Dissertations / Theses: 'Indentured labour'

1

Rajkomar, Sraddha Shivani. "Vaishnavism and indentured labour in Mauritian literature." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.579537.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis addresses two key issues of postcolonial studies that remain under- represented in Anglophone academic circles: the history of Indian indentured labour in Mauritius that began in the nineteenth century and ended in the twentieth century; and the importance of religion in representations of histories of arbitrary colonial control and anti-colonialist struggle. Cross-disciplinary in scope, the thesis nevertheless adopts a literary methodological approach in the examination of poetic and prose texts written by four Mauritian authors from extremely diverse religious and social backgrounds who share a common interest in the fraught history of indenture. These authors are: Leoville L'Homme (1857-1928), Robert-Edward Hart (1891-1954), Marcel Cabon (1912-1972), and Abhimanyu Unnuth (1937- ). Each author's engagement with Vaishnavism, a Hindu tradition, shapes and reflects the visceral individual experiences of a chapter of Mauritian history that brought about one of the most important demographic, social and political changes in the island. In the Introduction, I provide extensive methodological, historical and conceptual contextualisation for the thesis, and establish indenture to be a traumatic phenomenon on a scale that is comparable to that of its predecessor, slavery. The subsequent chapters - which further contribute to postcolonial studies by participating in debates such as Orientalism, colonial desire and masculinity - are each devoted to one author and their relevant texts. In Chapters 1 and 2, I argue that using Vaishnavism, the religion of the colonised, by members of the colonial elite in representations of indenture inevitably consolidates colonialist control in a discursive manner. In Chapters 3 and 4, I look at how the same religion empowers the colonised subject in overcoming the trauma of indenture and in resistance to the sugar plantation system. To conclude, I reflect on the scope of the thesis and its contribution to postcolonial scholarship.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

2

Durgahee, Reshaad. "The indentured archipelago : experiences of Indian indentured labour in Mauritius and Fiji, 1871-1916." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2017. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/44058/.

Full text

Abstract:

Between 1829 and 1917, over 1.3 million men, women and children travelled from India to the sugar colonies of the British, French, Dutch and Danish empires as indentured labourers. They worked on sugar plantations deprived of labour following the abolition of slavery. I propose that two conceptual innovations can help us understand the historical geographies of indenture and of imperialism more broadly. The first is that the indenture system created an indentured archipelago encompassing colonies not geographically located together but which had a shared experienced of indenture. This thesis focuses on two colonies of the indentured archipelago between 1871 and 1916, Mauritius and Fiji. Mauritius was the first British colony to begin recruiting Indian indentured labourers (over 450,000) and Fiji the last (over 60,000). The second conceptual innovation is that of subaltern careering, which examines the hitherto unexplored re-migration amongst Indian indentured labourers between sugar colonies and the wider colonial world. This phenomenon challenges the spatiality of empire and brings to the fore questions of subaltern agency. Analysing the lived spaces of Indian indentured labourers in Mauritius and Fiji and their movements within the indentured archipelago, avoids the colonial compartmentalisation of the Indian indenture experience that has characterised scholarship to date. In doing so, this thesis radically alters the accepted geography of the Indian indenture system. The thesis considers a period that begins with the appointment of Arthur Hamilton-Gordon as Governor of Mauritius in 1871 and concludes with the end of indentured transportation to Fiji in 1916. Gordon’s transfer from Mauritius to become Governor of Fiji in 1875 connected the two colonies. In Fiji he initiated the use of Indian indentured labour to support the colony’s burgeoning sugar industry. He oversaw the start of an era of connection between Mauritius and Fiji as colonial officials, ordinances, ideas and practices and indentured labourers themselves travelled between the two. In focusing on two colonies, the thesis enables a broader understanding of the varied experiences of indenture. The thesis re-orders the way in which historical geography has engaged with movements through empire by focusing on trans-oceanic subaltern mobility. The archipelagic framework used, inverts the notion of core-periphery and places Mauritius and Fiji, seemingly peripheral parts of empire, firmly at the core of the late 19th and early 20th century Indo-Pacific.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

3

Bright, Rachel. "Chinese indentured labour in South Africa and the formation of a nation 1902-10." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.720570.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

4

Pirbhai, Mariam. "The multiple voices of indenture history : the South Asian diasporic novel in English." Thèse, [Montréal] : Université de Montréal, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/umontreal/fullcit?pNQ92768.

Full text

Abstract:

Thèse (Ph.D.) -- Université de Montréal, 2004.
"Thèse présentée à la Faculté des études supérieures en vue de l'obtention du grade de Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) en études anglaises" Version électronique également disponible sur Internet.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

5

Bel, Carine. "Mémoire et identité dans les récits de vie des insulaires australiens du pacifique sud : une lutte pour la reconnaissance." Thesis, Montpellier 3, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017MON30050.

Full text

Abstract:

Cette étude reconsidère les récits de vie d’auteurs méconnus issus de la communauté des Insulaires australiens du Pacifique Sud dans une perspective postcoloniale. Elle se concentre sur leur expérience de déplacement et de relocalisation telle qu’elle est racontée dans les récits en lien avec la mémoire. Cette thèse avance que ces récits constituent une littérature de résistance et contribue dans leur ensemble à une plus large reconnaissance de leur communauté. Les Insulaires australiens se définissent comme les descendants d’Insulaires en provenance de Mélanésie principalement (Vanuatu et îles Salomon), engagés sous contrat (« Kanakas ») pour travailler dès 1863 dans les plantations de canne à sucre du Queensland dans des conditions proches de l’esclavage. Les souvenirs personnels des auteurs présentés, Faith Bandler, Noel Fatnowna, Mabel Edmund et Jacqui Wright associée à Francis Wimbis, de même que ceux de leurs ancêtres kidnappés, victimes du « blackbirding », mettent en lumière une histoire commune de souffrance, de discrimination mais aussi de survie et d’adaptation qui servit de base à la création d’une identité commune inédite en dépit de leurs diverses origines géographiques. Bien que leur existence ait fait l’objet d’une d’une reconnaissance officielle, cette identité inscrite sur le papier n’est pas aussi fixe et unique qu’il n’y paraît : elle s’intègre dans un réseau d’identités-relations maintenues en interaction constante par le travail mémoriel qui, dans les récits insulaires, opère à la fois comme stratégie de résistance à l’oubli et comme processus d’identification. A la fois ancrées en des lieux et déterritorialisées, ces identités dynamiques évoluent à la manière d’un rhizome et inscrivent les Insulaires australiens sur une carte plus large des populations diasporiques déplacées
This dissertation reconsiders the life narratives of unrecognised writers belonging to the Australian South Sea Islander community from a postcolonial perspective. It concentrates on their experience of dispersion and relocation as related by memory and recounted in narrative. This thesis argues that these narratives constitute a literature of resistance and contribute as a body of work, to a larger recognition of their community. Australian South Sea Islanders define themselves as the descendants of Islanders who mainly came from Melanesia (Vanuatu, Solomon Islands) and were indentured to work on the sugar cane plantations of Queensland from 1863 to 1904 in slave-like conditions. The personal memories of the authors under study, Faith Bandler, Noel Fatnowna, Mabel Edmund and Jacqui Wright in association with Francis Wimbis, as well as those of their abducted ancestors, victims of « blackbirding », shed light on a common history of suffering, discrimination but also survival and adaptation which enabled them to create a new common identity despite their various geographical origins. Although their existence has been officially recognised, this identity, as written on paper, is not as fixed and unique as it seems: it is part of a network of identités-relations which, in the case of Australian South Sea Islanders’ narratives, are maintained in constant interaction by the work of memory that operates as a strategy of resistance against oblivion and as a process of identification. In being both rooted and deterritorialised, these dynamic identities are evolving in the same way as a rhizome would and they inscribe Australian South Sea Islanders on a larger map of diasporic displaced people

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

6

Griffiths, Philip Gavin, and phil@philgriffiths id au. "The making of White Australia: Ruling class agendas, 1876-1888." The Australian National University. Faculty of Arts, 2007. http://thesis.anu.edu.au./public/adt-ANU20080101.181655.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis argues that the colonial ruling class developed its first White Australia policy in 1888, creating most of the precedents for the federal legislation of 1901. White Australia was central to the making of the Australian working class, to the shaping of Australian nationalism, and the development of federal political institutions. It has long been understood as a product of labour movement mobilising, but this thesis rejects that approach, arguing that the labour movement lacked the power to impose such a fundamental national policy, and that the key decisions which led to White Australia were demonstrably not products of labour movement action. ¶ It finds three great ruling class agendas behind the decisions to exclude Chinese immigrants, and severely limit the use of indentured coloured labour. Chinese people were seen as a strategic threat to Anglo-Australian control of the continent, and this fear was sharpened in the mid-1880s when China was seen as a rising military power, and a necessary ally for Britain in its global rivalry with Russia. The second ruling class agenda was the building of a modern industrial economy, which might be threatened by industries resting on indentured labour in the north. The third agenda was the desire to construct an homogenous people, which was seen as necessary for containing social discontent and allowing free institutions, such as parliamentary democracy. ¶ These agendas, and the ruling class interests behind them, challenged other major ruling class interests and ideologies. The result was a series of dilemmas and conflicts within the ruling class, and the resolution of these moved the colonial governments towards the White Australia policy of 1901. The thesis therefore describes the conflict over the use of Pacific Islanders by pastoralists in Queensland, the campaign for indentured Indian labour by sugar planters and the radical strategy of submerging this into a campaign for North Queensland separation, and the strike and anti-Chinese campaign in opposition to the use of Chinese workers by the Australasian Steam Navigation Company in 1878. The first White Australia policy of 1888 was the outcome of three separate struggles by the majority of the Anglo-Australian ruling classto narrowly restrict the use of indentured labour in Queensland, to assert the right of the colonies to decide their collective immigration policies independently of Britain, and to force South Australia to accept the end of Chinese immigration into its Northern Territory. The dominant elements in the ruling class had already agreed that any serious move towards federation was to be conditional on the building of a white, predominantly British, population across the whole continent, and in 1888 they imposed that policy on their own societies and the British government.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

7

Guerci, Mark Thomas. "Hawaiian Emancipation?: Slavery, Free Labor, and Indentured Labor in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii." W&M ScholarWorks, 2015. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626799.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

8

Carter, M. "Indian labour migration to Mauritius and the indenture experience 1834-1874." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.234302.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

9

Iannini, Craig, and Craig Iannini. "Contracted chattel : indentured and apprenticed labor in Cape Town, c.1808-1840." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1995. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/23252.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis examines indentured and apprenticed labor in Cape Town between the years 1808 and 1840. Through analysis of primary material such as the South African Commercial Advertiser, the Colonist, and the Mediator, as well as contemporary travel accounts, contracts of indenture and apprenticeship, and an examination of the records of the Cape Town Magistrates, this study explores the attitudes and perceptions towards indentured and apprenticed labor by both employers and indentured and apprenticed servants.This study hopes to add to the existing literature pertaining to nineteenth-century Cape Colony labor. This thesis commences with an examination of the different indenture and apprenticeship systems which existed in Cape Town between the years 1808 and 1840. It explores the issue of how employers and the government sought to maintain a constant supply of labor in the city as the prominence of urban slavery declined. It also discusses the important issue of how employers defined the terms apprentice and indenture. Chapter two explores the topic of child apprenticeship in Cape Town between the years 1812 to 1840, and illustrates that the notion of child apprenticeship was understood in different ways between employers and parents of apprenticed children. Chapter three investigates the stereotypes Cape Town's English speaking employers held towards the city's indentured and apprenticed laborers. The final chapter explores the question of status and incorporation into Cape Town society for the city's indentured and apprenticed laborers, and demonstrates that laborers did not enjoy equal status to the city's slaves.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

10

Huitelec, Didier. "Les Indiens esclaves et libres de la société bourbonnaise au XVIIIème siècle." Thesis, La Réunion, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018LARE0046.

Full text

Abstract:

Les nombreux travaux portant sur les Indiens à l’île Bourbon / La Réunion ont apporté une bonne connaissance de cette communauté, mais se sont essentiellement intéressés au groupe des travailleurs engagés au XIXe siècle, surtout après 1848. Cette étude, qui s’inscrit dans le cadre des subaltern studies, a pour but de mettre en lumière ce que signifie être un Indien de la société bourbonnaise au XVIIIe siècle. Depuis la mise en culture du café au début du XVIIIe siècle jusqu’à l’abolition de l’esclavage en 1848, les Indiens ne forment pas un groupe homogène puisque certains sont amenés comme main-d’œuvre servile et d’autres sont engagés comme travailleurs libres. Les conditions de vie de ces deux groupes sont différentes. L’étude, qui exploite les fiches 480 individuelles de recensement, porte sur leur nombre, la répartition par sexe, leur localisation spatiale dans la colonie, leur habitat. En interrogeant les archives notariales, les portes des foyers qui s’entrouvrent, dévoilent ainsi les espaces de l’intimité (espace de vie, du repas, du repos, du travail) et offrent une bonne vision de la formation des couples, des relations familiales et extra familiales
The many studies on the Indians at Bourbon Island / Reunion brought a good knowledge of this community, but were mainly interested in the group of workers engaged in the nineteenth century, especially after 1848. This study, which is part of the subaltern studies, aims to highlight what it means to be an Indian in Bourbon society in the eighteenth century. From coffee cultivation in the early eighteenth century to the abolition of slavery in 1848, Indians did not form a homogenous group, some were brought in as slave labor and others were engaged as free workers. The living conditions of these two groups are different. The study wonders about their number, the distribution by sex, their spatial location in the colony, their habitat. By interrogating the notarial archives, the doors of the homes that open up, reveal the spaces of intimacy (space for living, meals, rest, work) and offer a good vision of the formation of couples, relationships family and extrafamily

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

11

Ali, Ibrahim. "Esclaves, engagés et travailleurs libres à la Grande Comore et au Mozambique pendant le sultanat de Saïd Ali ben Saïd Omar (1883-1910)." Thesis, Paris 4, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017PA040028.

Full text

Abstract:

Cette thèse étudie du trafic des esclaves au départ de l’Afrique orientale (Mozambique) vers les Comores où des planteurs étrangers venaient les acheter comme engagés libres. Le sultanat de Saïd Ali né en 1883, a bénéficié de la protection de de la France en 1886. Malgré ce protectorat, l’esclavage n’est aboli qu’en 1904. Pour maintenir la main-d’œuvre coloniale, l’État protecteur a retardé cette abolition. Face aux hésitations, le sultanat est rattaché à Magascar en 1908, le sultan abdique en 1910, avant que la Grande Comore devienne colonie française en 1912
This Thesis studies the slaves trade starting from East Africa to Comoros where foreign growers came to buy them as free Endentured servant. The Sultanat of Saïd Ali born in 1883 benefited of French protection in 1886. Even thought this protectorate, the slavery is abolished in 1904. To maintain the colonialworkforce, The Protecting State has delayed this abolition. In front of theses hesitations, the Sultan is attached to Madagascar in 1908, the sultan abdicated in 1910, before that the Great Comoro become a French colony in 1912

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

12

Chowdhury, Amitava. "Horizons of memory a global processual study of cultural memory and identity of the South Asian indentured labor diaspora in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean /." Online access for everyone, 2008. http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Dissertations/Summer2008/a_chowdhury_060308.pdf.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

13

Ali, Ibrahim. "Esclaves, engagés et travailleurs libres à la Grande Comore et au Mozambique pendant le sultanat de Saïd Ali ben Saïd Omar (1883-1910)." Electronic Thesis or Diss., Paris 4, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017PA040028.

Full text

Abstract:

Cette thèse étudie du trafic des esclaves au départ de l’Afrique orientale (Mozambique) vers les Comores où des planteurs étrangers venaient les acheter comme engagés libres. Le sultanat de Saïd Ali né en 1883, a bénéficié de la protection de de la France en 1886. Malgré ce protectorat, l’esclavage n’est aboli qu’en 1904. Pour maintenir la main-d’œuvre coloniale, l’État protecteur a retardé cette abolition. Face aux hésitations, le sultanat est rattaché à Magascar en 1908, le sultan abdique en 1910, avant que la Grande Comore devienne colonie française en 1912
This Thesis studies the slaves trade starting from East Africa to Comoros where foreign growers came to buy them as free Endentured servant. The Sultanat of Saïd Ali born in 1883 benefited of French protection in 1886. Even thought this protectorate, the slavery is abolished in 1904. To maintain the colonialworkforce, The Protecting State has delayed this abolition. In front of theses hesitations, the Sultan is attached to Madagascar in 1908, the sultan abdicated in 1910, before that the Great Comoro become a French colony in 1912

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

14

Hathaway, Dana S. "Human Trafficking and Slavery: Towards a New Framework for Prevention and Responsibility." PDXScholar, 2012. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/534.

Full text

Abstract:

Human trafficking and slavery are horrific crimes that require strict penalties for perpetrators and effective protections for survivors, but these crimes are in part facilitated by a system of laws and norms that effectively marginalize certain populations--the "unskilled" migrant. In this thesis I aim to reexamine and reinterpret the problem of human trafficking and slavery in a way that highlights the background conditions to the problem. I argue that the framework used as a conceptual foundation for addressing the problem limits the scope of responsibility. Specifically, the framework fails to acknowledge structural contributing factors I show to be relevant: law, policy, and norms impacting immigration and migrant labor. I assert that the limited scope of responsibility, which focuses heavily on direct perpetrators of the crime, leaves largely unexamined the role of social-structural processes in contributing to the problem. I use the United States as a case study in order to provide a targeted analysis of social-structural processes that contribute to the problem. In this examination of the United States, I focus on agricultural and domestic slavery. In conclusion, I attempt to build a new conceptual framework that calls attention to social-structural processes and includes this understanding in assigning responsibility for the problem. I assert that anti-trafficking efforts must account for the role of social-structural processes and that these contributing factors must be adequately addressed and incorporated into the framework for prevention.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

15

Weir, Christine Helen. "The work of mission race, labour and Christian humanitarianism in the south-west Pacific, 1870-1930 /." 2003. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/228504594.html.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

16

Meyer, Anja. "An assessment of metabolic bone disease in the skeletal remains of Chinese indentured mine labourers from the Witwatersrand." Diss., 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/33240.

Full text

Abstract:

An essential part of bioarchaeology is the study of diet and nutrition and its effects on the general health of a person. Interpretation of nutritional and metabolic disease related pathologies often provide additional insight into the daily social and cultural practices of people. It is therefore also an essential part of understanding differences amongst past populations from archaeological contexts and provides an alternative means for cross referencing historical accounts. In this study the skeletal remains of 36 Chinese indentured mine labourers, who worked and died on the Witwatersrand mines during the period AD 1904-1910, were assessed for any signs of metabolic or nutritionally related signs of disease. Historical information suggests that these indentured Chinese labourers came from poverty stricken communities in China where disease and malnutrition were often encountered. Once in South Africa they were again subjected to the harsh living and working conditions associated with mining. Analyses suggest that all 36 individuals were males between the ages of 16 and 45 years, with the majority being of young adult age (20-34 years). Pathology that could be observed included a high prevalence of nutrition-related changes and linear enamel hypoplasia which suggests that the Chinese miners had been subjected to long periods of malnutrition and illness throughout childhood continuing into adulthood. Nevertheless, a large proportion of lesions associated with malnutrition showed some degree of healing. A high frequency of traumatic lesions, specifically peri-mortem fractures, was observed and may have contributed to the death of many of the Chinese miners. It therefore seems that even though the healing of pathological lesions associated with malnutrition indicated a period of improved nutritional intake, possibly during their time on the Witwatersrand mines, the high prevalence of peri-mortem fractures attests to the hazardous working conditions associated with deep-level mining. In order to aid in the interpretation of skeletal pathology associated with metabolic and nutritional diseases non-specific signs of disease observed in a cadaver skeletal sample with known causes of death (related to specific metabolic or nutritional diseases) were compared to pathology observed in the Chinese miners. This provided pathological patterns which enabled a better interpretation of the pathology observed in the Chinese skeletal remains.
Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2014.
am2014
Anatomy
unrestricted

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

17

Griffiths, Philip Gavin. "The making of White Australia: Ruling class agendas, 1876-1888." Phd thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/47107.

Full text

Abstract:

This thesis argues that the colonial ruling class developed its first White Australia policy in 1888, creating most of the precedents for the federal legislation of 1901. White Australia was central to the making of the Australian working class, to the shaping of Australian nationalism, and the development of federal political institutions. It has long been understood as a product of labour movement mobilising, but this thesis rejects that approach, arguing that the labour movement lacked the power to impose such a fundamental national policy, and that the key decisions which led to White Australia were demonstrably not products of labour movement action. ¶ It finds three great ruling class agendas behind the decisions to exclude Chinese immigrants, and severely limit the use of indentured “coloured labour”. ...

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

18

Sheik, Nafisa Essop. "Labouring under the law : gender and the legal administration of Indian immigrants under indenture in colonial Natal, 1860-1907." Thesis, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/2892.

Full text

Abstract:

This study is a gendered historical analysis of the legal administration of Indian Immigrants in British Colonial Natal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By focusing primarily on the attempts of the Natal Government to intervene in the personal law of especially indentured and ex-indentured Indians, this thesis presents an analysis of the role that gender played in the conceptualization and promulgation of the indentured labour scheme in Natal, and in the subsequent regulation of the lives of Indian immigrants in the Colony. It traces the developments in the administration of Indian women, especially, from the beginning of the indenture system in colonial Natal until the passage of the Indian Marriages Bill of 1907 and attempts to contextualize arguments around these themes within broader colonial discourses and debates, as well as to examine the particularity of such administrative attempts in the Natal context. This study observes the changing nature of 'custom' amongst Indian immigrants and the often simultaneous and contradictory attempts of the Natal colonial administration to at first support, and later, to intervene in what constituted the realm of the customary. Through an analysis of legal administration at different levels of government, this analysis considers the interactions of gender and utilitarian legal discourse under colonialism and, in particular, the complex role of Indian personal law and the ordinary civil laws of the Colony of Natal in both restricting and facilitating the mobility of Indian women brought to Natal under the auspices of the indentured labour system.
Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

19

Harris, Karen Leigh. "A history of the Chinese in South Africa to 1912." Thesis, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/16907.

Full text

Abstract:

The small Chinese community in South Africa has played an important part in the economic and political life of South Africa. From 1660 to 1912, it reflected the experiences of migrant Chinese who left the mainland during and after centuries of isolation. This thesis therefore examines the Chinese in South Africa in the context of a growing historiography of the overseas Chinese, noting particularly the comparisons with other colonial societies, such as the United States of America and Australia. It is also concerned with tracing the history of the free Chinese at the Cape in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before engaging in a more detailed discussion of the period of indentured Chinese labour on the Witwatersrand gold mines in the early twentieth century. Although the political economy of indenture has been copiously dealt with in recent historical research, the focus here is more on the social and cultural dimensions of Chinese labour, including aspects such as privacy, sexuality and living conditions in the compound system. This cultural history is interpreted against the background of political and legislative developments in South Africa leading to the formation of the Union in 1910. One of the main arguments of the thesis is that the indentured labour scheme had profound repercussions for the racial status of the free Chinese in the late colonial period. The different experiences of the Chinese in the Cape and the Transvaal are given special attention to illustrate regional patterns of social stratification, and explain the vicissitudes of race relations in South Africa up to 1912. In the Cape it led to subjection under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904, while in the Transvaal it resulted in political involvement in the initial phases of Mahatma Gandhi's "satyagraha". Cultural exclusivity and minority status are at the heart of this· analysis and are indices of how the Chinese were brought under the yoke of segregation, which anticipated the oppression of apartheid after 1948.
History
D. Litt. et Phil. (History)

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

20

Batsha, Nishant. "The Currents of Restless Toil: Colonial Rule and Indian Indentured Labor in Trinidad and Fiji." Thesis, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7916/D8D79HPR.

Full text

Abstract:

The study of Indian indentured servitude in the British Empire has largely been confined to the histories of slavery or free labor. Few scholars have connected indenture to larger processes in the British Empire. This dissertation examines the global nature of Indian indenture to find how trends in colonial power were inflected in the relationship between the state and the indentured worker. This dissertation uses the colonial experience in South Asia as a basis for its global history. It contends that the history of the colonial rule of law in the subcontinent was of deep importance to the mechanisms of indenture. By looking at archival records from the United Kingdom, Trinidad, Fiji, and elsewhere, this dissertation finds that officials in the indenture colonies were attempting to transform indebted Indian peasants into indentured workers. This process was inflected by the experience of colonial rule elsewhere. At first, this meant the implementation of ideas tied to imperial liberalism. Following the challenges to British colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century, the indenture colonies mirrored a wider movement towards conservative governance. The ways in which the colonial state attempted to control and manipulate workers underwent a dramatic shift. In the indenture colony, colonial power exerted both authoritarian and paternalist tendencies. This dissertation uses the governorships of Arthur Hamilton-Gordon in Trinidad and Fiji to explore this shift. This dissertation makes its argument by focusing on the indenture colonies of Trinidad and Fiji. In doing so, it moves beyond the model of studying indenture that has looked at the British Empire as a whole, or otherwise in specific colonies or sub-regions. Using Trinidad and Fiji allows for a deep understanding of continuity and change. For example, Trinidad can be used to examine indenture’s beginnings, as the colony began to import Indian indentured labor in 1842, while Fiji can be used to understand late indenture. Furthermore, colonial officials, ideas of authority, capital, labor, and goods were always circulating throughout this global empire. The study of Trinidad and Fiji allows for a critical understanding of such exchanges and this dissertation uses both to explore bureaucratic offices, law, financial systems, governance, protest, medicine and health, and global agitation in Indian indenture. “The Currents of Restless Toil” is an in-depth study into the nature of colonial governance in the indenture colonies of Trinidad and Fiji. It explores the nuances of colonial power, providing a window into the theory and practice that shaped the restless toil of Indians across the world.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

21

Phillips, Anne Marie. "Contracting Freedom: Governance and East Indian Indenture in the British Atlantic, 1838-1917." Diss., 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10161/9116.

Full text

Abstract:

This is a dissertation about identity and governance, and how they are mutually constituted. Between 1838 and 1917, the British brought approximately half a million East Indian laborers to the Atlantic to work on sugar plantations. The dissertation argues that contrary to previous historiographical assumptions, indentured East Indians were an amorphous mass of people drawn from various regions of British India. They were brought together not by their innate "Indian-ness" upon their arrival in the Caribbean, but by the common experience of indenture recruitment, transportation and plantation life. Ideas of innate "Indian-ness" were products of an imperial discourse that emerged from and shaped official approaches to governing East Indians in the Atlantic. Government officials and planters promoted visions of East Indians as "primitive" subjects who engaged in child marriage and wife murder. Officials mobilized ideas about gender to sustain racialized stereotypes of East Indian subjects. East Indian women were thought to be promiscuous, and East Indian men were violent and depraved (especially in response to East Indian women's promiscuity). By pointing to these stereotypes about East Indians, government officials and planters could highlight the promise of indenture as a civilizing mechanism. This dissertation links the study of governance and subject formation to complicate ideas of colonial rule as static. It uncovers how colonial processes evolved to handle the challenges posed by migrant populations.

The primary architects of indenture, Caribbean governments, the British Colonial Office, and planters hoped that East Indian indentured laborers would form a stable and easily-governed labor force. They anticipated that the presence of these laborers would undermine the demands of Afro-Creole workers for higher wages and shorter working hours. Indenture, however, was controversial among British liberals who saw it as potentially hindering the creation of a free labor market, and abolitionists who also feared that indenture was a new form of slavery. Using court records, newspapers, legislative documents, bureaucratic correspondence, memoirs, novels, and travel accounts from archives and libraries in Britain, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, this dissertation explores how indenture was envisioned and constantly re-envisioned in response to its critics. It chronicles how the struggles between the planter class and the colonial state for authority over indentured laborers affected the way that indenture functioned in the British Atlantic. In addition to focusing on indenture's official origins, this dissertation examines the actions of East Indian indentured subjects as they are recorded in the imperial archive to explore how these people experienced indenture.

Indenture contracts were central to the justification of indenture and to the creation of a pliable labor force in the Atlantic. According to English common law, only free parties could enter into contracts. Indenture contracts limited the period of indenture and affirmed that laborers would be remunerated for their labor. While the architects of indenture pointed to contracts as evidence that indenture was not slavery, contracts in reality prevented laborers from participating in the free labor market and kept the wages of indentured laborers low. Further, in late nineteenth-century Britain, contracts were civil matters. In the British Atlantic, indentured laborers who violated the terms of their contracts faced criminal trials and their associated punishments such as imprisonment and hard labor. Officials used indenture contracts to exploit the labor and limit the mobility of indentured laborers in a manner that was reminiscent of slavery but that instead established indentured laborers as subjects with limited rights. The dissertation chronicles how indenture contracts spawned a complex inter-imperial bureaucracy in British India, Britain, and the Caribbean that was responsible for the transportation and governance of East Indian indentured laborers overseas.

Dissertation

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

22

Quirk, Joel. "The Anti-slavery project : bridging the historical and contemporary." Phd thesis, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/150354.

Full text

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

23

Rai, Satish C. "In exile at home : a Fiji-Indian story." Thesis, 2010. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/496671.

Full text

Abstract:

Accompanied by 2 DVDs featuring the documentary drama, In exile at home : a Fiji Indian story. The second DVD contains interviews of key academics featured in the film. Both DVDs may be viewed at UWS Library.

APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles

Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Indentured labour'

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles