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Labor demands following the abolition of slavery in the 19th century led to the arrival of five hundred thousand indentured South Asians between 1838 and 1920 in the plantation zones of the Caribbean. Of this total, two-thirds of them stayed in the Caribbean when their five-year contract expired while a third went back to their homeland of India. These indentured servants used their one-sided contracts to revive the post-slavery plantation system and to develop themselves and their communities. By the Second World War, these once cyclical migrants turned settlers had become a majority population in Guyana, Trinidad, and Suriname, as well as visible minorities in the French Caribbean, Jamaica, and the Lesser Antilles. In so doing, they have retained substantial aspects of their culture, customs, and religion while adapting to a creolized Caribbean. These Indians have contributed to nation-building in the Southern Caribbean in fields including leadership, law, medicine, and business. However, political and ethnic tensions arising from poor governance have led to the steady out-migration of this population from the Caribbean to Europe and North America, where they have experienced new challenges of integration while sending remittances to their Caribbean homeland. Nonetheless, Indians of South Asian background have maintained a different and distinct identity whenever and wherever they have settled in the Caribbean and overseas.

Two white ethnic minorities, Jews and Frenchies, are rather unusual in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. The Jews arrived during the period of slavery and participated in the economic colonialism of islands, retaining a prominent position in the Virgin Islands. The Frenchies in St. Thomas arrived from St. Barths after slavery. These white minorities have expanded connections between friends and families as well as in their departed homeland and the Virgin Islands. Their strong religious beliefs and in-group solidarity allowed them to remain in the sociological and economic comfort zones of St. Thomas. In modern times, they have branched out from their insular zones and merged their mores and folkways and their peasant and professional ways, on their gradual terms, with those of other ethnic Virgin Islanders, bringing themselves closer to Virgin Islands society as evidenced by their younger generation.

The following article examines the post-emancipation labor contract migration (1848–1917) from the eastern Caribbean islands to the Danish West Indies. This migration was intended to fill a labor v...

For over three quarters of a century (1838–1920), the British, Danish, Dutch, and French governments transported an estimated 500,000 indentured Indian laborers from the Indian subcontinent to the ...

Like so many other colonizing imperial governments (British, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Portuguese), Denmark also engaged in claiming Caribbean islands (namely St. Thomas in 1671, St. John in 1718...

(2019). The Birth of the Kabir Panthi Movement in Trinidad. Caribbean Quarterly: Vol. 65, African-Caribbean Spirituality and Creativity, pp. 308-310.

Public curiosity has always been high regarding what life was like for British overseas servicemen and women in far‐flung areas of the British Empire during its three hundred years of colonialism. ...

Following the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, the British Government allowed its overseas as well as the French, Dutch, and Danish colonies to import Indian indentured laborers to m...

The objective of the following article is to examine why a small number of Muslims from the Middle East chose to settle in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI). Further, the article is interested in how this Muslim community has retained its work ethic and religious identity in a predominantly Christianized USVI. The article also explores the relationship between this Muslim community and the USVI particularly since the events of 11 September 2001 (9/11). The findings are startling. Unlike some Muslim minority communities that have been unable to make significant strides forward, Muslims in the USVI have achieved impressive levels of economic achievement. Muslims have effectively dominated the retail business in the USVI while largely retaining the religious ways of their homeland, despite some assimilation. Local structural issues such as the inefficient entrepreneurial skills and unstable family ties among Virgin Islanders, as well as an upsurge in investment in tourism and industry, have pav...

This book tells a distinct story of Indians in the Caribbean—one concentrated not only on archival records and institutions, but also on the voices of the people and the ways in which they define themselves and the world around them. The book explores previously marginalized Indians in the Caribbean and their distinct social dynamics and histories, including the French Caribbean and other islands with smaller South Asian populations. It pursues a comparative approach with inclusive themes that cut across the Caribbean. In 1833, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire led to the import of exploited South Asian indentured workers in the Caribbean. Today India bears little relevance to most of these Caribbean Indians. Yet, Caribbean Indians have developed an in-between status, shaped by South Asian customs such as religion, music, folklore, migration, new identities, and Bollywood films. They do not seem akin to Indians in India, nor are they like Caribbean Creoles, or mixed-race Caribbeans. Instead, they have merged India and the Caribbean to produce a distinct, dynamic local entity. The book does not neglect the arrival of nonindentured Indians in the Caribbean since the early 1900s. These people came to the Caribbean without an indentured contract or after indentured emancipation but have formed significant communities in Barbados, the US Virgin Islands, and Jamaica. The book contributes a thorough analysis of the Indo-Caribbean, among the first to look at the entire Indian diaspora across the Caribbean.

A careful analysis of East Indian (hereafter Indian) indentured historiography in the Caribbean reveals an upsurge in published studies in the past three decades. These studies have arguably enhanced and advanced our understanding of Indian experience during indenture. However, these studies also have some serious shortcomings. Specifically, most studies have used the records of the colonizers to write the history, narrative, and memory of colonized indentured Indian servants. Moreover, across published studies, the numerical statistics on indentured service in the Caribbean are inconsistent. Published studies tend to focus on particular regions in the Caribbean. Comparative analyses of indenture within the former and present European Caribbean colonies and elsewhere are rare. This article provides a critique of Indian indentured historiography in the Caribbean with the hope and expectation of challenging the status quo as well as instigating new trends.

This book analyses Tamil Brahmans’ social transformation from an old, rural, elite caste to a predominantly urban, modern, middle-class group (15). Fuller and Narasimhan state that the book is ‘abo...