'The Loads are Heavier Than Usual': Forced Labor by Women and Children in the Central Province, Gold Coast (Colonial Ghana), ca. 1900-1940

Abstract

Colonial reports on labor in the early twentieth-century Gold Coast (colonial Ghana) subtly suggest that slavery, pawnship, and forced labor had declined considerably, even reaching the point of demise by the 1920s.2 The colonial reports were written in response to queries from the League of Nations and the Colonial Office. In contrast to the colonial reports, a number of studies have convincingly demonstrated that slavery,3 female pawnship, and male forced labor4 thrived as a result of economic expansion and infrastructural development in the early twentieth century. Available studies have concentrated on the late nineteenth century.' The early twentieth century, a period of rapid economic expansion, was characterized by evanescent colonial abolition policies.6 We need to know more about the nature of the labor recruitment and labor forms