Houseboys: Domestic Labour Practices in Spanish Settlers’ Homes in Colonial West Africa

Abstract

The presence of houseboys, cooks, motoboys, and other domestic workers was a key feature of the household for Spanish settlers in colonial West Africa. This essay will attempt to enter into the colonizer’s home, to unpack this presence marked by gender and servitude as primal facets of colonial exploitation. It will engage with various archives—from traces of servants’ voices scattered in official documentation, to rare autobiographical sketches, to collections of photographs from private family albums—all inextricably bound to the complex relationships that defined colonial African and Spanish interactions.