General Labour History of Africa: Workers, Employers and Governments, 20th–21st Centuries ed. by Stefano Bellucci and Andreas Eckert (review)

This extensive work, published in association with the International Labour Organization (ILO), ambitiously claims to be "a comprehensive reference book" (12) to bring "for the first time, an African perspective within a global context to the study of labour and labour relations" (cover). It comprises 23 chapters that thematically synthesise labour trends; many contributors are distinguished scholars of African economic history though, of 28, only eight are based in Africa. The volume analyses with great insight key developments and sectors over time, from the emergence of "free" wage labour to proliferation of precarious labour and impact of gender on the workplace. Covering an entire continent of great diversity over more than 100 years is no easy task and the solution offered is succinct essays on themes that summarise the literature.

The book begins with an introduction by Stefano Bellucci and Andreas Eckert on the "labour question" in African historiography that, if competent in scope, sets a somewhat opaque theoretical tone by including "affluent entrepreneurs" in the definition of "working peoples" (1). Some chapters treat employers as workers, there is glowing reference to the inclusion of "extremely rich" workers (13), and the ILO Africa director marvels at this "vital treatise regarding capitalists, entrepreneurship and professional labour" (xvii). In part, the specific nature of many African economies, with high levels of agricultural activity and extractive industries and limited industrialisation, may excuse this, but it comes with the cost of less attention to working lives. This is more a history of "general labour" than a general history of labour.

Part one, on free and unfree labour, examines wage, precarious and informal, and forced labour. Franco Barchiesi provides an up-to-date survey focused on the impact of casualisation.

Part two discusses the key sectors of agriculture, mining, industry/ manufacturing, and transport. Carolyn Brown charts mining history in an impressive manner, bringing in how precolonial mining assisted the growth of African states just as the colonial state blocked African prospecting and mining. She emphasises the centrality of mining, which often introduced wage labour, influenced labour history, led to state intervention through migrant labour, and continues to attract most foreign capital. Brown gives particular attention to gendered aspects of Nigerian coal miners, some of whom sought to regain respectability lost under colonialism by becoming "big men." Although an important dimension, it begs the question of the fate of millions of other miners across Africa who died poor, wracked by industrial disease or mine accidents. The chapter on transport by Stefano Bellucci similarly underlines the significance of that sector in labour history, how docker and rail workers were among the earliest to unionise. He also points to the decline in their unions under structural adjustment programmes imposed by the North.

Part three, on international dimensions, analyses the ILO and labour migration. The ILO chapter is a balanced, critical survey showing how in its first decades the body passed conventions against forced labour but pandered to colonial powers who avoided scrutiny with a special form of "native labour" to which different norms applied. In the 1950s, it "remained a forum which African actors hardly had a say" (264) and was then sidelined by the World Bank, but returned after 2000 to at least gives some voice and contribute to global debates.

Part four examines other varieties of work: domestic labour; "white collar" workers including sport and entertainment employees; and, controversially, military/police/crime/illegal work, broadening definitions of labour history to almost any kind of exertion. Deborah Bryceson shows the enormous burdens of rural working women, the extent of underpaid household work, how ILO conventions on child and forced labour are rarely ratified or enforced, and how today higher income women employing domestics in some cases reinvent old master–slave relations.

Part five, on entrepreneurs and self-employment, includes particularly well-written chapters by Gareth Austin and Sara Berry that bring together capital...