[Geo4All] The Indian indenture system during British Colonial rule of India - information needed on interactive maps that can be used for history education

Suchith Anand Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk
Thu Sep 7 16:36:00 PDT 2023


Dear colleagues,


I am trying to learn more about the Indian indenture system during British Colonial rule of India  and will appreciate advice.


Wikipedia article on this says


The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude>, by which more than 1.6 million workers from India<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_subcontinent> were transported to labour in European colonies<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_colonies>, as a substitute for slave labor<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade>, following the abolition<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism> of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire> in 1833<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833>,[in the French colonies<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire> in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Empire> in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system


Some of the references and links provided to UK National Archives is not working so I cannot find more historical information.




Indian Indentured Labor and the History of International Rights Regimes The American Historical Review, Volume 119, Issue 5, December 2014, Pages 1439–1465, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/119.5.1439




“THE INDIAN INDENTURE SYSTEM WAS PUT into place by the British imperial government at the behest of sugar planters.6 The intention was to provide planters with a regular, assured, and cheap labor force similar to what they had had under slavery, thereby alleviating their need to rely upon, or pay market price for, the labor of their former slaves. During its more than eighty years of operation, the system was responsible for transporting some 1.2 million laborers from India to new and old colonies around the world—including Mauritius, Réunion, Natal, East Africa, British Guiana, Trinidad, Suriname, Jamaica, and Fiji—primarily to labor on sugar plantations, but eventually also for other agricultural and industrial enterprises.7 Wherever the system was instituted, it became integral to a racial segmentation of the labor force and to racialized models of labor organization. Because of its direct connection to slavery abolition, from the moment of its inception the system generated significant anguish and outcry from British anti-slavery forces. By the early twentieth century, it became a major target of elite Indian nationalist criticism as well. As a result, it was finally abolished in 1917 in the context of the economic and political exigencies of the First World War.”



"Coolies – How Britain re-invented slavery"; exposing the British practice of Indentured Labour

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uQz080QcGY


Are there any research publications , interactive maps, map stories etc that can be used for education on this topic. If so, please share. Thanks.


Best wishes


Suchith


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