Call for Papers

From Porters and Canoe-men to Busboys and Railwaymen, towards a social history of Labour and Transport in Africa

Proposal for Supplement to the International Review of Social History 2011
Editors: Jan Georg Deutsch and Jan-Bart Gewald

The omnipresent porter has become almost invisible - part of the scenery. History has relegated him or her to the background - to the "enormous condescension of posterity" - like E.P. Thompson's English croppers, hand-loom weavers, and artisans.¹

The International Review of Social History intends to publish a special issue focusing on sub-Saharan Africa to be edited by Jan Georg Deutsch and Jan-Bart Gewald. The issue will examine the interplay between labour and transport in relation to transformations within and between societies in Africa in the period between 1400 and 2000.
Labour and transport are integrally connected in Africa. For a wide variety of reasons, related primarily to geography and climate, the bulk of transport in Africa, prior to the introduction of motorised transport in the early 1900s, was conveyed by human labour. In contrast to the image of a stagnant or at best slowly moving continent, the movement of people -and with them goods and ideas- was and is the standard, and extensive trading systems and trade routes existed within and across Africa, all of which were totally dependent on African labour. Hitherto research into the relationship between labour and transport in Africa has been understudied.
Archaeological evidence indicates the existence of long-distance trading routes across the Sahara and throughout sub-Saharan Africa prior to 1400 A.D. East African societies interacted with the monsoon driven Indian Ocean network from at least 1100 A.D. The arrival of European ships on both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts of Africa in the late 15th Century provided new products and a further impulse to already existing trade routes. Goods passed from hand to hand, sometimes taking years on their journey, and along with the goods came ideas, stories, and tales that were linked to the goods.² The new food crops introduced from the new world, specifically Maize and Cassava, served to enable a greater population density than had been possible before. In addition, these crops served as fuel to power the long-distance trade within Africa itself.³ With caravans of up to a thousand porters and merchants regularly traversing the Central African Plateau, food emerged as the key to maintaining the caravan system. The switch from millet and sorghum to cassava greatly increased the local and regional availability of food, in addition its impact on the division of labour was equally profound; "Cassava played a key role in freeing men from food production."⁴
The establishment and maintenance of distance trading routes serviced by human muscle power also had profound effects for the social organisation of African communities along a number of African deltas and river systems. Along 1700 kilometres of the Congo and Ubangi River systems a new ethnic polity emerged in the course of the 17th Century that controlled river transport and trade above Malabo pool.⁵ Similarly in the lower reaches of the Niger River forms of social organisation were transformed, as an institution known as "canoe houses" developed in the delta. Apart from controlling and maintaining canoe bound trade, Canoe houses disrupted former social relations through allowing for the rapid assimilation and acculturation of slaves, and for the rise of a commercial elite.⁶

In the late nineteenth century transport routes powered by human power reached their furthest extension and sophistication. The imposition of colonial rule brought about structural changes in the relationship that had hitherto existed between labour and transport in Africa. New forms of economy were facilitated by new forms of technology introduced into the continent. However, for all of their supposed superiority, the new forms of transport, be they boats or buses, trains or trucks, were also dependent on labour, and heralded a new relationship between labour and transport in Africa. In addition new forms of transport, in particular the establishment of railway and steam ferry services to and from the harbours of colonial Africa initiated the development of new relations between transport and labour, and saw the establishment of the first trade unions in Africa.
Throughout Africa colonial states demanded labour for the construction of roads and railways. Where labour was not forthcoming reprisals were taken and prisoners made to build the roads. In addition to building roads and railways, labour in all its many forms was still needed to porter and pole, as well as to chop wood and collect water for the new technologies of transport. Along the Congo River, thousands upon thousands of men women and children were forced to establish supply dry wood dumps to be utilised by the steamers of the Congo Free State. Similarly, in the course of World War One at least another 1.000.000 men women and children were dragooned into service as porters in East Africa. Whilst steam trains required wood and water, in addition to the actual railroad, petrol driven motor vehicles similarly required roads, and more importantly petrol, which, more often than not, had to be transported by porters. In other words, even as new forms of transport appeared to supersede more traditional forms of transport, these new forms were still dependent on older forms. In times of war, when guerrilla armies have taken up arms against more conventional forces, porters have once again come to the fore as the prime mode of transport. The guerrilla wars fought in Guinea Bissau, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique as well as the extensive low intensity wars being fought in the Congo basin, have all been dependent, indeed made possible by porters.
An adequate description of the socio-economic transformations in African societies and new forms of employment brought about by the interplay between labour and transport in Africa, requires a more subtle and differentiated approach than has been briefly outlined above. Never the less, it is hoped that the text has touched on issues that can be developed upon. Simply put, at present, with few notable exceptions, there are no social histories that deal explicitly with the interplay that exists between transport and labour in African history.⁷
With the above in mind the editors invite innovative papers and contributions based on original archival and oral primary research material that would seek to deal with the issues raised above.

Notes

1. Stephen J. Rockel, Carriers of Culture: Labor on the Road in Nineteenth-Century East Africa, Portsmouth: Heinemann 2006, p. 5.
2. Elizabeth Isichei, A History of African Societies to 1870, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997, p. 323.
3. Maize produces nearly twice as many calories per hectare than Millet, and 50 per cent more than sorghum, in addition it is less vulnerable to drought and birds. James McCann, Maize and Grace: Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop, 1500 – 2000, Cambridge: Harvard University Press 2005.
4. James Anthony Pritchett, The Lunda-Ndembu: Style, Change, and Social Transformation in South Central Africa, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 2000, p. 51.
5. Isichei, 390, 396, 562.
6. Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa, "The Niger Delta states and their neighbours, 1600 – 1800" in, History of West Africa (London 1971) edited by J.F.A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, pp. 280-3.
7. Ahmade Alawad Sikainga, "City of Steel and Fire": A Social History of Atbara, Sudan’s Railway Town, 1906 – 1984 Portsmouth: Heinemann 2002. See also Frederick Cooper, "African Labor History", in J. Lucassen (ed.), Global Labour History Bern: Peter Lang 2006, pp. 91-116.

Editors

Jan Georg Deutsch
  Faculty of History, Oxford University
  
Jan-Bart Gewald
  African Studies Centre, Leiden University
  

Projected publication schedule:

Submission of abstracts: Interested contributors are to submit their abstracts of no more than 800 words to the editors no later than 1 September 2009.
It is intended that selected contributions be presented as papers within set panels at the African Studies Association Conference in November 2010, and the European Social History Conference 2010.
Written papers are to be submitted for external review by anonymous readers no later than 30 June 2010.
Reworked drafts of the contributions, drawing on the comments of the external readers reviews, and conference feedback, are to be submitted for internal review no later than 1 December 2010.
Final drafts of all articles selected for publication shall be submitted electronically no later than 29 April 2011.
Publication to take place December 2011.