Krumen "Down The Coast": Liberian migrants On the West African coast in the 19th century
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
This paper discusses migrant laborers from eastern Liberia called Krumen who worked along Africa's west coast in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the system of which they were a part. The study focuses on areas where Britishers were working. British traders and British officials
who established themselves in areas of present-day Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra
Leone in the nineteenth century depended on Africans for the day-to-day operation
of their activities. When they did not find willing helpers close at
hand, they recruited Africans from other West African countries. Skilled
artisans and clerks came from Sierra Leone and Ghana. Unskilled laborers -
who worked on one- or, at most, two-year contracts - were brought from eastern
Liberia. Men from along Liberia's eastern seaboard had worked for Europeans
on shipboard since the eighteenth century; in the early nineteenth century
they began to work on shore.[TRUNCATED]
Description
African Studies Center Working Paper No. 64
License
Copyright © 1982, by the author.