Work 4

White Man’s work eat people.

Quote: John C. Caldwell (1990): The Social Repercussions of Colonial Rule: Demographic Ascpects. In: Albert Adu Boahen (Hrsg): General History of Africa. VII. Africa under Colonial Domination 1880-1935. London: Heinemann, p. 475. The year (1900) is an approximation. Picture: Wikimedia

Mossi proverb from what was then Upper Volta and is today Burkina Faso.

Enslaved Africans were forced to work on colonisers’ plantations and infrastructure projects (Linebaugh and Rediker, 2008: 16, German edition). For example, in the early 20th century, before WW1, one fifth of the 'workforce' in the German colony of Cameroon (150 to 200 people of every 1000, see Caldwell, 1990) died of the hardships and diseases of plantation and railway construction work. This high mortality rate was also at the root of the Mossi proverb in today's Burkina Faso.

*John C. Caldwell (1990): The social repercussions of colonial rule: demographic ascpects. In: Albert Adu Boahen (Hrsg): General History of Africa. VII. Africa under Colonial Domination 1880-1935. London: Heinemann, S. 458-486. *Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker (2000): The Many-headed Hydra. New York: Verso.

1900