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"Voices and Silences: Narratives of Girmitiyas and Jahajis from Fiji and the Caribbean" by Anjali Singh is a book that explores the experiences of indentured laborers who migrated to Fiji and the Caribbean during the British colonial period. The book examines the girmitiya system, a labor agreement that promised workers the ability to return home after five years, but often resulted in their inability to accumulate enough savings to do so. Singh's work also highlights the feminist perspective, categorizing women who accompanied male laborers into three groups: wives, deserted widows, and prostitutes. The book discusses the history, exploitation, and social stratification of indentured laborers in Fiji and the Caribbean, as well as the narratives and experiences of these individuals. [Extracted from the article]

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Dutch bankers channeled investors' funds to sugar and coffee plantations in the Caribbean, Surinam in particular. Agency problems between plantation owners, bankers, and investors led to an arrangement called negotiaties. Bankers oversaw plantations' cash flows and placed mortgage debt with investors. We demonstrate how this securitization arrangement worked using market-wide data and detailed records from banker F. W. Hudig. During the boom, debt contracts and their securitization were an effective solution for planters, bankers, and investors. However, the market crashed after an oversupply of credit. This led to inefficient restructuring due to debt overhang. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1838 and 1917, a British system of indentured servitude replaced the enslavement of African peoples with Indian labor in the Americas and the Caribbean. Almost a quarter of a million indentured Indian laborers came to British Guiana and would form the foundation of the majority of the Indian population in present-day Guyana. These men and women would spend nearly eight decades toiling on sugar plantations and rice fields before the brutal system of labor was abolished. This curatorial essay explores the work of three key contemporary artists of Guyanese heritage—Maya Mackrandilal, Michael Lam, and Suchitra Mattai—who underscore St. Vincent-born poet Derek Walcott's seminal words "the sea is history" with an exploration of the sea as a weapon of rupture. Collectively, their artworks return us to a British past to offer a visceral reminder of the perilous kālā pānī crossing [Hindi for "black waters"], marking the sea the place where ancestral histories, trauma, and survival all share space. Grounding us in the present and pointing us to a future, I illustrate how these artworks also function as contemporary tools of remembrance and repair. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article re-examines the declining influence of Jamaican sugar planters within the British Empire during the period between the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775 and Parliament’s decision to abolish the slave trade in 1807. Much of the existing scholarship emphasises the consequences of the American Revolutionary War and rise of abolitionism during the 1780s as pivotal to the fall of the planters. This article argues that those challenges did not determine the fate of the Jamaican planters. Rather, it was the radicalisation of the French and Haitian Revolutions, and the extended period of war that began in 1793, that led to their eventual defeat over the question of the slave trade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the history and idea of Hispanic Caribbean studies. Topics include the difference between the French and British Caribbean, observation of historian Juan Giusti-Cordero regarding the studies focusing on sugar and the plantation-institutions, and radical differences among Caribbean islands.

The article revisits one of the most significant questions in the historiography of British West Indian slavery and abolition. It examines the argument that the relatively weak state of the British West Indian economy from the 1780s onward was the main reason why Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807. In confronting this question of decline, the article analyzes the largest and most important slave plantation economy – Jamaica – during the early eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Using newly generated indicators such as total factor productivity and national income, the paper constructs a case for the dynamism and efficiency of the plantation system in Jamaica right up to abolition in 1807. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the history of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo's anti-Haitian policies by examining two unstudied dimensions of the government's campaign against Haitian migrants. Archival records reveal that Trujillo attempted to implement a clandestine plan to deport Haitians prior to the 1937 massacre on the border. However, this plan failed because local officials resisted government attempts to supersede their authority. I contend this led Trujillo to order the massacre in order to compel obedience from rural authorities and to destroy Haitian-Dominican networks. While in the border region these goals were accomplished with violence, Trujillo pursued a different strategy in sugar-producing areas. Because of the economic importance of sugar, the Trujillo regime began to employ extralegal coercion to force Haitians in the country onto sugar plantations, and to inextricably link Haitian identity with cutting sugarcane. In implementing such policies, government officials again faced resistance from local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines wealth inequalities and social hierarchies that appeared among slave communities on sugar plantations in the British Caribbean. These inequalities in status and in material conditions among the enslaved were the product of the privileges that planters granted elite slaves, the collective survival strategies of smaller family groups and the energy demands of different working roles. Elite creole families emerged on sugar plantations and these slaves lived more privileged lives than the rest. African-born slaves and women were particularly disadvantaged. Inequalities in status and material conditions could create oppressive and discordant community dynamics within the slave community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the history of philosophy in the Caribbean. Particular focus is given to the philosophies of the peoples who lived and worked on sugar cane plantations, also called the canepiece. These include the Taíno people, enslaved Africans, indentured Indian and Chinese workers, and their descendants. Details related to Taíno ontology, the roles of slavery and liberty in Afro-Caribbean philosophy, and the role of labor in Indo-Caribbean philosophy are presented. Other topics include genocide, social harmony, and the relationship between the Enlightenment and colonialism.

From the 17th century, Glasgow grew from a local market centre to a merchant city. Much of the wealth of its leading merchants came from Atlantic trade. Before the city's celebrated connections with Virginia, great success was achieved from trade with the Caribbean. In the late 17th century, Glasgow had more than a hundred merchants, part of a ‘Great Company’ trading with the Americas, including the Caribbean islands.1 This was a two-way process, and various Glasgow pioneers operated at the colonial end. This article explores the hitherto hidden background of two of the city's earliest and most successful Caribbean merchants. This is achieved by an investigation of the upstanding archaeology on their sugar plantations on the Leeward Island of St Kitts (St Christopher). It will suggest that to put Glasgow's development in proper context, we must consider this neglected part of its history and archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]