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FOUAD MAKKI: The title of this morning's panel is Mobilizing Communities and Resources for the War Effort. I'll be moderating the panel. My name is Fouad Makki. I'm a Professor in the Department of Development Sociology here at Cornell. And I want to thank Judy for giving me this opportunity to participate in this, what looks like a wonderful conference.
Everybody will be given about 20 minutes to do their paper. And after all the papers have been presented, we'll open up for a discussion about an hour long, something like that? Yeah, OK.
The first speaker, we all know, Judith Byfield. The title of her paper is "Feeding the Troops, Soldiers, Rice, and Economic Crisis in Abeokuta during World War II."
Judith is an Associate Professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center here. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 1993. She's the author of the Bluest Hands, a Social and Economic History of Women Indigo Dyers in Western Nigeria. Her interests include women's social and economic history and political activism in Nigeria. And her current project examines a women's tax revolt in Abeokuta, Nigeria, between the period 1947 to '48.
JUDITH BYFIELD: Sorry to drag you out your beds this early. [LAUGHS] My paper today is actually part of a larger project that seeks to destabilize the existing male-dominated narrative of Nigerian nationalism by examining the ways in which women mobilized and contributed to that complex set of processes through which anti-colonial actions became the building blocks and fuel for nationalist imaginings-- sorry-- and organizing.
At its core is a focus on a women's anti-tax campaign in Abeokuta in 1947, led by Mrs. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the mother of Fela Kuti, [LAUGHS] the very well known, late well-known singer, and the Abeokuta Women's Union. And here, this photograph shows you, Mrs. Ransome-Kuti in the middle there and her husband, Reverend Ransome-Kuti, who was-- he was the headmaster of the Abeokuta Grammar School.
The Abeokuta Women's Union accomplished three critical goals. First, they were able, as a result of these protests, to get the poll tax on women abolished temporarily. The alake or the traditional king and sole native authority of Abeokuta was forced into exile, though temporarily. And women were placed on the local governing council for the first time since the British took political control of this Yoruba city-state in 1914.
The tax revolt is an important example of women's collective action. However, that is just one dimension of a richly textured story about gender, class, and nation. This event was a local event, but the social and economic factors that created it were not. In addition, Ransome-Kuti's national and international networks, as well as her own political astuteness, ensured that this local event took nourishment from the rich discursive universe of the era and that its implications went well beyond the town's borders.
The Abeokuta Women's Union, or AWU, did not challenge the sole native authority only. It also demanded democracy. The women borrowed the slogan of the American Revolution, no taxation without representation, and argued that it was unfair for women to pay taxes if they did not have political representation.
This concern for democratic practice analytically recast this revolt in several ways. First, the tax revolt was an anti-colonial struggle as well as a struggle to bring a women-centered agenda into colonial policy. Second, the tax revolt became the beginning of a process to make women's concerns explicit in the evolving nationalist agenda.
Ransome-Kuti built on the success of the AWU to launch a national women's organization, the Nigerian Women's Union, in 1949. By 1953, the Nigerian Women's Union had branches throughout Nigeria, thus knitting together a wide cross-section of women's organizations to present a uniform set of issues and concerns to the newly formed political parties.
And political parties only formed in 1951, so she actually had a national organization prior to the formation of the political parties. So temporally and ideologically, the tax revolt is a window into the gendered nature of nationalist thought and development in Nigeria.
This chapter examines the roots of the tax revolt. The interwar depression certainly contributed to women's precarious economic condition. However, I argue that World War II played a much more important role in creating both the economic and political circumstances which finally brought those women into the streets of Abeokuta, demanding an end to taxes on women and an end to the alake's reign.
Before I go on, I just want to make a note here on periodization, and that is most histories acknowledge September 1, 1939, as the beginning of World War II. This periodization, however, poses certain difficulties in African studies. It fails to capture the link between Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the expanded conflict that began in 1939. Thus, for certain parts of the continent, a more appropriate periodization, as some has argued, is the World War decade, 1935 through 1945.
Analyses that begin with 1939 also limit our understanding of Africa's engagement with the larger ideological issues behind the war. Fascism, imperialism, and expansionism. So the first part of this paper considers the tremendous organizing around the invasion of Ethiopia.
And in fact, in response to an appeal from a 17-year-old princess from Ethiopia, 174 women in Abeokuta donated amounts ranging from one shilling-- or the other way, from one penny up to one shilling. Their donations totaled three pounds, two shillings, and one pence. And in addition to this small amount of funds that they were able to generate in 1936, they also collected 503 signatures for a petition that was forwarded to the League of Nations through the governor of Nigeria, Sir Bernard Bourdillon.
Men organized and raised funds as well in support for Ethiopia. The Reverend Ransome-Kuti chaired the Abyssinia League, which met at the Abeokuta Grammar School, where, as I said, he happened to be the headmaster. And this mobilization around Ethiopia was especially important in West Africa because it brought about significant discussions of fascism, an increase in distrust of the intentions of Europeans, as well as fuel for nationalist sentiment.
And if you look at the biography-- the autobiographies, for example, of people like Obafemi Awolowo in Nigeria or Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, this was a significant event in their own political development. So clearly, before fighting began in Europe, Nigerians and most specifically residents of Abeokuta were paying attention to the buildup of this global conflict.
Now, when the war actually-- or when fighting actually began in Europe, colonial officials noted that during its early months, its economic effect in Abeokuta was very slight. However, things changed rapidly as 1940s wore on. The urgent appeal for petrol, the collapse of France, and Italy's entry into the war imposed what the resident wrote in the annual report that year, quote, "new burdens and some drastic changes in the economic life of the Egba," end quote.
I should just mention before I go on, the Egba are a subgroup of the Yorubas. And when Abeokuta was formed in 1830 as a result of the Yoruba Civil Wars, after the collapse of Oyo the first decade of the 19th century, the Egbas settled in what became Abeokuta, but other smaller Yoruba groups settled there as well. So Abeokuta is often referred to as the Egba town, but the Egba were the dominant subgroup within Abeokuta, but not the only Yoruba subgroup there.
OK. So the fall of France brought the closure and militarization of the border between Dahomey and Abeokuta, because Dahomey was a French colony. The war also brought rationing of butter and sugar, scarcity of salt, and the introduction of radio. [LAUGHS] And this actually is a really important development because a lot of news about the war was going to be communicated through the radio. They did 10 hours worth of BBC programming a day through the radio.
The war also brought a myriad of fundraising drives for the war effort. The 1943 annual report noted that since the outbreak of the war in 1939, the Egba division alone contributed over 8,000 pounds.
Colonial officials also undertook military recruitment with the help of what was called a recruitment circus. The circus was a group of African soldiers who toured the province for about six weeks, demonstrating the various trades that they were involved in or that they practiced. They gave examples of physical training, as well as exhibits of drills and unarmed combat.
Now, officials hoped that their villas-- visits, rather, to villages and the towns within the province would stimulate the recruitment, particularly of men who could become clerks, drivers, and nursing orderlies. The secretary of the Western provinces also instructed the district officers to visit each village before the circus arrived so that they could distribute funds to the chiefs so that the chiefs could provide, quote, "suitable entertainment," unquote.
Abeokuta, at the end of the day, though, did not contribute much in the way of manpower to the prosecution of the war. Its greatest contribution was the production of agricultural products needed for the war effort and foodstuffs needed for the civilian and military populations in Lagos, as well as Abeokuta.
For residents in Abeokuta, the greatest impact of the war revolved around the colonial state's economic policy, especially after the fall of the Far East colonies in 1942, for it was then that really, the government ran the economy. They took over the administration of not only the movement of goods, but also put in place price controls.
The Nigerian Defense Regulation of 1939 had conferred tremendous power on the supply board and officials such as the food controller to regulate the distribution of imports, as well as foodstuffs. And the extent of the regulations actually kept increasing over the course of the war.
Now, because women played such a critical role in the economies of Abeokuta and other Yoruba provinces, there were few economic decisions that did not affect their livelihoods. Yoruba women processed cassava into garri, which was a staple foodstuff.
They processed the palm oil from the palm fruits, palm kernel oil from the palm kernels. They dominated retail sale of all products in the market. And although they didn't process cocoa, they played a critical year in bulk in each year's cocoa crops as cocoa was moved from the villages to the major distribution points.
Women also dominated the retail trade in imports such as salt, matches, and textiles. They controlled the manufacturing of indigo-dyed cloths, one of Abeokuta's major economic activities, and an industry heavily dependent on imports of cheap textiles, caustic soda, and synthetic dye.
So the government's decision to set prices of cocoa beyond-- below cocoa-- depression-era prices, rather, and to ban the export of palm kernels from Western Nigeria hurt some women. But others benefited substantially from the state's decision to create an export market in cassava and starch. The documentation from this period shows that there was a tremendous demand and competition for foodstuffs, and this demand was increased by the substantial increase in military personnel in Lagos, as well as a substantial military presence in Abeokuta itself. (WHISPERING) OK, thanks.
(NORMAL VOICE) Military camps were created in different parts of the province, and a large number of military units from all over were sent all over Egba division in preparation for going to Burma. And I should just mention, one of the ideas was-- because this was the first time they're really developing the rules and protocols and training for jungle warfare.
And the thought was that there was so much jungle in this part of Africa that they send them to Abeokuta. They would then get appropriate training that would serve them well in Burma. The problem, though-- and they talk about this in some of the reports that when they got to Abeokuta, they realized, there's no jungle here.
[LAUGHTER]
So you know, they did what they could for four months. And the only thing that they said was like the conditions they would get in Burma was that they started this training during the rainy season, so it was wet and damp and uncomfortable for the entire four months that these men trained in Abeokuta. So they said, OK, at least that approximated some of the conditions they would find in Burma. [LAUGHS]
But with all these units then doing their preparation before going off to Burma, that only then increased the demand for foodstuffs, and particularly rice. And rice was declared as the desired foodstuff for the military personnel. And so, in fact, the Agricultural Department was tasked to increase production of rice in Abeokuta.
Now historically, Abeokuta was not a major rice-producing area in Nigeria. Officials claim that the province produced approximately 300 tons of rice annually before the war. But by 1943, they estimated the province could produce 3,000 tons.
The bigger issue for them, though, was that even with the increased production, they couldn't get the rice at the controlled price, and a lot of rice was being moved out surreptitiously from Abeokuta. And so the government responded by banning the movement of rice, except by those with a license.
Native authority police and certain chiefs applied pressure and farmers on women traders by confiscating their rights without payment. And despite these efforts, officials still had difficulty obtaining rice at the controlled price.
There were also charges that the alake was aiding a particular African trader get rice from the farmers and then selling it on the black market. And this brought him into conflict with the Association of European Merchants, who were the license. In fact, they were given the majority of the license to get rice at the controlled price.
Now, even though they were never entirely sure of the alake's involvement, the secretary of state of the Western provinces sent a message, a communication to the alake where he was told that it was his personal responsibility to see that rice reached the appropriate organizations at the controlled price. The pressure placed on the alake bore fruit, for at the end of the 1943 harvest, Abeokuta supplied a total of 2,095 tons of rice.
Now, it was below the 3,000 tons that was initially demanded. But as the report said, quote, "In consideration of the fact that last year we obtained only 188 tons against the target figure, the position is not unsatisfactory." [LAUGHS]
So in conclusion, World War II greatly affected the economic and agricultural landscape of Abeokuta. More importantly, the war sharpened political tensions in Abeokuta town as men and women struggled to dominate or defend themselves in this new economic climate. The struggle over foodstuffs during the war made the market an extremely contested space. In the process, it exposed struggles between the state and local producers as officials tried to obtain commodities below the cost of production and producers tried to resist this exploitation.
The struggle over foodstuffs also exposed tensions between distributors. European trading companies, and with the support of the colonial state, maintained their hegemonic position in trade. However, they had to strategize against local African authorities who supported African traders.
In Abeokuta, it is clear that small traders, mostly women, were caught between these two power blocs. Market women were vulnerable to the demands of the military and the food controller in Lagos, and equally vulnerable to the demands of the alake and his agents, especially the native authority police.
The alake was a central figure in this unfolding drama. Despite his best efforts to maintain and manage his public role as the father of Abeokuta and the dutiful native authority, the alake became increasingly associated with duplicitous economic activities in the minds of European traders. These activities no doubt contributed significantly to the market women's demands for his removal from office-- thanks-- in the post-war period.
Yet, these events made clear that his power was not supreme. As a functionary within the colonial bureaucracy, pressure could be brought to bear on him to ensure that he privilege the state's priorities.
The dramatic increase of rice for the government's coffers in 1943 nonetheless raised questions about how this was achieved. Did the alake and his agents redirect rice from the illegal market to government agents, or did the alake and his agents bring more coercive pressure to bear on farmers and traders?
We may never know the full answer to these questions. But regardless of how he achieved those startling results, the market women were correct in assigning him a significant role. Their anger at him by 1947 reflected their continuing critique of broader colonial policies, as well as the specific ways in which the alake used his power. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
FOUAD MAKKI: Perfect. Thanks, Judy. The next paper is by Thaddeus Sunseri He's unfortunately unable to be with us, but the title of his paper is "World War II and the Tanzanian Forest."
Thaddeus is Professor of African History at Colorado State University. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota. He's the author of Vilimani, Labor, Migration and Rural Change in Early Colonial Tanzania, and Wielding the Ax, State Forestry and Social Conflict in Tanzania.
And we are happy and fortunate to have [? Olajumoke ?] [INAUDIBLE] to read his paper. [? Jumo ?] is a graduate student in the Department of Development Sociology, and is actually working on a dissertation looking at the middle class and questions of development in African politics in the second half of the 20th century.
SPEAKER 1: "World War II and the Tanzanian Forest." "World War II empowered Africans in Tanzania to return to the forests. The war created a sudden demand for Tanzanian forest products that Africans had been discouraged from producing before the war. Colonial scientific forestry was premised on expelling peasants from forests, but the war had the opposite dynamic, creating a demand for food, fuel, timber, and other forest resources that enabled Africans to reclaim forest lands.
This paper focuses on two types of forest activities that were promoted during the war. African pit sawing of hardwood, tropical timbers, and forest farming, known as taungya, licensed cultivation.
Although World War II was a moment of African empowerment in the forests, it also suddenly valued East African hardwoods, which had interna-- which had little international demand before the war, even on marginal woodlands that Europeans never before reserved as forests. This created a--" excuse me-- "this created a dynamic for a dramatic post-war expansion of forest reservation that aimed to reassert a colonial dominance over the Tanzanian landscape and its people.
All colonial powers adopted European frameworks of scientific forestry in their colonies, which they believed were necessary for resource, colonial, and social engineering. Scientific forestry meant claiming tropical forests and woodlands for the state, making them into reserves, evicting their peasant and pastoral populations, and imposing structures of managed exploitation of trees.
Ideally, this meant transforming the tropical landscapes according to a European model whereby intensive agriculture would be layered with intensive plantation forestry, replacing slow-growing tropical hardwoods with fast-growing softwoods from the Northern Hemisphere. Peasants evicted from forests would be transformed into forest workers, producing the timber and fuel necessary for colonial development while the agriculture would be transformed from impermanent, shifting agriculture that used fire to open up new fields to sedentary-intensive, cash crop agriculture.
Foresters regarded fire-using peasants as the chief enemy of scientific forestry. Although the ideal of colonial scientific forestry was never achieved, German and British colonizers of Tanzania used it as a framework to assert control over the landscape and its people.
In Tanzania, German colonizers introduced scientific forestry from the start of colonial rule in 1891. In a practical sense, this meant reserving about 1% of the landscape and its forest reserves by 1914, which included all the rainforests and closed canopy forests, protecting water catchments and containing identifiable, marketable hardwoods in sufficient concentrations. These forests were also those that Africans used for social charters, enclosing rainmaking shrines and ancestral graves that helped to ground local policies.
Forests were also vital for African resource extraction, including famine foods, game meat, poles and fuel, and marketable products such as rubber, copal, and mangroves. In the 19th century, African extraction of these resources for an international market empowered them to import textiles, currency, and firearms, which helped them to survive difficult times.
Colonial scientific forestry brought these activities to an end as Germans valued Africans as growers of cash crops and as plantation and railway workers, but not as independent marketers of extracted products. Germans failed to arrest Africans' shifting cultivation, and they failed to introduce meaningful rotational forestry in Tanzania, instead importing most timber that they needed for colonial construction.
World War I ruptured scientific forestry as British and German forces battled in the recesses of the landscape and Africans used the forest as best they could to escape wartime exactions. When the British took over Tanganyika by 1920, they largely adopted the German forestry template and shared its goals. However, the economic dislocations of the 1930s and the British unwillingness to invest in a colonial periphery meant that colonial forestry declined, empowering a return of some Africans-- of some African forestries such as rubber and copal tapping.
British foresters struggled to find a market for Tanganyikan hardwood, and remained dependent on wood imports during the depression. Tanganyikan forestry's state of limbo ended abruptly with Italy's declaration of war in June 1940, inaugurating British military operations in Libya, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia, alongside ongoing wartime preparations in the Middle East.
The outbreak of war forced greater internal reliance on Tanganyika's own timber, as overseas timber sources were diverted to wartime priorities. Late in 1940, war planners informed the East African Governors Conference that the war demanded the, quote, 'greatest possible quantity of timber,' end quote, for military operations in East Africa and the Middle East.
The Japanese takeover of Southeastern Asia by 1942 also deprived the Allied powers of teak and other hardwoods, making East Africa a much more important source of timber and other wartime forest resources such as rubber, leather, dyewoods, beeswax, and copal. Hardwoods were among the formerly unmarketable timbers suddenly in demand.
The British Timber Control Department of the Ministry of Supply brought colonial timber markets under price controls with output coordinated by the East African War Supplies board in Nairobi. In 1941, military orders tripled Tanganyikan timber exports over the previous year, and most sawmills and pit sawing associations worked to capacity. Although the Italian capitulation in Ethiopia in May 1941 slowed orders for military timber, a standing order for 2,500 tons of East African timber per month for the Middle East was maintained, and another 1,500 tons per month were needed for local wartime activities.
In 1942, the forest sector agreed to supply the military with 15,000 railway ties per month, besides timber for barracks, bridges, vehicles, and tools. In order to meet these wartime demands, the timber controller directed the East African government to subsidize new sawmills by leasing machinery to contractors at favored prices.
The East African governments provided food subsidies in order to attract Africans to work in sawmills. Nine new sawmills opened in 1942 in Tanganyika to help meet the demand. Royalty rates on railway ties were reduced by 75% as an incentive for private contractors to increase production of otherwise marginal timbers.
Even with an imposed 10% discount for military and government orders, Forest Department revenue increased by almost 50% in 1942, exceeding expenditure by over 13,648. pounds. The following year, revenue exceeded expenditure-- expenditure--" excuse me-- "by 26,168 pounds, most exploitation coming from, quote, 'readily accessible forests near railways and roads.'
Demand for railway ties in the war years rose from zero in 1940 to 1,188 cubic tons in 1941 and reached 19,654 cubic tons in 1942 before dropping to 11,292 cubic tons in 1943, still almost 200,000 ties. By 1944, 15 different Tanganyikan tree species were used for ties, obtained increasingly from new frontier miombo woodlands, which, after 50 years of virtual neglect by colonial forestry, were suddenly accorded a high value.
The war also created a newfound urgency to harvest trees from pre-existing forest reserves. In eastern province, 11 Indian and Greek timber contractors operated along the line of the central railway as far as Dodoma and south of Dar Es Salaam to the Rufiji River.
The beginning of what would become a chronic post-war labor shortage was inaugurated during the war. Timber contractors hired African pit sawers to supply railway ties, paying two shillings for each tie, individual sawers supplying about 20 ties per month.
Although pit sawers have paved the way for exploitation of woodlands in the interwar years, cutting timber under harsh conditions from far lines of communication, which commercial sawmillers refused to do, by the end of the 1930s the forest department had marginalized pit sawers as mechanized portable sawing appeared to make them obsolete. The war reversed this dynamic, and foresters did what they could to attract Africans to pit sawing.
Prices for railway ties were high enough to attract some sisal workers from area plantations, threatening another wartime production priority owing to the wartime cut-off of Philippine Manila hemp. Labor for timber procurement was irregular and inadequate, making actual railway tie output far below expectations at a time when military authorities demanded that, quote, 'the maximum possible turnout of labor for the production of ties is achieved wherever possible,' end quote.
Yet, labor for logging was considered to be, quote, 'independent and sporadic,' end quote, and difficult to supervise, since sawers operated in small gangs, isolated in forest locales. Loggers entered the forests along the main roadways to select and fell trees, cut them to railway tie size, which is five inches by 10 inches by 8.5, before transporting the 200 to 230-pound timbers to railroads--" excuse me, "to roadways.
Contractors' trucks then transported loads of 20 to 25 ties to Dar Es Salaam and other ports. Although the rainy seasons often delayed production, during the dry seasons about 5,000 ties per month could be supplied along the line of the central railway, while the northern railway to Tanga, with its denser forests, supplied 10,000 ties per month. However, by 1944, Tanganyikan contractors struggled to supply 11,000 ties per month, about 35% less than potential production estimates, owing to labor bottlenecks and ever greater difficulty in locating exploitable trees.
The Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia also impaired Western supplies of rubber, reviving wild rubber tapping in African forests and production on derelict German-era plantations. At the outset of the war, planners in London directed that rubber be prioritized over every other commodity as a strategic war material.
In response, the acting chief secretary in Tanganyika, [? AS ?] [? Marlow, ?] directed that wild rubber be removed from the list of protected forest produce and that all royalties and fees be waived so that Africans could collect it freely, even in forest reserves. Although forest officials feared that the quantities of rubber available would not be worth the risk of rubber tappers damaging the forests, and a representative from Firestone Rubber in South Africa doubted the rubber quality would be adequate for tire production, forest officers were nevertheless directed to survey the forests and woodlands in their regions for availability of rubber trees.
In 1942, the Kisarawe district officer issued permits for 25 Africans to collect wild rubber in the Pugu and the Kindu coastal forest reserves. The Ministry of Supply acted as the sole buyer of collected rubber, paying as much as one shilling per pound or, quote, 'whatever sum was found necessary to get the native gatherer interested,' end quote. In 1944, 124 tons of wild rubber were exported from Tanganyika. And in 1945, the figure rose to 174 tons. In contrast, in 1944, 1,525 tons of plantation rubber were produced, and almost twice that amount in 1945.
The boom in wartime Tanganyikan forest industries was paralleled by a spike in the urban population that increased the consumer demand for food, construction timber, and wood fuel. Wartime exigency unleashed the modern Tanzanian dependency on charcoal as the primary urban source of energy.
Dar Es Salaam's population doubled between 1935 and 1948 to about 70,000 people. Fear of a disorderly urban population that lacked adequate food, housing, and cooking fuel at a time of wartime consumer goods shortage and labor unrest led political officials and foresters alike to respond favorably to African requests for land in forest reserves near Dar Es Salaam. They did this by adopting a Burmese system of forest agriculture known as Tanga hill cultivation.
Tanga gave African shifting farmers licenses to clear land in the forests to grow food and tend tree plantations under forest department authority. It was a quid pro quo, giving farmers land access and regions of land scarcity while providing forestry with needed labor.
The template was so-called forest squatting or forest fuel, a scheme in Bakundu Forest Reserve south of Dar Es Salaam where in 1944, an African chief requested land for his people. Colonial officials saw this as an opportunity to anchor a forest labor force that would tend exotic softwood tree plantations that replaced Indigenous hardwoods in order to supply Dar Es Salaam with fuel and construction poles.
Tanga peasants who appear to have been mainly women household-- women householders in the absence of tens of thousands of men conscripted for wartime wage labor also grew food that helped to supply urban demand. The Vikindu scheme was the model for other Tanga schemes surrounding Dar Es Salaam, and in effect marked a return to the forest for peasants who had been driven out since the start of colonial rule.
It provided them with access to a resource, charcoal, to earn twice-- to earn cash, which replaced the rubber and copal tapping of gold, and continues to be an important source of income for Tanzanian peasants in spite of recent dynamic to keep peasants out of forests under the rubric of biodiversity preservation.
Despite World War II as an empowering moment for pit sawers, rubber tappers, and Tanga peasants, in other respects, the war created a dynamic for destructive social engineering. The war did not deter colonial officials, for example, from undertaking massive population relocations in Liwale district that literally sought to eliminate the district from moving its entire population to concentrated villages near the coast.
Although relocated peasants formed labor pools for sisal plantations and mangrove exploitation for [? dibarks ?] and railway ties, the dislocation and resistance that it engendered was counterproductive to the war effort. The contradictions of colonial forestry intersected after the war when the forest sector became a key player in the second colonial occupation.
Colonial officials increased the extent of Tanganyika's forest reserves by over 10 times in the next 15 years, driving peasants off the land. Foresters again sought to replace African pit sawers with mechanized sawing. These actions fed a burgeoning nationalist movement, drawing pit sawers, Tanga peasants, and evicted peasants together in support of the emergent Tanganyika African National Union by the mid 1950s."
[APPLAUSE]
FOUAD MAKKI: Thank you. Our next speaker, Allen Howard, is a Professor of History at Rutgers University where he teaches and does research in African and Atlantic history. His research focuses geographically on the Upper Guinea Coast of West Africa and topically on ethnicity, commerce, and urban social life. He has written extensively on the application of spatial analysis to African history.
Along with Michael Addis, he has taken a major role in developing and supervising the minor field in world and comparative history. He also is actively engaged in the Black Atlantic diaspora major and in the Center for African Studies, where he's a member of the Executive Committee and the Program Chair-- and was the Program Chair from 1999 to 2004.
His publications include The Spatial Factor in African History, The Relationship of the Social, Material, and Perceptual. It was published in 2005. And he's editor of a special issue of the Canadian Journal of African Studies in 2003 on cities in Africa. The title of his paper is "Freetown and World War II, Impacts Responses and New Formations."
ALLEN HOWARD: Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
See if you clap afterwards.
[LAUGHTER]
Don't count my time yet.
[LAUGHTER]
Instead of fumbling around, I did have some things I wanted to protect, but I think there's almost enough maps for everybody, so I'll pass around free maps. OK. And the reason for doing this is two-fold. First, to give you some sense of this, Freetown and its harbor, but also to really overcome the confusion that oftentimes exists between colony and Sierra Leone and colony lowercase, uppercase.
So there's the colony of Sierra Leone, which, in a formal sense includes the protectorate of Sierra Leone, which is about 95% of the-- oh, behind the podium. OK. Well, [INAUDIBLE]. [LAUGHS] About 95% of the space. And this is what Judy's passing out now. So that's colony with the lowercase. That's the protectorate plus the peninsula.
The second area is the Colony with the uppercase, and this is what goes back to the 19th century [INAUDIBLE]. And that's the peninsula itself with the hills. And this is the area that was heavily militarized.
And then the third map gives you some sense of the way the military saw the harbor of Freetown as a place for ships, and so on. So oftentimes when I speak, I'm talking about the colony. I'm referring to really the peninsula, and really mix back and forth between peninsula and colony when talking.
Is that OK? So lowercase colony is the huge area, the whole-- the totality of present-day Sierra Leone. Uppercase Colony is the peninsula, and Freetown sits in that Peninsula. Hope that's OK.
I think everyone would like to join me in thanking Salah and our hosts for giving us plenty of time to meet and talk in this wonderful setting. And especially, again, thank Judy for the great organizational work that she's done. And I think these panels really do fall together very nicely. And you can see a lot of intersections between what I'm saying and what that is, and Judy had previously said. And there's intersections with other papers as well.
OK. If you compare what I'm presenting today with the earlier versions of this, you'll see that this focuses on Freetown and employs spatial analysis. There's little discussion of the protectorate. That's the larger territory of Sierra Leone. I've taken that out in order to focus much more on the city.
And I argue here, as I have elsewhere, that spatial analysis reveals the ways in which racial, ethnic, class, and gender identities and associations were produced. And social relations were redefined through point-specific conversions. So we look very much at specific sites in the city where these kinds of convergences happen.
And to understand the complex urban dynamics of the era, however, a focus on particular sites is insufficient because Freetown during the war was part of a global human, economic, and military mobilization. The paper offers a multi-level analysis that links these small places within the town to the larger city, to the colony, to West Africa, and to the empire and beyond.
And I argue that Freetown during the war was part of a modern, as distinct from a post-colonial globalization. And this is drawing on Tony Hopkins and Chris Bailey and others who talk about modern globalization. Now I'll begin the paper more formally so you can turn on the [INAUDIBLE].
[LAUGHTER]
Though its contribution is little known, in Freetown, the capital of the colony of Sierra Leone was one of the Allies' most important ports in the Second World War. Great Britain, the colonial ruler, and the United States created a joint staff arrangement-- this is a little strange here, I'm going to turn this light-- no, I can't do that either-- for coordinating operations in and around the city, which attracted considerable attention from the highest level of war planners of the two powers. And the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the US were involved with Freetown and its fate. So this really was a US involvement as well.
Both the US and Britain had military installations, officers, and troops stationed there, although the British role, of course, was by far the largest. Tens of thousands of soldiers, airmen, and sailors spent some time on ships moored in Freetown's wide, well-protected harbor.
And on many occasions, as many as 200 cargo and military vessels waited in this harbor for convoys to form. And these convoys usually had about 50 ships in each convoy. And they would go at least once a week surrounded by destroyers and other ships, and they would go up to the Mediterranean, up to Europe. So this assembly of convoys is very, very, very important for the whole war effort of the Allies.
Freetown residents took on a wide variety of skilled and semi-skilled jobs while migrants flowed in from the protectorate to load and unload ships, build infrastructure, and handle other war-related tasks. All in all, the militarization of space-- I'm going to talk quite a bit about that-- demand for resources, mobilization of tens of thousands of workers, and struggles over wages and other social and economic issues meant that the war was disruptive in a great number and very deep ways-- very deep ways.
Now, Gilbert Sekgoma, who wrote the pioneering article on this subject, demonstrated that during the war, Britain extracted resources from Sierra Leone, including direct monetary transfers derived from taxes on colonial subjects and other means. He also showed how the health and other development programs that were undertaken before the war were shelved during the war.
He argued that the war further integrated Sierra Leone into a peripheral relationship with the metropole. This is back in the old days of core periphery analysis, right? That's correct in certain respects, but the process was much less mechanical and much more contradictory and negotiated than Sekgoma allowed, and was also part of a much more global process.
Now, the city's very rapid growth must be emphasized and linked to these imperial and global processes. Following the declaration of war, population growth was at first slow. But after the fall of France and the loss of the Port of Dakar to the Vichy government and the beginning of all these major infrastructure projects [INAUDIBLE] convoying, the jump in size was really phenomenal. The first half of 1940, they were averaging about 10,000 people who were employed by the government and by private firms, and so on. That's the average per month.
By August there was 15,000. By December, 25,000. So it goes up to 250% in six months. That's formal employment. By November 1942, 50,000 people were formally employed. So it's a 500% increase in the employment in the city in that short period of time. After that peak, it falls back.
Now, in addition to the very large numbers of Africans who come from the protectorate, from the interior area of Sierra Leone, and to some degree from neighboring countries, there was a large influx of Europeans. The population rises from about 400 to about 6,000 to 7,000 Europeans, mostly military people, but others involved in all these infrastructural projects, and so on.
And some officials estimate that by mid-1941, Freetown's population had nearly doubled, although I think that's slightly exaggerated. But it's a massive and rapid growth, which you can imagine all the problems that arise.
OK. So first of all, the militarization of space. There's only a few things that I can take up here, but I think they're some of the critical ones. I mean, first of all, it's important to understand that Freetown was actually a place where they feared until 1943 a German attack by either air or sea. And there were some periodic appearances of German planes in the area, and so on.
So they did all these typical things to prepare defense works. They installed barrages out in the ocean. They set up military sites. And you can see some of that from the third map. Cannon that were mounted up on the hills, and so on and so forth. And they, of course, initiated air raid drills and brought many of the Creole into civil defense schemes.
Other defensive actions taken were very similar to what was done in the British ports, and in many ways similar to the United States. At least, those places that were not bombed in Britain was quite similar. Space was commandeered for military use. Civilians were recruited for quasi-military functions. The population movements were tightly restricted, and so on and so forth.
And in ways that the British felt appropriate for a colony, propaganda and patriotic campaigns were launched, which were, again, quite similar to the British, but as I said, tweaked for colonial purposes. And political assembly and speech were curtailed.
Now, for Freetown to function as a convoy port and a military base-- and there were several bases around the city-- substantial amounts of money and labor had to be invested. The largest projects involved building docks, the loading of storage facilities, and the water supply had to be rebuilt. A huge new infrastructure.
In addition, there was an upgrading of the transport system. Rails, the lightering to move things to these boats and among the different kinds of boats, and so on and so forth.
Britain financed much of this, and the United states also helped. But Africans, of course, contributed their labor, their skills, and many, many resources to this building up of the port and making it a truly militarized center so crucial for the convoying and other military efforts.
This construction was more or less completed by early 1943. And it's interesting how every one of these cities that we study, they have to be understood in terms of other cities and in terms of these larger global pictures.
And the reason this became so important at first was because convoying across the North Atlantic was extremely dangerous because of the U-boats. But by 1943, North Atlantic convoying becomes much safer. Dakar, again, is controlled by the Allies. The Vichy are thrown out. And other changes, which then begin to reduce Freetown's importance from late 1943, and eventually a kind of demilitarization occurs over the next two years.
And it's also at the shift in '43 that the Americans pull out rather rapidly and redeploy their resources. So you can see how all of this militarization and demilitarization are tied with much larger forces that are at work around the globe, actually.
According to Barron's semi-official history of merchant shipping during World War II, it was not only the vast number of vessels that made Freetown unique, but the great variety and the high number that might arise in any short period of time. On one particular day in 1941-- and you can actually look at this day by day-- 50 ships steamed into the harbor.
The highest strategic priority then was given to coaling these ships, providing water to these ships, loading and unloading them quickly, and preparing these convoys for departure. And of course, this requires gearing up a vast amount of labor. That's what a lot of these thousands of people were devoted to.
So Freetown becomes really one of the most important bunkering sites in the Atlantic, and coaling was a major function throughout the war. And this is almost totally ignored in all studies of the war.
Most of the coal-- and this is where we begin to get at the African side-- in the words of Barron, at first had to be delivered to ships in canvas bags "carried by Native labor." Later on, the carrying and the loading and unloading of the coal is done in wicker baskets, which held 336 pounds. And typically, two guys were managing one of these. And these are then eventually hooked up to beams and all sorts of ways to move them mechanically. But actually loading and unloading is done by people, right?
These coal handlers, African coal handlers, were caught up in the mechanism-- a really complex mechanism that particularly in 1940 and '41 was chaotic, stressful, and dangerous. A lot of people are injured. I haven't ever found the statistics on this, though, but there are, you know, episodic reports.
Prior to the war, the Freetown water supply was meeting the people's needs pretty well, except in the heart of the dry season. And Sierra Leone has a very extreme wet and dry season. But with the rapid increase in wartime demand, a crisis for water supplies soon existed.
By 1941, again, they were supplying 17,000 tons of water per day from the water supplies in the hills behind Sierra Leone. 50,000 new people come to the city who need water. So by 1942, there's severe rationing. And they-- that is, the British authorities, say "to meet the essential demands of shipping."
Overall, the volume of water supplied to the city met less than half of the needs of people for washing, hygiene, cleansing your clothes-- washing your clothes, bathing, cooking, et cetera. And the rationing meant that taps were often shut off for long periods of time.
By '44-- and this continues on throughout the war despite a lot of infrastructural projects. But by 1944, taps are open only four hours a day, and that's from 5:00 in the morning till 9:00 in the morning. And that's when you have to get all your water to try to do everything. And so you can think about-- there's some very good descriptions of the suffering of people under this kind of regime.
There's also something I talked about once before in another paper, this militarization of the health provisions, and the really notorious practice of the British and these experts they brought out from the Liverpool School of Medicine in which they took the map of Freetown. They look. They trace how far mosquitoes fly. [LAUGHS] This is a lot of nonsense in many cases.
But then they put a compass literally down on the map, and they draw an arc. And then if you're within that arc, if you're an African living within this arc in the city, then you get this full eradication treatment, you know? If you're beyond that arc, you just don't get much at all.
So Africans benefited in terms of the malaria eradication campaign in direct proximity to places of strategic significance inside or outside this arc. Depended, really. Thank you very much. Well, I'm going to take a little bit longer, I think. Anyway, [LAUGHS] let's see. I'll cut and move ahead. OK.
Now let's move on to another section. That's the struggle over wages and work sites. While wartime regulations authorized officials to use involuntary labor for defense purposes-- and there was some involuntary forced labor in Freetown. There was a lot up country on the rails, and so on. But really, the vast majority of this labor was voluntary.
But it was really in a sense pushed by the terrible rural poverty in Sierra Leone. The depression and then the wartime itself leads to an increasingly impoverished situation. There was a downward trend in rural incomes throughout the '30s and then continuing on in the war.
According to an official report, medical examinations from army recruits in the protectorate, quote, "revealed a deplorably low standard of physique due in part to malnutrition," unquote. So immigrant men and women alike were stimulated to come to the cities, to Freetown, by the rural decline, as well as the obvious attraction for paying-- by paying jobs.
In 1943, official report estimated that 23% of the adult male population of the protectorate-- that would be 200,000, 250,000-- had left agriculture and were employed either in the service or in the works projects for the services or for the government. And many of them, of course, came to Freetown.
Migrants entered a city with a history of labor activity and unionism going back to the teens. And during the 1930s, wages in Freetown had really dropped very radically. Unemployment was high. And it was this context that ITAW-- Wallace-Johnson comes into play with the West African Youth League.
And in 1938-'39 in this really extremely stringent economic situation, the Youth League staged anti-imperial rallies that numbered in the tens of thousands-- or in the thousands, I'm sorry. In the thousands.
They won all the seats for the Freetown city council. And they organized militant unions, which had the capability to carry out strikes on the docks and in other strategic sites around the city. And you should read Ibrahim Abdallah's work on this, which is really very good, and I want to repeat that.
Now, what the British then do is to try to crush this militancy. And so they arrest Wallace-Johnson, and they keep him in prison for the rest of the war. And they arrest quite a few other labor leaders, but eventually they let most of them out.
And what IB-- that's Ibrahim Abdallah-- says, is that "the British seek to use coercion plus co-optation to prevent the emergence of an independent working class movement that they could neither control nor predict." Now, this effort at repression and co-optation continues on during the war, but they then introduce a whole series of new efforts to control labor and to work with labor. So it's much more complex during the war because of the strategic goals.
They use wage increases. They use cost of living bonuses. And they use other things to realize their main strategic goals, which are keeping plenty of workers now, they hope, well-trained-up workers and disciplined, stable workers at these critical war sites. So the war really changes the relationship of employer to employee. And most of the employers, of course, are these government and military employers.
OK. So I think it's important to stress that while the workers, especially those from the protectorate who go on strike and carry out a number of actions that I'll talk about, are influenced by this longer history of unionism and labor action in the cities. They're really also, and maybe more immediately, responding to the economic situation in the cities, which is very, very difficult. Reflects some of the things that Judy talked about.
Prices for locally produced food moves steeply upward. The cost of living index spirals through 1940 and 1941. Using a base of 100-- 1939, 100-- by 1942, it's 234. In other words, prices increase about two and a half times, or 250%, for basic foods.
There's a cost of living survey in 1941 that finds that 90% of low-income households had difficulty living on the wages they earned, and 75% of those households had members who were underfed. So the workers, especially those from the protectorate, are really trying to feed people in this situation of price inflation and shortages for many commodities. Excuse me.
So to meet these strategic demands for labor, the civilian and military authorities are really willing to pay workers fairly well. And this is, I think, something has to be recognized. The laborers are paid an average of two shillings per day with higher rates for skilled laborers.
But they-- that is, the officials, the governor and others-- do not want to go beyond this. And what they then begin to do is to institute cost of living bonuses. And they give these cost of living bonuses without increasing base wages, and they can play around with that much more. And they force the companies that are still-- like the Sierra Leone Coaling Company and others that have been carrying out, again, strategic work, to go along with this.
And the companies drag their feet. And the companies are more willing always to accept cost of living bonuses rather than wage increases because that does not set a precedent, and it doesn't carry over to after the war. So this is the struggle, really, wages versus cost of living bonuses and wartime increases.
The main thing that they're seeking-- that is, the military and civil officials-- is stabilization. And they do put forward a number of new laws that go beyond anything in the pre-war period. And some of these are quite draconian.
They register workers. This, again, has not really been recognized, but in a 46-day period in 1942, they register 42,000 laborers. And they give them life cards, and they fingerprint most of them as well. And there's very little resistance to this, which is interesting. The resistance is really around the wages and the work conditions, and so on. It's not to these kinds of control efforts.
So then what I do is I go through and talk about a number of strikes that are fairly successful in raising wages and getting the government to institute additional cost of living bonuses, and so on and so forth. I might just mention one, a strike against the Sierra Leone Coaling Company in 1941 when the workers walked off the job. The company gives them only a $0.02 an hour-- or $0.02 a day increase, and they just say, we won't take this at all.
And then what the government tries to do is to bring in scab workers using moderate unions. And this is totally rejected by the majority of workers. They will not go along with the labor leaders. Leaders say, well, we'll deliver to you, our workers. The workers don't come.
And actually, the strike against the coaling company is successful, and they have to increase the pay. They have to give the cost of living bonuses, and they recognize a union. Now of course, the government hopes this will lead to greater stability, and so it's acceptable to the government. But the fact that no scab workers were delivered by the moderate unions I think really sobered both the government and the company.
Let's move ahead to a couple other topics quickly. I think you can also see a spatiality of consumption and of criminality tied to consumption and to marketing, which, again, ties in with Judy's paper. During the war, a lot of people did make money as traders. People selling fish, palm oil, and many other commodities, they could do fairly well.
Wholesalers, African wholesalers did well. Cattle traders-- and I've interviewed a lot of those people-- had really lucrative contracts with the government and with the military authorities. Other contractors, including the famous Constance Cummings-John, who later becomes the mayor of Freetown-- LaRay Denzer wrote up a nice biography with her, autobiography. She was a stone supplier.
And others supplied materials. Other Africans supplied materials for these docks and for these airports and other strategic installations, and they also do well during the war. So some people are making out if you're in certain sectors of trade.
What the government wants to do, of course, is to control prices. And so they set up the Emergency Power Defense Act of 1939, and the 1942 with, again, like in Abeokuta and elsewhere, price setting committee, price controls, and severe punishment of violators. And the newspapers are just filled with accounts of the punishments of these people.
There's one guy, [? Mamadou ?] [? Konte, ?] who was selling fabrics, and so on. He was fined seven pounds, 10 shillings, or given a choice of two months imprisonment for selling one spool of thread for one shilling three pence, which was three pence above the listed price. And there are just many, many, many other accounts of it. They put people in jail for six months, a year, and so on, for price violations.
So this is what they tried to do. They have to-- they rely on these traders, but they try to control prices, which is interesting. You'd think of this as something in the United States or Britain, but the degree of price intervention, market intervention is quite marked. So there was a lot of tension between market women and police, and there were incidents when police in the markets were attacked by the market women, and so on and so forth.
Just say something briefly about rice as a major crop. And of course, rice has very deep significance for people in Sierra Leone. It's different than the Nigerian setting. It was the basic starchy staple, but of course, it was the center of family life, and it has various societal and ceremonial meanings of a lot of significance.
Officials had a palpable fear of rice shortages, and shortages appeared throughout the whole war. And they also feared that high prices for rice would lead to urban upheavals. And of course, there's a history of urban riots in Sierra Leone or in Freetown in 1919, 1926.
So the prices and the controls over rice in the market intervention in the rice-- in the rice situation is really quite remarkable. Traders accused of hoarding rice or price gouging were, again, dealt with very harshly. And the government ran rice distribution centers for direct sale to the populace. So they actually compete with marketers.
The main site was a government-operated rice mill, which in 1944 still was operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the rice season, just trying to get out enough rice. But shortages continue throughout the war, 1945 and '46, '47. There's still rice shortages. In an earlier paper, I talk about the efforts to mechanize rice in the interior. Just skipping that now.
But people fear-- I mean, the authorities feared food riots, and they trained members of the African Frontier Force to put down civil rebellions. But that never actually happened. There were no food riots. The government also feared attacks on the warehouses and the docks because people knew a lot of valuable commodities were held in these-- war-related commodities were held in these docks, but none of that happened.
What did happen-- and this is another section, the contestation of these military sites. What did happen is a series of repeated clashes between soldiers and civilians. And as I mentioned yesterday, a lot of these soldiers are Nigerian, so there's clashes between Black soldiers and Freetowneans.
And then there are many more and much more serious clashes between whites and Blacks in Freetown. And I'll just say a little bit about that, because here you see the racial dimensions clearly coming out.
Throughout the duration of the war, there were confrontations between white military personnel and African residents. Racial overtones were often present. And in some instances, Europeans manifested overt racism. Very overt racism. Military personnel did not talk or write about these robberies in the streets when they were held up or in their homes, and so on, simply as crimes, but as intimate personal encounters between subjects were racially marked, both overtly and then in more coded terms.
In the first few months of 1943, for example, there were a series of incidents on the streets of Freetown in which white soldiers and others were robbed. And the reports of the investigating officers, just the language they choose to use, suggests that the whites were being emasculated by Blacks. And they always talk about the need to arm the whites so they can protect themselves as men. That comes out time after time in the testimonies and in the reports.
In some of the other incidents, loss of clothing is very, very important. And also, the invasion of "white spaces." There's a popular beach, Lumley Beach-- some of you have probably have been to it-- in which swimming soldiers' clothes were repeatedly taken from them. Of course, that still happens. But of course, these--
[LAUGHTER]
--these incidents were highly racialized at that period of time. And also, African youth gangs would invade these military bases and take people's clothes and other belongings. And there's-- some of these are really quite humorous.
Of course, they all have-- all the soldiers have their trunks. So they would carry off their trunks or carry off their particular kinds of clothing. So in one incident, 12 guys had their trousers stolen. So the reporting officer says "these men were immobilized--"
[LAUGHTER]
--until they could find some more trousers, right? And the military write-ups of this evoke images of whites being robbed in their own homes. They talk about that a lot, right? Being robbed in our homes, defenseless because they could not shoot the intruders. That was bad.
And officers, of course, advocated flogging the burglars. They say, these Africans only understand harsh bodily discipline. There's a lot of that kind of language too. I'll finish up in a couple of minutes here.
So just to talk about the clashes between the Nigerians and the Sierra Leoneans, in 1941 and '42, there were 25 such incidents that I found. Oftentimes, the soldiers were abusing women, so the men would come to defend "their women." Soldiers burned houses. Soldiers engaged in all sorts of assaults against civilians, and so on. And of course, the civilians fought back against these soldiers from overseas, mostly Nigerians.
There was one incident in 1942 at the Kissy Admiralty Works. And I picked that one out because, again, this is one of these strategic sites. 150 civilians challenged a group of Nigerian soldiers. A few soldiers were beaten up. Eventually, a European officer comes and takes command, and he orders them to fire on these civilians, and they kill one and wound others. And they use actually Tommy guns as well as rifles against these people. That shows how tense it is.
But it's the language of the people in the crowd, the ones who were attacked by the soldiers, which is very interesting. One man who was carrying a machete said, "We are prepared to sacrifice ourselves today. We cannot be treated in such a manner." Another called out, "Oh, my man, is that how they are treating you? Like a woman." Another said, "I'm a man. I'm a man. Let nobody hold me." These are the civilians, right?
And the soldiers, on the other hand, yelled that no civilian could damage a uniform or beat a soldier. That was not going to be allowed. And they call themselves brothers. They referred to each other as brothers, and they protect one another against these civilians harming their uniforms. The uniform is very, very important.
So pervading all these encounters is a sense of masculinity mixed with a national, if you wish, or "incipient national--" I wouldn't put that in quotes-- identity of Sierra Leones versus Nigerians. Certainly, they're perceived as foreigners and outsiders.
But there's something deeper here that's going on because these civilians express a sense of violation, a kind of antagonism against abuse of authority. They see these troops as abusive. And this is not registered by a sense of nationalism. This is something else.
Now, just to conclude rapidly-- I'll take two more minutes. I hope-- I'm sorry I've gone a little bit over here. You didn't give me my two-minute signal yet, so--
FOUAD MAKKI: [INAUDIBLE] actually.
ALLEN HOWARD: Oh, OK. All right. So the mili-- just to go back to this question now of what this all means, the military and economic cooperation between the US and Britain was based on perceived strategic realities, which by 1943 were changing, as I said, because of the changes in the Atlantic and elsewhere in the world. As the Allies advanced in North Africa and then in Europe, as Dakar again becomes available to the Allies, all these kinds of things, especially as the North Atlantic convoying opens up, all these things then change Freetown's place in the larger strategic and global realities, and Freetown becomes less important.
And the US pulls out quickly, and the British then begin a process of demilitarization, which means they gradually hand back over the next two years control to civilian authorities. But they do this very gradually. The companies, again, which had been put under very tight control, again, gradually begin to get more and more opportunity to operate on their own as profit-making organizations.
Now, in quite a number of recent works, scholars have located African cities and processes of globalization. Since the 1980s, of course, globalization has been typified by a rapid transnational circulation of capital, ideas, and people, by nation-states and city governments that are weakened under neoliberal regimes, by huge increases in the size of cities and in the informal sector, and by urban dwellers using, in a very inventive way, as what Malik Simone calls "platforms for action." This is what we see in the 1980s and '90s and the first part of the 21st century. This is postcolonial globalization.
Now of course, some of these things that happen in recent decades could not have happened in the Second World War. But I think the Second World War is a phenomena of African cities, at least these ports being caught up in global processes. And you can see that in several ways.
I mean, first, I've already pointed to that this is a system that's operating when what happens in North Africa, what happens in the US, what happens in South Asia, what happens in the United States affects what happens in Freetown. And what happens in Freetown has great significance for what happens in the European theater of war with these convoys in particular. So this is a systemic thing with each part affecting one another. OK, time's up. I only have two more paragraphs.
Secondly, Freetown was linked obviously-- and other papers show this-- global flow of people, clear commodities, and ideas. You know, the thousands of ships that enter the harbor come from all over the world, many actually from the United States. Concepts of democracy, struggles against fascism. These kinds of ideas circulate widely. And of course, the radio, again, is very important, and I took some big sections out about the use of radio propaganda.
Third, people in Freetown experienced aspects of the war that were similar to what people experienced in Britain and in the United States, at least in those cities that were not bombed or destroyed. It's actually quite similar, if you think about it. Inflation, shortages of essentials, air raid drills, restriction on movements of people, expression of-- political expression, and so on and so forth.
But there are also, of course, very significant differences. And that happens to be, of course, because this was a colonial city. I think the level of economic hardship that people in Freetown experienced really was much greater than most places in Britain, and certainly far greater than what happened in the United States.
You know, the symbolism of that radius being drawn and your fate as a person who can contract malaria being tied to the presence of whites in these ships who are vulnerable to mosquitoes, that says a lot to me. You know, the colonial patterns of gender, ethnicity, and race that were being produced and redefined at these military sites again reflects a colonial city, not a city in the metropole.
But I think finally, it's important to understand that the residents of Freetown did everything they could to integrate with these global forces on their own terms. And you see this particularly in the labor struggles, but in many other efforts of people to contribute their labor, their skills to success of this war effort.
So I just want to say that if you take a multi-level analysis that looks at these particular sites in Freetown, but all around the Atlantic, you can see how the realities of generals, governors, coal carriers, and food sellers are really complexly meshed. Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Sorry I went a little over there.
FOUAD MAKKI: So the floor is now open to questions, comments. Yes?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] I was [INAUDIBLE]
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
JUDITH BYFIELD: [INAUDIBLE]
ALLEN HOWARD: Oh, is it on? [INAUDIBLE]
JUDITH BYFIELD: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: I was [INAUDIBLE] campaign that you mentioned [INAUDIBLE] people who [INAUDIBLE] during 1935. And I was thinking that one of the reasons to write again and re-evaluate the history of World War II in Africa is that actually, if you don't understand what happened in Africa, you don't realize that these conflicts in Europe became much more complicated when it came to Africa.
Because for British to say, OK, the Italians are fascists and they invaded Ethiopia and everything, it would be very clear in Europe. But when it comes to the colonial scene, then it must have been very complicated because I assume that the British were very concerned about these kind of campaigns, African campaigns for Ethiopia because, of course, it was anti-Italian, which is might be good, but it was also anti-European and anti-colonialism actually.
And it happens-- the same thing happens with Vichy France [INAUDIBLE] this propaganda against Vichy France is problematic for the British because it's also against [INAUDIBLE]. And I was wondering if you have any knowledge of British responses to this campaign. Were they trying to stop it, or did they have anything-- any fierce concern [INAUDIBLE]?
JUDITH BYFIELD: It is interesting that you ask that. I didn't-- they were definitely talking about this effort to send this petition and whether or not they could do it or should do it. And I didn't find anything where they explicitly expressed a concern that it raises, you know, these questions about British imperialism.
But they did feel threatened because they felt that if they didn't forward the petition, it would put them in an even more negative light than they were already in, because people were very upset that they didn't defend Italy-- I mean, Ethiopia. And in fact, Britain very early on recognized the conquest and that Ethiopia was now under Italian control.
And so this campaign that starts in '36, that's actually one of the very explicit points they make, that they're upset that Britain has recognized the conquest. And so Bourdillon felt where-- you know, the Secretary of-- yeah, the Chief Secretary's office felt that, OK, when this petition comes, we are going to forward it to the League of Nations.
And what was interesting for me was seeing how quickly these women jumped on it, because it's this-- I didn't mention it in the talk, but in the paper I talk a little about it, that it's this Lagos women's organization. Let me just find the name of this organization. Oh, Prominent Women of Lagos Society [LAUGHS] that are the first to organize.
And they had gotten this appeal from this Princess [? Saha. ?] Now, I don't know if this-- if there really was this princess or just--
FOUAD MAKKI: [INAUDIBLE]
JUDITH BYFIELD: OK, there it is. OK. And if she was the one herself who generated this appeal. Because it says that she's 17--
FOUAD MAKKI: I don't know about [INAUDIBLE], but there is a Princess [? Saha. ?]
JUDITH BYFIELD: Yeah, [? Saha. ?] So I have to follow up on that and find out more about this particular appeal. But you know, in the appeal she points out that her age and what has happened to them in Ethiopia and how desperately they are in need of help. And this Prominent Women's Society jumps on the bandwagon.
It's also interesting too that the woman who is the head of this Prominent Women's Lagos Society, her name is Mrs. Shackleford. And she is Jamaican, and she is in Nigeria as a part of these West Indians that lived in Lagos, primarily working on the railway. And so they were in managerial positions.
And so there's this Jamaican community that's in Lagos in the early decades of the century. And Shackleford and her husband are also involved in the UNIA chapter in Lagos. And I think she really is the driving force here, given her UNIA background, and that she jumps on this.
And she's a good-- she knows the alake. So I have these letters between Shackleford and the alake where she's telling him she's going to come to Abeokuta, and she wants to speak to these-- to people in the town. And he's welcoming her. And he actually is her host when she comes to Abeokuta, and they organize this meeting.
And she specifically sent out the notice about the appeal and this meeting she wanted to organize to the ministers. And she asked the ministers to read the appeal to the girls and women's classes. So each church had a separate women's group that met, and so she wanted it to go out specifically to them.
The other piece that's interesting here too is when the Reverend Ransome-Kuti attends this meeting-- and at the meeting that they hold, the title of his talk was "The Part Already Played by Men as a Challenge to the Women to Play Their Own Part." And they're already engaged in this discussion about imperialism.
One of the things I should mention about the Ransome-Kutis too and why they're really important in this struggle, they're very early on identified with nationalist movements in Nigeria. So the reverend was a member of the Nigerian Youth Movement, which was one of the first of the more contemporary nationalist organizations.
He was also very close to Ladipo Solanke, who started the West African Students' Union in Britain. And so they and Solanke were communicating through the 1930s. And in also looking through-- I spent some time looking through his papers in Lagos. A lot of communication from them.
And so they were also patrons to some extent of the West African Students' Union because Solanke would come. He's from Abeokuta. And so he came to Abeokuta to also fundraise for this hostel. So the Ransome-Kutis are already engaged in these discussions about imperialism and discussions that are critical of the nature of colonial rule in both places, in England as well as in Nigeria. Now, Reverend Ransome-Kuti did get his degrees in West Africa. He went to-- oh, what's the university?
ALLEN HOWARD: Fourah Bay.
JUDITH BYFIELD: Fourah Bay. Yes. Yeah, he went to Fourah Bay. Mrs. Ransome-Kuti actually went to college in London, so she was in London from 1920 to '22. So yeah, the British are playing it very carefully here because they know people are upset and already very-- raising all these questions about them so quickly in recognizing the Italian conquest. And so they decide to not make matters any worse. Let's push the appeal forward.
Now, it didn't change their actions. It's really-- you know, it's later on. It's not till '41 that they go in, right? Did I get the dates right there?
ALLEN HOWARD: Yeah.
JUDITH BYFIELD: Yeah. And that helped then to support Ethiopia. So they're watchful of all of these things, but they didn't try to suppress it.
FOUAD MAKKI: There's a mic right next to [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Thank you. I have one specific question for Judy and then one for Judy and Allen together. [INAUDIBLE] study sounds to me like it is more of a regional study. Do you have any implications for the larger level through your findings? Do you think your findings apply to all of Nigeria?
And my question for both of you has to do with the American influence. And I was very interested in, how did American ideals and American anti-colonial ideas get transmitted to different places in Africa? How were they-- how were they received? Was there any questioning about the credibility of the United States and the United States-inspired United Nations in fighting the anti-colonial struggle? And how did that story come to you?
JUDITH BYFIELD: I'll start first. Yeah. In terms of the-- because it's really a local story that reaches out. And so it's even smaller than a regional thing in terms that it's really looking at this tax revolt and the questions and ideas raised here, and then trying to link how they move out of Abeokuta.
And one of the things that-- the press plays a really important role in this here. And Ransome-Kuti is very astute about using the press. And so every time there was going to be a protest or if they got a response from the government that they didn't like, she quickly wrote off-- she did press releases. And the main newspaper that was circulating all of this was The West African Pilot that was controlled by Nnamdi Azikiwe, who's a very important person in the development of nationalist movement in Nigeria.
As the word got out about what the women in Abeokuta were doing, and Ransome-Kuti-- actually, Azikiwe and the Ransome-Kutis are among the founders of the NCNC, which is the dominant nationalist organization for really a short period, roughly from '44 to-- the parties start developing in '51.
They did a countrywide tour of Nigeria in the early part of 1947. So through that tour, she was the only woman on this seven-member delegation. A lot of people all across Nigeria become aware of her.
And then the tax revolt began a few months after that tour. And Azikiwe's newspaper is carrying all of this information about the tour. And so you see in her files massive amounts of letters from both women and men across Nigeria, asking her to come and help them organize sometimes around taxes, other times around challenges to their own local leaders. So it's no longer just an Abeokuta issue as a result of all of that. Word gets out.
And she does try to visit a number of different places. And so she went to other communities close by. And one of the stories is that she's one of the first-- she is the first woman in-- depending on who tells it, either Abeokuta or Nigeria, but I think more Abeokuta-- to drive a car.
[LAUGHTER]
So she's literally able to transport herself. And so she visits a number of communities where women are organizing, they're forming sort of similar women's unions, or they already had existing women's organizations but want that connection. So that when she organizes the Nigerian Women's Union, it's pulling in all of these people who had already reached out to her.
One of the-- just a digression a little bit here. She's also connected internationally. And so she-- there are letters in her files from Kwame Nkrumah. She was communicating with women's organizations in South Africa, with women's organizations in Europe. And by 1953 or '54, she becomes a vice president of the Women's International Democratic Federation, which is an Eastern Bloc women's association. And so late '50s, she's going to meetings in Hungary. They take her passport, so she couldn't go to China. [LAUGHS]
And you know, she's-- there are pictures of her visiting factories in Hungary. And so she over time develops all these international connections, but a lot of that work really begins with what happens as a result of this tax revolt. So that is partly why I think it's such an important event in not only the nationalist movement, but the way women begin to organize around the nationalist movement, because this organization becomes a place for the sorts of conversations.
And one of the things that will later get her in trouble with the NCNC, when the NCNC reconstituted-- becomes reconstituted as a political party, it's the party most associated with the Ibos in Eastern Nigeria. The Yoruba party is the action group, and she never joins the action group. And in fact, the action group loses the first election in Abeokuta because the market women voted with her and the NCNC.
But she refused to bring these women's organizations into any of the political parties. She insists that these women's organizations have to be autonomous-- be spaces where women from all the different parties can come and talk and sort of plan their own agenda. So they become a central place from which women can then go out and influence things.
But one of the ways the parties get back at her is actually by banning their members from participating in the women's unions. And for people who worked on Nigeria, one of the most important women organizers in Eastern Nigeria, Margaret Ekpo, who in the first post-colonial government has an appointed position, she partly gets that because the NCNC tell her to break her relationship with Ransome-Kuti and the Nigerian Women's Union, and she does that.
So in terms of the Americans, they're-- outside of them using-- well, they certainly use that phrase associated with the American Revolution. There is discussion about America and sort of models of education in America. So people are very interested in the Tuskegee schools, things like that. Not a lot of discussion about democracy in America or, you know, any ideas of American anti-colonialism. It's not really central to the discussion, as far as I can tell.
ALLEN HOWARD: Yeah. I actually agree with that, that I think the American influence that you find described in certain textbooks-- mainly Basil Davidson and others-- I think that's exaggerated for the wartime period. Now later, it might be more significant.
I mean, I looked at the archives down in Bethesda, right? And these are official naval and other archives. They don't give any indication of any contact between Americans and Africans around any of these political issues.
If you look at the newspapers, there are three newspapers that publish. And it's interesting. I mean, the British allow newspapers to be published. There's a sort of self-censorship. There's certain boundaries you can't go beyond.
But the newspapers carry many articles about the United States. They're fascinated with FDR, for example. But you can pick that up through reading international papers, because all these people are, as Judy was saying, are plugged into these international circuits. You can read the British newspapers and pick this up. You can get it in American newspapers through a long circuit and eventually work out there.
But I think a lot of this is actually the British even distributing this kind of stuff. So this is to show the American contribution to the war and to look at the-- just like there's pictures of Stalin in the newspapers, and so on, that does not mean that there's any particular effort of the Americans to disseminate new notions of nationalism or African freedom, or anything like that. I think it's Africans who take all these ideas and use them in their own ways.
And then the second point that's parallel is that there are quite a number of Sierra Leoneans that, again, have long-standing connections with the United States going to traditionally Black colleges, living and working in the United States, and also with the Caribbean. Those connections are very strong. And then connections with London are very, very strong.
So these ideas are circulating among African networks, and it's just part of a much larger, longer term-- I think your point is really correct-- effort to build anti-colonial movements after the war. I think there are some differences with, you know, the American and Soviet clearly pushing independence.
Just one other thing I might mention is that many of these Americans who are stationed, they have a naval officer, for example, who is stationed who is actually a spy. He travels around using Freetown as a base to other colonies. And what they're really looking for are American economic opportunities after the war.
[LAUGHTER]
This is much more important than spreading ideas about democracy. I think the Africans have all-- you know, there are plenty of access to these ideas and plenty of ways to interpret them, given the longer history of, well, radicalism and anti-imperialism, and so on for the war period.
FOUAD MAKKI: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: I was wondering about some of the things in terms of comparisons with what I'm accustomed to. And I was just going to mention that the governor of Uganda was one of the people responsible for trying to arrange an East African truce that would basically declare the entire region non-aligned during the war.
And I'm wondering if that kind of attempt to set Britain and Italy together against the notion of resistance and warfare in East Africa was something that got any press in Nigeria. In other words, it almost-- the way that [? Mitchell ?] put this forward is almost a statement that white people need to stick together, even if they're fascists and anti-fascists, unless we have an upheaval in East Africa, which I'm oversimplifying, but that's kind of what it looks like. And I'm wondering if that received any publicity.
And for Allen, I'm still thinking about boundaries. And I'm thinking it would-- I really enjoyed a lot of the discussion in the labor movement, but I'm kind of wondering if there was also a discussion about enforcement of this, because when I read the labor movement stuff, there's a lot of discussions, especially the French materials, about the policing within labor movements to prevent scabs from taking the jobs, and very careful monitoring in a mobilized and militant way involving sticks, stones, and broken bones, of people not crossing the lines and taking the work. And so I'm wondering if that kind of mobilization was also used in this case to ensure these kinds of labor victories.
FOUAD MAKKI: [INAUDIBLE] just for the sake of time.
JUDITH BYFIELD: OK. OK. Yeah.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
AUDIENCE: I just-- I had a question or a comment about the influence of Americans. And I wondered, like, after the Atlantic Charter was passed, there was such a public fight between Churchill and Roosevelt. And I think that-- you know, that was picked up by the West African Students' Union.
And I also-- I was wondering, even if you can't see evidence of the influence of that within the grassroots groups, it seemed that the US-- the prestige that the United States had was often reflected on a cultural level. And you could see it in terms of people imitating American, whether it's American music or seeing-- because I think it was some of the documents of Eastern Nigeria, I saw references to the first Black doctor who appeared in [INAUDIBLE] group coming from the United States. And people commented, that's the first time I've seen someone-- a Black person in these positions.
And I wondered if, you know, even like the role that Black Americans may have played in-- you know, in the military in these different areas. And then just also the kind-- I know Churchill was very worried about the United States' appeal because he really felt that it was undermining the kind of prestige that Britain should have in order to-- because he still thinks they're going to have colonies forever after the war. But I don't know if you saw any evidence of those kinds of concerns on the local level.
FOUAD MAKKI: Is your question related to this?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
FOUAD MAKKI: OK.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] follow-up on this question.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] what she was saying.
AUDIENCE: I looked at the-- I apologize for being a [INAUDIBLE] journalist. But my interest has been in the creation of the air route across Africa during the war. And from an influence perspective, for the very first time in August of 1941, you had Americans operating-- American civilians now at strategic locations all across the continent, specifically starting with Accra, and going all the way to Khartoum and up to Cairo.
And so you end up with a place like Accra where you have hundreds and hundreds of Africans employed for the first time in an aviation and infrastructure improvement project, and they're dealing with Americans as their supervisors. Now, you're absolutely right. The British were very upset about that and tried to keep everybody at arm's length and whatever, but there was still daily contact.
And I think just by the presence-- by virtue of their presence, there was an impact. And how lasting that is, I know that up until a few years ago, there were still Ghanaians who looked back at those days and remembered working for the Americans. And the Americans weren't British. They were Americans, and they definitely had some [INAUDIBLE].
FOUAD MAKKI: We'll take one more from the [INAUDIBLE].
JUDITH BYFIELD: OK.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] comment for this issue-- on this issue of the Americans. Now in Eritrea, as of 1941, the British and also some American troops, I will say that I didn't look at American archives or in British sources. And there is nothing that suggests that Americans were aware of some of [INAUDIBLE] the Eritreans were picking up ideas from the Americans. So in their minds, they found totally different sources that we're discussing about the whole [INAUDIBLE].
And the British had a hard time reconciling, you know, white solidarity with the fact that they had Black troops of the Sudanese Defense Force. And then [INAUDIBLE] you had the issue of the prestige of a winning army, you know? [INAUDIBLE] defeat the enemy.
But then they discuss, OK, they give access to some white shops and restaurants and cinemas to the Sudanese Defense Force, but then they say, no to dancing halls or cabarets because the Americans are kind of sensitive of the color bar, so they would strongly object on having-- on having Africans going to these places.
And then the British, when a certain point the American army suggests of dispatching to Eritrea a contingent of African-American soldiers, the British prevent it, stop it, say, absolutely not, and say, over here we have many white women [INAUDIBLE]. And it's clearly a problem. I think it was going to be even more difficult for them to reconcile this issue of color bar, you know? Between the winning army and then [INAUDIBLE].
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
JUDITH BYFIELD: Yeah. I'll sort of go in the order and, like, how I don't recall seeing any major discussion about the role of the-- was it the Ugandan governor and the truce that-- so--
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
JUDITH BYFIELD: Yeah, OK. Yeah. I don't remember-- recall seeing any of that, although I wasn't specifically looking for it. But yeah, I don't recall seeing that in the newspapers.
And Carolyn, yes, there was an appeal of American culture. I think it was stronger in some places than others, and I think it was particularly strong in Lagos. And the American troops, as far as I'm aware, are only in Lagos. I didn't see any reference to American troops in Abeokuta itself.
And [? Tom ?] connects to your question too in that I think it matters where the Americans are, and that you may have these then local relationships. And I mean, people are, to some extent, aware of America. You know, there are people traveling back and forth. They're, in a way, people who would go to America and come back and declare themselves Dr. So-and-so, [LAUGHS] whether or not they actually did go to school when they were in America.
A number of articles in the newspapers, I think particularly because Abeokuta is only 60 miles-- or 60 kilometers from Lagos, so relatively easy to move between those two cities. And because you had this concentration of a highly literate Christian community there too, you know, newspapers did well there. And so you see in the newspapers the number of stories about people who were giving lecture tours, and so they may have been to America.
And particularly during, you know, the period in the early part of the 20th century when they are challenging ideas about the color bar that Britain had imposed in Nigeria itself. And so you have this whole effort of people reclaiming African names and getting rid of their European names, and going back to wear an African dress and not wearing Western dress. And there is a whole circulation of those people visiting the US, coming back, and talking about their experience in the US.
But one of the things that's very clear in the newspapers, a lot of the stories that you see about America have to do with African Americans and the conditions under which African Americans are living here. And so they're very much engaged with discussions about racism and segregation.
And Azikiwe had gone to school in the US. He had gone to Lincoln, which is a historically Black university. And so in his newspapers, he carried a lot of those stories. So you'd hear about African-American leaders, the people who were educators. A lot of things about educators as well.
So there is information about America that's being conveyed, but not necessarily the information that the US government would have wanted conveyed, because they are identifying with this really larger international politics around racism. And so they're aware of the NAACP, the crisis. There are articles by George Padmore in the newspaper. They're following Dubois and his activities as well.
So that's why, Rafael, when you say anti-colonialism, American anti-colonialism, that's not really what they're following. And yes, later on they will become very animated by the Atlantic Charter. But it's really the connection through pan-Africanism that people know a lot about America.
ALLEN HOWARD: I agree with that 100%. The actual direct connections with the United States in terms of travel and so on, they're stronger in the '30s and they're stronger after the war than during the war. There's very little of that during the war itself.
But there's this ongoing-- which, again, precedes the war, is strong during the war, and continues after the war, connections with the African-American world, with the pan-African world through newspapers, through WASU. They carry articles on WASU week after week after week, and people come out from Britain. And that's the conduit for learning about the larger Black world. And that continues on during the war, but it's not a direct American influence.
Now as far as the Atlantic charter, that's a good question, Carolyn. I'll have to look at that and see how that's treated. I just can't give you the answer.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] it's so public.
ALLEN HOWARD: Right.
AUDIENCE: Churchill.
ALLEN HOWARD: Right. Right.
AUDIENCE: And then [INAUDIBLE] former presidential candidate goes to England and then starts making statements against colonialism. I mean, there's a whole very public kind. of debate going on between Churchill and Roosevelt. And then Roosevelt makes some statements that ended up in The New York Times that Churchill was very defensive about. And they're talking about this as if there's-- as if Africans are not hearing it, you know? [LAUGHS] It's just like a whole [INAUDIBLE]
ALLEN HOWARD: This might well be something that they do not put in the newspapers, but know about. That's quite possible. Just to go back to Carol's other question, yeah, there actually are a variety of clashes among African workers on the docks. And it really has to do with, again, the long-established Creolean crew, especially workers who try to maintain the better paying positions.
But they tend to wind up in these more moderate unions, a lot of these people. But there's a split between the Creole-- or among the Creole as to whether you stay in the moderate unions or whether you go for the unions that Wallace-Johnson formed.
And so the split is partly between the more privileged workers and all these unskilled workers who come from the protectorate to try-- I suppose to prevent them from rising up too high in the ranks. But these workers who come from the protectorate are needed. I mean, there's just so many jobs that have-- there's no way to fill them from people in Freetown or people in the established unions.
And they're going to be supported by the government who want these people. Encourage them. So there are some incidents, but I don't think the more established union people can do anything about this massive employment that occurs.
And among the elite workers, it's more the split between the moderates and the more radical people. And the radical people actually gain a lot of ground in the late '30s and then again in the '40s.
But what happens is that the government moves ahead with this process of co-optation. And this is where Siaka Stevens and others come in. Siaka, again, eventually becomes the president of the country, and notoriously corrupt. But he is one of these moderate union people who work with the British during the war and after the war. You see this much more clearly in the mines than in the ports, I think. And Ibrahim Abdallah has really studied this in quite a lot of detail for [INAUDIBLE] especially the iron mines.
So over the long run, I think the co-optation process works very well to undercut the radical unions. And so it's some union leaders working with British government officials to run a modulated kind of labor movement that triumphs.
AUDIENCE: Two-- one question and a comment. The comment first is thinking about the influence of African Americans. From the [INAUDIBLE] standpoint, a lot of what takes place takes place [INAUDIBLE] takes place overseas [INAUDIBLE] oral histories and published memoirs of soldiers who served in [INAUDIBLE] and soldiers who served in India [INAUDIBLE].
So the West African question arises, What about these two divisions of West Africans [INAUDIBLE] Southeast Asia? The question-- and I was originally going to ask you [INAUDIBLE] you as well is that I find these local perspectives really intriguing. And I think they kind of take us away from our general [INAUDIBLE].
And so what I've encountered in some other studies is there's a new field of World War II archaeology that's usually in the Pacific looking at material remains of Japanese occupation of these islands. So I'm asking a question that I probably know the answer to already, which is, has anyone done-- are there archaeologists working in Freetown and in [INAUDIBLE] Lagos in this period? And if not, how can we get them to do it?
[LAUGHTER]
JUDITH BYFIELD: Funding. [LAUGHS]
FOUAD MAKKI: [INAUDIBLE]
JUDITH BYFIELD: [LAUGHS]
AUDIENCE: I can make one comment that a lot of the infrastructure that was built is still being used today. So the east-west line of communication that was established by the aviation route [INAUDIBLE] hard to engage with it again is still there. There is an airport at Al Fashir at the west end of Darfur. And that airport was put there in 1941. There's an airport in the [INAUDIBLE] and--
JUDITH BYFIELD: Right.
AUDIENCE: You'll need to excavate that [INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: I just wanted to contextualize my question a little bit. I found in the French Secret Service reports about unrest of [INAUDIBLE] and they were greatly worried about American influence that apparently many [INAUDIBLE] had witnessed. African-Americans-- African-American soldiers had witnessed [INAUDIBLE].
And since they couldn't-- mostly they couldn't communicate directly, I think both saw in each other what they wanted to see. The [INAUDIBLE] thought that the African Americans had totally equal rights. Equal pay, equal food, and they wanted to be like them. And the African Americans often thought, well, the French army's so great because it doesn't [INAUDIBLE]--
[LAUGHTER]
But in 1944-'45, many curious [INAUDIBLE] tell the French commanders in West Africa, well, you are no good anyway because the Germans already beat you, and now the Americans liberated you. And the Americans are going-- the next thing, the Americans are going to come here to West Africa and they're going to kick you out. [INAUDIBLE] the end of colonialism. And the French were very, very worried, this incredible hostility against Americans in the official French documents.
JUDITH BYFIELD: Oh my goodness.
AUDIENCE: I wanted to ask a question. It follows up on that. It's about the free French government in the Congo, because that's where the-- that was the capital of de Gaulle's France. And I think in Phyllis Martin's book, she mentions something about Americans being in Brazzaville.
Or you know, there was-- she had a whole discussion about these women that hung out in bars that were very, very dressed up. They weren't necessarily prostitutes, but they were very modern, et cetera. And then there's a mention of American jazz and American troops.
And I realized that there's a whole issue about Brazzaville. We haven't talked about that at all in either of the two conferences. And I'd like to probe that a bit because I just wonder-- it's such an important-- and it's always overlooked. I mean, the assumption was-- I don't know where people think the free French government was based, but it didn't-- you know, I think it's something that I don't know who else works on it besides--
AUDIENCE: Actually, you look at [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Oh, OK.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Oh, OK. That's good. Good. Yeah. Yeah.
JUDITH BYFIELD: OK. I was just going to say that, Tim, in terms-- you know, there really hasn't been much done on those soldiers who went to-- the Nigerian soldiers who were in Burma and then what happened to them when they came back. And I would need to do more work on that.
And you know, so these things-- that whole story gets mentioned. So if you look at Olusanya's book on Africa, Nigeria in World War II, it's mentioned. It's mentioned that there are American soldiers in Lagos, but there's very little detail about that. And I'm just not aware of anything done in-- you know, since even that book.
There have been a few articles on Nigerian World War II, and most of them tend to be economic history. But this is a thing, whereas a lot of social history that could be written about this period just hasn't been done. At one point, I literally got funding for the history department at University of Ibadan to do an oral history project around-- which involved interviewing both the politicians as well as veterans from the Second World War.
AUDIENCE: To follow up with that, I had a similar idea that I wanted to see who these African Americans were [INAUDIBLE] East Africans. And so I went to the National Archives and said, well, [INAUDIBLE]?
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE] can't do anything about [INAUDIBLE].
JUDITH BYFIELD: Yeah. And I think this is one of those things too where we may have to try to identify American military historians or, you know, historians of African-American soldiers who have an interest in those who were in West Africa. Because I think of this wonderful scene in the [INAUDIBLE] film, [INAUDIBLE] where it's so clear that they are just totally impressed by these African-American soldiers they meet in Dakar.
And I have seen nothing from the Nigerian materials that talk about the American soldiers, so I don't even quite know what was the degree of their interaction with Nigerians, where they were located, and all that. And I have to admit, it wasn't until last year I even knew that, you know, this training was taking place in Abeokuta. [LAUGHS]
ALLEN HOWARD: Yeah, I actually have quite a lot of information on this, but I haven't really analyzed it yet. But there are Sierra Leoneans who are sent to Burma. And they actually pause in Nigeria where they have-- there's some further training and preparation there, so it's a very interesting circuit.
Now, as far as I've seen in the documents so far-- and it's not-- I haven't really exhaustively looked at them or even collected them for that matter. But I don't see any evidence of contact between these Sierra Leoneans and African Americans in South-- in Southeast Asia.
What you do find that's very interesting is the connection among Muslims. A very large share of these troops are taken from interior Sierra Leone-- that's where they were recruited-- and they're Muslims.
And so they send along with them an imam who is this old, doddering guy. He's about 75, 80 years old. He can't-- when he gets to India where they stop first, he really has a health problem. So what they do is they recruit a local imam, and this guy goes with them to Burma. And then they start interacting with other Muslims who are in India somehow. And I don't have this all figured out, but it's actually--
AUDIENCE: Is there a Sufi connection there? [INAUDIBLE]?
ALLEN HOWARD: I don't know. Certainly, there's [INAUDIBLE] in Sierra Leone at this time from the '30s, anyway, but I don't know if that's part of it. But there's one other thing. They engage in an uprising. And what I really want to do, but haven't had time to do this, is to study the history of these Sierra Leonean soldiers, bracketing it with an uprising that occurred in one of these army-- I mean, these gun emplacements overlooking Freetown that's on that map that I passed around.
That occurs in 1939 and is instigated by the West African Youth League. And they come down on these guys. They give them 20 years in jail with hard labor, and that sort of thing, for just doing nothing except refusing to take an order about some minor, minor thing.
And then there doesn't seem to be any trouble through the whole war. And then in 1945, these ones who go to Burma again engage in an uprising because they're being delayed in going home. That's the basic thing. They're seeing all these white troops being repatriated. They're sitting in these terrible camps with bad food. A lot of them are dying from bad health conditions, and so on.
And they protest this. And again, they get a lot of court martials, and so on, but I haven't really studied that. So in between, there's a lot of information about their-- but they're basically in Sierra Leone, being prepared for the war, and they don't go until fairly late when they're needed.
So there's a lot of interesting history here. But I think this idea of a pan-Islamicism is something that-- they discover there are Muslims in this other part of the world that they hadn't, I think, been aware of now. And they actually had this imam who was an Indian, right? But--
[AUDIO OUT]
[BEEP]
AUDIENCE: The danger of these troops being near towns that were Indian National Congress towns, and that they were very afraid that-- in fact, they admitted that there was all this contact with Indian nationalists. And then they refer to a mutiny in which these Nigerian troops had killed their commanding officer. And it was very interesting because the district officer blamed the commanding officer for not having control over his troops. He said this.
And I've wondered how many times this had happened. But I have-- it's like a long report. [INAUDIBLE] use that in classes in which they say something [INAUDIBLE] it's very suggestive because you wonder, what were the contacts like with the Indian troops? And then someone told me-- a Nigerian scholar told me that a few years ago, a Nigerian returned from India who had been there in World War II.
JUDITH BYFIELD: Oh, wow.
AUDIENCE: He came back to Lagos and was in the newspaper. [LAUGHS] So I don't know how many stayed. That is a totally unexplored area, and I don't know Indian scholars who might work [INAUDIBLE]. We just haven't had any connections to see that.
JUDITH BYFIELD: You know, one of the interesting things too-- and I was showing Carolyn this document-- but they-- in preparation for this division that was going to Burma, the officers were going to be all British. And so they prepared a manual for them. You know, now you're coming to Africa, and they're telling them how to interact with Africans.
And they're saying, you've got to be careful about what you say because they're hypersensitive. [LAUGHS] And just going through this whole list of things of how to talk to people, how to treat people, and you know, just basically telling them to watch yourselves.
But once you're careful with them, they will be-- the discussion came up yesterday about these martial racist things. And that is a part of the discussion too. You know, they will fight to the death.
And then they have this quote in there from a Japanese-- the diary of a Japanese soldier who is basically saying, these African soldiers, they're just formidable because they will just take you on. And so this is how they're talking about these African soldiers here, as long as you don't upset them.
[LAUGHTER]
FOUAD MAKKI: I have a-- I have a quick question about radio, since you both mentioned radio. Yes. And I'm curious to what extent there's any information or data available about the spread of radio and what kind of--
ALLEN HOWARD: There's a lot of information about that.
FOUAD MAKKI: More so than the spread of the-- say, the newspapers and print?
ALLEN HOWARD: Well, I should say there's a lot of information. There's a lot of archival information that has not been put together. No one's ever written this up. But it only starts in the war. And like, Judy has statistics on the number of radio sets, and so on. This you can obtain. But what's interesting is the content of the radio broadcasts, which are really highly propagandistic. They use it as a media to--
AUDIENCE: Online to the BBC. If you just look on the BBC site, [? you can ?] hear the broadcasts, the World War II part of Africa.
JUDITH BYFIELD: Because before the radio diffusion service opens in Abeokuta on June 1, 1943, before that, radio is only available in Lagos. So it's really as a result of the war that they start taking it to other parts of the country. And one of the things that they are very concerned about is addressing false rumors, these rumors that suggest that Europe is losing the war.
And one of the things they talk about too-- I don't think I mentioned it in the paper-- or maybe I do-- but just how important the alake is to this whole effort to address these false rumors. And they said that, initially the town had 150 radios. By 1946, so right after the war, there were 589 radio sets, and they had a waiting list of 100 subscribers.
And then they're getting the 10 hours of programming from BBC. And then there was one hour, 6:00 to 7:00 PM, Monday through Friday, of local programming. [LAUGHS] But they were also doing the news in Yoruba as well. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I was just going to add in there that there's another element of radio as well, which is the mobile radio [INAUDIBLE], which I hear a lot of for exactly the reasons of spreading propaganda and [INAUDIBLE]. But the mobile radio vans, because they go in disturbed areas, can also get stung. They can become major targets if there is upheaval or dissidence or anything like that.
And so one of the things I've been fascinated with-- and you just keep seeing these things in the archives-- is even as late as the 1950s, one of the first things people will target when they're engaged in political protests are the mobile radio vans. At the same time, one of the things that the British are most interested in doing is sending the mobile radio vans into areas that are disturbed. And so you get fights within the administration of, exactly how much are you willing to risk your vans with [INAUDIBLE]? Are you willing to shoot to protect your vans?
JUDITH BYFIELD: Now, the war is also an important time for the dissemination of information through films, because they're sending out film trucks and film crews to show a lot of propaganda films. Now, they don't go into-- and I really haven't followed this up exactly, you know, what some of these films were. But they do make a comment that the films aren't really successful, and they're really disappointed [LAUGHS] about the response.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] Yeah.
AUDIENCE: But there was a journal of colonial film making or something, because there's a woman that writes about propaganda film, Rosalyn Smith.
JUDITH BYFIELD: Right. Yeah.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] and there was this journal, and they have all these articles about-- they showed the film units, what they looked like, and they talked about the kind of films that were better for Africans versus other groups. [LAUGHS]
FOUAD MAKKI: I mean, I asked this question because this is a slight off the subject, but related to the conversation here. I've done work on 1940s Eritrea, and I haven't been able to find any information on the radio. But unlike the cases here, there you had the-- by 1943, the British allowed the publication of vernacular newspapers. And they became extremely important for the development of political ideas, providing a space for all kinds of conversations and debates to take place.
But the official newspaper became important, the English language weekly, which was then translated into the local newspapers because there was a lot of conversation-- I mean, articles about what was happening in places like India. And especially after the war with the partitioning of-- and that had an enormous influence in the politics of Eritrea itself where you had half the population was nominally Muslim, the other half Orthodox Christian. And what was happening was the Muslim League and the congress and the politics of partition in the subcontinent had an enormous influence in political ideas and organizations within Eritrea, primarily through the newspaper rather than the radio.
ALLEN HOWARD: Yeah, this is so interesting. I mean, there are all these circuits of circulation, right? Of newspapers, of people, radio content, and so on, but they're really different from each place.
I mean, just think of that-- you know, your point, Rafael, about the African-American influences being so strong in Dakar, you know? That's something you wouldn't expect, but that's a particular kind of circuit that they're part of that's different from the Freetown one, somewhat different from-- well, Egyptian and other ones, and so on. So this is all part of a very large network, but it takes particular form in each place with-- so this could really be sorted out in some extremely interesting ways.
JUDITH BYFIELD: There's a really interesting book that's going to come out from Brill Press. And I'm not exactly sure on the publication date, but I reviewed it for them. And there was a great article in there about radio in Morocco because there was an effort-- I think people were getting radio from Free France. They were the Free France station that was at least available. But then the Vichy government was also trying to control what they were getting on radio as well too.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
JUDITH BYFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, because that's just fascinating work.
AUDIENCE: Just wanted to add [INAUDIBLE] the circulation of information [INAUDIBLE]. Well, first of all, [INAUDIBLE] one interesting point is that in the Vichy [INAUDIBLE] colonies, they had a special hospital [INAUDIBLE]. And when I read it, I thought poor people sleeping there, being there in hospital, and then having to hear [INAUDIBLE].
[LAUGHTER]
Probably didn't make them much healthier, but it's a kind of a captive audience.
[LAUGHTER]
[INAUDIBLE] But what's interesting is that many of these-- I think [INAUDIBLE] that's also in my case, that many of these propaganda organizations that were actually created like youth movements in [INAUDIBLE] Vichy colonies, were actually created in order to [INAUDIBLE] propaganda, Vichy propaganda, later after the war became tools of anti-colonial movements.
It's kind of the same-- the same organization, the same radio was used, films were used. It's kind of like-- you know, you take the machine that was built and use it for exactly the opposite [INAUDIBLE].
FOUAD MAKKI: OK. I think that's-- unless somebody else has a question, we'll take a lunch break and [INAUDIBLE]. But we [INAUDIBLE] at 2:00, [INAUDIBLE]?
JUDITH BYFIELD: No--
FOUAD MAKKI: At 1:00.
ALLEN HOWARD: 1:00 or 1:30? 1:00?
JUDITH BYFIELD: 1:00, yeah.
ALLEN HOWARD: OK. That's interesting.
[APPLAUSE]
This conference brought together an international group of historians to re-examine Africa's role in World War II and the war's impact on African communities.
Participating scholars addressed a lacuna in African history and World War II studies, of which both literatures largely construct Africa as incidental to the war and the war as tangential to Africa's history.
Participants highlighted Africa's vast contribution in terms of labor and resources and drew on examples from North and sub-Saharan Africa demonstrating the weakness of the conventional narrative that primarily concentrates on North Africa. Drawing on insights from several fields including spatial analysis, cultural studies, gender analysis, and environmental history, the papers at this conference illuminated the distinctive social, economic and political changes the war generated on the continent, providing a much richer and textured cultural and social history of the war.
