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| Title: | Coercion, Paternalism and the Labour Process: The Mozambican Cotton Regime, 1938-1961 |
| Author: | Isaacman, Allen F. |
| Year: | 1992 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies |
| Volume: | 18 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Period: | September |
| Pages: | 487-526 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Mozambique Portugal |
| Subjects: | colonialism forced labour cotton History and Exploration Labor and Employment Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637298 |
| Abstract: | In 1938 the Portuguese colonial regime imposed a brutal system of cotton cultivation throughout rural Mozambique. Within four years more than 700,000 peasants had been forced to grow cotton. This essay focuses on the ways in which the Portuguese colonial State and its cotton concessionary allies tried to restructure production and the ways in which partially autonomous peasants sought to organize themselves. The colonial authorities imposed a harsh labour regime predicated on coercion and terror. This policy of State-sanctioned violence, however, was only part of the story. Within the State apparatus there were some colonial officials who favoured a paternalistic managerial strategy. Their objectives were to moderate the most abusive features of the regime and to create material and moral incentives which would encourage peasants to grow cotton. However, neither violence nor paternalism resulted in satisfactory production. Peasants developed coping strategies to minimize the amount of work they would put into the cotton regime, and at times, struggled against the most abusive demands of the cotton regime. By 1961 the Portuguese textile industry still had to purchase 30 percent of its cotton abroad. The State abolished the cotton regime in Mozambique in 1961 and shifted instead to a settler-based plantation system. The documentation for this article rests on more than 200 interviews. Notes, ref. |
