Conducts research and collects data on the global history of labour, workers, and labour relations

Carriers of Culture

6 August 1877
Henry Morton Stanley and Ndugu M’Hali or Kalulu (1872)
Source: 
Smithsonian Institution (Wikimedia)

On the 996th day of his expedition tracing the course of the Congo river, the British explorer Henry Morton Stanley approached the Portuguese outpost Boma. At this point only 114 of his initial 356 carriers had survived the expedition. Europeans in precolonial Africa always traveled with local caravan porters or carriers, as the use of pack animals was precluded by the tse tse fly. Most African long-distance carriers were migrant or itinerant wage labourers. Traveling on foot in caravans, they linked the communitiers of the interior with the ocean coast. All trade and communications rested on their shoulders.

In Carriers of Culture. Labor on the Road in 19th century Africa (2006) Stephen J. Rockel vividly pictures this large-scale African migrant labour system and culture.