About the Author

Eric Allina is Associate Professor of History at the University of Ottawa.

Reviews

...add[s] depth and complexity to our knowledge of labor in early colonial Africa.... Allina is very perceptive on the gender and intergenerational dynamics of forced labor.-- "International Labor and Working-Class History"

Slavery by Any Other Name brings an important archive to wider notice.-- "The Historian"

Slavery by Any Other Name makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge of concessionary companies and their reliance on bound labor in Mozambique-- "The American Historical Review"

Allina provides a meticulously researched labor history, but what he provides is much more interesting than a laundry list of labor abuses under Portuguese rule. Rather, he tells a nuanced history of the region, and how Africans responded to and engaged with Company and colonial rule.-- "The International Journal of African Historical Studies"

An important book on the social history of colonial Africa.... Allina succeeds admirably in describing the appalling history of a specific Anglo-Portuguese cooperation.-- "African Affairs"

Eric Allina has written a compelling account of African life under the forced labor regimen of the Portuguese in Colonial Mozambique. His study illuminates how the prolonged exploitation of Africans residing in territory leased by royal charter or the Mozambique Company led to widespread rural impoverishment that continues to plague the region today. By plumbing the long-lost records of the Mozambique Company and combining this wealth of archival data with evidence gathered from oral testimonies of Mozambican elders, Allina refutes the rhetoric of empire couched in Portuguese claims to be engaged in a civilizing mission.-- "The Journal of Modern History"

Provides fascinating insights into the minds of colonial administrators.... A poignant and detailed description of the horrors of colonial labour practices in Mozambique.... [Allina] succeeds in revealing the mechanisms through which Africans resisted the tentacles of the chartered company through open and negotiated means.-- "Kronos"

The depth of analysis of on-the-ground practices of labor coercion in Slavery by Any Other Name is a major contribution, and the picture one gets of the positions of Portuguese administrators and African chiefs, caught in the middle of an iniquitous system, is illuminating. The archival evidence deployed here is likewise impressive.--Frederick Cooper, New York University