This essay examines the counterfeiting and uttering of BritishImperial coinage in interwar Nigeria, and the response of the colonialstate. In particular, it establishes a connection between criminality andresistance to European colonialism in Africa. In this regard, itcontextualizes the preponderant involvement in the counterfeiting saga ofthe Ijebu, a subgroup of the Yoruba nationality in southwesternNigeria. Though other considerations were involved, the preponderance of theIjebu in making what was called “Ijebu money” illustrates how self-helpcriminality was both a means of accumulation and a veritable form ofresistance to colonial rule. Following their military defeat in 1892 andtheir subsequent alienation from British rule, this criminal activityrepresented resistance by other means. The point must be stressed, however,that not all Ijebu were counterfeiters, and all counterfeiters were notIjebu, and that the counterfeiters were no “heroic criminals”, whoshared their loot with the poor.

During the post-Independence period, Buenos Aires province engaged in arepublican-authoritarian experiment in which the relations between dominantand subaltern were altered and redefined. The ascent to power of Juan Manuelde Rosas and the federalists meant an increase in the violence meted out bythe state against its political and military opponents. On the other hand,the diffusion of a market economy created the basis of contractual relationsacross a variety of social fields and institutions. This was true withregard to relations between masters and servants in the household, betweenofficers and soldiers within regiments, between rural residents and justicesof the peace, between ranchers and peons at the estancia. Though coerciondid not disappear, the power to coerce found limits because of the veryexpansion of market relations. To address these changes, in their complexityand diversity, this article uses the concept “repertoires ofcoercion”. The concept may be useful to analyze and compare relationsof power in multiple social or institutional spaces. In addition, thearticle addresses the question of the relationship between coercion andmarket culture, suggesting that in a situation of labor scarcity, and themilitary mobilization of the subaltern classes, contractualism tends topervade relations of power, even those previously based upon coercion.

Structural, organizational, and technological changes in British industryduring the interwar years led to a decline in skilled and physicallydemanding work, while there was a dramatic expansion in unskilled andsemiskilled employment. Previous authors have noted that the newun/semiskilled jobs were generally filled by “fresh” workersrecruited from outside the core manufacturing workforce, though there isconsiderable disagreement regarding the composition of this newworkforce. This paper examines labour recruitment patterns and strategiesusing national data and case studies of eight rapidly expanding industrialcentres. The new industrial workforce is shown to have been recruited froma “reserve army” of workers with the common features of relativecheapness, flexibility, and weak unionization. These included women,juveniles, local workers in poorly paid nonindustrial sectors, such asagriculture, and (where these other categories were in short supply)relatively young long-distance internal migrants from declining industrialareas.

TOM BRASS. Towards a Comparative Political Economy of Unfree Labour. CaseStudies and Debates. [The Library of Peasant Studies, 16.] Frank Cass,London [etc.] 1999. £47.50. (Paper: £20.00).

Free and Unfree Labour. The Debate Continues. Ed. by Tom Brass andMarcel van der Linden. [International and Comparative Social History, 5.]Peter Lang, Bern [etc.] 1997. 603 pp. S.fr. 98.00.