| Southeastern Nigeria underwent significant economic, political, and social change as a result of European conquest. The transatlantic slave trade, the expansion of the legitimate trade in palm oil and the subsequent need for domestic labor contributed to a long history of human trafficking. The existing continuities between the transatlantic slave trade and the ways in which colonial authorities and Igbo, Ibibio, Efik and Ijaw (Ijo) populations mobilized juvenile productive and reproductive labor is at the center of this study. Child dealing supported domestic labor needs at a time when the legality of colonial 'slavery' was in flux. Nigeria's steep economic decline of the 1920s and 1930s caused a dramatic increased in child pawning, stealing and dealing. This dissertation examines the porosity between the institutions of pawnship, slavery, child (girl) marriage, panyarring, serfdom, clientelism, and servanthood. The transformation of child pawning, a family strategy that used children's labor as collateral for loans, is highlighted as an institution that allowed slippages from 'pawn' to 'slave' as the procurement and post-slavery exploitation of children became an important local system of attaining child labor. Many parents pawned children in order to pay colonial taxes. Men pawned girls to raise the bride price needed for their own marriages and child dealers stole and sold children to add to their personal wealth.;This study also examines the actions of Nigerian, European, American and Canadian women who attempted to challenge colonial policies at a time when the welfare of poor Nigerian children decreased and colonial economic demands increased. The decline of Nigerian children's livelihoods occurred at the same historical moment that American, European and Canadian activists sought to increase the protection of children globally. This work also disrupts assumptions about categorizing certain groups as primary trafficking 'victims'. Members of the League of Nations and similar groups concerned with the rights of women and children often focused on women and children as specific groups needing protection in colonial Nigeria. However, my work shows that women and children participated in human trafficking for the same reasons men did---they wanted to enhance their own financial and social security. |
