From Free Labor to Family Allowances: Labor and African Society in Colonial Discourse

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Frederick Cooper (1989). From Free Labor to Family Allowances: Labor and African Society in Colonial Discourse. American Ethnologist 16(4). Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.

Type	journal article
Scope	Comparative and methods
Method	archival narrative
Period studied	1833–1980s
Regions	British Africa, French West Africa, Kenya, Northern Rhodesia, Congo, West Indies, South Africa (peripheral)
Themes	comparative theory, origins segregation, mining migrant labour, labour markets wages, unions strikes, demography urbanisation, politics ideology elections
Citation key	cooper1989

Argument

Cooper traces how free labor ideology shaped European colonial thinking from the 1830s to the 1980s, through four cycles of ideological rise and breakdown. Efforts to turn slaves and peasants into wage workers failed when they met local economic and social visions, and colonial states were drawn into African social life. After the 1930s-40s strike waves, British and French officials rejected migrant labour and sought a stabilised, family-based working class, with family wages and allowances that exceeded the market wage. Decolonization allowed a return to market purism, now promoted by international agencies. South Africa appears only briefly, as the case where labour discipline was achieved through assaults on African land access and where 1940s labour reforms were rejected in favour of controlled migration.

Evidence and method

Secondary literature plus archival material from French (ANSOM, Senegal) and British (PRO, Kenya) colonial records, official commission reports, ILO and Inter-African Labour Conference proceedings, and contemporary published sources. The author describes the article as schematic and selective.

Findings

• In South Africa, labour discipline was achieved by coercive attacks on African land access, not by gradual market extension. (p. 6)

  Where the demands capitalist development made on Africans expanded the most rapidly-in South Africa- the gradual extension of market relations and individualistic values proved completely inadequate

• South African labour coercion escaped effective international critique because it was legalistic and framed as the costs of progress rather than slavery. (p. 7)

  South African labor policy has long had its principled critics, but on the international scene they had no sure handle to pry open the le- galistic and systematic approach to creating a proletariat.

• Colonial regimes relied on a system of short-term labour drawn from large impoverished catchment areas. (p. 8)

  A small demand for manpower required large numbers of potential laborers, and worked most predictably when large regions were so impoverished that wage labor became part of the life cycle.

• The 1935-40s strike waves drove officials to treat African workers as an industrial working class. (p. 9)

  The search had begun for a vocabulary that would put African workers into a sociology of industrial capitalism rather than an anthropology of colonial society.

• The 1945 Mombasa commission reversed prewar migrant labour policy, advocating fuller detribalisation. (p. 10)

  the evils which are commonly attributed to 'detribalisation' can only be cured by more complete detribalisation

• The Inter-African Labour Conference (which included South Africa) endorsed stabilisation of workers with their families near their workplaces. (p. 12)

  established permanently in residence with their families at or near their places of employment.

• British and French officials set family wages above the free market price of labour. (p. 13)

  even where the 'bachelor wage' still represents the supply price of labor, it may be below the level of wage necessary to secure efficient pro- duction.

• Cooper notes that South Africa rejected 1940s labour reforms, in favour of controlled migration and racial difference in social norms. (p. 16)

  Labor reforms analogous to those implemented in French and British colonies were discussed in the 1940s and rejected in favor of continued controlled migration and a denial that universal social norms applied to whites and blacks.

• After decolonization, international agencies pushed free-market wage standards and cuts in urban social support. (p. 16)

  The International Monetary Fund has used its moral force and financial power to persuade 30 of the 45 sub- Saharan African countries to cut government social services and food subsidies for urban work- ers

• The postwar vision implied the working class must reproduce itself even at a cost above the market wage. (p. 18)

  An African working class had to reproduce itself even if the costs of its reproduction exceeded the market wage.