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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2010

Frederick Cooper
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

Much of what has been written about African labor history conforms to a master narrative: more and more Africans went to work, their lives became increasingly dependent on wages, they became conscious of the extent of their exploitation and their vulnerability to the whims of capitalists and the vagaries of markets, and they formed trade unions and conducted strikes, making themselves into a working class. The story's power – the linear momentum that sustains it and the way it ties an African tale into a global one – is also what is problematic about it. The strike wave occurs too soon, among casual and migrant workers as well as relatively long-term ones, and the strikers' success is as much a phenomenon of communities – and complex ties of affiliation and support linking urban and rural areas – as it is of a class of people who can be specifically identified as workers. The general strikes of the 1940s were a class phenomenon in the broadest sense – collective acts of sellers of labor power in general and those closely tied to them. But as such the strike wave is a conjunctural phenomenon, not a pathway to ever deeper unity, and class mobilization occurred most powerfully when it was simultaneously mass mobilization, a populist rising of petty traders, unemployed or semi-employed youth, and of people with strong connections to agricultural and fishing communities. The Mombasa general strike of 1947 was the last event of such scope in that city, similarly with the Dakar strike of 1946 and others.

Type
Chapter
Information
Decolonization and African Society
The Labor Question in French and British Africa
, pp. 273 - 276
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

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  • Introduction
  • Frederick Cooper, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Decolonization and African Society
  • Online publication: 22 February 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511584091.013
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  • Introduction
  • Frederick Cooper, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Decolonization and African Society
  • Online publication: 22 February 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511584091.013
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Frederick Cooper, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Decolonization and African Society
  • Online publication: 22 February 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511584091.013
Available formats
×