Early 20th Century: (The Gradual Disappearance of Slavery — Former Slaves Entering Forced Labor and Migrant Systems, Hundreds of Thousands in French Zones Be…

Early 20th Century: (The Gradual Disappearance of Slavery — Former Slaves Entering Forced Labor and Migrant Systems, Hundreds of Thousands in French Zones Becoming Part of Colonial Labor Forces, Men Doing Better Than Women Whose Dependent Status Hardly Changed, and the British Anti-Slavery Society Pressuring the League of Nations in the 1920s to Force Colonial Administrations to Report on the Issue): Freedom from slavery was relative. Early colonial states had relied on runaway and freed slaves for armies and police forces, and hundreds of thousands of former slaves in the French western and equatorial zones became part of the forced labor essential to colonial economies. Former slaves entered the migrant labor system in southern and central Africa, and the expanding cash economy offered employment opportunities for formerly unfree male labor. Men did rather better than women, however, and frequently the dependent status of women hardly changed with emancipation. With the slave trade suppressed and the illegality of slave status gradually enforced, slavery had largely disappeared by the middle of the twentieth century, even if some replacement forms of labor were hardly less exploitative. The British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society in the 1920s pressured the League of Nations to take greater interest in suppression, forcing colonial administrations to report regularly. While slave-raiding continued in remote areas, particularly in the Sahel and across the Sahara, the traffic was reduced to an underground activity.