Coolies of capitalism : Assam tea and the making of coolie labour / Nitin Varma.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Varma, Nitin.

Series:

Work in global and historical perspective

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Labor--India--History.

Labor.

Working class--India--History.

Working class.

Tea trade--India--Assam--History.

Tea trade.

History.

India--Assam.

India.

Physical Description:

vi, 242 pages : some illustrations ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Coolies of capitalism : Assam tea and the making of coolie labor

Place of Publication:

Berlin : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, [2017]

Summary:

Coolies of Capitalism tells the story of women, men and children being recruited and transport to work on the plantations of tea being set up in nineteenth century colonial India. The making of these workers into so called coolies was a broader global process of disciplining labour in the nineteenth century revealing deep lineages and linkages with slave labour and "free" wage labour. The process of producing coolies revealed deep and organic relationship between colonial state and private capital. The author further highlights the human dimension of this story by showing how the coolies themselves were actively intervening and transforming the nature of plantation capitalism in a colonial world. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Tea in the Colony 15

1.1 Introduction 15

1.2 Discovery of Tea and the Skills of Chinese Work 16

1.3 Framing Plantations and encounters with the Lazy Native Worker 21

1.4 Experimental Plantations and the search for Immobilised Worker 24

1.5 Privatising the discovery and the emergence of the Assam Company 27

1.6 Early Plantation enterprise and Kachari as the Ideal Worker 31

1.7 Assamese peasant as coolie labour 37

1.8 The Migrant Worker solution 39

2 Contracts, Contractors and Coolies 43

2.1 Introduction 43

2.2 Protection, Exceptionalism and the beginnings of the Assam Contract 45

2.3 The 'Protection' of Private arrest and the construction of managerial authority 52

2.4 Assam Contract and the 'Protection' of the Coolie 66

2.5 Act XIII and the Assam Contract(s) system 71

2.6 Contractors, Sardars and the Assam Contract System 75

2.7 Discourse of reform and the new contract regime 82

2.8 Practice of Free System 90

2.9 Free System in Surma Valley 93

2.10 Conclusions 100

3 Unpopular Assam 105

3.1 Introduction 105

3.2 Assam as a Lost World 108

3.3 Problems of Life and Work on the Tea Gardens 110

3.4 Songs and Oral Traditions of Tea Workers 115

3.5 Deception of Recruiters and the Fear of Assam 119

3.6 The 'Choice' of Assam 123

3.7 Conclusions 125

4 Drink and Work 127

4.1 Introduction 127

4.2 Colonial Policy and Taxing the "Coolie Drink." 128

4.3 Drink as Work Stimulant 129

4.4 Industrial Tea, Intensification of Work and the Intoxicant Drink 132

4.5 Drink and the Emerging Working Culture 141

4.6 The Controls of Drink and Drinking Workers 145

4.7 Conclusions 148

5 Oustoor of Plantations 149

5.1 Introduction 149

5.2 Dusloor and Assam Tea Gardens in the late nineteenth century 154

5.3 The Shifting Authority of Manager 158

5.4 The Rice Question 165

5.5 The Occasions of Tea Garden 168

5.6 Coolie Lines 174

5.7 Work Place, Authority Structure and Issues of Tasks and Wages 177

5.8 Notions of Honour 193

5.9 Violence as Protest, Protest as Violence 196

5.10 A Collective Wilt to Leave 200

5.11 Conclusions 203

6 Gandhi baba ka Hookum 205

6.1 Introduction 205

6.2 Situating the Episode 208

6.3 Markets and New Networks of Information 211

6.4 Anxieties of Colonial State and Nationalists 212

6.5 The Legitimacy of the Manager 214

6.6 Changing Practices of Work, Life and Control on Sylhet Plantations 218

6.7 A New Will to Leave 221

7 Epilogue 225.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-242).

ISBN:

9783110461152

3110461153

OCLC:

967950094

Publisher Number:

9783110461152