ABSTRACT
Colonization was the occupation and domination of a large part of the continent of Africa, the imposition of a foreign rule over millions of inhabitants, and the exercise of an uninvited will over the land and its resources. Some idea of the numbers of whites in the Congo and Ubangi basins must be acquired in order to properly evaluate the contribution made by blacks to achieving the goals of colonization. Exploratory and even military expeditions could be expected to have only a few whites, but the ratio of whites to blacks was determined by the nature of the expedition. The moralizing that whites exercised on Africans was identical to that which they directed towards their inferiors at home. Workers in France were better off than workers in Africa in one respect: they could organize and strike, a right that had only been legalized. The true perspective of colonial attitudes towards work is that of capitalism and bourgeois society in Europe.
