Egyptian abolitionists argued manumitted slaves deserved land as compensation for past labor

Evidence

Slavery is not better than freedom, she admits, but the uncertainty of independent living is intolerable. Sa´id agrees that the employment situation of former slaves is dire, and he tells Bakhïta that he thinks the government should take responsibility for them and give every manumitted slave a plot of land from royal estates and the necessary machinery and tools. After all, he says, the government used them to cultivate a lot of land, year after year, and also conscripted many soldiers out of the Sudan. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 683

Categorization

• XREF: Compares with post-emancipation land-restitution debates in the US South after 1865.
• ADDENDUM: Sudanese conscription and land cultivation by former slaves echoes the ‘Grafting & Growth’ infrastructure theme of extractive colonial labor systems.