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Urban Masculinity in a ‘Coal City’ - Enugu, Nigeria during World War II
| Enugu, Nigeria is the location of West Africa’s only coal mines. Opened in World War I the mines became a strategic resource for fuel supplies of West Africa’s railways and steamships for both World Wars. The coal miners became a vanguard of working class militancy in the earliest days of the industry and they introduced a model of masculinity that came to shape urban life for most African men. This paper will explore the multiple forms of masculinity that emerged when this city was established in 1914 through World War II, when it became a hot bed of radical nationalism. It looks at how the mines shaped the city in general and impacted upon the ways that African men represented and constructed gendered and racial identities. Finally, it centers work in the process of identity formation and identifies links between labor militance and the political radicalism of the city, which in World War II became known as ‘Red Enugu’.
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