Cassandra started following the work of Robin Smith, University of Oxford, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology.
Cassandra started following the work of Dinesh Kataria, University of Delhi, Department of History.
Cassandra started following the work of Nimrod Tal, University of Oxford, History.
Cassandra Commercial Agriculture in Africa as an Alternative to the Slave Trade, 23-25 September 2010
Graduate Student, History
PhD Student
St. Cross College
Thesis Title: INDUSTRIAL GOLD-MINING IN SOUTHWEST GHANA AND THE PERSISTENCE OF PREINDUSTRIAL FORMS OF LABOR RELATIONS, CA. 1880–1920.
About
My thesis explores the social and economic history of industrial gold miners in Wassaw, a region in southwest Ghana. It is about abolition, the gradual transition from a pervasive market in slaves and bonded labour to one in which individuals were increasingly able to sell their own labour power. Even though Britain held no firm economic interests in the region, after centuries of domestic slavery, by the first quarter of the twentieth century several thousands of miners were voluntarily travelling to new and distant areas in search of work. Further, they were signing agreements to work on an individual contract basis in industrial gold mines. Slavery, which had been highly visible in the colony before 1880, was hardly longer to be seen. My research is particularly interested in the interaction between the end of slavery and debt-bondage and the expansion of the wage labour market.
