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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Labour Mobilization and African Response to the Compulsory Labour Ordinance in the Gold Coast (Colonial Ghana), 1875-1899 |
Author: | Akurang-Parry, Kwabena O. |
Year: | 2000-2001 |
Periodical: | Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (ISSN 0855-3246) |
Issue: | 4-5 |
Pages: | 83-104 |
Language: | English |
Notes: | biblio. refs. |
Geographic terms: | Ghana Great Britain West Africa |
Subjects: | colonialism labour recruitment forced labour labour law History and Exploration Labor and Employment Law, Human Rights and Violence Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Ethnic and Race Relations History, Archaeology imperialism Forced labor Labor policy history |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/41406658 |
Abstract: | A major problem for successive British colonial governments in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) was how to recruit labour to meet its needs and in the process promote the transition from servile to wage labour. Labour policies and ordinances geared to colonial labour recruitment drives from the mid-1870s to the early 1890s all failed, as did the Compulsory Labour Ordinance, passed in 1895. They failed because of the harsh methods of recruitment and the inhumane treatment of recruited labourers. Moreover, the main labour recruiting agency, the institution of chieftaincy, had been weakened by the colonial conquest itself. The CLO also failed because of its deleterious impact on the colonial economy, especially the arbitrary recruitment policies that jeopardized porterage labour for the long-distance trade between the Gold Coast Colony and the interior States. Resistance to the colonial labour policies came from the Gold Coast press, patronized by the African intelligentsia, the African working class, and the local European trading agencies, backed by parent firms and the merchant houses in Britain. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |