No full-time African wage laborers existed before World War I

Evidence

In I9I2, what appears to have been the first general circular on labor recruitment before World War I was drawn up by the interim governor general Franc;ois Clozel. In his directive, Clozel suggested that individual lieutenant governors should consider submitting proposals for regulating labor contracts in their colonies. Nothing came of this suggestion; Dakar would wait until I925 before issuing the first labor regulations in West Africa. At around the same time an internal memorandum on the subject of labor in all of West Africa noted that there were no African agricultural laborers who lived exclusively by working for others. The Africans who hired themselves out did so for only part of a year, and only to a member of their extended family. This situation made it difficult for the few European farmers in West Africa, who needed steady workers to succeed. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 231

Categorization

• SHARE: Nerdy labor-history fact for anyone working on colonial labor regimes — African laborers worked seasonally and only for kin, a structural obstacle to plantation-style farming.