Unfree labor, forced labor and resistance among the Zigula of the Lower Juba, Southern Somalia

Interpreting resistance to forced labour during the colonial period is a complex issue, especially in countries where several forms of slavery were common before colonialism and where colonial policies tended to implement emancipation decrees gradually rather than put abolition into immediate effect. THis chapter deals with episodes of resistance to forced labour in agricultural concessions held by Italian farmers in the Lower Juba River region of southern Somalia until 1941 and during the Second World War when the colony came under the direction of the British Military Administration (BMA). The region, then known as Oltregiuba to the Italians, as ex-Jubakand to the British and as Gosha to the Somalis, had been transferred from the British protectorare to the Italian colonial government in 1925