2025/11/28 by Mona Rudolph · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #German Colonialism and Identity Studies #African history and culture studies #Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2592786
This article examines labour recruitment and work regimes in two distinct yet structurally comparable sectors of the German colonial economy: coffee cultivation in German East Africa and diamond mining in German South West Africa. Although separated by geography and differing in their economic logic, both sectors faced a central challenge: the persistent difficulty of securing and retaining indigenous labour. Drawing on company reports and administrative correspondence, the article explores how recruitment was organised, who the key actors were, and under what conditions, promises, and incentives workers were engaged. It also considers the lived experiences of those recruited and the extent to which they were able to exert agency within restrictive colonial frameworks. By comparing coffee and diamonds as colonial commodities, the article not only reveals patterns of labour exploitation and adaptation but also revisits the methodological value of comparison in colonial historiography. It argues that economic-historical approaches, especially those attentive to global trade routes and commodity flows, offer important insights into the structures and contradictions of colonial rule, insights that remain relevant well beyond the formal end of the German colonial empire.