Decolonization and African Society - The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Hardcover)

This is a comparative study of colonial policy towards the recruitment, control and institutionalization of African labour forces from the mid 1930s, when the labour question was first posed, to the late 1950s, when decolonization was well under way. The work explores colonial conceptions of the African worker and shows how African trade union and political leaders used the new language of social change to claim equality and a share of power. This helped to persuade European officials that the modern Africa they imagined was unaffordable. Britain and France could not reshape African society. As they left the continent, the question was how they had affected the ways in which Africans could reorganize society themselves.