Voice from Calcutta Indian indenture in the age of abolition Purba Hossain

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hossain, Purba, author.

Series:

Global South Asians

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

India--Kolkata.

British Indian Ocean Territory.

Caribbean Area.

Indentured servants.

Foreign workers, East Indian--British colonies.

Foreign workers, East Indian.

Sugar workers.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Cambridge New York, NY Cambridge University Press 2025

Summary:

"Between 1837 and 1920, 1.3 million indentured labourers migrated from India to sugar plantation colonies in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean. Voices from Calcutta shows how spokesmen from Calcutta – the capital of British India – disrupted this trade and influenced the lives of these migrants. It follows Calcuttans in their journey of debating, investigating and defending indenture, unfolding a complex web of letters, petitions, interviews and investigative-reports. As the indenture debates influenced lived experience on ships and plantations, and shaped the negotiation of subjecthood and labour rights for the empire's peripatetic labourers, they became a means by which elite Calcuttans negotiated their own position within the empire. This book locates in Calcutta voices of protest that fundamentally defined the contours of post-slavery labouring across the British Empire. Instead of simply emanating from Britain, to be dutifully followed in the colonies, labour legislation was informed by voices from those very colonies"-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Calcutta and indenture : a historical connection

Debating indenture

Investigating indenture

In defence of indenture

Race in the making of indentured labourers

Subjects, citizens, spokesmen

Conclusion : city, spaces, encounters

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Cambridge University Press, viewed July 18, 2025)

Other Format:

Print version Hossain, Purba Voice from Calcutta

ISBN:

9781009572996

1009572997

OCLC:

1525502472

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license