Forced Agriculture after Abolition: Vagrancy Laws in Liberia of the 1960s

In 1963, Liberia’s vagrancy laws were revised to respond “to the implementation of priority number one, Operation Production”, according to the president. The country was suffering a major rice shortage at the time, which officials hoped to ameliorate by launching a nation-wide call for greater levels of agricultural production. But in order for that to have any success officials needed a solution to the labor shortage. It was consequently decided that supposed vagrants be returned to their rural home village if they were unable to prove some forms of employment in the capital, Monrovia. And in the rural areas private landowners, many of whom were representatives of the state, including district commissioners and paramount chiefs, were regularly accused of practicing forced labor. This paper will also look at debates over vagrancy between officials and members of the ILO during the 1960s. It will discuss the mechanisms of vagrancy legislation in Liberia after 1963, when Operation Production began, to see if and how the state benefitted from such measures. Finally, it will examine some of the responses of those affected by the threat of forced labor.