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Book chapter | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Creating hunger: labor and agricultural policies in Southern Mosi, 1919-1940 |
Author: | Gervais, R. |
Book title: | African population and capitalism: historical perspectives |
Year: | 1987 |
Pages: | 109-121 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Burkina Faso France |
Subjects: | colonialism labour law economic history |
Abstract: | This chapter analyses the effects of French colonial labour policies on agriculture and the reproduction of labour in Southern Mosi, Upper Volta, during the years 1919-1940. It establishes a relationship between the quantitative and qualitative levels of the Mosi work force under the strains imposed by colonial administration and the social and ecological constraints involved in agricultural production. It contends that not only did 'labour exports' - labour migration - have negative effects on economic development, but they also endangered the demographic regime. Food and people became rarer. Competition between the colonial system and domestic agricultural production units for labour was structurally unequal. It precipitated the demise of previous agricultural work processes without offering any alternatives but bare survival. Notes, ref. |