By the late eighteenth century the ever-increasing British need for local labour in West
Africa based on malarial climatic and manpower concerns led to a willingness of the British
and Kru (West African labourers from Liberia) to experiment with free wage labour contracts.
The Kru's familiarity with European trade on the Kru Coast (modern Liberia) from at least the
sixteenth century played a fundamental role in their decision to expand their wage earning
opportunities under contract with the British. The establishment of Freetown in 1792 enabled
the Kru to engage in systematized work for British merchants ship captains and naval
officers. Kru workers increased their migration to Freetown establishing what appears to be
their first permanent labouring community beyond their homeland on the Kru Coast. Their
community in Freetown known as Krutown provided a readily available labour pool and ensured
their regular employment on board British commercial ships and Royal Navy vessels
circumnavigating the Atlantic and beyond. In the process the Kru established a network of
Krutowns and community settlements in many Atlantic ports including Cape Coast Fernando Po
Ascension Island Cape of Good Hope and in the British Caribbean in Demerara and Port of
Spain. Outsourcing African Labour in the Nineteenth Century: Kru Migratory Workers in Global
Ports Estates and Battlefields structures the fragmented history of Kru workers into a
coherent global framework. The migration of Kru workers in the Atlantic Indian and Pacific
Oceans in commercial and military contexts represents a movement of free wage labour that
transformed the Kru Coast into a homeland that nurtured diasporas and staffed a vast network of
workplaces. As the Kru formed permanent and transient working communities around the Atlantic
and in the British Caribbean they underwent several phases of social political and economic
innovation which ultimately overcame a decline in employment in their homeland on the Kru
Coast by the end of the nineteenth century by increasing employment in their diaspora. There
were unique features of the Kru migrant labour force that characterized all phases of its
expansion. The migration was virtually entirely male and at a time when slavery was widespread
and the slave trade was subjected to the abolition campaign of the British Navy Kru workers
were free with an expertise in manning seaborne craft and porterage. Kru carried letters from
previous captains as testimonies of their reliability and work ethic or they worked under the
supervision of experienced workers who effectively served as references for employment. They
worked for contractual periods of between six months and five years for which they were paid
wages. The Kru thereby stand out as an anomaly in the history of Atlantic trade when compared
with the much larger diasporas of enslaved Africans.
