ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the emergence and evolution of the ILO’s conventions on forced labour, focusing on a number of controversies over their application in colonial Africa. The chapter begins by situating the origins of the ILO in the context of broader changes in the structures of world order in the early twentieth century. It then moves on to consider patterns of contestation around colonial labour practices that emerged at the ILO in the 1920s. By framing ‘forced labour’ as a temporary expedient that would be gradually eliminated with the further development of colonial economies, and whose worst excesses could be managed by international supervision, the ILO’s approach sought to limit the scope of political contestation around colonial labour practices by differentiating certain practices from the ‘normal’ operations of capitalism. The chapter concludes by tracing out some patterns of contestation around the application of the ILO’s standards on forced labour by examining a particularly longstanding controversy: whether or not the various pass law systems in white-ruled settler territories in Southern Africa constituted systems of forced labour. While the ILO never conclusively condemned pass law systems, these patterns of contestation reveal the fragility of the boundary between ‘free’ and ‘forced’ labour.
