Abstract
The chapter looks at migrations of Africans during the colonial era in Africa. Covering the period c.1870 to the 1960s, the chapter draws on examples from various colonized African states and societies. It shows that the attritions of colonial rule (such as wars of conquest and African resistance; and the political economy of colonial rule, including conscription, forced labor, taxation, and brutalization of Africans) triggered migrations in the early colonial period. Such forces of migrations continued throughout the colonial epoch, but during the late colonial era, the unintended benefits of colonial rule, such as education, expanding colonial economy, urbanization, and social change also became inexorable forces behind African migrations. The chapter sidesteps conventional designations of migration by theorizing that all movements of Africans that occurred due to the exigencies of the colonial situation (for example, journalists and soldiers) were forms of migration, even if they were ephemeral and infinitesimal.
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Akurang-Parry, K.O., Indome, I. (2018). Colonialism and African Migrations. In: Shanguhyia, M., Falola, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59426-6_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59426-6_15
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