Ivory and itinerant workers during the “Scramble for Africa”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2024.e98219Keywords:
Itinerant Workers, ivory, Scramble for AfricaAbstract
The conventional period of the so-called “Scramble for Africa” (1884-1914) coincides with a large influx of raw ivory into the metropolises. As a commodity in an expanding colonial economy, the ivory trade depended on a series of itinerant African labor groups. From the extraction of tusks to storage, land transport and boarding in seaports, several groups of Africans (guides, hunters, batsmen, porters) were needed until the ivory reached the hands of European workers who, after disembarking and from the distribution of the raw material across different countries, they would transform it into jewelry, piano keys, billiard balls etc. From some examples such as a ivory factory in Germany during the Second Reich, the aim is to retrace the ivory production chain with a focus on the various groups of itinerant African workers. With emphasis on sources from the German colonial press and based on an entangled history (verflochtene Geschichte) between the extraction, transport, storage and transformation of ivory, the purpose of this article aims to connect the work of itinerant Africans with the leisure of sedentary European bourgeoisie around a pool table or a piano.
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