This paper examines the African experience with forced labor in colonial Mozambique, where the administration developed a labor regime that resembled a 'modern slavery.' Both contemporary observers and subsequent scholarly research have used the modifying 'modern' to describe types of forced labor and to draw distinctions from older forms of slavery. This work aims to historicize notions of free labor in the midst of a broader atmosphere of coercion and to make sense of the silence of certain actors on the question of slavery. The paper explores the ways in which African in Mozambique considered colonial labor practices, with an emphasis on questions of dignity, honor and degradation. © 2017 Centro de Estudos Internacionais do Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL).

African experience Colonialism historiography Slavery Mozambique Forced labor

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