Radical History Review Issue 91 (Winter 2005): 40–61 Copyright 2005 by MARHO: The Radical Historians’ Organization, Inc. 40 Atlantic and Pacific Crossings: Race, Empire, and “the Labor Problem” in the Late Nineteenth Century Matthew Guterl and Christine Skwiot Colour white and colour brown, Brahmin and Pariah, domineering Anglo-Saxon and supple Asian, masters and servants, lord and serf, Government and labourers, Planters and Coolies. . . . Often has the world seen a similar controversy, the scene shifting with the shifting fortunes of races. — John Edward Jenkins, The Coolie W hen the war between England and the Boer settlers in southern Africa ended in 1902, many of the so-called Randlords hungered for the return of “native” workers, who had been drawn away by the conflict. Any profit from the deep mines of the Transvaal colony depended on the exploitation of a poorly paid labor force. But would that labor force be white or black or something else? Was the Transvaal to pro- mote itself as a settler colony like Australia, Canada, or the United States? Or was it to become an extractive dependency like India, Jamaica, or British Guiana? Was the abundance of southern Africa for rich whites only? Or could the unemployed white masses of England benefit from the possibilities of work there? The public debate over these questions pitted organized labor in England against capital, for the mine owners were quite content to keep the “refuse and wastrels” of England at bay, leav- ing only an “aristocracy” of white peoples in place. 1 “Gold,” Thomas Naylor, a lib- Radical History Review Published by Duke University Press