ABSTRACT

In this article, we explore employment policies and practices in Colonial Nigeria, during a period of planned development, from the late 19th to early 20^th century. We consider the relationship between colonial government, commerce and development of a labour force against the working experiences and growing aspirations of many colonised locals. Our study draws on Michel Foucault's work on governmentality. We draw on an archive that comprises British government and colonial administrative reports, complimented by a range of official and unofficial documents of the period. There was a coexistence of colonial governmentality through waged labour (a non-traditional practice in precolonial Nigeria), sovereign power through localised rule by traditional leaders and slave labour) and forced labour (introduced by the British). In the Lagos area in particular there was concentration of commercial, administrative and waged employment, with Lagos also the main hub for the organisation of labour and the seeds of resistance to unfair working conditions and colonization among workers dissatisfied in particular with wage and taxation levels. We also use the Foucaudian approach of the deep archive, which captures the interplay between governmental policy and its outcomes, and accounts of the lived experience, as our method of evaluating our research archive.

摘要

在这篇文章中，我们期间规划发展的探索殖民地尼日利亚，就业政策和做法，从19世纪末到20月初^日 世纪。我们考虑到殖民政府，商业和劳动力发展之间的关系，反对许多殖民地当地人的工作经验和日益增长的愿望。我们的研究借鉴了米歇尔·福柯关于政府性的工作。我们利用包含英国政府和殖民行政报告的档案，并辅以该时期的一系列官方和非官方文件。通过有偿劳动（殖民地时期以前的尼日利亚的非传统做法），通过传统领导人和奴隶劳动进行的局部统治的主权统治和强迫劳动（英国引进），殖民政府共存。特别是在拉各斯地区，商业，行政和有偿就业集中，拉各斯也是劳工组织的主要枢纽，也是抵制不公平工作条件和工人殖民的种子，尤其是对工资和税收水平不满意的工人。我们还使用深层档案库的Foucaudian方法（该方法捕获了政府政策及其成果之间的相互作用以及对所经历的描述）作为我们评估研究档案库的方法。