Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T09:31:55.692Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forced Labour in the “Gorgulho Years”: Understanding Reform and Repression in Rural São Tomé e Príncipe, 1945–1953

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2014

Alexander Keese
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The crossroads of nationalist historiographies in sub-Saharan Africa and of the history of developmentalist attempts that characterise the European late colonial states, have left us with very incomplete images of important trajectories. In the seemingly more “liberal” large colonial empires—notably the French and British—sails were set by 1945 towards a policy of investment and economic change. Some of the scholarly debates question whether this investment was genuine or just a last resort to avoid (rapid) decolonisation; others put the emphasis on inadequate routines of development implemented in these territories, many of which have apparently been continued since decolonisation.

In this context, we encounter a clear lack of understanding about how decisions made by individual actors on the administrative level interacted with the larger panorama of social conditions in colonial territories, and of the consequences that these interactions had for the paths towards decolonisation. For a smaller empire such as the Belgian colony of Congo-Léopoldville, these processes are still more obscure; and for the colonies ruled by authoritarian metropoles, as in the cases of territories under Spanish and Portuguese rule, stagnation and absence of change are often taken for granted. In other words, these territories, which were under the rule of metropoles regarded as rather weak in economic terms, are treated as unrepresentative of the broader, European movement towards change in colonial policies. However, the conditions of change towards economic and social modernisation in this latter group of empires, even when inhibited by lack of funding and weak professionalisation of the administration, are frequently very telling for the broader range of challenges that the late colonial states faced.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 103 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Allina, Eric. Slavery by any Other Name: African Life under Company Rule in Colonial Mozambique. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Austin, Dennis. Politics in Ghana, 1946–1960. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Bandeira Jerónimo, Miguel. Livros Brancos, Almas Negras: A “missão civilizadora” do colonialismo português c. 1870–1930. Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2010.Google Scholar
Burton, Andrew, and Ocobock, Paul, “The ‘Travelling Native’: Vagrancy and Colonial Control in British East Africa.” In Cast Out: A History of Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global Perspective, edited by Beier, A. L and Ocobock, Paul, 270–301. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Chafer, Tony. The End of Empire in French West Africa: France's Successful Decolonization? Oxford: Berg, 2002.Google Scholar
Chirwa, Wiseman Chijere. “Child and Youth Labour on the Nyasaland Plantations, 1890–1953.” Journal of Southern African Studies 19:4 (1993): 662–80Google Scholar
Clarence-Smith, William Gervase. “The Impact of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War on Portuguese and Spanish Africa.” Journal of African History 26:4 (1985): 309–26.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick. “Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans, and the Development Concept.” In International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge, edited by Cooper, Frederick and Packard, Randall, 64–92. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Dembour, Bénédicte. Recalling the Belgian Congo: Conversations and Introspection. New York: Berghahn, 2000.Google Scholar
Duffy, James. A Question of Slavery: Labour Policies in Portuguese Africa and the British Protest, 1850–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Duncan, David. “The State Divided: Farm Labour Policy in South Africa, 1924–1948.” South African Historical Journal 24 (1991): 67–89.Google Scholar
Espírito Santo, Carlos. A Guerra da Trindade. Lisbon: Cooperação, 2003.Google Scholar
Eyzaguirre, Pablo B. “Small Farmers and Estates in São Tomé, West Africa.” PhD diss., Yale University, 1986.Google Scholar
Fall, Babacar. Le travail forcé en Afrique-Occidentale française (1900–1945). Paris: Karthala, 1993.Google Scholar
Fernandes Rodrigues, Maria Cristina. Portugal e a Organização Internacional do Trabalho (1933-1974). PhD diss., University of Coimbra, 2010.Google Scholar
Filipovich, Jean. “Destined to Fail: Forced Settlement at the Office du Niger, 1926–45.” Journal of African History 42:2 (2001): 239–60.Google Scholar
Havinden, Michael Ashley, and Meredith, David. Colonialism and Development: Britain and its Tropical Colonies, 1850–1960. London: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Higgs, Catherine. Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Isaacman, Allen F., and Isaacman, Barbara. Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982. Boulder: Westview Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Johnson, David. “Settler Farmers and Coerced African Labour in Southern Rhodesia, 1936–46.” Journal of African History 33:1 (1992): 111–28.Google Scholar
Kagan-Guthrie, Zachary. “Repression and Migration: Force Labour Exile of Mozambicans to São Tomé, 1948–1955.” Journal of Southern African Studies 37:3 (2011): 449–62.Google Scholar
Keese, Alexander. “‘Proteger os pretos’: Havia uma mentalidade reformista na administração portuguesa na África tropical (1926–1961)?” Africana Studia 6 (2003): 97–125.Google Scholar
Keese, Alexander. Living with Ambiguity: Integrating an African Elite in French and Portuguese Africa, 1930–61. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007.Google Scholar
Keese, Alexander. “Early Limits of Local Decolonization in São Tomé and Príncipe: From Colonial Abuses to Postcolonial Disappointment, 1945–1976.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 44:3 (2011): 373–92.Google Scholar
Keese, Alexander. “The Constraints of Late Colonial Reform Policy: Forced Labour Scandals in the Portuguese Congo (Angola) and the Limits of Reform Under Authoritarian Colonial Rule, 1955–1961.” Portuguese Studies 28:2 (2012): 186–200.Google Scholar
Lawler, Nancy. “Reform and Repression Under the Free French: Economic and Political Transformation in the Côte d'Ivoire.” Africa (London) 60:1 (1990): 88–110.Google Scholar
Martens, Jeremy. “Polygamy, Sexual Danger, and the Creation of Vagrancy Legislation in Colonial Natal.” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 31:3 (2003): 24–45.Google Scholar
Martin, Jean, Comores: quatre îles entre pirates et planteurs, vol. 1, Razzias malgaches et rivalités internationales (fin 18e-1875). Paris: L'Harmattan, 1983.Google Scholar
Martino, Enrique. “Clandestine Recruitment Networks in the Bight of Biafra: Fernando Pó's Answer to El Problema Bracero, 1926–1945.” International Review of Social History 57, Supplement S20 (2012): 39–72.Google Scholar
Messiant, Christine. “Luanda (1945–1961): colonisés, société coloniale et engagement nationaliste.” In 'Vilas' et ‘cidades': bourgs et villes en Afrique lusophone, edited by Cahen, Michel, 125–199. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1989.Google Scholar
Monnier, Jehanne-Emmanuelle, Esclaves de la Canne à Sucre: Engagés et Planteurs à Nossi-Bé, Madagascar, 1850–1880. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006.Google Scholar
Nartey, Robert Nii. “From Slave to Serviçal: Labor in the Plantation Economy of São Tomé and Principe, 1876–1932.” PhD diss., University of Illinois, 1986.Google Scholar
Nascimento, Augusto. Poderes e quotidiano nas roças de S. Tomé e Príncipe de finais de Oitocentos a meados de Novecentos. Lisbon: author's edition, 2002.Google Scholar
Pearce, Robert. “The Colonial Office and Planned Decolonization in Africa.” African Affairs 83:330 (1984): 77–93.Google Scholar
Penvenne, Jeanne-Marie. African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican Strategies and Struggles in Lourenço Marques. London: James Currey, 1995.Google Scholar
Rathbone, Richard. “The Government of the Gold Coast after the Second World War.” African Affairs 67:268 (1968): 209–18.Google Scholar
Rizzo, Matteo. “What Was Left of the Groundnut Scheme? Development Disaster and Labour Market in Southern Tanganyika 1946–1952.” Journal of Agrarian Change 6:2 (2006): 205–38.Google Scholar
Ross, Edward. Report on Employment of Native Labor in Portuguese Africa. New York: Abbott Press, 1925.Google Scholar
Satre, Lowell J.Chocolate on Trial: Slavery, Politics, and the Ethics of Business. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Seibert, Gerhard. “Le Massacre de Février 1953 à São Tomé: Raison d'Etre du Nationalisme Santoméen.” Lusotopie (1997): 173–92.Google Scholar
Seibert, Gerhard. Camaradas, Clientes e Compadres: Colonialismo, Socialismo e Democratização em São Tomé e Príncipe. 2nd ed. Lisbon: Vega, 2002.Google Scholar
Seibert, Gerhard. “The February 1953 Massacre in São Tomé: Crack in the Salazarist Image of Multiracial Harmony and Impetus for Nationalist Demands for Independence.” Portuguese Studies Review 10:2 (2002): 53–80.Google Scholar
Van Beusekom, Monica, and Hodgson, Dorothy L., “Lessons Learned? Development Experiences in the Late Colonial Period.” Journal of African History 41:1 (2000): 29–33.Google Scholar