ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to historicize the shifting interplay between labor migration and coercive labor practices in British East and West Africa. An analysis of Uganda, Kenya, and the Gold Coast reveals three important links between forced labor and migration. During the early period of colonial rule, until the 1930s, colonial administrations used direct forced labor and a range of indirect coercive interventions in labor markets such as taxation to augment the anemic supply of voluntary labor migrants. After forced labor for private purposes was formally abolished in the early 1920s, paid forced labor for public purposes, such as railway and road construction and porterage, continued and involved either extensive worker mobility or limited mobility of Africans where labor was more readily available locally. Third, the use of paid government-forced labor, and in some cases unpaid “traditional” forced labor which persisted for most of the colonial era, led to flight as people tried to escape recruitment areas. Flight occurred within colonial territories, but forced labor recruits from French, Belgian, or Portuguese colonial empires in Africa also sought refuge in British territories.
