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| Title: | The Union Miniere and Its Hinterland: A Demographic Reconstruction |
| Author: | Fetter, Bruce S. |
| Year: | 1983 |
| Periodical: | African Economic History |
| Volume: | 12 |
| Pages: | 67-81 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Congo (Democratic Republic of) |
| Subjects: | sex distribution colonial administration dual economy mining companies Economics and Trade Labor and Employment History and Exploration |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3601317 |
| Abstract: | The prevailing view of the colonisation of Central Africa rests on Immanuel Wallerstein's thesis that the major determinant in the lives of the local population was the incorporation of the region into the modern world system determined by international capitalism. To test the Wallerstein hypothesis, the author examines the districts, territoires, and chiefdoms of the bulk of Africans employed by the Union Miniere during the Second World War to see whether these locales were more severely affected than the non-Union Miniere locales around them. The author found the Union Miniere recruitment areas no worse off than others in the region in terms of unbalanced sex ratios. As an alternative hypothesis, the author tests the theory of Kenneth Boulding that government demands are at least as powerful as capitalist demands in affecting human welfare. Spatial analysis showed little direct relationship between the placement of administrative centres and Union Miniere recruitment but did suggest that people who lived in areas near administrative centres where the government collected taxes in the 1920s were predisposed to work for the company in the 1940s. Maps, notes, tab. |
