Colonial Economies (1750 to 1950)
Colonial state power: taxes, land seizure, forced labor, railroads & ports & roads
Global market: rubber & cotton & sugar & coffee & cocoa & minerals
Old subsistence, artisan work eroded by cash needs, cheap imports
Coercion
Unpaid labor for public works, statute labor in French Africa
Congo Free State: rubber quotas
Terror, mass death
Public outrage in Europe
Belgium takes Congo in 1908
Cash-Crop Agriculture
Burma: rice boom, small farmers gain land + imports
Ghana & Gold Coast: cocoa expansion
labor shortage + price dependence
Mekong Delta: environmental damage from colonial farming systems
Plantations, mines, cities expand
long-distance migration surges
Land loss + reserves
Bantustans push Africans into wage work
SA mines segregated
Colonial cities segregated, overcrowded, opportunity hubs
Women farm + trade precolonial, cash crops shift profits to men
Male migration, women carry subsistence + household burdens, gain market autonomy
Backlash, tighter controls on women’s mobility & sexuality