Coerced Labour

The subject of this article is the monastic complex at Mafra, Portugal, commissioned by Dom João V (King John V, 1689-1750). An overview of the historical circumstances of the building project is followed by José Saramago's fictive version in his novel. Saramago describes the cause of the ruination of the Portuguese nation as the king's egotistical desire for the largest monastic complex in Christendom. Saramago's critique of the coerced labour required to construct the extensive edifice is discussed in terms of Marxist labour theory.

Sir Raymond William Firth tem hoje 97 anos e mora em Londres. Nasceu em 1901 na Nova Zelândia. Por via materna, Firth é neto de imigrantes irlandeses. Seu pai chegou a Auckland proveniente de Inglaterra quando ainda era criança, foi marceneiro, artesão e pastor metodista. Firth é, sem dúvida, o antropólogo mais velho de renome mundial atualmente com vida, um dos principais protagonistas da chamada "Escola Britânica" de antropologia e, também, um dos seus primeiros produtos: foi o primeiro a receber o título de doutor em antropologia em uma universidade do Reino Unido, em 1926, com uma tese sobre a "economia primitiva" dos Maoris, um dos primeiros alunos de Bronislaw Malinowski e o seu mais fiel discípulo, sendo, desde a morte do mestre, chefe do departamento de antropologia da London School of Economics. A trajetória de Firth acompanha o processo de institucionalização da antropologia como disciplina universitária, não só na metrópole mas também em algumas das possessões britânicas na Oceania e na África. Em 1930, Firth se tornou o segundo professor de antropologia da Universidade de Sidney, sucedendo A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, outro dos pais fundadores da Escola Britânica. No período de entre-guerras, ensinou em Auckland e em Cidade do Cabo. Antes de virar um acadêmico de renome internacional, Firth já tinha sido diretor do Australian National Research Council e editor da revista "Oceania"-que, como outras revistas que nasceram a partir da definição de uma área geográficocultural como objeto, foi um importante lugar de encontro entre jovens professores metropolitanos no começo da carreira e jovens estudantes das colônias a caminho da metrópole. Nesse sentido, a presença de Firth antecipou em poucos anos a de vários outros jovens nascidos nos domínios imperiais de ultramar e que (como o também neozelandês Reo Fortune, ou os sul-africanos Meyer Fortes e Isaac Schapera) integrariam o reduzido grupo dos antropólogos britânicos do entre-guerras. O fato de a coroa britânica ter outorgado a Raymond Firth o título de "Cavaleiro", em 1973, demonstra até que ponto, para muitos deles, a antropologia e a carreira acadêmica constituíram caminhos de ascensão social. Uma das marcas da antropologia desse período era a associação do nome de cada antropólogo ao de um grupo de nativos e ao título da monografia na qual esse grupo era definido como objeto. Malinowski e Radcliffe-Brown

This book explores how workers moved and were moved, why they moved, and how they were kept from moving. Combining global labour history with mobility studies, it investigates moving workers through the lens of coercion.

The contributions in this book are based on extensive archival research and span Europe and North America over the past 500 years. They provide fresh historical perspectives on the various regimes of coercion, mobility, and immobility as constituent parts of the political economy of labour.

Moving Workers shows that all struggles relating to the mobility of workers or its restriction have the potential to reveal complex configurations of hierarchies, dependencies, and diverging conceptions of work and labour relations that continuously make and remake our world.

This article argues that the ability to systematically analyze hundreds of thousands of life course events provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which an Australian convict archive was originally intended to be used, as well as a means of placing information supplied by subalterns within context. We also show how the digital reconstruction of the bureaucratic instruments of colonial labor management can be used to shed light on state actions. Using a combination of longitudinal and cross-sectional techniques, we place the experience of transported men and women within the colonial context of evolving labor markets, policing, and criminal justice systems, exploring questions of colonial class formation, gender, and labor mobility in the process. We end by pointing to how such datasets might be used in future undergraduate teaching and digitization initiatives.

This study investigates the historical role of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in the abolition of slavery and protection of associated human rights. Its objective is to critically analyse modern forms of slavery, and investigate the world’s considerable efforts for the abolition of slavery. In previous decades, slavery was clear, which led to complex and longstanding problems. But now in the modern era, it appears in various forms that are difficult to be noticed. In fact, understanding slavery is a complex and subjective exercise, open to interpretation and political manipulations. It originates from slavery’s original concept, that human beings are owned as property. The managerial reactions to international debates have been clear, in which descriptions of slavery are fractured, and therefore difficult for the public to process and act. Consequently, public workers, who are not taught their rights, are always enslaved.

Taxation was at the core of colonial exercises of governance, state-building
and state-society relations. This dissertation analyses taxation in colonial
Indonesia between 1870 and 1940. In an era of continuous expansion
and reform, colonial statesmen envisioned a full-fledged tax state of
equivalent and just forms of tax-payment in accordance with fair laws,
a transparent administration and benevolent governance. They saw taxation
as an important tool in the project of constructing a modern empire,
‘disciplining and improving’ its subjects and unifying and reforming the
state. However, despite intricate law-making processes, shrewd strategies
of data accumulation and a sophisticated bureaucratic machinery, the
colonial state in Indonesia had limited success in realising its ambitions. On
the ground, taxation was controlled by local elites and driven by processes
of negotiation, mediation and subversion of the state apparatus. Rather than
imposing a Western model of taxation on the colony, the resulting system
became an amalgam of Dutch and local interests, while the state itself became
increasingly mixed with the local structures and practices it was supposed
to change and replace. Instead of a force of extraction and reform, taxation
provided an arena for contesting the colonial state.
Based on extensive archival research and traversing the Indonesian archipelago
from Aceh to the Moluccas, this dissertation unveils the diverse administrative
realities of colonial Indonesia as created by colonial officials, intermediaries
and subjects. By focusing on taxation, it demonstrates how colonial
governance was experienced as hybrid and malleable, thereby contributing
to broader academic debates about colonial statecraft, fiscal policy and the
consequences of colonial rule.

In the 1780s, a series of legislative reforms were introduced in Iceland which aimed at enhancing the regulatory framework of labour.  The law strengthened the pre-existing dominant labour regime of compulsory service. Amongst other measures, such as revised and stricter forms of punishment for non-compliance, the new laws introduced a reformed passport system to enhance the control and surveillance of labour mobility. The laws were revised again and softened in the 1860s and it became somewhat easier to acquire a permit to make a living as a wage labourer.
Despite the rigidity of the compulsory service system, studies have shown how seasonal migrant labour of both male and female workers was essential to an economy based on labour-intensive fishing on open rowing boats in the winter and pastoral farming practices where the summer hay harvest required a greater number of workers than the rest of the year. Experiments with proto-industrial wool manufacturing and an expanding foreign trade in the eighteenth century led to greater labour diversification as well as growing concerns about vagrancy and masterless day labourers and their assumed negative effects on social and moral order. The legislative reforms in the 1780s were a part of a broader development and they represent the growing desire of the Danish authorities to rationally govern and control the labour market in Iceland without disrupting economically important traditions such as seasonal labour migration.
In this paper, we discuss the role of day-labour permits, passports and other state-issued documentation in facilitating the increased governance of labour coercion in eighteenth and nineteenth century Iceland. The ambiguity of travel documentation such as passports will be highlighted as they simultaneously offer freedom of movement to those who possess them while immobilizing those who do not, and are thus important weapons in the state arsenal for coercive labour management. Focusing on the use and non-use of passports by labourers, we argue that while the extensive archival records of issued passports reveal great insights into the mobility of the labour force they cannot be studied without taking note of the various tactics employed by some labourers in either evading or exploiting, and thus subverting, the passport and permit systems in order to avoid the restrictions of compulsory service regulations and laws on settlement. The paper will address spatial disparities in passport use and control, gender and age differentials in issued passports, and the apparently selective enforcement of the legal mechanisms of coercion to discuss the divergence of normative prescription (such as coercive legislation) and everyday practice with all of its contradictions in order to analyse the friction inherent in regimes of coercive labour relations.

This study investigates the historical role of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in the abolition of slavery and protection of associated human rights. Its objective is to critically analyse modern forms of slavery, and investigate the world’s considerable efforts for the abolition of slavery. In previous decades, slavery was clear, which led to complex and longstanding problems. But now in the modern era, it appears in various forms that are difficult to be noticed. In fact, understanding slavery is a complex and subjective exercise, open to interpretation and political manipulations. It originates from slavery’s original concept, that human beings are owned as property. The managerial reactions to international debates have been clear, in which descriptions of slavery are fractured, and therefore difficult for the public to process and act. Consequently, public workers, who are not taught their rights, are always enslaved.

This study investigates the historical role of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in the abolition of slavery and protection of associated human rights. Its objective is to critically analyse modern forms of slavery, and investigate the world’s considerable efforts for the abolition of slavery. In previous decades, slavery was clear, which led to complex and longstanding problems. But now in the modern era, it appears in various forms that are difficult to be noticed. In fact, understanding slavery is a complex and subjective exercise, open to interpretation and political manipulations. It originates from slavery’s original concept, that human beings are owned as property. The managerial reactions to international debates have been clear, in which descriptions of slavery are fractured, and therefore difficult for the public to process and act. Consequently, public workers, who are not taught their rights, are always enslaved.

SummaryThe essays in this volume aim to explain the evolution and persistence of various practices of indirect labour recruitment. Labour intermediation is understood as a global phenomenon, present for many centuries in most countries of the world, and taking on a wide range of forms: varying from outright trafficking to job placement in the context of national employment policies. By focusing on the actual practices of different types of labour mediators in various regions of the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and by highlighting both the national as well as the international and translocal contexts of these practices, this volume intends to further a historically informed global perspective on the subject.

In this study, first of all, the basic elements of the slavery phenomenon in general and the paradigm of slavery were tried to be discussed in order to understand the slavery phenomenon correctly. Following these explanations, a definition proposal has been made for modern slavery, which has not yet been defined in any national or international law text. This defination includes four essential elements that must be included in the definition of modern slavery: control, continuity, voluntas and exploitation. Beside this defination On the axis of this definition, a brief critique of other slavery definitions in the literature has been made. The desired result with these discussions and explanations in the study is to present a generally accepted road map that can be applied in the fight against modern slavery.

Until the late sixteenth century, the devşirme system was the main method of manning the janissary army. This was no simple conscription. It required an intense process of identity formation that transformed adolescent Christian boys into Muslim warriors fighting for Islam and the sultan. The training that the boys and young men received was composed of several aspects, including coerced labor, disciplined and harsh physical training, the learning of Turkish and Islamic practices, and a mental formation that would give them a certain perception of their manhood. This article examines these prominent components of janissary training. First, it investigates the function of coerced labor in the boys' transformation, followed by a discussion of the centrality of structured and intensive training with weapons to become professional warriors. Second, it examines the masculine identity formed by the communal way of life in the barracks as soldiers and by notions of military prowess, brotherhood, and comrade solidarity that were strengthened through Bektashism. These dynamics are investigated through an examination of archival sources, chronicles, travelers' writings, and poems by janissary poets.

Since the 1970s historians interested in the impact of changing social and economic conditions on health outcomes have studied record collections that contain information about adult stature. Fluctuations in mean height by year of birth are potentially informative because they should reflect conditions encountered in utero and during the early years of life. Yet, like all historical records, surviving height series are not necessarily representative of the population as a whole. They are also subject to factors that might change over time. This article uses Tasmania nineteenth century criminal record series to explore these issues in greater depth. It is particularly interested in the relationship between recorded height and conviction history. The article examines ways in which digital humanities techniques can be used to shed light this complex and often puzzling relationship.

Between 1833 and 1841 the Children’s Friend Society, a London-based philanthropic organization, sent some eight hundred children from England to the Cape, where they were apprenticed to local settlers. This article focuses on two of them: Alfred Brooks, aged thirteen or fourteen, and twelve-year-old Elizabeth Foulger. Both of these children appear in archival traces because they transgressed and were subsequently disciplined by their masters. The article argues that a series of binaries shaped these young migrants’ lives: between infant and adult, black and white, and colonizer and colonized. The in-between status of the CFS apprentices had the potential to disrupt increasingly rigid hierarchies at the colonial Cape, during a time of significant social and political turmoil. The context of slave emancipation, as well as concerns over juvenile delinquency in London, affected these children’s experiences. Concerns over their categorization illustrate the complicated range of positions...

This study investigates the historical role of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), in the abolition of slavery and protection of associated human rights. Its objective is to critically analyse modern forms of slavery, and investigate the world’s considerable efforts for the abolition of slavery. In previous decades, slavery was clear, which led to complex and longstanding problems. But now in the modern era, it appears in various forms that are difficult to be noticed. In fact, understanding slavery is a complex and subjective exercise, open to interpretation and political manipulations. It originates from slavery’s original concept, that human beings are owned as property. The managerial reactions to international debates have been clear, in which descriptions of slavery are fractured, and therefore difficult for the public to process and act. Consequently, public workers, who are not taught their rights, are always enslaved.

A história dos povos e dos indivíduos flui, muda sempre, como um curso d’água em caudal contínuo. Ninguém vê duas vezes a mesma cena ou vive várias vezes os mesmos eventos. “Não é possível mergulhar duas vezes no mesmo rio”, escreveu o filósofo grego Heráclito no final do século VI a.C.
Todavia, a mutação nem sempre é percebida na sua dimensão. O peso das tradições, a contingência dos fatos e a abrangência das rupturas embacia o sentido das transformações da vida das pessoas e da sociedade. Refletindo sobre estes temas, Fernand Braudel, num texto que se tornou um clássico das Ciências Humanas, distingue os três arcos concêntricos do tempo histórico.

Human trafficking has both a long legal and political history, distinguishing it from many contemporary international legal issues. In 2000, the United Nations (hereafter, UN) Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish the Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children (hereafter, the Trafficking Protocol) created the first definition of trafficking by international law. The Trafficking Protocol through Article 3 established three key elements to trafficking, namely the action, means and exploitation. The origins of the Trafficking Protocol’s definition can be traced back to the International Convention for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic 1910 (hereafter, the 1910 Convention) which identified the terms ‘abuse of authority’, ‘fraud’, ‘threats’ and ‘violence’ as the means elements. A doctrinal analysis of international instruments serves as a mechanism to shine light upon the evolution or transfer of ideology over a period of time. The parallels between contemporary international legal instruments implemented and their historical counterparts highlighted through a doctrinal analysis illustrate the ahistorical state of contemporary research upon the international law of child trafficking. This research demonstrates the necessity of understanding the historical developments of anti-trafficking law to understand contemporary international law.

Abstract: Legal restrictions on vagrancy and day labour in Iceland became increasingly strict in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, culminating with a decree in 1783 which prohibited any form of masterless labour and proscribed compulsory service on a yearly basis for most people over the age of eighteen. Despite strict regulations and the strenuous efforts of various state officials to uproot the problem, vagrancy and day labour remained relatively common and publicly acknowledged throughout the nineteenth century, thus highlighting the contrast between normative prescription (such as law) and everyday life and the ambiguity of power relations in rural Iceland, underscoring their contested nature. This article discusses how vagrants and illegal day labourers in Iceland in the early nineteenth century found ways to evade the authorities and make a living for themselves on the margins of society. It stresses the agency of the working poor and highlights some of the survival strategies employed, including passport fraud, the careful exploitation of cultural notions of hospitality and methods of earning social capital by providing useful services. The article builds on the case of a travelling healer and vagrant named Árni Sveinsson who was found guilty of vagrancy, forgery and quackery in 1821. His trial provides rare insights into the tactics employed by those on the margins of the law to get around undetected.

Contemporary campaigns against modern slavery, forced labour and trafficking are mobilising considerable amounts of human and financial resources without paying much attention to the legal underpinnings of the terms used. Moreover, concepts have become conflated in official reports, policy papers and scientific research, a situation that is leading to a broadening of the meaning of legal terms, to the creation of new terms and, more worryingly, to definitional confusion. This conceptual essay provides an overview of the definition of these matters in international law. Coerced labour is used as an umbrella term for all those forms of work that have been defined as " unfree " in law, and is treated here as synonymous with unfree labour. The paper unfolds in five thematically-arranged parts. In the first section I briefly discuss the issue of freedom and coercion in labour relationships. In the second part, the ubiquitously-used but seldom defined term " exploitation " is examined. Parts three and four examine the earliest types of coerced labour to appear in international law: slavery and forced labour. The legal meaning along with the uses and abuses of the term " human trafficking " form part five. To conclude, I reflect on the opportunities and risks involved in the broad interpretation and application of legal definitions of coerced labour.

Convict labour is "the work performed by individuals under penal and/or administrative control".¹ It is the work of prisoners and deportees,i ndividuals impressed into the armyand the navy,prisonersofwar,and military convicts. Arguablyaubiquitous phenomenon in human history,itstretches from Antiquitytothe present,appears in virtuallyall parts of the world, and cuts across multiple punitive institutions and labour contexts: from the Romanm ines to contemporary concentration camps, through the earlym odernM editerranean and Oceanic galleys, penal transportation, workhouses,a nd penitentiaries. This chapter addresses convict labour from three distinct perspectives. In the first section, Id iscuss its definition by pointing to the ways by which an individual becomes aconvict labourer.Icontend thatsome historical processes are especiallylikelyt oproduce such transformation: war; empire and state building;the search for labour flexibility; conceptualizationsofthe functionof punishment; and ideas on ethnicity,class, and gender.The second section highlights the new trends in bothlabour history and the history of punishment that have been, and still are, transformingthe studyofconvict labour.Iarguethatthree approaches have been especiallyrelevant: the reconceptualization of the "workingclass" beyond wagel abour,t oi nclude otherl abour relations imbricatedi nt he process of labour commodification; the attention paid to the multiplicity of forms thatp unishment has taken historically, rather than to single punitive institutions; and the focus on the spatiality of punishment,i .e.o nt he fact that punishing has often involved not onlyt he immobilization of convicts, but also their relocation across space. The concludingsection reflects on how these new insights might provide the basisfor anew theory of the relationships between punishment and labour,both in the past and in the present. Convict labour emergesa tt he crossroads of two dynamic social processes: the enforced social definition of the "convict" and the commodification of labour.I n other words, in order to become ac onvicted labourer,a ni ndividual has to undergo adouble process: he or she has to be constructed as aconvict,through the social and culturald ynamics of the legal and administrative systems (laws, rules, orders,a nd trials);s ubsequently, this convict has to be turned into af orced labourer,b y

Do factor endowments explain serfdom? Domar (1970) conjectured that high land-labor ratios caused serfdom by increasing incentives to coerce labor. But historical evidence is mixed and quantitative analyses are lacking. Using the Acemoglu-Wolitzky (2011) framework and controlling for political economy variables by studying a specific serf society, we analyze 11,349 Bohemian serf villages in 1757. The net effect of higher land-labor ratios was indeed to increase coercion. The effect greatly increased when animal labor was included, and diminished as land-labor ratios rose. Controlling for other variables, factor endowments significantly influenced serfdom. Institutions, we conclude, are shaped partly by economic fundamentals.