Clandestine Recruitment Networks in the Bight of Biafra

Fernando Pó's Answer to the Labour Question, 1926-1945

Bibliographic Data

ID5778464
AuthorsEnrique Martino (0000-0003-0827-6477, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume57
IssueS20
Pages39-72
Publication date2012-08-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Review of Social History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-8590 • E-ISSN: 1469-512X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020859012000417
OpenAlexW2079931413
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited49

The "Labour Question", a well-known obsession pervading the archives of Africa, was posed by colonial rulers as a calculated question of scarcity and coercion. On the Spanish plantation island of Fernando Pó the shortage and coercive recruitment of labour was particularly intense. This article examines two distinct clandestine labour recruitment operations that took hold of Rio Muni and eastern Nigeria, on the east and the north of the Bight of Biafra. The trails of the recruitment networks were successfully constructed by the specifically aligned "mediators" of kinship, ethnicity, money, law, commodities, and administration. The conceptual focus on flat "mediators" follows Bruno Latour's sociology of associations and has been set against the concept of an "intermediary" that serves to join and uphold the structure/agency and global/local binaries

Coercion (linguistics · Economic shortage · Scarcity · Structure and agency · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Race, History, and American Society