1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910457843303321

Autore

Kale Madhavi

Titolo

Fragments of empire [[electronic resource] ] : capital, slavery, and Indian indentured labor migration in the British Caribbean / / Madhavi Kale

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia [Pa.], : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1998

ISBN

1-283-21177-7

9786613211774

0-8122-0242-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (243 p.)

Collana

Critical histories

Disciplina

306.36/09729

Soggetti

Indentured servants - Caribbean Area - History

Indentured servants - India - History

Labor supply - Caribbean Area - History

Slave labor - Caribbean Area - History

Electronic books.

India Emigration and immigration History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-227) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. Casting Empire -- 1. Very Particularly Situated -- 2. Capitalists in the Neighborhood -- 3. Just a Minute -- 4. Where Are These Records ? -- 5. The "Saints" Come Marching In -- 6. Projecting Identities -- 7. Casting Labor in the Imperial Mold -- Postscript -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

When Great Britain abolished slavery in 1833, sugar planters in the Caribbean found themselves facing the prospect of paying working wages to their former slaves. Cheaper labor existed elsewhere in the empire, however, and plantation owners, along with the home and colonial governments, quickly began importing the first of what would eventually be hundreds of thousands of indentured laborers from India. Madhavi Kale draws extensively on the archival materials from the period and argues that imperial administrators sanctioned and authorized distinctly biased accounts of postemancipation labor



conditions and participated in devaluing and excluding alternative accounts of slavery. As she does this she highlights the ways in which historians, by relying on these biased sources, have perpetuated the acceptance of a privileged perspective on imperial British history.