Slaves Freedmen And Indentured Laborers In Colonial Mauritius

In this wide-ranging social and economic history of the island of Mauritius, from French colonization in 1721 to the beginnings of modern political life in the colony in the mid-1930s, Richard Allen brings out the importance of domestic capital formation, particularly in the sugar industry. He describes the changing relationship between different elements in the society - slave, free and maroon, and East Indian indentured populations - and shows how these were conditioned by demographic changes, world markets and local institutions. Based on thorough archival research, and thoroughly attuned to contemporary debates, this 1999 book will bring the Mauritian case to the attention of scholars engaged in the comparative study of slavery and plantation systems.

"This book addresses historical issues of colonialism and race, which influenced the formation of multicultural society in Mauritius. During the 19th century, Mauritius was Britain's prime sugar-producing colony, yet, unlike the West Indies, its history has remained significantly under-researched. The modern demographic of multi-ethnic Mauritius is unusual as, in the absence of an indigenous people, descendants of colonists, slaves and indentured labourers constitute the majority of the island's population today. Thus, it may be said that the Mauritian nation was "assembled" during the period in question. This work draws on an in-depth examination of the two labour systems through which the island came to be populated: slavery and indenture. In studying the relevant laws, four legal events of historical importance within the context of these two labour systems are identified: the abolition of the slave trade, the abolition of slavery, private indentured labour migration and state-regulated indenture. This book is notable in that it presents a legal analysis of core historical events, thus straddling the line between two disciplines, and covers both slavery and indentured labour in Mauritian history. Mauritius, as an originally uninhabited island, presents a rare case study for inquiries into colonial legacies, multiculturalism and race consciousness. The book will be a valuable resource to scholars worldwide in the fields of slavery, indenture, and the legal apparatus of forced labour"--

This book presents a comparative history of slavery and the transition from slavery to free labour in Zanzibar and Mauritius, within the context of a wider comparative study of the subject in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. Both countries are islands, with roughly the same size of area and populations, a common colonial history, and both are multicultural societies. However, despite inhabiting and using the same oceanic space, there are differences in experiences and structures which deserve to be explored. In the nineteenth century, two types of slave systems developed on the islands – while Zanzibar represented a variant of an Indian Ocean slave system, Mauritius represented a variant of the Atlantic system – yet both flourished when the world was already under the hegemony of the global capitalist mode of production. This comparison, therefore, has to be seen in the context of their specific historical conjunctures and the types of slave systems in the overall theoretical conception of modes of production within which they manifested themselves, a concept that has become unfashionable but which is still essential. The starting point of many such efforts to compare slave systems has naturally been the much-studied slavery in the Atlantic region which has been used to provide a paradigm with which to study any type of slavery anywhere in the world. However, while Mauritian slavery was 100 per cent colonial slavery, slavery in Zanzibar has been described as ‘Islamic slavery’. Both established plantation economies, although with different products, Zanzibar with cloves and Mauritius with sugar, and in both cases, the slaves faced a potential conflictual situation between former masters and slaves in the post-emancipation period.

This book addresses historical issues of colonialism and race, which influenced the formation of multicultural society in Mauritius. During the 19th century, Mauritius was Britain’s prime sugar-producing colony, yet, unlike the West Indies, its history has remained significantly under-researched. The modern demographic of multi-ethnic Mauritius is unusual as, in the absence of an indigenous people, descendants of colonists, slaves and indentured labourers constitute the majority of the island’s population today. Thus, it may be said that the Mauritian nation was "assembled" during the period in question. This work draws on an in-depth examination of the two labour systems through which the island came to be populated: slavery and indenture. In studying the relevant laws, four legal events of historical importance within the context of these two labour systems are identified: the abolition of the slave trade, the abolition of slavery, private indentured labour migration and state-regulated indenture. This book is notable in that it presents a legal analysis of core historical events, thus straddling the line between two disciplines, and covers both slavery and indentured labour in Mauritian history. Mauritius, as an originally uninhabited island, presents a rare case study for inquiries into colonial legacies, multiculturalism and race consciousness. The book will be a valuable resource to scholars worldwide in the fields of slavery, indenture and the legal apparatus of forced labour.

Between 1500 and 1850, European traders shipped hundreds of thousands of African, Indian, Malagasy, and Southeast Asian slaves to ports throughout the Indian Ocean world. The activities of the British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese traders who operated in the Indian Ocean demonstrate that European slave trading was not confined largely to the Atlantic but must now be viewed as a truly global phenomenon. European slave trading and abolitionism in the Indian Ocean also led to the development of an increasingly integrated movement of slave, convict, and indentured labor during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the consequences of which resonated well into the twentieth century. Richard B. Allen’s magisterial work dramatically expands our understanding of the movement of free and forced labor around the world. Drawing upon extensive archival research and a thorough command of published scholarship, Allen challenges the modern tendency to view the Indian and Atlantic oceans as self-contained units of historical analysis and the attendant failure to understand the ways in which the Indian Ocean and Atlantic worlds have interacted with one another. In so doing, he offers tantalizing new insights into the origins and dynamics of global labor migration in the modern world.

The first comprehensive historical survey of a hitherto neglected and only partially known migration: the export of Indians to supply the labour needed in producing plantation crops in Mauritius, South and East Africa, Caribbean and other countries. This followed the legal ending of slavery and Professor Tinker shows the many features the two systems had in common.

Slavery and Bonded Labor in Asia, 1250–1900 is the first collection of studies to focus on slavery and related forms of labor throughout Asia. The 15 chapters by an international group of scholars assess the current state of Asian slavery studies, discuss new research on slave systems in Asia, identify avenues for future research, and explore new approaches to reconstructing the history of slavery and bonded labor in Asia and, by extension, elsewhere in the globe. Individual chapters examine slavery, slave trading, abolition, and bonded labor in places as diverse as Ceylon, China, India, Korea, the Mongol Empire, the Philippines, the Sulu Archipelago, and Timor in local, regional, pan-regional, and comparative contexts. Contributors are: Richard B. Allen, Michael D. Bennett, Claude Chevaleyre, Jeff Fynn-Paul, Hans Hägerdal, Shawna Herzog, Jessica Hinchy, Kumari Jayawardena, Rachel Kurian, Bonny Ling, Christopher Lovins, Stephanie Mawson, Anthony Reid, James Francis Warren, Don J. Wyatt, Harriet T. Zurndorfer.