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8 - The International Labour Organization
- from Part III - International Dimensions and Mobility
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- By Daniel Roger Maul, Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Luca Puddu, Department of Cultures and Civilizations at the University of Bologna, and Department of History, Cultures and Religions, Sapienza University of Rome, Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani, Department of History, National Open University of Nigeria, Lagos
- Edited by Stefano Bellucci, Andreas Eckert
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- Book:
- General Labour History of Africa
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 21 September 2019
- Print publication:
- 17 May 2019, pp 223-264
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Summary
AFRICA AND THE ILO's FOUNDATIONAL YEARS
The relationship between the International Labour Organization and Africa during the first decades after the Organization's founding in Versailles in 1919 was, first and foremost, shaped by the ILO's strong European bias. The ILO built on the European labour experience in more than one aspect: its roots lay in the demands of late nineteenth-century European social reformers and proponents of international labour law, and it had grown out of the immediate effects of the First World War in Europe. The integration of the reformist part of the European labour movement into the war effort in many countries, and the Russian October Revolution of 1917, had created the political environment in which the ILO was founded. Its establishment was in a sense both a reward for European workers’ contributions to the war effort and a safety valve to calm the revolutionary potential of the working class. In the same sense, the ILO's tripartite structure, in which workers’ and employers’ delegates took part next to government representatives in the decision-making process, built on the practical experiences and institutions created by some European countries during the war, which were for the first time institutionalized at the international level by the ILO.
While the ILO's mandate was not restricted to any world region or political and social environment, a tension between the universalistic claims of the ILO's Constitution and a definite bias towards European industrial labour permeated the work of the Organization from the start. Initially, the ILO catered primarily to the needs of industrial wage labourers (including seafarers) in the industrialized countries of the West. Both the standardsetting activities and the technical work in which the ILO engaged during the interwar period reflected this bias. From 1919 onwards, the annual sessions of the International Labour Conference (ILC) adopted international labour standards in the form of Conventions and Recommendations (the latter being instruments that are not binding under international law), dealing with a broad range of issues, from protection of children and women workers in industry through labour inspection to social insurance and employment policies. The common denominator of these activities was that the great majority of these standards dealt with problems specific to the industrialized world. Non-industrial labour, including agricultural labour – although within the competence of the ILO – was given much less attention.
6 - The United States' Economic and Political Activities in Colonial West Africa
- from Part One - Trade and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
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- By Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani, Morgan State University
- Edited by Alusine Jalloh, University of Texas at Arlington, Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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- Book:
- The United States and West Africa
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 12 September 2012
- Print publication:
- 01 November 2008, pp 112-122
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Summary
Introduction
The central theme of this chapter is to detail the history of the United States' political and economic interests in West Africa after World War II. The United States was interested in political matters (including nationalist movements, political reforms, and decolonization); and the type of economic policy and development carried out by the colonial powers. Simply put, it consciously monitored the way colonial officials handled nationalist demands, colonial reforms, and the type of economic developmental plans put in place. This chapter reinvestigates the genesis of U.S. interests in West Africa; it reinterprets U.S. activities during the post–World War II period; and it presents a historical narrative of the Anglo-American entente during the colonial period (1945–60).
While the events that propelled the tactics of the Cold War are well documented, Africa's (indeed West Africa's) place in the scheme of the Western Allies' strategies is often misrepresented. While news of the strategies, tactics, and procedures regarding the Western powers' activities in colonial Africa did not make it to the front pages of leading newspapers or to the radio, official records indicate that Africa was never treated as a “backwater” in world affairs. This chapter argues that the focus of the United States' activities during the period under discussion was based on its Cold War goals. It was informed by the growing radicalism within Africa, international Communist activities, the role of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), the prevalence of Communist propagandist newsletters, the provision of funds and support by the Eastern bloc, and the presence of leftist nationalists and their sympathizers.