Touts: Recruiting Indentured Labor in the Gulf of Guinea

Enrique Martino

Published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2022

Touts

Recruiting Indentured Labor in the Gulf of Guinea

Enrique Martino

Volume 14 in the series Work in Global and Historical Perspective

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110755923

Overview
Contents

About this book

Touts is a historical account of the troubled formation of a colonial labor market in the Gulf of Guinea and a major contribution to the historiography of indentured labor, which has relatively few reference points in Africa. The setting is West Africa’s largest island, Fernando Po or Bioko in today’s Equatorial Guinea, 100 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria. The Spanish ruled this often-ignored island from the mid-nineteenth century until 1968. A booming plantation economy led to the arrival of several hundred thousand West African, principally Nigerian, contract workers on steamships and canoes. In Touts, Enrique Martino traces the confusing transition from slavery to other labor regimes, paying particular attention to the labor brokers and their financial, logistical, and clandestine techniques for bringing workers to the island.

Martino combines multi-sited archival research with the concept of touts as "lumpen-brokers" to offer a detailed study of how commercial labor relations could develop, shift and collapse through the recruiters’ own techniques, such as large wage advances and elaborate deceptions. The result is a pathbreaking reconnection of labor mobility, contract law, informal credit structures and exchange practices in African history.

Author / Editor information

Enrique Martino, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	V
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	XI
List of Maps and Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	XIII
Introduction: Smugglers and Strangers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Indentured Contract Labor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
2 Take or Give: Recruiting Techniques Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
3 Panya: Contractual Inversions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
4 Dash: Contractual Doubling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
5 Lumpen-brokers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Conclusion: Making Colonial Labor Markets Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224
Archives Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	232
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	266

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
Audience: Scholars of social/labour history, anthropology, sociology, students
Pages
- Front matter: 12
- Main content: 271
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 12
- Coloured Illustrations: 2
Keywords: Equatorial Guinea; Nigeria; contract labour; free and unfree labour

eBook

Published: August 22, 2022
ISBN: 9783110755923

Hardcover

Published: August 22, 2022
ISBN: 9783110754643