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A Cultural History of Slavery and Human Trafficking in the Age of Global Conflict

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Slavery and human trafficking have plagued history, with the worst witnessed during the Age of Global Conflict. Henrice Altink explores the enduring issues of exploitation and the emergence of new forms of slavery.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 11, 2023

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This video video outlines the author's motivations and objectives for editing a volume that explores unfree labor practices from 1900 to 1945. Initially approached to edit a different volume, the author chose this one due to a growing interest in the resurgence of slavery and exploitative labor during this period, informed by their experience teaching a related course.

Key aims of the book include challenging the traditional understanding of slavery, illustrating that many exploitative labor practices from the past persisted and transformed, rather than ended with formal abolition. The author highlights three critical factors contributing to the upsurge in unfree labor: the global conflict of World War II, the era's globalization and commercialization, and European colonization, which often relied on unpaid labor for resource extraction and infrastructure development.

The volume features contributions from a diverse range of scholars, discussing themes such as the legal definitions of slavery, economic impacts, and anti-slavery movements, while also emphasizing local examples and the global scope of the issue. The author encourages readers to conceptualize labor as a continuum, recognizing the complexity between fully free labor and its unfree counterparts. Overall, the book aims to deepen understanding of the persistence of slavery-like practices and the contradictions inherent in historical attempts to eradicate such exploitation.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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So maybe it's, it's good to start off by saying how I came

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to edit the book,

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because I was approached by the editor of the series

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as a whole to edit one of the volumes.

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And I think he probably thought that it would've gone for

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this, the volume just

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before this one, the one

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that covers Atlantic slavery in the 19th century,

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because I'd written a book about Jamaican slavery,

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but I actually opted to do this one,

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which covers the period 1900 to 1945.

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Because I've been teaching a course, I designed

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and taught a course about unfree labor across time

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and place, and designing and teaching that course.

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I realized that this period was one

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where there was an upsurge in slavery

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and other exploitative labor practices,

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and I thought that if I edit this volume, I'll,

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I'll find out more about what were the factors that drove

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that upsurge in these different types of unfree labor.

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So that's what, what made me up for this particular volume.

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And then more specific about what the aims

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and the objectives of the volume are.

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First of all, what I hope

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that readers will get from this particular book is that,

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the, so-called that mantle slavery model held, a lot

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of powers still in slavery model.

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I mean, the model that was in place in the Americas up

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to about 1888 where slaves were property,

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they were markedly different from their

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owners in terms of race.

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Uh, they had very little, freedom of movement,

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and also they passed the status on to the offspring.

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And, and what the book tries to show is

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that contemporaries use that as a yardstick

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to decide whether a particular exploitative labor practice

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was slavery or not.

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And at the same time was also used by, you know, those

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who wanted legislation to end slavery

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to denote certain labor practices as being slavery,

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because it was a very strong rhetorical tool

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to label label it that way.

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So that's, that's one aim.

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And then the other aim is to, demonstrate

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and explain that sheer upsurge in unfree labor

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in this particular period.

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And the book points to three major factors.

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One of them is the actual global conflict,

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particularly the second World War, when there was an upsurge

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of unfree labor, particularly in Nazi Germany,

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but also in the Japanese empire.

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Second factor is very much, the kind of globalization

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and commercialization of this period.

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So what you see in the period is a demand

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for particular products

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and in order to, you know, grow, extract those products.

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Um, resource was used to unfree labor.

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So for example, pearls were in great demand at the time,

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and these were particularly, found in, in the Gulf area.

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And the gulf area started

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to use enslave labor from Eastern Africa to do that.

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So particularly young boys that we used as,

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as pearl divers,

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Linked to that in the period there is, a lot

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of migration when people go

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to work on these new commercial enterprises.

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So, for example, you see,

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Japanese contract labors working on,

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on plantation sugar plantations in Hawaii,

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signing those contracts may be freely,

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but getting to these plantations where they then face a lot

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of conditions that we would now call unfree.

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And then obviously another really major factor in this

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period is European colonization.

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So the period that the book covers follows on from the

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scramble for Africa.

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And, you know, you could say it's, it's the, it's the heyday

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of imperialism and, you know, the extraction

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of natural resources, the building

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of major infrastructure in economies that often required,

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you know, it required lots of labor,

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but often labor for which wasn't paid,

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which wasn't freely entered into.

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So those are our, you know, the key factors

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that the book highlights.

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And then you also asked about, you know,

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the contributors to the volume.

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So there's eight chapters.

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Some of the chapters are co-authored,

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but the authors are, we're all selected on the basis

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of their expertise.

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Uh, so we have, for example, Jean, Elaine,

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who's a professor of law at Monash University, who's,

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you know, one of the leading experts on

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international law around slavery.

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But we also have, you know,

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early career researchers contributing chapters

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because of their expertise.

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Like, for example, Wilson Bell,

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who's an associate professor at a Canadian university

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who is an expert on the Stalin, Eric Gula Archipelago.

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And he, you know,

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wrote a chapter about slave economies in the period.

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So a real mix of early career established scholars, mix

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of historians, and a mix of social scientists.

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But the book does not have, it doesn't start, like, this is

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how we understand slavery in the book.

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What it does do though, is it really tries to unpack

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how contemporaries define and understood slavery.

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And particularly takes a lot

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of interest in legal definitions

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because it was at this moment in time

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that the first global efforts were done

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to eradicate slavery.

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So in 1926 League of Nations, they,

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come up with an a slavery convention,

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and then four years later, the ILO comes up

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with a forced labor convention,

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and several chapters in the book really try to unpack,

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the definitions in those conventions

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and how they came to be framed in that particular way.

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And, so that is, is one thing

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that the book really does is,

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is unpacking the local understandings at that moment in time

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of these definitions

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and the contestations around that the book tries to show

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as well, that, you know,

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and alongside a kind of an upsurge in,

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Unfree labor, more

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and more people being exploited,

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there was also a greater diversification of different types

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of slavery and other types of unfree labor.

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And what it tries to highlight is that some of these,

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types of unfree labor had been around for,

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for sometimes centuries,

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but there were modified, they were changed.

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So to give you maybe two examples of that, in, you know,

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prison labor had often been hired out, usually

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for like neighboring farms.

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But what you see in 1900 to about, you know, 1945, is

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that it becomes far more kind of commercial on,

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on a much bigger scale, particularly in the southern states

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of the us but also, especially during,

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the Nazi Germany when inmates of camps were hired out

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to big firms like for example, Siemens

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or iga Faren, that was a new one.

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And then another, a kind of, you know, longstanding practice

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that became quite, you know, modified in this period

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was a practice called Pawning.

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Um, if somebody had taken out a debt

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and, it was not uncommon in certain places

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for then a person, usually a family member to be used

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as a pawn until the debt was paid off.

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And during that period, they more

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or less lost their freedom they had to work.

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And what you, you know, this was very common,

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especially in West Africa, in the 17th, 18 19th century.

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But then pawning also becomes more common elsewhere.

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So for example, in Japan,

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parents rural in rural areas were really struggling

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to make ends meet, would sometimes

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poem young daughters to middlemen.

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And these middlemen then would often, pass them on

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to, brothels.

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So these girls entered what was then quite,

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an extensive global, trade in, in, you know,

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in sex, eventually.

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And, and one of the chapters in the book about gender

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by Jessica finally really explores that trade, what she

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and what contemporaries also called the,

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the white slave trade.

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Particularly, I think to some extent you,

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it may be a useful distinction.

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Um, I think it is actually much more that we have

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to think about it as a massive pleura of all sorts

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of different types of unfree labor.

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Uh, some of it which became copied from one part

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of the world to another part of the world.

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But within particular local context,

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longstanding unfree labor practices became modified

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because of different factors being at place.

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Like I said, for example, the commercialization, the,

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migration of people in and out.

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All of that changed in some places longstanding practices

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like all the other volumes.

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In this series, the book covers,

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a eight chapters, eight themes.

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So there's definitions, there's the law of slavery,

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there is the economy of slavery,

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The politics of slavery, social organization, gender, age

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and family, and then finally anti-slavery activities.

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And, all

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of these chapters draw evidence from across the world.

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But because of their areas of expertise,

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authors often bring in examples from their own area.

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So for example,

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the chapter about the social organization

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of slavery is written by co-author

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by three African historians.

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And they actively draw upon, case studies from Africa,

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particularly French Mauritania, which you know,

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is a case study you won't find in the other chapters

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because of the expertise that the authors bring in.

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Um, most

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of the chapters rely heavily on secondary literature, so

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what other people have already written about the topic,

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but they often do bring in primary sources

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to exemplify points made to a, you know,

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provide a more human interest story as well.

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It's important to point out though, that when,

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when we talk about primary sources about this particular

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topic, at that moment in time,

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we don't have many firsthand accounts by slaves

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or by other unfree laborers

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because many of them were illiterate.

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But also, you know, some of the unfree labor practices,

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for example, dose in Nazi Germany

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or the Japanese Empire, evidence for that

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until recently was very hard to get

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because a lot of materials had been destroyed.

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Or like, for example, companies that hired prison labor

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closed, had closed their archives

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and they've only opened up recently.

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So, so the contributor to the volume do not, you know,

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provide much of firsthand accounts of what it was like

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to be, an enslaved other, another form

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of unfree labor in this period.

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Also, you know, all of the chapters have images.

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Each has about five images,

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and these images range from photographs of unfree laborists.

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So for example, indentured servants in the Caribbean to,

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a lot of anti, abolitionism,

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like abolitionism propaganda,

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and then also some images of people who, you know,

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enabled condone, systems of slavery and unfree labor.

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So for example, there's an image of King Leopold II

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of Belgium who, in his, you know, colony

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of the Congo allowed for a lot of unfree labor practices,

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particularly on rebel plantations.

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And then on top of these eight chapters

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that draw upon primary

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and secondary literature, I also provide an introduction

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to the, to the volume where I set out

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what the main objectives are, et cetera,

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but also focus on some areas where

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I think scholars working on this topic could go next.

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And, you know, one of these for example is, is work

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around memory and commemoration of these practices.

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There's a lot of work around memory commemoration

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of Atlantic slavery.

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So there's museums devoted to it.

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Like, in Liverpool we have the slavery museum,

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but when it comes to the unfree labor practices in this

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period, there's very little there

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and it tends to be largely confined to,

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for example, Europe.

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Um, so you know, sites of former,

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Nazi camps, for example.

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But there isn't much, for example, about the unfree labor

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that was used to build major infrastructure works in Africa.

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And I think, you know, that could be an area

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where historians could go next.

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So they were given, instructions

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to cover the whole globe,

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but they were encouraged

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to really bring in also the evidence from their own

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areas of expertise.

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And that's what we see. So for example, the chapter around,

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abolitionism by Katrina Kfa,

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she is an expert on the abolition

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of slavery in northern Nigeria.

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So she uses that.

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Um, well, part of the chapter is a case study of

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how slavery in Northern Nigeria became abolished.

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I think, you know, the main message

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that I hope they take away is that, you know,

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slavery did not come to an end when Brazil,

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the last country in America

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to abolish slavery ended the practice.

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It continued

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and actually, what a lot

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of people will probably find quite, you know,

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not quite what they expected is there was actually an

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upsurge in slavery

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and other types of unfree labor in this period.

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And I really, you know, want them to understand

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the factors why that was the case.

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And I think the other, the other thing

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that I hope they will take away is the kind of,

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contradiction,

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that is happening in this particular period.

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Because on the one hand you have this upsurge in on free

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labor, and on the other hand you have the two well,

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multiple attempts to eradicate slavery on a global scale,

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like particularly the 1926 League

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of Nation Slavery Convention

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and the 1930 ILO four Labor Convention.

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And, and what it tries to show and,

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and do is explain how these two things could go exist.

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And, and one of the answers to that is, is largely

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around colonialism.

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Um, the need, you know, the, the, the, the, the, you know,

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the desire to extract natural resources from colonies and,

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and the use of, you know, unfree labor to do that.

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And then I think, you know, final point that I hope,

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readers will take away or maybe not take away,

14:22.705 --> 14:25.825
but at least think about is what do we mean by free labor?

14:26.645 --> 14:31.585
Uh, the free labor is often posited against unfree labor,

14:31.725 --> 14:34.225
but what I think the book really highlights is

14:34.225 --> 14:36.985
that it's much more of a continuum with, on the one hand,

14:37.045 --> 14:38.305
you know, real free labor

14:38.315 --> 14:40.705
where somebody freely signs a contract,

14:40.805 --> 14:42.225
has negotiated their working

14:42.225 --> 14:43.785
conditions, that pay, et cetera.

14:44.045 --> 14:46.745
And on the other hand, you know, unfree labor practices

14:46.745 --> 14:48.105
with the most extreme slavery

14:48.115 --> 14:50.425
where somebody is somebody else's property.

14:50.885 --> 14:54.185
But the book highlights a lot of different practices along

14:54.185 --> 14:58.265
that continuum, but many of them really to that far end of,

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of unfree rather than free.

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