Why is equatorial guinea spanish

Resistance continued into , with guerilla resistance as well as petitions to the colonial government by prominent Bubis. In , the metropolitan government ruled that forced Bubi labor for the benefit of private companies was illegal. By that point, most Bubis had been disarmed as well. Given that cocoa planters could not control native laborers, they looked to labor migrants as a population that could be more easily subjected to forced labor on their properties.

They had supported such migration schemes from neighboring African territories most notably from Liberia during the nineteenth century. However, the scale of these schemes increased dramatically during the twentieth century. By the s, European administrators regarded forced labor as a means of building colonial regimes across West Africa. However, after World War I, the British and the League of Nations proffered the idea that forced labor was not and should not be like slavery, and that efforts should be made to prevent the morphing of forced labor arrangements into slavery.

The ideological justification for such arrangements was that African populations were unable to govern themselves and were too apathetic to be motivated by salaried work. However, since abolitionism had been such an essential ideological aspect of European empire-building in Africa, slavery could not be countenanced either. In this vein then, forced labor was a compromise between slavery and free labor, supposedly, akin to an apprenticeship that would come to an end at an undetermined point in the future, when colonial administrators would deem Africans ready to govern themselves.

This particular ideological justification for forced labor suited Spanish interests well. Their attention was fixated on West Africa in the wake of two major scandals. Indeed, the British consul in Calabar followed closely news about abuses of British subjects and breaches of contract on Fernando Po throughout the s.

News about the brutal treatment of migrant workers in Fernando Po became more widely shared following a strike action. In , approximately workers went on strike, after the death of one young man who had been whipped by an overseer. Beyond the violence of this act, the strikers complained that they were being paid significantly less than they had been promised. Most of them were from the Gold Coast, which is why their plight attracted the attention of British authorities.

Even when the Spanish authorities introduced a Native Labor Code in , the British government still considered it insufficient evidence of a will to end brutal laboring conditions. According to reports penned by British vice-consuls in Fernando Po, small planters were much more likely to breach labor contracts and to force laborers into highly exploitative situations because they had access to less liquid capital.

In , the Spanish government passed a new labor ordinance in response to British pressures. Employers lost access to migrant laborers if they failed to pay them three months in a row.

Contracts could not be longer than two years, and rations had to be distributed on a daily basis. Flogging was not permitted, and the supervisors who flogged workers could be fined. These measures brought smallholding cocoa planters to collapse. However, by this point, the Spanish government was more interested in supporting large plantations.

Two other labor migration schemes would supply Fernando Po with migrant workers. Between and , the Spanish government had an agreement with Liberian authorities that allowed planters in Fernando Po to access Liberian laborers.

The tactics used in such recruitments relied however on coercion. Moreover, many of the workers shipped to Spanish Guinea would not return after their contracts ended. As the Liberian government was expanding the infrastructure, they started looking on the agreement with the Spanish with skepticism.

They eventually withdrew from it in Some private agreements soon followed that allowed for the ongoing flow of laborers until The Francoist regime used Spanish Guinea as a model colony, a showcase of European munificence. Corporatist economic policies and price controls helped capital investors reap high profits. In , Spanish and British authorities signed a labor migration agreement.

By the mids, close to 16, workers from Nigeria were working in Fernando Po. The Spanish colonial administration managed to extract cash crops from the island by means other than plantation cultivation or the direct coercion of indigenous Bubis and migrant workers. Catholic education and land distribution were two other policies used to control the Bubis.

The Bubis, like indigenous people in the Americas, were treated as legal minors, or wards of the colonial regime. The Patronato was ostensibly responsible for protecting the Bubis by securing access to land for them, providing schooling, and making sure that they were not abused by European settlers.

By , the governor general, Angel Barrera, estimated that approximately a third of the cocoa crop on the island was produced by smallholding Bubis. When the Patronato dissolved in , the Bubi participants acquired full shareholder rights to agricultural cooperatives that the Patronato had created. Ties of debt and privileged access to Spanish markets consolidated the relationship between the Bubi elite and the colonial administration.

It was the population of Rio Muni that would drive the anti-colonial initiative forward. Spanish military rule in Rio Muni began in earnest in Voyages of exploration had occurred in the s, but attempts to occupy territory only started half a century later, likely motivated by a need for labor on Fernando Po. By the s, in response to anti-Spanish mobilization in the area, the regime provided Guinea with limited autonomy; in , it granted it full independence.

Upon independence and following the loss of a privileged access to Spanish markets, the export economy collapsed. The administration has been, however, accused of very high levels of corruption.

The vast majority of the oil revenue has been siphoned into large infrastructure projects overseen by contractors with ties to the administration. Only percent of the budget has been allocated to education and health. Oil reserves are estimated to dry out by , and extraction has already been declining since Oil wealth came with new forms of inequality and exploitation.

Some of the old stories of slavery and forced labor have taken an uncanny contemporary form. According to the US Department of State, child slavery is rampant, with the government doing little to halt it. Adriana Chira is an Assistant Professor of History at Emory University, where she teaches courses on global human trafficking, race and slavery in the Atlantic world, and Cuban history.

Her first book project is a socio-legal history of popular ideologies of race in nineteenth-century Cuba. Her second book project focuses on reverse Atlantic networks after the end of the contraband slave trade to the Americas, with particular attention to Spanish colonialism in West Africa.

Photo: Antique world planisphere portolan map of Spanish and Portuguese maritime and colonial empire. Created by Antonio Sanches, published in Portugal, Shutterstock. Ministerio de Ultramar. Tags: africa , britain , christopher columbus , cocoa , colonialism , colonization , colony , cuba , cuban war , equatorial guinea , europe , ghana , history , imperialism , nigeria , portugal , research , slave trade , slavery , spain , spanish , sugar cane. Prev Post.

Next Post. Why do people believe the leader of Equatorial Guinea is a cannibal? Equatorial Guinea comprises of two portions — the mainland and the insular. In the late 19 th century, Spanish settlers established cacao farms to generate income. The Spanish oversaw a base in Bioko which was initiated by the United Kingdom. The treaty was an agreement between the Spain Empire and the Kingdom of Portugal. The economy thrived on the growing and sale of coffee, cacao and logging.

Spanish Guinea endured three segments of decolonization. From to , the Portuguese attempted to reclaim the stake it previously held in the country; its status went from colony to province. From to , the Spanish partially decolonized the country while keeping some control; the plan was thwarted by the Guineans.

Spanish has been one of the official languages of Equatorial Guinea since The version of Spanish spoken in the African country is considered European Spanish. It is spoken by It is spoken in administration and educational settings.