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This article analyses representations of the indentured woman in the Hindi print-public sphere of colonial north India in the early twentieth century. There have been sophisticated studies on the condition of Indian women in the plantation colonies of the British Empire, this article focuses instead on the vernacular world within India, showing how the transnational movements of these women emigrants led to animated discussions, in which they came to be constructed as both innocent victims and guilty migrants, insiders and outsiders. The ways in which these mobile women came to be represented reveal significant intersections between nation, gender, caste, sexuality, and morality. It also demonstrates how middle-class Indian women attempted to establish bonds of diasporic sisterhood with low-caste indentured women, bonds that were also deeply hierarchical. In addition, the article attempts to grasp the subjective experiences of Dalit migrant, and potentially migrant, women themselves, and illustrates their ambivalences of identity in particularly gendered ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper compares the definitions, practices, and legal constraints on labour in Britain, France, Mauritius, and Reunion Island in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It argues that the way in which indentured labour was defined and practised in the colonies was linked to the definition and practice of wage labour in Europe and that their development was interconnected. The types of bondage that existed in the colonies were extreme forms of the notion, practices, and rules of labour in Europe. It would have been impossible to develop the indenture contract in the British and French empires if wage earners in Britain and France had not been servants. The conceptions and practices of labour in Europe and its main colonies influenced each other and were part of a global dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper traces the evolution of the indenture labour system in the tea plantations of Assam and, simultaneously, the shaping of the attitudes of British planters towards the labour force. Also explored are: the significant fact that only a small number of British managerial personnel were in charge of a huge migrant labour force; how the need to step up tea production for the competitive world market while keeping down costs--i.e. labour costs, being the main production cost--fostered an exploitative labour system, with planters taking frequent recourse to physical and economic coercion; and the ensuing extra-legal measures needed to keep the labour force under control. The paper also demonstrates that the colonial state was in full cognizance of the injustices of the labour system. Legislation by the government had laid the foundations of the indenture system and, while there were provisions for protecting the interests of labour force, these were on the whole ignored, with the state turning a blind eye to the planters' use of physical and other extra-legal measures. One instance involved Chief Commissioner Henry Cotton, who attacked the injustices of the system. This attack was silenced swiftly, and the stance taken by Viceroy Curzon as the incident played out is a clear pointer to the government's willingness, to side with tea-industry interests at all costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social history of the tea industry in Assam, India from its inception in 1834. In particular, the use of imported migrant labor ("coolies") from other parts of British India are discussed, along with the importance of the tea industry to local Assamese society. The racial and cultural aspects of Assam tea production are discussed in detail, including the predominance of white British planters, the importation of Chinese and then Indian indentured labor, and the limited participation of local people.

This article discusses the role of labour contractors, called sardars, in the recruitment of Indian indentured workers for service in India and abroad in British Guiana and Mauritius. These contractors were the local contacts of recruiters, called arkatis, who led groups of labourers to their colonial employments. The costs and benefits of the sardars as economic agents are discussed in terms of the impact of colonialism and traditional labour conditions on the social organisation of work in India. The relationship between the sardars and the recruited labourers is framed in terms of the traditional social organisation of South Asia.

The article discusses the practice of slavery in the early 18th century in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Punjab. In these societies, the article indicates, slavery had a social, and often sexual, function. Many of the slaves were concubines and female domestic servants. Topics include the religious rather than racial classifications used for such slaves and the economic impact of slavery on the region. The article also compares slavery practiced in this region with the practice of slavery in the Atlantic region during the same time period.