Abstract
In general, many accounts of labor Other African workers against industrialization, scientific discoveries, and technology reduce them to immutable categories of farmers, laborers, proletariat, craftsmen, diggers, etc. The history of railway construction in Nigeria has been typically rendered without due recognition for the roles of native workers except as laborers—as tools of colonial infrastructure and as resistors of it. The lopsidedness of the archives and historical methodology silence the adaptations, innovations, and professionalism of indigenous workers. This article revisits conventional accounts of the construction of the Lagos railways and the Niger Bridge (1907–16) by pointing attention to indigenous workers who, despite their contributions and the reliance of the railways on them, were never designated as professional by the colonial public service, and whose records may not be found in the colonial archive. By demonstrating the incompleteness of contemporary engineering and the shared adaptions of innovation, it recovers a more complete scope of the history of labor in railway construction.
Résumé
En général, de nombreux récits du travail dissocient les travailleurs africains de l’industrialisation, des découvertes scientifiques et de la technologie, les réduisant à des catégories immuables d’agriculteurs, d’ouvriers, de prolétariat, d’artisans, de creuseurs, etc. L’histoire de la construction ferroviaire au Nigeria a été typiquement rendue sans une reconnaissance appropriée pour les rôles des travailleurs autochtones, sauf en tant qu’ouvriers. C’est-à-dire en tant qu’outils de l’infrastructure coloniale et en tant que résistants à celle-ci. Le déséquilibre des archives et la méthodologie historique passent sous silence les adaptations, les innovations et le professionnalisme des travailleurs autochtones. Cet article revisite les récits conventionnels de la construction des chemins de fer de Lagos et du pont sur le Niger (1907-1916) en attirant l’attention sur les travailleurs autochtones qui, malgré leurs contributions et le fait que les chemins de fer dépendaient d’eux, n’ont jamais été désignés comme professionnels par la fonction publique coloniale, et dont les dossiers sont introuvables dans les archives coloniales. En démontrant le caractère incomplet de l’ingénierie contemporaine et des adaptations partagées de l’innovation, cet article rétablit une portée plus complète de l’histoire du travail dans la construction ferroviaire.
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