http://bit.ly/LordChildLabor

Thanks to Johns Hopkins University Press for permission to deposit this in the SOAS eprints repository, which means that anyone can access the article for free.

The general theme of the paper is that the history of child labour in Africa is something that needs to be studied on a surprisingly wide geographical scale. It was pretty useful to write. In particular, it finally forced me to learn Adobe InDesign – the PDF is quite heavily illustrated and trying to lay it out in MS Word was like nailing an uncooperative eel to a wall.

‘Households, Hometowns and Migrations in the Colonial Era: The Circulation of Child Labour in the Gold Coast’, paper presented at the conference Regional Studies and Critical Perspectives on Regions, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, 5-6 June, 2009.

Child labour is right below child soldiering on the won’t-someone-please-think-of-the-children scale of moral outrage. Child labour, everyone agrees, is a Problem. And it is an apparently huge problem: the International Labour Organization counts 5-11 year olds as child labourers if they do one hour of work a week!¹ Concerned parents should buy a dishwasher ASAP.

But as long as violence and coercion aren’t involved then I’m not convinced that child labour is such a problem, and it’s certainly not a problem solved by feeling guilty about who sewed your socks together, passing unenforceable laws or making empty Declarations.

The roots of child labour

Despite child labour being forbidden by the constitution and the Children’s Act in Ghana, for example, child labour is still common.² There is a simple reason for this. The use of child labour is not driven by legislative fiat but by a cost-benefit analysis: can a family – or a whole society – afford its children to be an economic burden rather than an economic asset? That is, do the the long-term benefits of education or carefree innocence outweigh the loss of labour power to the family unit for some or all of childhood? Legislation probably complicates this decision – by adding the threat of prosecution, say, or immediate rewards for schooling – but it doesn’t override it.

One of my research aims is to explore the changing use and usefulness of child labour in colonial Ghana. I suspect it is an uneven process, and that an increase in societal wealth does not necessarily lead to a linear decline in child labour. Instead, the value of children’s labour is determined by numerous economic, technological and demographic shifts.

Historical approaches

Some possible determinants of child labour in African history include:

- The availability of adult labour. Demographic trends and shocks – for example the Atlantic slave trade or the present AIDS epidemic – inevitably alter a society’s reliance on child labour.

- New uses for child labour: tending cash crops (cocoa etc) on family farms might be a relevant historical example, and industrialisation and the factory system a possible future dilemna.

- Childhood choice and ambition based on new economic opportunities. The growth of education and an African staffed colonial bureaucracy, for example, created a growing disdain for manual work. I have found one case from the late-1940s of a boy living vagrant in Accra after running away from his home and apprenticeship because he thought that ‘washerman’ was a dishonourable trade.

- Technical and infrastructural changes. The availability and quality of education affects long-term planning. And the availability of mains water and electricity and kitchen appliances cuts down on demand for child labour within the household. But other trends might increase the need for child labour – there is some intriguing evidence that this was the case in the Gold Coast.

Given the complexity of the topic, it is a bit rich for the West to simply say that you can’t use child labour because it’s morally wrong and all children should be in school. Maybe it is and maybe they should – but maybe not.

References:
¹Kaushik Basu and Zafiris Tzannatos, “The Global Child Labor Problem: What Do We Know and What Can We Do?,” World Bank Econ Rev 17, no. 2 (December 1, 2003)
²For example: ‘Child Labour Still Prevalent, LRC Calls for Affirmative Action’, Ghanaian Chronicle, 13th June 2008, http://allafrica.com/stories/200806130975.html

The digital promise

The great thing about digital archives for historians is that peripheral sources that are normally too time consuming to track down can be used with the same ease as those from a subject- or location-specific archive. The history of Britain’s African colonies, for example, relies on a canon of missionary and government sources held in the UK, and national and regional archives in Africa. Other archival sources are underused because the ratio of useful material to research hours is too unrewarding. With searchable archives, data-mining etc., the potential cost of research could become trivial.

As an experiment, I spent half an hour looking for African history in the records of a London courtroom – and it’s there alright. I ran searches on place names, personal names, ethnic epithets and racial slurs. Even that wasn’t very time-consuming, but it’s easy to imagine APIs that would allow you to query a digital archive, or set of archives, with a set of keywords relevant to your research, and return a group of potential files. This kind of stuff has enormous potential.

The African diaspora: crime and respectability

Using a series of fairly obvious search terms, for example, threw up some intriguing material on African history. Most obviously, there is information on the lives of Africans or their descendants in London, of whom there were many. The defence of highwayman Joseph Guy in 1767 was that ‘There are a thousand black men in London besides me’. Unsurprisingly, most appear in criminal contexts. Poor Thomas Robinson (‘a Negro Black Boy ‘), for example, was sentenced to death for house-breaking and stealing ‘divers Goods’ in 1724. But others were respectable citizens. John Bardoe was bought as a slave in Lagos by a Genoese sea-captain and, when their ship docked in London in 1859, Bardoe apparently freed himself with the aid of a fellow countryman and began working for another Italian. Bardoe then fell ill and, in a feverish state, assumed he was being recaptured. He first barricaded himself into his room, then made a break for it and stabbed a policeman in a rooftop chase. An interesting story in itself – but the translator at the trial was ‘Miss. M. B. Servano, a native of Yorubah, and educated in England’. There are lots of interesting analytical details there: social networks among Africans in London, the continuation of slavery at sea, perceptions of freedom, and the education of African women. Bardoe was found to have acted in self-defence and judged not guilty.

Young migrants

But the Old Bailey material also has the potential to feed back into research on Africa itself. One area of my research that looks particularly promising is the migration of children within and to the Gold Coast. The detailed records I have of this phenomenon date from after WWII, so I was fascinated to discover the story of John Prince, a West African who in 1908 was working as a servant in London. A Doctor Bayfield had employed Prince, then aged about sixteen, in West Africa and brought him to London on his return to Europe. Prince later defrauded Bayfield and was imprisoned for one day before being seen off to Liverpool by the court missionary. I have no idea what court missionaries do, so I’m not sure if Prince’s treatment was normal – or if this was exceptional treatment doled out to an African.

The great ship robbery

Conditions on the West African coast also make an appearance because some crimes at sea seem to have been prosecuted in London rather than locally. In 1848, for example, the prominent Gold Coast merchant Andrew Swanzy had chests containing 1760 ounces of gold dust – now worth a cool $1.5 million – stolen from the brig Lemuel while it was anchored offshore close to the town of Cormantine. Three crew members struck out in a longboat laden with booty. They were captured on a beach eastwards of Cormantine, where ‘a great number of natives’ were hauling the booty away from the surf. This is an interesting crime. Was it pre-arranged? How much contact did European crews have with locals in African port towns? Was this a criminal alliance where class (or greed) was more important than colour? Or were the ‘natives’ robbing the robbers?

Potential histories

There are, I’m sure, a lot more intriguing cases in these archives that would illuminate history far beyond the parochial borders of London or Britain. Digital history is so exciting because it provides the potential for a truly global history – a history not just written about the whole world, but that draws its evidence from a global store of knowledge, and is written, researched and distributed using methods that are independent of place.

Court Records

This is basically my PhD – a vast tome of misbehaving children. Some dastardly colonialist decided not to spring for a new book so it’s stuffed full of extra papers – I had many “it came apart in my hands, guv” moments while working with it. After taking photos of every single page, I set fire to it so that no one else can research my topic.

Olde Worlde Maps

After WWII the colonial government decided that wartime trauma could best be assuaged by building children’s playgrounds. This led to an outbreak of NIMBYism on an epic scale. I particularly like this map that shows a proposed children’s playground in between the HQ of the United Africa Company (Unilever), a prison and the palace of the Ga chief. Guess whether it got built or not?

These two maps are of the playgrounds themselves. They were on weird wax paper and had mostly disappeared, but they look quite cool anyway.

Currency

A cheque with an elephant on it from the Bank of British West Africa:

I don’t understand why this receipt/invoice has a stamp stuck on it:

Jack Sharpe, Scout Outfitter:

Full size photos are on my flickr page.

I’m a fan of Tim Harford, aka the Undercover Economist, and author of a very interesting blog at the FT. He is an excellent example of the division of labour, one of his favourite things, successfully hoovering up dull economics papers and rolling out readable prose. His second book, The Logic of Life, is not really about Africa. It is mostly about how cities are great, and how people who live in the country are carbon-hungry subsidy-hounds. It’s really good.

The undercover Africanist

But there are a couple of relevant sections, including a useful discussion of post-colonial African agriculture drawn from Bates’ Markets and States in Tropical Africa. Harford also discusses disease and development. He argues that malaria control is of secondary economic importance to AIDS control because, while malaria mostly affects children, AIDS primarily affects economically more productive adults. (He’s not totally heartless, just an economist.) He also argues that disease control is itself secondary to, and follows from, the establishment of institutions that incentivise economic innovation and wealth creation.

Won’t somebody please think of the children?

I think he might be wrong about malaria. This is mostly guesswork on my part. But, judging by the notes, it was also mostly guesswork by Harford – so wild conjecture is allowed (and fun of course).

Even if we just consider malaria in younger children – the least economically productive demographic – the disease has a spillover impact on household economics. First, children don’t suffer an illness alone: they are nursed, probably by a more economically-productive family member. Serious treatment probably involves a time-consuming trip to a non-local medical facility. Sickness in the young therefore removes important child labour from the household economy, and the labour of healthy adults. Second, the high likelihood of a child dying creates a rational incentive to have more children. Pregnancy, childbirth and post-natal care reduce the availability and productivity of female household labour for lengthy periods. High childhood mortality reduces the eventual economic payoff for this sacrifice. And, third, medical facilities spend an inordinate amount of time on childbirth or treating childhood malaria, skewing medical provision away from temporarily-sick, but otherwise economically-productive adults.

AIDS and malaria

Harford goes on to argue – correctly I suspect – that AIDS is a more significant direct economic problem than malaria. But in areas with a high incidence of both diseases, AIDS and malaria may be linked. AIDS has already reduced the stock of econimcally productive adults and created a scary number of child-headed households: their economic viability is thus under great pressure from childhood malaria. And, in adult-headed households, child mortality may increase AIDS infection rates. First, the replacement of childhood malaria victims by (un)knowingly HIV-positive parents, perhaps with a new partner, is a rational choice with socially harmful consequences. And second, pregnancy does not just reduce the domestic and agricultural productivity of women, it may also temporarily remove their sexual labour from the household. Bored and impatient fathers thus have an increased incentive to find another sexual partner, and the corollary increased risk of contracting and passing on AIDS.

Disease and development

Harford ultimately argues that disease has been controlled elsewhere after economic growth, and that growth was secured by establishing institutions that preserved and encouraged the creation of economic wealth. True enough, I expect. But it is also true that the technology to control malaria already exists, and where these technologies are imperfect, the incentive to innovate certainly exists. African history has been marked by efforts to control, direct and increase labour power (if not always productivity). So if African governments need to create or reform economic institutions then a good place to start might be anti-malarial projects that protect and encourage such ‘wealth in people’.

Tim Harford, The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World:
Buy from amazon.co.uk or amazon.com

Some jargon

‘Embodied power’ is an important concept for my research on the history of childhood in colonial Africa. This pretentious academic jargon simply means the physical markings on the body that are used to display citizenship, to mark the transition through age grades, or to complete puberty rites. In Africa this means things like scarification, circumcision, clitoridectomy and other forms of ritual mutilation. Most of these operations are performed by adults on children, or on children who are becoming adults, so ritual mutilation is vital to a historical understanding of generational power.

Embodied power now: the UNPFA and the trouble with aid workers

Ritual mutilation is still a live issue. In Ghana, you can get 5-10 years for practising female genital mutilation. Sounds fair. The 6th February was catchily declared the International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation by the United Nations Population Fund. It’s hard to fault their good intentions. But the UNFPA also claim that genital mutilation is “deeply entrenched in social and cultural tradition”.¹ The word tradition is always bad news.

Traditions might be old and they might be entrenched. But they might be very young and not entrenched at all. Cultural practices have historical roots, and history springs up all over the place. To be fair, the UNFPA website does ask “Where does the practice come from?”. But, to return to being unfair, this is answered with meaningless waffle and a meek admission that its origins are “unclear”.² The social causes are apparently the economic weakness of women and the desire to control female sexuality. Well, duh. But why now, why here and since when?

The UNFPA, in short, has no idea what it is trying to combat. Shouldn’t it try and find out? Well, no, probably not.

For western development and aid workers – as for colonial officials – detailed local knowledge is unnecessary and annoying: it makes your job more difficult.³ You don’t need to know much about the roots of the problem at all. You need to know how to arrange a conference, how to extract funding from governments, how to write a glossy report – and which paved streets in Accra are too narrow for your air-con SUV. In fact, knowing too much might make your job irrelevant. Maybe your mate who works for the imaginary UN Road Building Initiative has more influence over clitoridectomy than you do, so it’s probably best not to find out. And, ultimately, if your development or advocacy group is successful – and understanding the problem makes this more likely – then you put yourself out of a job.

Not that I’m cynical.

Embodied power in history: a Xhosa example

But if the UNPFA did get its act together, what might it find? I think they’d find that clitoridectomy etc are not ‘traditional’, but contingent on local historical dynamics.

Let’s ignore clitoridectomy and consider a South African example of embodied power: the Xhosa ‘custom’ of ingqithi, the exarticulation of the last joint of a finger. It was a marker of citizenship, control and belonging; children normally had the operation at about three years old, but it could be delayed until as late as eighteen if the child lived away from the village. So far, so anthropological. But the statistical study of this practice also allows the problem to be approached from a historical perspective.⁴

In 1964, a Transkei mission-hospital doctor surveyed all visiting patients to see if they practised this ‘tradition’, and made two unsurprising findings: that incidence of ingqithi was smaller among both educated and Christian patients. But he also noted the age of his patients so it is possible to track the probable date of the operation and any chronological trends. Surprisingly, there is not a linear decline of this custom. There is a clear peak of ingqithi in the interwar years, approximately 50% higher than in the decades before WWI and after WWII. European cultural values were clearly not simply destroying an indigenous tradition – ‘tradition’ was itself a historical product and dynamic.

One useful route for histories of African childhood would be to trace the driving forces behind the desire, among young and old alike, to control children’s bodies and identities. For the Transkei, for example, this might involve studying Xhosa relationships to encroaching mission and independent Christianities, but also the increased incidence (not always with parental blessing) of migratory child labour to Natal. We can also speculate on the impact of ingqithi on productivity: if you have 9-and-a-bit fingers, are you still able to perform nimble-fingered tasks with industrial machinery, or are you only good for hoeing?

References:
1. Interview with UNFPA director.
2. “The practice of FGM/FGC has been followed by many different peoples and societies across the ages and the continents”. UNPFA FAQs on FGM.
3. On the similarities between aid workers and colonial officials see this review by Justin Willis.
4. All statistics are from Jansen, G., ‘Some observations about ritual mutilation in a Transkei mission hospital, with special reference to the ingqithi-custom’, African Studies, 25, 2 (1966), pp73-9.

I’ll post a pdf with full scholarly references as soon as I’ve figured out how Adobe InDesign works.

Alegi points out that Africa had a continent-wide national tournament two years before Europe did (1958 vs 1960), and shares his thoughts on the tournament so far. He reckons that Cote d’Ivoire will edge out Egypt in the final – although as those two will now meet in the semi, that ain’t happening. He’s probably right about Cote d’Ivoire, although I think the odds on Egypt (8.4) are still generous. The real value is probably laying Cameroon, who at 8.2 are now available at shorter odds than Egypt. Why? And continuing my pro-North Africa theme, Tunisia might be worth backing, if only to lay them off after they dump Cameroon out of the quarters.

Anyway, Peter Alegi sounds like a very nice bloke. I’ve read a couple of interesting articles by him. One, about the first African international club tournament, is available online. He also has a full-length book on South African football, Laduma!, and another one on African football and capitalism forthcoming. I’ll be reading both of them.