The 2014 issue of the Cambridge Journal History in Africa – now online - has a special section on Labour History in Africa (edited by Karin Hofmeester and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva) dedicated to the first results of the Sub-Saharan Africa network of the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations, 1500-2000, a project of the IISH.
A new taxonomy of labour relations, developed by the members of the Collaboratory, is now for the first time applied to Sub-Saharan Africa which allows us to follow the development of labour relations in various Sub-Saharan countries from 1800 to 2000 (for coastal East Africa even from 1500 onwards) and to compare them to each other and to the developments in the rest of the world.
The issue contains an introduction by Karin Hofmeester (IISH), Jan Lucassen (IISH), and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva (University of Macau and IISH Fellow) that explains the rationale behind the taxonomy and gives an overview of the historiography of labour history in Africa seen from a global perspective. An article by Paul Lane explains how archeological findings can be reinterpreted to help shaping ideas about labour relations in Sub-Saharan Africa where written sources are lacking. The other three articles are case studies: one by Karin Pallaver on Tanzania 1800-2000, a second by Rory Pilossof on Zimbabwe 1900-2000 and a third by Jelmer Vos on Angola 1800-2000.
One of the preliminary conclusions of the Collaboratory project as a whole, is that all over the world people combine various types of labour relations and that major shifts show themselves in the variation of these combinations. What the articles in this special section show is that in Sub-Saharan Africa the shift from predominantly reciprocal labour, mostly agricultural labour for the household, to a combination of reciprocal labour and wage labour seems to have occurred later and slower than in other parts of the world. Overall the case studies for 1800 show overwhelmingly agricultural societies, with predominantly reciprocal labour for the household, sometimes including household slaves, combined with areas (usually the coastal areas) were trade and commodified labour, including slave labour existed. In 1900 we see an increase of wage labour, often unfree, in colonial plantations, railroads and as porters. During this cross section many workers combined both reciprocal and commodified labour relations. In 1950 we see a shift to more commodified labour performed especially by men, working as wage workers in urban industrial work, mining and commercial agriculture, whereas women and often children remained in reciprocal agriculture. Here we see a combination of labour relations within households. In 2000 we see an increased urbanization, including unemployment and the development of a large informal economy.