第10章工業化世界の生活と労働Life and Labor in the Industrial World

Most workers in industrialized countries during the period of the Second Industrial Revolution were free. “Free” in this context is a relative term, however. Their employers could not buy or sell them or their labor. They were legally able to leave their places of employment if they chose. But the extreme poverty of many workers makes it difficult to think of them as truly free. They toiled for long hours at dangerous jobs they hated because the alternative was homelessness and starvation. Nevertheless, they had advantages and choices, even if limited ones, that many other nineteenth-century workers did not have. For many people, to one degree or another, employers still had the legal right to compel their labor.

第二次産業革命期の工業国の労働者の大半は自由だった。しかし、この文脈での「自由」は相対的な語である。雇用者は労働者自身やその労働を売買できず、労働者は望めば法的に職場を去れた。しかし多くの労働者の極度の貧困を考えると、本当に自由だったとは考えにくい。嫌いな危険な仕事でも、他にあるのは住まいを失うことと飢えだったため、長時間苦役した。それでも、19世紀の他の多くの労働者にはなかった利点や選択肢を、限られてはいても持っていた。多くの人にとっては、程度の差こそあれ、雇用者にはなお労働を強制する法的権利があった。

By the end of the nineteenth century, chattel slavery, in which one human being is owned by another and can be bought or sold, lingered in only a few places on the globe. Some nations had already abolished slavery before the Second Industrial Revolution began. Japan officially did so in the sixteenth century. Britain abolished the slave trade and ended slavery completely in 1834. France banned slavery in 1848, freeing nearly all enslaved people in the Caribbean. In India, the Penal Code of 1861 punished those who attempted to enslave others. The Netherlands and the United States were among the last industrialized nations to end the practice, with the Dutch freeing enslaved people in the South American colony of Suriname in 1863 and the United States abolishing slavery with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to its Constitution in 1865.

19世紀末までに、人間を別の人間が所有し売買できる動産奴隷制は、世界のわずかな場所にしか残っていなかった。第二次産業革命の開始前に奴隷制を廃止した国もあった。日本は16世紀に正式に廃止した。イギリスは奴隷貿易を廃止し、1834年には奴隷制を完全に終わらせた。フランスは1848年に奴隷制を禁止し、カリブ海地域のほぼすべての奴隷を解放した。インドの1861年刑法は、他者を奴隷化しようとする者を処罰した。オランダとアメリカは、この慣行を終わらせた工業国の中では最も遅い部類で、オランダは1863年に南米の植民地スリナムの奴隷を解放し、アメリカは1865年に憲法修正第13条の成立によって奴隷制を廃止した。

Most Latin American nations ended slavery following their wars of independence in the early nineteenth century. Brazil, however, with its primarily agricultural economy, long resisted reformers’ calls for emancipation. In 1850, the country finally bowed to pressure from its chief trading partner, Great Britain, which had assumed the moral duty of abolishing slavery around the world soon after it liberated its own enslaved people. Brazil ended its slave trade, and in 1871 it passed a law that freed all children born to enslaved women from that point forward. In 1885, it decreed that all enslaved people would be free when they reached their sixtieth birthdays. Finally, it completely abolished slavery in 1888.

ラテンアメリカ諸国の大半は、19世紀初めの独立戦争の後に奴隷制を終えた。しかし、経済が主として農業に依存するブラジルは、改革者の解放要求に長く抵抗した。1850年、ブラジルはついに、主要貿易相手であるイギリスの圧力に屈した。イギリスは自国の奴隷解放の直後から、世界の奴隷制を廃止する道徳的義務を引き受けていた。ブラジルは奴隷貿易を終わらせ、1871年には、その時点以降に奴隷の女性から生まれる子供をすべて自由とする法律を成立させた。1885年には、奴隷は60歳になれば全員自由になると定めた。ついに1888年、奴隷制を完全に廃止した。

Along with British pressure, other factors influenced Brazil’s decision. The battlefield performance of enslaved men during Brazil’s 1864–1870 war with Paraguay led many White soldiers to admire the Afro-Brazilian fighters, and they became reluctant to recapture runaways. Many White Brazilians also believed their nation could not become modern and industrialized if it possessed a large population of African ancestry. For them, getting rid of slavery was the first step on the path to creating a Brazil that was more White.

イギリスの圧力に加えて、他の要因もブラジルの決定に影響した。1864～1870年のパラグアイとの戦争で奴隷の男性が示した戦場での働きに、多くの白人兵士がアフリカ系ブラジル人兵士への敬意を抱き、逃亡奴隷を再捕獲したがらなくなった。また多くの白人ブラジル人は、アフリカ系の人口が多いままでは、国を近代化し工業化できないと考えた。彼らにとって奴隷制をなくすことは、より白人の多いブラジルを作る第一歩だった。

Serfdom also largely disappeared in the second half of the nineteenth century. Serfs were unfree peasants who were legally bound to work the land on which they lived, land that was owned by another. Russia held nearly all Europe’s remaining serfs. Approximately eleven million were owned by private citizens, and another twelve to thirteen million were owned by the state. Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom in Russia in 1861. This did not necessarily improve serfs’ lives, however. Though emancipated, they were required to serve their masters for two more years. They were then allowed to remain on the lands they had worked, but they had to purchase them, often at high prices. Domestic serfs, those who had been household servants, received no land. In some parts of the Russian empire, serfdom lingered on for a few more decades.

農奴制も19世紀後半には大部分が姿を消した。農奴とは、他者が所有し、自分が住む土地を耕すことに法的に縛られた、自由のない農民だった。ヨーロッパに残る農奴のほぼ全員はロシアにいた。約1100万人が私人、さらに1200万～1300万人が国家に所有されていた。ツァーリのアレクサンドル2世は、1861年にロシアの農奴制を廃止した。しかし、それが必ずしも農奴の生活改善を意味したわけではない。解放されても、さらに2年間は主人に仕える義務があった。その後は耕してきた土地に残れたが、しばしば高い価格で買い取らねばならなかった。家内使用人だった農奴には土地が与えられなかった。ロシア帝国の一部では、その後も数十年間、農奴制が残った。

While slavery and serfdom disappeared from the industrialized world in the nineteenth century, other means remained for securing a long-term or permanent labor force for both agricultural and industrial production. Two such systems are contract labor and debt bondage. Contract labor, a system in which people sign contracts promising to perform work in exchange for a fee, still exists today. Indentured servitude is a form of contract labor in which people pledge to work for an agreed period of time for an agreed form of compensation. Although indentured servants are not enslaved, while their contract is in force, their employers have nearly total control over them, and they are not allowed to leave their service. Debt bondage is a system in which a person who owes money works (or provides someone else to work) for the creditor until the debt has been repaid through labor. Indentured servitude and debt bondage are similar and were common in the later nineteenth century; they differ from slavery in that, theoretically, at a point in time the bondage will end.

19世紀の工業世界から奴隷制と農奴制が消えても、農業・工業生産のために長期的または恒久的な労働力を確保する別の手段は残った。その二つが契約労働と債務労働である。報酬と引き換えに働くことを約して契約する契約労働は、今日も存在する。年季奉公は契約労働の一形態で、合意した報酬を得るため、合意した期間働くことを誓約する。年季奉公人は奴隷ではないが、契約が有効な間、雇用者はほぼ全面的に支配し、奉公人は仕事を離れることができない。債務労働は、借金のある人が、労働によって返済し終えるまで、債権者のために働く、または他の人を働かせる制度である。年季奉公と債務労働は似ており、19世紀後半には一般的だった。理論上は一定の時点で束縛が終わるという点で、奴隷制と異なる。

In the United States, indentured servitude had been common during the colonial period, and it was the means by which many Europeans obtained passage to North America. The practice had largely died out in the United States by the middle of the nineteenth century but still existed in a few places. In Hawaii, plantation owners used contract labor from Portugal, China, Korea, Japan, and the Philippines to grow their crops, especially sugarcane. Many Chinese immigrants also came to the United States as contract laborers. They were not working under a contract with their employer. Instead, they had agreed to work for one of their compatriots to pay for their passage to the United States. Many Chinese workers were taken abroad by the Six Companies, a Chinese-owned business formed to transport Chinese immigrants to North America, and they had to repay their debt to the company before they were allowed to return home.

アメリカでは植民地時代に年季奉公が一般的で、多くのヨーロッパ人が北米への渡航費を得る手段だった。19世紀半ばまでにはほぼ消えていたが、一部には残った。ハワイでは農園主が、主にサトウキビなどの栽培に、ポルトガル・中国・朝鮮・日本・フィリピンからの契約労働者を用いた。多くの中国人移民も、契約労働者としてアメリカへ来た。彼らが結んでいたのは雇用者との契約ではなく、アメリカへの渡航費を支払うため、同胞の一人のために働くという合意だった。多くの中国人労働者は、中国人移民を北米へ運ぶため設立された中国人所有の事業体「六公司」によって海外へ連れて行かれ、帰国を許される前に会社への債務を返済しなければならなかった。

Other parts of the world also relied on various forms of contract labor once slavery had been abolished. During the nineteenth century, Australia depended on indentured laborers from the islands of the Pacific, such as the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Samoa, and the Gilbert Islands (now called Kiribati). A flourishing trade also provided Chinese and Indian laborers to work in Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and European colonies in Africa. These laborers were underpaid, overworked, brutally disciplined, and given only enough food to allow them to work. Reports about their poor treatment convinced many industrialized countries to end participation in the trade. Britain prohibited its ships from carrying Asian laborers to Cuba and Peru, two of the main destinations. In 1874, Portugal, following Britain’s example, prevented the trade from being carried on in Macao, a Portuguese colony in Asia through which many Chinese laborers were shipped elsewhere in the world.

奴隷制廃止後、世界の他地域もさまざまな契約労働に頼った。19世紀のオーストラリアは、ソロモン諸島、ツバル、サモア、ギルバート諸島（現在のキリバス）など太平洋の島々からの年季労働者に依存した。活発な人身取引は、ラテンアメリカ、カリブ海、東南アジア、アフリカのヨーロッパ植民地へ、中国人やインド人労働者も供給した。彼らは低賃金で酷使され、残虐な統制を受け、仕事ができるだけの食料しか与えられなかった。劣悪な扱いの報告によって、多くの工業国はこの取引への参加を終えることを決めた。イギリスは、主要な送り先だったキューバとペルーへのアジア人労働者の輸送を自国船に禁じた。1874年、ポルトガルもイギリスにならい、多くの中国人労働者が世界各地へ送られる経由地である、アジアのポルトガル植民地マカオで、この取引を禁止した。

Debt bondage was also a common source of labor in some parts of the world in the late nineteenth century. In the 1880s in Japan, faced with an economic depression that led many to bankruptcy and starvation, parents “rented” their children, especially daughters, to factories. The girls were provided with food and shelter, and money they earned was sent home to their parents. Daughters might also be hired out to brothels; dutiful ones might make the decision themselves to spare their parents the pain. In the United States, debt bondage was a common means by which southern farmers kept a labor force of African American people and poor White people at their disposal. It also trapped many Asian laborers who immigrated to South America, even after their contracts had expired.

19世紀後半、債務労働も世界の一部では一般的な労働力の供給源だった。1880年代の日本では、多くの人が破産や飢えに追い込まれる不況に直面し、親は子供、とりわけ娘を工場へ「貸し出した」。少女は食事と住まいを与えられ、稼いだ金は実家の親へ送られた。娘が売春宿へ出されることもあった。親孝行な娘は、親の苦痛を避けるため、自分でその決断をする場合もあった。アメリカでは、南部の農場主がアフリカ系アメリカ人や貧しい白人の労働力を自由に使える状態に保つため、債務労働を広く用いた。南米へ移住した多くのアジア人労働者も、契約が終了した後まで、この制度に縛られた。

In some places, debt bondage was nearly impossible to escape. Sharecroppers and tenant farmers working other people’s land depended on the harvest for their income. In the time before the harvest, they purchased necessities like food on credit from a local store, which was usually owned by the landlord. They also often needed to purchase seed and use equipment owned by the landlord. When they sold their crops following the harvest, they repaid their debts. Often, the prices of goods and the interest charged by the store owner were so high that income from the harvest was insufficient to satisfy the workers’ debts, and the unpaid portion was added to the amount borrowed against the next harvest. Some employers paid their workers with scrip, a substitute for money that could be exchanged only at the store the employer owned; because they could not shop elsewhere, laborers had no choice but to go into debt. In Japanese brothels, the young women were not paid in scrip, but the cost of everything provided for them, including clothing and food, was recorded, and the women could not go free until they had repaid both the original sum exchanged for them and the total cost of their upkeep.

場所によっては、債務労働から逃れるのはほぼ不可能だった。他人の土地を耕す分益小作人や借地農は、収穫に収入を依存していた。収穫前の期間には、通常は地主の所有する地元の店で、食料などの必需品を掛けで買った。種子を買い、地主の農具を使う必要もよくあった。収穫後に作物を売ると、借金を返済した。しかし商品の価格や店主が課す利息が高すぎて、収穫の収入では返済しきれず、未払い分が次の収穫を当てにした借金に加えられることが多かった。一部の雇用者は、スクリップという、自分の店でしか交換できない貨幣代用品で賃金を払った。他で買い物ができない労働者は、借金するほかなかった。日本の売春宿の若い女性は、スクリップで支払われたわけではなかったが、衣服や食料を含む、提供されたすべての費用が記録された。女性たちは、最初に自分と引き換えに支払われた金額と、維持費の全額の両方を返すまで、自由になれなかった。