Workers of African Trade

The movement of workers involved in long-distance trade in Africa constitutes one of the most ancient and most massive forms of labour migration in African history. Focusing primarily on the latter half of the nineteenth century, the contributors to this volume examine various aspects of long-distance trade: the roles of the family, wage employment, slavery, and the entrepreneur; the institutions that mobilized and organized the work force; and the workers' remuneration and the accumulation of surplus. This collection is especially concerned with the possible relationship between western commercial capitalism and the emergence of a 'proto-proletariat', with the extent to which such trade may have promoted individualism, and with the implications of this social change for the emergence of class consciousness that was revealed through the struggle over terms of employment.Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine is the author of 'Workers of African Trade' with ISBN 9780835784498 and ISBN 0835784495.