ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the themes that dominate studies of dockworkers the world over-the ambiguous relation of dock culture to the surrounding society, labour time, worker militancy, and politics-but it does so in a way that stresses the particular context of a colonial society. It also focuses on archives in Kenya, supplemented by a number of interviews. The chapter provides a response to the questions raised in the conference agenda with a chronological framework, for it is the changes of the late 1930s through the middle 1950s that reveals the most about the problem of port labour in a colonial society. Mombasa had been a port for centuries before the advent of British rule in 1888. In the 1920s, the casual labour market turned in the opposite direction: more upcountry migration, the stagnation of coastal agriculture, and the modest pace of expansion meant that dockers were less likely to find work when they sought it.
