In 1916 the South African government received a request from the Imperial government for the provision of non-combatant African labour for work in France. Despite opposition from white opinion on both political and economic grounds, the South African Native Labour Contingent was formed and recruiting commenced. Although recruiting had the active support of African political leaders, it was not as successful as had been hoped. Distrust of the government's intentions was one important reason for this. The South African government had agreed to the Imperial government's request for labour only on the condition that S.A.N.L.C. units were to be kept segregated from both other military units and the French civil population, and numerous measures (particularly the construction of compounds) were devised to facilitate this. But in practice this proved impossible to implement properly, and South African officers did not have the degree of control over their units that had originally been envisaged. On the African side, there was a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with conditions, and in one incident thirteen Africans were shot dead by their own officers. When the South African government decided to bring the ‘experiment’ to an end early in 1918, many Africans suspected that the reasons for this were not purely military as was claimed. Service in the S.A.N.L.C. was of importance both in terms of the individual experiences of those Africans directly involved, but it acquired also a wider political and symbolic importance, attached particularly to the sinking of the transport, S.S. Mendi, in February 1917 with the loss of over 600 African members of the S.A.N.L.C.

Between 1935 and 1960 a peculiar patterning of forced labour developed on Mozambique's lower Zambezi. By the beginning of the Salazar era a particular style of history had been imprinted upon Mozambique. Large scale recruiting of labour for the mines and farms of southern Africa coupled with mass migrations of Mozambique's people to escape the oppressions of Portuguese administration resulted in a severe labour shortage which companies operating in the colony had to face. Exacerbating this problem was the Portuguese decision in the mid-1930s to compel the colonies to produce enough cotton for the demands of the empire. To protect its position vis-à-vis already scarce male labour, the Sena Sugar Estates Ltd., Mozambique's largest employer of labour, formulated a system by which only female labour would cultivate cotton, leaving the men free to work in the company's sugar fields. This system, which was adopted in the 1940s by other employers of labour, led to severe oppression of the local people, notably the women, who were caught between the conflicting demands of interests more powerful than themselves. Only in the late 1950s and early 1960s did the pressures of the forced cultivation system end.

This study of the performance of the Niger Company, from surrender of the charter until its acquisition by Lever Brothers Limited, explores the ways in which the corporation organized both for stability and for change. Pooling agreements, contracts, negotiations with colonial governments and shippers aimed at defending the company's monopoly over river communications won before 1900. At the same time, company agents expanded the geographical area and the range of commercial operations into a wide variety of enterprises. Of these, the development of mining on the Bauchi Plateau and participation in the exploitation of northern Nigerian groundnuts were the most important and placed severe strains on the capacity of the firm's personnel, as well as on its working capital. The outbreak of war precipitated a crisis in the export of produce which was temporarily deferred by the exceptional profitability of raw commodities and tin concentrates. By 1919, the need for skilled personnel and greater amounts of capital compounded the difficulties arising from too great a reliance on river transport. The company assisted with railway construction and used the new system to meet commitments in its relationship with the mining companies; but it did not decide to restructure its operations in Nigeria to keep pace with changes brought about by railway communications, particularly at Lagos and Port Harcourt. The study, therefore, draws attention to the importance of technological adaptation in business performance, particularly in the case of an enterprise with a number of generalized functions in a rapidly changing tropical market.

French administrative policies during the inter-war period in Central Cameroun created a class of indigenous chiefs who fulfilled crucial functions in the mobilization of manpower and resources from the rural areas for the development of the European sector of the economy. Early problems in organizing food markets to provision the growing non-agricultural sector resulted in a decision to channel agricultural growth through the chiefs rather than to leave it to market forces. The institution of a food requisition system involved the administration in exercising direct control over key aspects of the rural economy through the regulation of production, price control, control of the trading network, and the use of the indigénat to support the rights of chiefs over their subjects. The system succeeded in achieving two purposes at once: it guaranteed a cheap, reliable supply of food to the wage-earning population, thus allowing wages to remain low and stable; and it encouraged the development of a class of wealthy planters in the rural areas whose self-interest lay in support for the colonial administration. However, close control of the economy became impossible in the late 1930s, and the government's dissatisfaction with some of the implications of its own chieftaincy policy resulted in the abandonment of the whole inter-war system. The rural economy which gradually emerged after 1946 was characterized by family-based production units but lacked a well-developed institutional framework appropriate to it.

During World War I, Africans in Nyasaland were called upon to provide large numbers of soldiers and military labourers for the war effort in eastern Africa. Although a few willingly volunteered, many more objected, and some resisted. In this situation, colonial officals used force to secure the necessary manpower. Africans, therefore, called the conflict ‘the war of thangata’, referring to the growing colonial demands for taxes and for labour rent on European estates. The tasks which the soldiers and carriers were called upon to perform were equally likened to thangata, being ‘work which was done without real benefit’. So far from receiving rewards, Africans found that inadequate food, clothing, and medical care contributed greatly to the sufferings associated with a military campaign. Between 1914 and 1918 wartime manpower requirements, and war service, gave full meaning to colonial rule throughout the protectorate. The response to these demands and this suffering brought, in the form of both traditional and modern religious and social institutions, the first tentative stirrings of African nationalism in Nyasaland.

For the campaign in East Africa from 1914 to 1918, the British used over 50,000 African troops, and over one million African followers. In 1914 no carrier organization existed, so this had to be rapidly improvised. There were three main carrier forces, based on the East Africa Protectorate, on Uganda and on Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. German East Africa was overrun in 1916 and 1917, but the German forces were not defeated. These offensives necessitated huge numbers of followers. Despite much improved rations and medical services, deaths among followers averaged 10 per cent; over 100,000 must have died. Over 10,000 troops died of disease or were killed, a death rate of 20 per cent. Deaths were most numerous amongst those followers who served for long periods far from home; this applied particularly to those from the East African Protectorate. About half of the million followers were, however, on short contracts or were casual labour. Since they worked nearer home and for shorter periods, their death rate was much lower. During 1916 the carrier force from the East African Protectorate was reinforced from conquered parts of German East Africa, but diminished by 100,000 men through releases, desertions and deaths. Numbers reached a climax in 1917, with the mass levy. The possibility that men enlisted more than once is hard to prove, but long-service carriers on release were unlikely to be fit again for a long time. Many recruits were medically unfit for the mass levy of 1917. During the war very many of the able-bodied male populations of these territories must have served, probably over 80 per cent, but not all at any one time. As it was the main theatre of war, German East Africa probably suffered most, conscriptions being carried out by both Germans and British.

It has usually been supposed that World War I was ‘an injury to the Christian cause’ because of the disruption of missionary work when mission personnel were called up, interned or not replaced. This view is questioned. Evidence is adduced from the history of the church in East Africa to show that African Christians responded to the situation by shouldering responsibilities in a way which surprised the missionaries on their return. The churches best placed to survive were those in which a beginning had been made to train African clergy. Only the Anglicans and Catholics had made any progress in training indigenous leadership by 1914. But even where this had not been done, leaders emerged, and some churches even grew considerably in numbers without any loss of quality. One example of this is drawn from the Usambara–Digo synod of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania. The missionaries' attitudes and actions on their eventual return are surveyed. Often they were surprised to find that in their absence the Christian communities had not disintegrated as they had feared. But almost always their concern was to ‘discipline’ the church, and return to the ways of doing things at the outbreak of war, instead of building on the developments which had occurred in the meantime. This sometimes had disastrous consequences as natural leadership became frustrated. The greatest ‘injury to the Christian cause’ may have been the missions' failure to see that a new method of working was now required of them rather than a return to the old.