers in Southern Rhodesia, c. 1920s

Making colonialism pay (ii): the extractive economy Extraction and transport of raw materials from colonies to the industrial economies of western Europe Plantations as a form of extraction Mineral wealth Particularly prominent in Southern Africa: gold, diamonds, copper, lead. Later uranium, cobalt. Industrialisation and urbanisation – migrant labour linking rural and urban areas

Diamond mining, Kimberly, South Africa, c. 1890s Black and white mineworkers, Langlaagte Deep Gold Mine, South Africa, c. 1890s

Making colonialism pay (iii): migrant labour Migrant labour key to industrial and mining economies of Southern Africa White mineworkers from Britain, Australia, the United States and elsewhere (took highly-paid, skilled jobs) African workers from across region and as far north as Tanzania (forced into low-paid, ’unskilled’ jobs) Migrant labour system Chiefs helped with labour recruitment 6-12 month contracts Cheap for the mining companies

Workers’ quarters in South African mining compounds, c. 1940s

Indigenous entrepreneurs and the ‘cash crop revolution’ African peasant producers in the broad belt of tropical western, central and east Africa E.g. Gold Coast and Ivory Coast African farmers established cocoa farms from the 1880s By 1914, Gold Coast was world’s largest single supplier of cocoa Massive wealth could be generated: Felix Houphouet-Boigny, wealthy cocoa planter and first President of independent Ivory Coast

Labourers on a cocoa farm, Gold Coast, 1925 Peanut farming in Senegal, c. 1930s

Gendering the colonial economy Early histories: focus on wage labour and male workers. Cash-based nature of urban economies. Women’s access to resources and housing often mediated through men. Women contributed to urban economies through various economic activities. Women’s reproductive labour in towns crucial to daily and generational reproduction of labour power.

Women and colonial cities Female migration to urban areas challenged patriarchal nature of African social hierarchies. Gendered and generational nature of struggles over female migration.

Conclusions Making colonialism pay The settler model The extractive economy Migrant labour African workers, farmers and entrepreneurs Gendering the colonial economy

Email me: s.hepburn@warwick.ac.uk Come to my office hours: Questions? Email me: s.hepburn@warwick.ac.uk Come to my office hours: Monday 3-4pm and Friday 11am-12pm H3.31, third floor Humanities