Editing Child labour (section)

===Colonial empires===
Systematic use of child labour was commonplace in the colonies of European powers between 1650 and 1950. In Africa, colonial administrators encouraged traditional kin-ordered modes of production, that is hiring a household for work not just the adults. Millions of children worked in colonial agricultural plantations, mines and domestic service industries.<ref name="bass04">{{cite book|title=Child Labour in Sub-Saharan Africa|last=Bass |first=Loretta|year=2004|isbn=978-1588262868|pages=[https://archive.org/details/childlaborinsubs00lore/page/30 30–43]|publisher=Lynne Rienner Publications|url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/childlaborinsubs00lore/page/30}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=The World of Child Labour|first=Beverly |last=Grier |editor-first=Hugh |editor-last=Hindman|publisher=M.E. Sharpe|year=2009|pages=173–177|isbn=978-0-7656-1707-1}}</ref> Sophisticated schemes were promulgated where children in these colonies between the ages of 5 and 14 were hired as an apprentice without pay in exchange for learning a craft. A system of Pauper Apprenticeship came into practice in the 19th century where the colonial master neither needed the native parents' nor child's approval to assign a child to labour, away from parents, at a distant farm owned by a different colonial master.<ref>{{cite book|title=Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955 (Studies in Legal History)|last=Hay|first=Douglas|year=2007|isbn=978-0807828779|pages=38–46|publisher= University of North Carolina Press}}</ref> Other schemes included 'earn-and-learn' programs where children would work and thereby learn. Britain for example passed a law, the so-called Masters and Servants Act of 1899, followed by Tax and Pass Law, to encourage child labour in colonies particularly in Africa. These laws offered the native people the legal ownership to some of the native land in exchange for making labour of wife and children available to colonial government's needs such as in farms and as ''picannins''.{{citation needed|date=October 2017}}
[[File:Jakarta slumlife62.JPG|thumb|Child picking up trash in [[Jakarta]], [[Indonesia]].]]
Beyond laws, new taxes were imposed on colonies. One of these taxes was the [[tax per head|Head Tax]] in the [[British Empire|British]] and [[French colonial empire|French]] colonial empires. The tax was imposed on everyone older than 8 years, in some colonies. To pay these taxes and cover living expenses, children in colonial households had to work.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Child labour in the Gold Coast: the economics of work, education and the family in late-colonial Africa, c.1940-57|last=Lord|first=Jack |journal=The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth|volume=4|issue=1|year=2011|pages=88–115 |url=https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/11595/1/Jack_Lord%2C_Child_Labor_in_the_Gold_Coast.pdf|doi=10.1353/hcy.2011.0005|s2cid=143683964}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Invisible Hands: Child Labour and the State in Colonial Zimbabwe by Beverly Grier (a review)|last=Wells|first=Karen|journal=The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth|volume=1|number=3|date=Fall 2008|pages=481–483 |doi= 10.1353/hcy.0.0025 |s2cid=144242016}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Head Tax, Social Structure and Rural Incomes in Cameroun, 1922-1937|last=Guyer|first=Jane|s2cid=143600106|journal=Cahiers d'Études Africaines|volume=20 |issue=79|year=1980|pages=305–329|doi=10.3406/cea.1980.2338 |hdl=2144/40432|hdl-access=free}}</ref>

In southeast Asian colonies, such as Hong Kong, child labour such as the ''[[Mui tsai]]'' (妹仔), was rationalised as a cultural tradition and ignored by British authorities.<ref>{{cite book|title=Child slavery in Hong Kong: the mui tsai system|year=1930|author=Hugh Lyttleton Haslewood|publisher=Sheldon Press}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=Theorizing the Chinese: The MUI TSAI controversy and construction of transnational chineseness in Hong Kong and British Malaya|last=Yuen|first=Karen|journal=New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies|volume=6|number=2|date=December 2004|pages=95–110 |url=http://www.nzasia.org.nz/downloads/NZJAS-Dec04/6_2_6.pdf|access-date=17 July 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200805150302/http://www.nzasia.org.nz/downloads/NZJAS-Dec04/6_2_6.pdf |archive-date=5 August 2020|url-status=dead}}</ref> The [[Dutch East India Company]] officials rationalised their child labour abuses with, "it is a way to save these children from a worse fate." Christian mission schools in regions stretching from Zambia to Nigeria too required work from children, and in exchange provided religious education, not [[secular education]].<ref name="bass04" /> Elsewhere, the Canadian Dominion Statutes in form of so-called Breaches of Contract Act, stipulated jail terms for uncooperative child workers.<ref>{{cite book|title=Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955 (Studies in Legal History)|last=Hay|first=Douglas|year=2007|isbn=978-0807828779|pages=203–207|publisher= University of North Carolina Press}}</ref>

Proposals to regulate child labour began as early as 1786.<ref>{{cite journal |author-link=Steve Charnovitz |first=Steve |last=Charnovitz |title=Child Labour: What to do? |journal=Journal of Commerce |date=15 August 1996}}</ref>
[[File:SenegalHerder.jpg|thumb|Young [[shepherd]] in [[Senegal|Senegal.]]]]