Abstract

ALLINA, Eric. Understanding “modern slavery”: Voices of archives. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos [online]. 2017, n.33, pp.131-155. ISSN 1645-3794.  https://doi.org/10.4000/cea.2216.

This paper examines the African experience with forced labor in colonial Mozambique, where the administration developed a labor regime that resembled a ‘modern slavery.’ Both contemporary observers and subsequent scholarly research have used the modifying ‘modern’ to describe types of forced labor and to draw distinctions from older forms of slavery. This work aims to historicize notions of free labor in the midst of a broader atmosphere of coercion and to make sense of the silence of certain actors on the question of slavery. The paper explores the ways in which African in Mozambique considered colonial labor practices, with an emphasis on questions of dignity, honor and degradation.

Keywords : slavery; colonialism; forced labor; Mozambique; African experience; historiography.

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