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African Forced Labour

African forced labour was a key factor in the shaping of the modern world. Through the Atlantic slave trade (1444-1865) about 10 millions involuntary migrants made the integration of the so called New World into the world market possible. One might even say that the slave trade, as well as the flux of trade coming in and from the Americas, was the starting point of the globalisation era. Later, during the period of 1880-1970, several millions of African workers, organised under colonial rule, produced the bulk of most of the tropical exports in the world market.
In spite of its historical magnitude, slave trade only became a scientific object, as an academic field of research, in the late 1960's. Since then, American scholars like P. Curtin gathered teams of researchers who produced educated estimates on global migration figures, number of voyages, origins and destinations. At about the same time, Latin American universities, especially in Brazil, also developed studies on slave societies, resuming a large tradition of debates on slavery that can be traced up to the 19th century. In what concerns European research - which could have began sooner to explored its rich archives located in the ports of the major slave networks - it is certain that the de-colonisation process that occurred during the 1950's and the 1960's hampered a faster growth of this field.
During the last two decades the pace of the research on slave trade picked up everywhere. A wide range of results were produced, in spite of the still persistent huge gaps. For instance, the major slave trade network - the Portuguese one mainly in the South-Atlantic along the axis Angola-Rio de Janeiro - is still the least studied.
The slave trade official abolition - which occurred in 1850-60 - was not the end of the role of African forced labour in the Modern World. The colonial societies that were implemented in Africa, after the so-called "Scramble of Africa" of the 1880 decade, were also crucial in the organisation of a world system of trade, wealth and power. They used several forms of African forced labour, from the so-called "contract system" to forced crops and tax impositions, which lasted for almost a century.

However, the historical analysis of these phenomena is almost as incomplete as were the slave trade studies during the 1960's. This is obviously more accurate for the Portuguese, Belgian and Italian cases than for the British and French ones, in spite of the fact that in all colonial areas huge gaps (concerning taxation, colonial labour legislation and its impact on traditional society) remain unfulfilled.
In order to have a comparative view of colonial forced labour systems and to emphasise the historical continuum of coercion, which framed many African societies, the CEAUP has been organising, since 2004, an International Seminar on African Forced Labour. It is, as far as we know, the only scientific seminar that combines the two problems: the Atlantic slave trade and the colonial labour systems in Africa.
Based on the results achieved through the four editions of this Seminar, this line of research has developed three sub-projects:

Sub-project 1:
The Atlantic Slave Market: commercial networks, prices and profits.

Main contents: The study object is the geographical area of the South-Atlantic, namely the Brazil-Angola- East Africa connections.
It seeks to identify and analyse:

• agents of the business networks implemented between Rio de Janeiro/Luanda/Benguela/Mozambique
• commercial circuits and formal procedures - from the ship's joint ventures to the slave retail sale, including the inland African commercial circuits
• price trends: main cycles of prices in local markets in Africa and Brazil
• capital rotation timing: length of voyages, the differential time of investments in fixed and rotating capital -rate of profits; averages and main trends.

Sub-project 2:
Effects of the reinvestment of slave-dealing profits and capitals in 19th century Europe:

Main contents:
The study object of this sub-project is the impact of the Brazilian slave trade capital in the British and Portuguese financial systems. The purpose is to identify and analyse the multiplier effects in the industry, public works and financial institutions, mainly in the 19th century. It intends to identify:

• slave dealer families and partnerships:
• banking and insurance corporations
• establishment and stockholders evolution
• the literary and traditional sources of the 19th century concerning the social image of the slave dealer (among the "brasileiro" tradition).

Sub-project 3:
African forced labour in colonial administrations.

Main contents:
The study object is to identify West, Central and Southeast African forced labour in post-abolition times. The purpose of this sub-project is to describe forms of forced labour in African colonial societies, mainly under Portuguese and French administrations (forced crops, tax collecting, forced contract labour, etc).
It intends to examine:

• the compilations of labour colonial legislation of the main colonial powers
• accounts reports of colonial corporations in agricultural, mining and industrial territories;
• administrative sources concerning forced cultivations and tax collecting
• neglected qualitative sources on forced labour (press, Angolan and Mozambican literature, etc.) of colonial and post-colonial societies, and to organise an oral archive with data collected in African societies.

Based on new data, this sub-project aims to:

• analyse patterns of power and labour exploitation in colonial administrations
• compare regional and historical trends among colonial labour politics
• connect these historical forms with present day slavery practices in modern African and Afro-American societies.

ESTIMATED OUTPUTS