Legacy Of Slavery And Indentured Labour

This book is the first publication originating from the conference Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour: Past, Present and Future, which was organised in June 2013, by the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR), Anton de Kom University of Suriname.

The age of imperialism ushered in a new phenomenon of large-scale organized migration of labourers through the systems of slavery and indenture, which were devised to feed the colonial political-economy. Another feature of such migrations was that it led to the permanent settlement of the uprooted African and Asian labourers in the new lands. These developments, in the long run, intertwined the histories of the ‘ruler’ and the ‘ruled’, the so-called ‘civilized’ and the ‘uncivilized’ along with the people from various continents, thus giving rise to plural societies. The narratives, however, remained dominated by the colonial legacies and frames of reference. Today such historical colonial narratives are being challenged and clarified through multi-disciplinary academic engagements. The authors in this volume take gender as a prominent analytical category and raise new questions and understandings in the way we conceptualize, document and write about gendered migrations in the diaspora. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The Caribbean history provides a rich study of the different forms of labour systems that have historically marked the politics of the coloniser and the colonised. It further provides the basis for an essential study for discourses on colonialism and capitalism. This interdisciplinary volume bridges the gap between historiography and the present-day diasporic communities, which emerged from the slave trade and indenture. Through case studies from the Caribbean context, the volume demonstrates how the region’s historical labour mobility remains central to performances and negotiations of collective memory and identity. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This book is the second publication originating from the conference Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour: Past, present and future, which was organised in June 2013, by the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR), Anton de Kom University of Suriname. The articles are grouped in four sections. Section one concentrates on indenture in the Caribbean and the IndianOcean and includes four diverse, but inter-related chapters and contributions. These reveal some newly- emerging, impressive trends in the study of indenture, essentially departing from the over used neo-slave scholarship. Not only are new concepts explored and analysed, but this section also raises unavoidable questions on previously published studies on indenture. Section two shows that there are many areas that need to be re-examined and explored in the study of indenture. The chapters in this section re-examine personal narratives of indentured labourers, the continuous connection between the Caribbean and India as well as education and Christianization of Indians in Trinidad. The result is impressive. The analysis of personal accounts or voices of indentured servants themselves certainly provides an alternative perception to archival information written mostly by the organizers of indenture. Section three in this volume focuses on ethnicity and politics. In segmented societies like Suriname, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago institutional politics and political mobilization are mainly ethnically based. In Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana this has led to ethnic and political tensions. These themes are explored in these three articles. Section four addresses health, medicine and spirituality – themes which, until recently, have received little attention. The first article examines the historical impact of colonialism through indentureship, on the health, health alternatives and health preferences of Indo-Trinidadians, from the period between 1845 to the present. The second examines the use of protective talismans by Indian indentured labourers and their descendants. Little or no psychological research has been done on the spiritual world of Indian immigrants, enslaved Africans and their respective descendants, with special reference to the use of talismans.

This book is the third publication originating from the conference Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour: Past, present and future, which was organised in June 2013 by the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research (IGSR), Anton de Kom University of Suriname.

From the 1600s, enslaved people, and after abolition of slavery, indentured labourers were transported to work on plantations in distant European colonies. Inhuman conditions and new pathogens often resulted in disease and death. Central to this book is the encounter between introduced and local understanding of disease and the therapeutic responses in the Caribbean, Indian and Pacific contexts. European response to diseases, focussed on protecting the white minority. Enslaved labourers from Africa and indentured labourers from India, China and Java provided interpretations and answers to health challenges based on their own cultures and medicinal understanding of the plants they had brought with them or which they found in the natural habitat of their new homes. Colonizers, enslaved and indentured labourers learned from each other and from the indigenous peoples who were marginalized by the expansion of plantations. This volume explores the medical, cultural and personal implications of these encounters, with the broad concept of medical pluralism linking the diversity of regional and cultural focus offered in each chapter. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Chiefly with reference to Suriname; conference organized by the Institute of Graduate Studies and Research, and the Faculty of Humanities of the Anton de Kom University of Suriname.