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# Administering Indenture through Suspension: British Guiana and the System of Indian Indenture, c.1834-1917.

Dylan Arthur Fox

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Dylan Arthur Fox. Administering Indenture through Suspension: British Guiana and the System of Indian Indenture, c.1834-1917. Université Paris Cité. 2022. hal-05107750

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**Administering Indenture through Suspension:**
**British Guiana and the System of Indian Indenture,**
**c.1834-1917.**

Dylan FOX

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>
Cover image: Sancintya Mohini Simpson, 'kūlī / karambu', watercolour and gouache on handmade wasli paper, 2020-2021. Photo: Carl Warner.<fnref n="1" />

<footnote n="1">¹ I am deeply thankful to Sancintya Simpson who authorised me to reproduce her artwork, it will be discussed in the conclusion page 109.</footnote>
En accord avec le règlement des examens (article 6-1) et l'article 5 du Règlement de l'Université de Paris, je déclare que ce mémoire résulte de mon travail de recherche personnel, mené indépendamment, et que dans tous les cas, les références au travail d'un tiers sont reconnues explicitement. Les citations et la paraphrase sont indiquées clairement et aucune référence autre que celles citées n'a été utilisée. Ce mémoire écrit n'a été soumis à aucune autre université auparavant. Je déclare aussi que la version numérique envoyée à mon directeur/trice de recherche est identique à la version imprimée, que ce soit au niveau du contenu ou de la formulation. J'ai conscience que la version numérique peut faire l'objet d'une vérification dans un logiciel anti-plagiat.

I hereby declare, in compliance with Article 6-1 of exam regulations and Article 5 of Université de Paris regulations, that this thesis is the result of my own independent scholarly work and that in all cases, material from the work of others is acknowledged. Quotations and paraphrases are clearly indicated and no material other than listed has been used. This written work has not been submitted at any university before. I hereby also declare to have e-mailed my supervisor a digital version of my thesis, which is identical to the printed version in content and wording.

I am aware that this digital version can be checked for plagiarism with the help of a software-assisted, anonymised assessment.
# TABLE OF CONTENTS.

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 4

Introduction. 6

Identifying moments of interruption 8

Indenture in historiographical perspective: the resilience of unfreedom 10

Indenture in Guiana: Renewed Historiographical Interest 13

Conceptualising rupture. The Guianese Lens. 15

Sources 19

Chapter 1: Suspension as Humanitarian Intervention ? (1838-1845). 23

A/ Humanitarianism and the Anti-Slavery Society: Combatting indenture in the immediate Post-Slavery era. 25

India's suspension of indentured emigration in Mauritius and British Guiana. 25

Press mobilisation to suspend indenture. 30

Finding alternative sources of indentured labour. 34

B/ An affirmation of British colonial power: regulating the indentured system. 38

Plantocracy lobbying for indenture and its renewal. 39

Regulation of the indentured system by the Colonial State. 41

A Legal Conundrum: Indian indentured labourers to the French Isle of Bourbon colony. 45

Chapter 2: Protectionism and Free-Trade: the second suspension of the indentured system, (1846-1852). 49

A/ Sugar Duties Act 1846: Protectionism vs. Free-trade debate around indentured emigration. 51

A general context to the Sugar Duties Act of 1846 and the question of free-trade. 51

The consequences of the Sugar Duties Act of 1846 in the British West Indies. 53

Social uprisings on plantations. 55

B/ Political and social unrest in British Guiana, leading to the suspension of immigration. 57

Struggling for Governance: local Guianese v. Metropolitan Colonial Power. 58

Suspending indenture to limit vagrancy. 62

Circumventing interruption. 66

C/ 1851: The Renewal of Indian indentured emigration. 68

Free-return passage and “unfree” laws around indentured labourers. 69

The Anti-Slavery Society's opposition to the renewal. 73

Chapter 3: Resistance to Indenture in Regional Perspective, (1853-1917). 78

A/ Opposition to Indenture from the West Indies. 80
<table><tbody><tr><td>Anti-Indenture/Immigration sentiment in the West Indies</td><td>80</td></tr><tr><td>Political figures in British Guiana, against indenture (1860s).</td><td>85</td></tr><tr><td>Over to indentured servants in Guiana: the Anti-Slavery Society's changed perspective post-1850s.</td><td>89</td></tr><tr><td><u>B/ Trans-imperial indentureship, suspension of immigration to the other Guianas.</u></td><td>92</td></tr><tr><td>Indian indenture to French Guiana (Cayenne).</td><td>92</td></tr><tr><td>Indian immigration to Dutch Guiana (Surinam).</td><td>96</td></tr><tr><td><u>C/ Protest and symbolic resistance: towards new forms of interruption?</u></td><td>99</td></tr><tr><td>Historiographical difficulties of studying resistance of indenture.</td><td>99</td></tr><tr><td>Indentured servants' resistance in British Guiana.</td><td>102</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Conclusion.</strong></td><td><strong>109</strong></td></tr><tr><td><strong>Bibliography.</strong></td><td><strong>115</strong></td></tr><tr><td>Primary Sources:</td><td>115</td></tr><tr><td>Secondary Sources:</td><td>119</td></tr><tr><td><strong>APPENDIX.</strong></td><td><strong>128</strong></td></tr><tr><td>A/Sources of Immigration to British Guiana, 1841-1851.</td><td>129</td></tr><tr><td>B/ Immigration figures to British Guiana and Costs, 1834-1849.</td><td>130</td></tr><tr><td>C/ Chinese Indentured Immigration to the West Indies in 1843.</td><td>131</td></tr><tr><td>D/ Comparative Sugar Prices. British West Indies, Cuba &amp; Brazil (1841-1846).</td><td>132</td></tr><tr><td>E/ Number of Immigrants to the British Caribbean, including Guiana, 1838-1918.</td><td>133</td></tr><tr><td>F/ Indentured labourers emigrating to French Guiana 1856-1867.</td><td>134</td></tr><tr><td>G/ Ethnic composition of the British Guyanese population, 1911-1931.</td><td>135</td></tr></tbody></table>
Acknowledgements.

I would like to thank my supervisor Stéphanie Prévost for her support all throughout the year, without whom I could not have undertaken this intellectual journey. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Université de Paris and IdEx for funding my research project through the MIRES scholarship and the School of History at Liverpool University for supporting research within that partnership, while I was spending my Erasmus year abroad at the latter. Furthermore, I am grateful towards Professor Lomarsh Roopnarine (Jackson State University) who has extensively written on Indian indentured labour in Guiana and who kindly agreed to take some of his time to give me advice on this project.
## Introduction.

I see the British public have been deceived with the idea that the Coolies are doing “well”; such is not the fact; the poor friendless creatures are miserably treated, at least I can speak confidently of plantation Belle Vue. On this estate they have made two attempts to escape ....<fnref n="2" />

In February 1840, during the first suspension of Indian emigration to British colonies, the Colonial Secretary Lord John Russell sent in a letter to the Governor of British Guiana Henry Light, in which he stated: "I am not prepared to encounter the responsibility of a measure which may lead to a dreadful loss of life on the one hand, or, on the other, a new system of slavery".<fnref n="3" /> Lord Russell was one of the first officials to define the system of indenture as "a new system of slavery" which has been at the heart of the debate around indenture since the 1970s. Russell's take and the subsequent suspension of the indentured system resulted from the pressure of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and the newspaper the *British Emancipator*. Aiming at eradicating slavery in British territories – which was progressively phased out by the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act -, editors systematically exposed the disinformation run by planters and defendants of the later indenture system and sought to reveal how unbenevolent it was instead.

Also influential on Russell's moral awakening was John Scoble's critique of the indentured system, published in bookform as *Hill Coolies: a Brief Exposure of the*

<footnote n="2">² *British Emancipator*, 9 January 1839.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Correspondence between Secretary of State for Colonies and Governor of British Guiana, respecting Immigration of Labourers, House of Common Papers (1840), XXXIV.121 (151), 43.</footnote>
Deplorable Condition of the Hill Coolies in British Guiana and Mauritius in 1840.

Later the secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society from 1842 to 1852, Scoble had taken part in the abolition of slavery and was against the apprenticeship system -indenture- that replaced slavery in many British colonies from 1838, in Guiana, Jamaica and Trinidad.

He too made sure that the conditions of indentured labourers in British colonies were revealed to the general public and tried to put pressure on government members.<fnref n="4" /> While the abolitionists' extra-parliamentary agitation in the early days of indenture has been well-documented, their success in having indenture suspended seems an anomaly in the history of an institution – indenture – that is usually discussed for its longevity. Yet, far from being a one-off break, indenture has undergone various attacks, leading to suspension over the years of its existence as a British imperial institution (1838-1917).

## Identifying moments of interruption

The main focus of this MA dissertation will be the ruptures, interruptions and suspensions of the system of indenture between 1838-1917, with a special attention to British Guiana. Two major moments of suspension of the system of indenture in British Guiana can be identified (1839-1845 and 1848-1851). They will also be analysed for their differences. While it seems that the first suspension occurred for 'humanitarian' reasons backed up by the Anti-Slavery Society, the second interruption appears to be because of economic and political condition by the effects of the Sugar Duties Act of 1846. Other official stoppages of indentured emigration

<footnote n="4">⁴ John Scoble, *Hill Coolies: a Brief Exposure of the Deplorable Condition of the Hill Coolies in British Guiana and Mauritius and of the nefarious means by which they were induced to resort to these colonies* (London: Harvey & Darton, 1940).</footnote>
took place later in the nineteenth century in certain British colonies (Jamaica in
particular). But also, on a trans-imperial level, suspension of indentured emigration
took place in the French and Dutch colonies, particularly in the second half of the
nineteenth century. Not all of the colonies stopped and resumed indenture
emigration at the same time, although it is possible to identify certain similarities with
the dates of commencement and resumption of the system. Another form of
suspension discussed in this work will be moments of resistance of indentured
labourers in the second-half of the 19th century, as an argument to show that even if
there is no "official" interruption of the system, there are attempts by the labourers to
condemn the system.

Although not the colony which took the highest number of indentured Indians
– Mauritius was –, British Guiana is absolutely central to the understanding of the
institution for it was the second colony to resort to this form of coerced labour. With
indentureship being ‘used’ and discussed in colonies on the way from India to the
West Indies and in metropolitan Britain, it is necessary to adopt a wider frame in
order to gain a better understanding of the system and its ruptures. Indeed, as Potter
and Saha have argued, the British Empire should not be thought of as a
“homogenous monolith directed from London” but rather as a “complex patchwork of
interacting and dynamic agencies”.<fnref n="5" /> Similarly, historian Alessandro Stanziani has
convincingly argued about the connections between “worlds of unfreedom”, which
gives further strength to a connected perspective on Indian indentureship in
long-nineteenth-century British Guiana.<fnref n="6" /> Thus, attention will be given throughout this

<footnote n="5">⁵ Simon J. Potter & Jonathan Saha, "Global History, Imperial History and Connected Histories of Empire," *Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History* 16, n° 1 (2015): 5.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ Alessandro Stanziani, *Labor on the Fringes of Empire* (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018).</footnote>
dissertation to the connected spaces of the British Empire but also to trans-imperial
connections. This will be done by looking at British (and French and Dutch) colonies
in the West Indies but also to colonies in the Indian Ocean such as Mauritius or
Reunion. Still, British Guiana shall remain at the centre of the dissertation, as it is
believed that there has been an overrepresentation of certain areas and an
underrepresentation of others by historians. Indeed, former British colonies such as
Natal, Mauritius and Fiji have been the core focus by historians when they approach
the study of indenture and the West Indies to a lesser extent. Paradoxically, British
Guiana has long been overlooked in the historiography of indenture, the regional
history and the number of indentured labourers it received seem to point to an area
where interesting historical work can be done.

Indenture in historiographical perspective: the resilience of unfreedom

Writing about indenture from the perspective of suspension is an unusual
historiographical move - one that is hoped to shed further light on the complexities of
that institution, which is often appraised for its resilience and continuation in the
post-slavery slavery era. Indian indentured labourers were employed throughout all
of the British Empire between 1834 and 1917, from South East Asia to South
America, the West Indies, but also the South Pacific Islands.

Following the abolition of slavery, with the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in
1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, the plantocracy in British Guiana argued
that they were experiencing a labour shortage and needed to introduce a new labour
force to substitute former slaves and keep wages the lowest possible. As historian
Richard B. Allen has argued in his article 'Re-Conceptualizing: The "New System of
Slavery” published in 2012, planters in the West Indies followed the example set in Mauritius, where the import and enslavement of Indians was well known since the very beginning of the 19th century.<fnref n="7" /> Thus, John Gladstone, a Liverpool based slave-owner and merchant, on the 31st May 1838, recruited and embarked 414 Indians on ships at Calcutta (today’s Kolkata) in destination for British Guiana.<fnref n="8" /> Even if this first attempt by Gladstone to bring indentured East Indians to the Caribbean is considered a failure, it ultimately began the stream of approximately one million Asian indentured labourers from India to the Caribbean from 1838 until 1917.<fnref n="9" />

Oftentimes, Indians were recruited in different provinces such as in the United Provinces, a region in the North of India, and around cities where agencies of recruitment were based, most importantly around Madras (Chennai) and Calcutta (Kolkata) but also Bombay (Mumbai). These recruiters did not hesitate to deceive people into getting indentured; the recruiters lied regarding the destination; the wages and the length of time that they would have to leave their home country. Furthermore, as Historian Lomarsh Roopnarine has shown, the recruited Indians were mainly young men who were fit for work, he also points out that amongst this group “the caste (...) and religious composition mirrored Indian composition”.<fnref n="10" /> However, he argues that this was not the case for the representation of women in the Caribbean. Before departing aboard the ships, Indians signed a contract that bound them on a plantation for a number of years depending on the colony. They received a fixed daily wage and if they wanted a free return to India they had to re-indenture

<footnote n="7">⁷ Richard B Allen, ‘Re-Conceptualizing: The “New System of Slavery”,’ *Man in India* 92, no. 2 (2012): 230.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ Moon-Ho Jung, “Outlawing “Coolies”: Race, Nation, and Empire in the Age of Emancipation,” *American Quarterly* 57, no. 3 (2005): 680.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ George D. Bayley, *Handbook of British Guiana, 1909*. Comprising General and Statistical Information Concerning the Colony (Georgetown: ‘The Argosy’ Company, 1909), 119.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ Lomarsh Roopnarine, “East Indian Indentured Emigration to the Caribbean: Beyond the Push and Pull Model,” *Caribbean Studies* 31, no. 2 (2003): 106.</footnote>
for another five years. Secondly, after being recruited, the new indentees were driven
to an immigration depot where everyone recruited was kept before departing on the
different ships for several destinations. Finally, when they arrived at their destinations
they only had a few weeks to adapt to their new environment before being separated
into two groups: the stronger ones for strenuous physical labour and the weaker
ones for easier work.

One of the central questions studied by historians when approaching
indenture is the nature of their work, since Hugh Tinker's founding study *A New
System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920* (1974), the
debate has been focused around whether or not the system of indentureship can
been qualified as forced/coerced labour.<fnref n="11" /> In most of the nineteenth century,
indentured labour was considered as free labour, especially by European powers,
but historians like Tinker have demonstrated the coercive nature of such
employment.<fnref n="12" /> With this in mind, the aim is also to show how indentured servants
can be considered as “forced” labour, this can partly be explained by how the
plantation was organised and used labour. Indeed, life on the plantation was paced
by the cycles of the sugar cane and indentured labourers would work around 9 hours
a day, except on Sundays and other holidays. The estates remained organised the
same way as under slavery, planters and overseers roles were taken up by the same
individuals as under slavery. The organization of the labour force on plantations, was
know as “gang systems” existed under slavery and continued during indenture.
Furthermore, the housing, often little barracks in which indentured servants were
accommodated were the same where slaves stayed in on the plantations. There was

<footnote n="11">¹¹ Hugh Tinker, *A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920* (London: Hansib, 1974).</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹² Tinker, *A New System of Slavery*, 39.</footnote>
no wage negotiation, no matter how unfair they were, and the division of labour for
indentured servants was mostly untouched since the days of slavery. As Senanda
Sen has further argued: "labour deployed as above can be labelled as 'unfree',
judged by the yardstick of the so-called 'freedom' that is supposed to be enjoyed by
wage labour under capitalism. Unfreedom, as faced by those indentured labourers,
concerns the denial, in terms of the contractual arrangements, of command over
their own "labour power".<fnref n="13" /> The same stance is adopted by historian Alessandro
Stanziani in *Bondage: Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early
Twentieth Century* (2014), where his comparative and connected study of labour
contexts evidences the blurred boundaries and continuities between free and
bonded labour in a comparative perspective, which included Indian indenture.<fnref n="14" />

Indenture in Guiana: Renewed Historiographical Interest

Up to 1866, Mauritius was the main destination of Indian indentured servants and was only overtaken by Guiana from that moment onward. Despite the centrality of indenture to Guyana's history and society today, it had long been overlooked in discussions in the history of British slavery. This has changed in recent years and this thesis hopes to be a modest addition to the existing literature. Although general studies on indentured labour in the British Empire in the long 19th century has for a long time been underrepresented, the field is progressively expanding. In recent years, it has first been further exposed by the UN's decision to add the Records of Indian Indentured Labour to the International Memory of the World Register in 2011. Since then, more conferences and events have been organised to develop and

<footnote n="13">¹³ Sunanda Sen, "Indentured Labour from India in the Age of Empire," *Social Scientist* 44, no. 1/2 (2016): 35.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Alessandro Stanziani, *Bondage: Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries*, (Berghahn Books, 2014), 175-211.</footnote>
gather historians and more generally scholars around the subject of indentured labour.

A good illustration of the advancement of the field of research on indentured labour are the following. In September 2021, the first issue of the *The Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies* was published by Pluto Journals in partnership with the Ameena Gafoor Institute. This journal is the first to specifically focus on the study of Asian and African indentured labour in the 19th century across the multiple empires who used such unfree/coerced labour. It hosts some of the most renowned authors on the subject such as Brij Lal, Brinsley Samaroo and Clem Seecharan.<fnref n="15" />

Moreover, a new project called “The Indentured Labour Route Project” has been under discussion by UNESCO to “bring together all countries who have experienced indenture and other forms of forced labour and servitude in the mid-nineteenth and twentieth century, in a strive to contribute to nation building efforts and to a greater understanding among peoples and societies across the indentured diaspora as well as within the countries themselves.”<fnref n="16" /> This shows a willingness to share a common history between many of the former European colonies around the world where the Indian diaspora is present and may open the perspective of a reparative process. Lastly, another project organised by The Ameena Gafoor Institute is the “Oral History Project” led by Arlen Harris which references different interviews and visual projects on the subject of indenture, making it easier for a larger audience to access debates on the historical researches

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Maria del Pilar Kaladeen and David Dabydeen, “Introduction,” *Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies* 1, no. 1 (2021): xi–xvi.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Discussion on the Indentured Labour Route Project, UNESCO, 2021. https://en.unesco.org/news/first-inter-ministerial-committee-indentured-labour-route-project, Accessed November 20, 2021.</footnote>
being done on indenture.<fnref n="17" /> These different projects all show the advancements that are ongoing for the field of study. However it remains the case that this field of study is still somewhat limited, even more so when it comes to periods during which the system of emigration of indentured labourers was suspended. These periods of suspension are the focus of this study.

**Conceptualising rupture. The Guianese Lens.**

With its centrality to indenture, but also to moments of interruption of the system, Guiana represents a prime site from which to write about discontinuities. Discussing suspensions of indentured emigration invites one to think of the vocabulary used at the time to designate these episodes. In so doing, perusing sources, one encounters a variety of figures involved in indenture (politicians, activists, legal scholars, plantation owners, servants themselves). So, when discussing suspensions of the system of Asian indenture in the 19th century, contemporaries and historians have used words such as “ban”, “rupture”, “suspension”, “stoppage” and “interruption”. For purposes of consistency, this dissertation will use the term “interruption”.

But what is an interruption? Interruption can be thought as a break from continuity, reflecting a moment where change happens or not, when what existed before no longer exists whether it be in the same form or not at all. However, this so-called moment of rupture cannot be understood on its own, but is the result of several causes that have been previously evoked by contemporaries, in the case of indenture from the beginning of the system it was criticised for being “a new system

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ Arlen Harris, “Oral History Project”, Ameena Gafoor Institute, 2020. https://ameenagafoorinstitute.org/oral-history-project, Accessed December 1st, 2021.</footnote>
of slavery". The short periods of interruption (from a few hours to a few years) will be
set back against the broader context of a near-a-century-long institution, thereby
highlighting how moments of rupture eventually make for a long-lasting institution.
Put differently, discontinuities/interruptions can only be understood with reference to
a broader timeframe, which may be both temporal and spatial. The theoretical frame
here is partly borrowed from Ian Chambers who writes about the need to take into
account "la pluralité du temps historique" (plural historical times). By that, he means:
'this is to work with the proposal of an interrupted and interrupting history, a history of
intervals and discontinuities, of multiple temporalities'<fnref n="18" />. Chambers's proposal makes
even more sense if one thinks that the origins of indenture are constantly put back to
different dates, depending on who administers it. Asian indenture can be traced back
to the beginning of the 18th century in Mauritius, but the date that historians seem to
agree on is 1834, this is when indenture started being controlled by the British
Government. This can also be said with Trinidad, where Chinese labourers were
sent as indentured servants in 1806, although the consensus among historians is
that indenture started in 1845, which is when it was legally authorised within the
colony<fnref n="19" />. However, this raises questions as to whether it counted as indenture before
1845, and if not, who so. As will be argued here, the history of indenture is
discontinued and is contained in multiple narratives and intervals, in its origin but
also during the largest period where moments of suspensions happened. In other
words, 'continuities always rested on disconnection, contest, and disjuncture'.<fnref n="20" />

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Ian Chambers, *Postcolonial Interruptions, Unauthorised Modernities* (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 110-111.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Lomarsh Roopnarine, "Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World", *Oxford Bibliographies*, 2018.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Michael Lang "Evolution, rupture, and periodization", in *The Cambridge World History. Volume 1, Introducing World History, to 10,000 BCE*. ed. David Christian (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015), 100.</footnote>
Moreover, by widening the spatial focus, through the study of indenture, connections within the British Empire appear. Above all, by looking at indenture, tensions of governance between the colonies themselves and the metropolis are made visible. What will be discussed throughout this dissertation, is the complex administrative system trying to keep control over the system of indenture and the immigrants themselves. The governance of indenture will be at the heart of the dissertation, and interruptions of the system of immigration also shed a light on this question. These interruptions put on the front of the scene the different levels of powers and how they overlap, whether it be within the British Empire and even foreign powers once the recruitment of indentured labour was authorised to the French and Dutch. In other words, one might think of the system of indenture as a system of polycentric governance. As Ostrom & al. argued in 1961 for metropolitan areas, polycentricity is a multiplicity of overlapping political units.<fnref n="21" /> Thus, indenture can be considered as being administered on a polycentric model, connecting different levels of power within the British Empire: India, the sugar-colonies, London and the immigrants themselves. How indenture is a polycentric administered system will be explored all throughout this dissertation through its suspensions, all three chapters will look at the different suspensions and all reveal the complex administrative system governing indenture. Through the question of governance, a certain opposition appears between colonial and metropolitan governance, in particular during the first and second interruptions which oppose respectively, India and London, Guiana and London (and to a certain extent India with the question of the return passage). Furthermore, indenture also enables the study of trans-colonial, trans-national and trans-imperial trajectories and the question again of governance

<footnote n="21">²¹ Vincent Ostrom, Charles M. Tiebout, and Robert Warren. "The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry." *The American Political Science Review* 55, no. 4 (1961): 831–42.</footnote>
of those sent abroad from India. These studies deconstruct the general belief of the metropolitan government and the British Colonial Office holding sway over its empire: in reality, even Crown Colonies appear to maintain a relatively important power – or at least try to – when it comes to immigration, while it is normally a prime domain of the Colonial Office.

While looking at the question of governance around indenture, questions appear when focusing on its suspensions. Did these periods of ‘crisis’ or ‘rupture’ really profoundly affect the system of indenture? But more importantly, can we think of these moments with the concept of ‘régime d’historicité’ such as François Hartog has done for the French Revolution or the fall of the Berlin wall?<fnref n="22" />

Even if we might not define these moments of interruption of the system of indenture as ‘turning points’, they were still major events for the indentured system, interrupting and suspending the system for a number of years. In the same way resistance and riots against planters showed the unrest of labourers and their discontent over a system which profited from deceit and exploitation.

In this dissertation, the main focus will be on the moments of suspensions of the system of indenture in British Guiana, during the period from 1834 until 1917. By looking at suspensions of the system of indenture the aim of this study is to demonstrate how indenture was administered and how multiple levels of governance and power overlapped to govern indenture.

This dissertation has been divided into three chapters and is organised chronologically. The first part deals with the first suspension of indentured emigration

<footnote n="22">²² François Hartog, *Régimes d'historicité, Présentisme et expériences du temps* (Paris: Le Seuil, 2003).</footnote>
from India between 1838 and 1845, it will look at how humanitarians influenced
heavily the decision, but also how planters turned towards other sources of labour
force and how the re-introduction of Indian emigration proved to be an affirmation of
the colonial power on its colonies. Chapter Two analyses the second interruption
between 1848 and 1851, focusing on the debate between protectionism and
free-trade when the plantocracy was under attack with the Sugar Duties Act of 1846.
It will also explore the new strategy from the Colonial Government towards indenture
by promoting women's indenture but also other measures put in place to incentives
indentees to stay in the colonies they were sent to. Finally the last chapter will
address the sentiment of opposition towards immigration in the West Indies but also
resistance of indentured labourers and it can be considered as a form of suspension
of the system.

Sources

To research ruptures, an array of primary sources is mobilised, premised on
the central ideas that moments of suspension exemplify tensions over the
administration of indentureship in British Guiana and that this governance is plural.
The prime source remains British Colonial Office (CO) papers at the National
Archives (TNA) at Kew, in London. The multiplication of themed archival collections –
whose context of production and contents always need to be analysed for a thorough
understanding of how digitization may alter our appreciation of documents – has
extended to British Colonial archives in recent years, especially in the context of
British Online Archives.<fnref n="23" /> Such a phenomenon tends to obfuscate that collections of

<footnote n="23">²³ See for instance, “Nigeria and Cameroon Under Colonial Rule, in Government Reports, 1887-1962” in the “Governing Africa, 1808-1895” collection of the British Online Archives. https://microform.digital/boa/collections/75/nigeria-and-cameroon-under-colonial-rule-in-government-reports-1887-1962 (last Accessed June, 19 2022).</footnote>
the British CO offer “no easy entry by theme”, which anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler
also remarks of the archives of the Dutch Ministry of Colonies.<fnref n="24" /> Just like the latter,
British CO Papers are not organised thematically, but chronologically and by colony,
with collections being dispersed over several shelfmarks as changes in political
governance affected such and such territory. British Guianese material has been
prioritised, in particular correspondence between the Colonial Office and the colony
(CO 111, CO 112), laws adopted by Guianan institutions and debates relative to
other legislation (metropolitan or colonial, for instance Indian) applicable to British
Guiana (CO 113), as well as specific files on indenture (CO 318). While help guides
developed by the TNA at Kew provide suggestions on how to research Indian
indenture in their collections, especially the British Colonial Office Papers whose
deposited documents they hold,<fnref n="25" /> descriptions and indexes give little inklings as to
ruptures in the chronology – at least on the surface. Minute attention to language, for
instance in the British press coverage of such moments, provides clues as to
potential descriptions of such events. A whole lexical field appears: interruption,
stoppage, suspension, disruption, ban, rupture being the most frequent ones, which
also appear in British parliamentary debates and command papers by the British
Parliament. These sources (main British newspapers, especially *The Times*
(London), which remains a leading daily over the whole period, as well as
parliamentary debates and reports) give further insight into the colonial metropolitan
perspective on Indian indenture in Guiana already present in British CO papers, as
both paid accrued attention to the system, especially in the early decades of its
implementation in Guiana.

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Ann Laura Stoler, *Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense* (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), Kindle Edition 283/7989.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ The TNA has also developed outreach actions with regard to this material. See “Indian Indentured Labour”, The National Archives, n.d.</footnote>

<footnote>https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/outreach/projects/indian-indentured-labour/</footnote>
As Stoler adequately remarks, “navigating the archives is to map the multiple
imaginaries”, in this case of Indian indenture in British Guiana.<fnref n="26" /> British Colonial
Office papers are thus analysed for their contents, as well as for what they reveal of
the overlapping racial imaginaries of Indian indentured labourers and of the
multi-layered governance within the British Empire – which the many tables and
statistics reproduced in the appendices exemplify further. British CO papers also give
to see the lobbies that attempted to alter colonial policies on British Indian indenture
in each colonial space that this thesis discusses (British Guiana, metropolitan Britain
and British India), so that their analysis helps reconstruct sprawling networks that
render manifest how interconnected different parts of the British Empire – or
neighbouring foreign colonies for that matter were. Amongst these lobbies are
abolitionist groups or individuals (both within metropolitan Britain, in colonial India or
in British Guiana), often pitted against former slave-owners who converted into
indenture enthusiasts. Their printed newspapers and pamphlets have also been
consulted.

Finally, one regret needs to be expressed as the consultation of the India
Office Papers in their archived version at the British Library has unfortunately not
been possible during this second year of MA, when archive consultations remained
difficult for some time due to the world pandemic. India Office Papers are now partly
digitised as part of the online database developed by Adam Matthew *East India
Company*. While the database was consulted as part of a two-month trial period,<fnref n="27" />
access conditions and the OCR process have not made any systematic consultation
cross-search of combined keywords (Indian+Indenture+stoppage for instance) easy,

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Ann Laura Stoler. *Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense*. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 9.</footnote>

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Put in place by the Grands Moulins Library, Université Paris Cité, Autumn 2021.</footnote>
revealing how the development of advanced search tools remains uneven across existing databases. More than that, it probably speaks to the fact that "inaccessibility has more to do with the principles that organised colonial governance and the "common sense" that underwrote what were deemed political issues and how those issues travelled by paper through the bureaucratic pathways of the colonial administration", something digital search tools still very imperfectly capture for colonial archives in particular.<fnref n="28" /> Conversely, Indian newspapers close to the British élite in India and/or the British governor in India (such as *The India Gazette* or *The Bengal Hurkaru and Chronicle*) often reproduced extended descriptions of metropolitan /colonial debates affecting India and commented decisions by the Governor, be it at the period of the East India Company (prior to the 1857-8 Sepoy Rebellion) or of the Viceroy in Council (after 1858). They thus have been extensively researched, in their digitised version, for coverage of Indian indenture to British Guiana. So have other official, or semi-official colonial newspapers (such as *The Bermuda Royal Gazette*) that too reflected on decisions passed on Indian indenture to British Guiana by the different decision-centres involved (British CO; Indian government, especially the Governor; British Guianan governor and British Guianan institutions). *In fine*, these sources taken together give shape to the complex, intricate nature of British imperial rule by suggesting different circulations of information/decisions as indentured labourers journey from India West. For whoever pays attention, they also contain the voices of those who resisted the institution – in particular indentured labourers themselves throughout the period –, although the language of CO sources often attempt to suppress any legitimacy by treating protests mostly under a repressing/policing angle.<fnref n="29" /> Through its historiographical

<footnote n="28">²⁸ Stoler, *Along the Archival Grain*, 9.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">²⁹ CO 318 contains files on Indian indenture (CO 318/162 for instance), but most generally contain documents about the policing of the colony and military matters.</footnote>
positioning and its sources, this dissertation is thus an attempt at unravelling the
nature of colonial governance in the indenture colony of British Guiana and making
visible its polycentricism, as well as its global, but also very local and transcolonial
power dynamics.<fnref n="30" />

<footnote n="30">³⁰ A rare instance of that approach is found in: Nishant Batsha, “The Currents of Restless Toil: Colonial Rule and Indian Indentured Labor in Trinidad and Tobago”, Unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2017. Online: https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8X63T7P/download (last consulted 12 June 2022).</footnote>
# Chapter 1: Suspension as Humanitarian Intervention ? (1838-1845).

This first chapter shall explore the different actors who were involved in the suspension and renewal of the first suspension/interruption of the indentured system. Indentured emigration to Mauritius dates back to the 1820s, and maybe even earlier. Allen B. Richard has argued that the "export [of Indians] was a – well established practice during the late eighteenth century". Hugh Tinker has also estimated that "by 1838, perhaps more than 25,000 Indians had been shipped to Mauritius".<fnref n="31" /> Overall, Mauritius has been viewed as the test colony for indentured emigration, which set the example for other sugar-colonies

Eager to replace slaves on Guianese plantations, John Gladstone, the Liverpool-based planter, looked to Mauritius and its indentured scheme as an example for a new labour system in Guiana. That is why in 1836 he (and other planters of Guiana) wrote to Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. asking for a hundred indentured labourers for his plantations (Vreedenhoop and Vriedenstein). The reply that Gladstone received stated: "We are not aware that any greater difficulty would present itself in sending men to the West Indies, the natives being perfectly ignorant of the place they go to or the length of voyage".<fnref n="32" /> It was only in May 1838 that Gladstone's ship arrived in British Guiana. The same year, the Court of Policy, a local Guianese chamber inherited from the Dutch period of colonisation and which retained its deciding on economic matters alongside the British governorship, proposed a general scheme for immigration that would allow other planters to recruit

<footnote n="31">³¹ Tinker, *A New System of Slavery*, 63.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² As quoted in Tinker, *A New System of Slavery*, 63.</footnote>
and employ indentured labour. However, the number of emigrants who were shipped
to Guiana before the first suspension of emigration remained very limited and only
amounted to 396 workers.<fnref n="33" />

As discussed in the introduction, the first suspension took place from 1838 until 1845 in British Guiana. However, in Mauritius the system was renewed a few years before, in 1842. It seems that this ban of indentured emigration from India took place for humanitarian reasons, backed by opposition in India and anti-slavery societies in Britain who had just fought for the abolition of slavery. Throughout the chapter, discussion will focus on the multiple layers of powers, governance and actors who participated in this suspension but also in its renewal.

**A/ Humanitarianism and the Anti-Slavery Society: Combatting indenture in the immediate Post-Slavery era.**

**a) India's suspension of indentured emigration in Mauritius and British Guiana.**

As early as 1837, the Government of India tried to regulate indentured emigration because of reports of ill-treatment of emigrants. This resulted in the Act V of 1837, which stated that emigrants should appear before an emigration agent before departure to write and sign a contract. Thus, a Superintendent of Police at Calcutta, who was given full control on emigration from this port, was given the

<footnote n="33">³³ G. W. Roberts and J. Byrne, "Summary Statistics on Indenture and Associated Migration Affecting the West Indies, 1834-1918." *Population Studies* 20, no. 1, (1966): 129.</footnote>
authority to refuse any permits to export indentured workers at any point. This Act
also limited the number of years for indenture to five years which could be renewed
for a further five years. Act V was intended to protect those who were being recruited
and sent as indentured workers, but in reality Indian immigrants were still subject to
abuses. In fact, the system would be suspended a year later due to the very same
abuses this Act tried to limit.

The act also authorised the exportation of labourers from India to the West
Indies, according to Gladstone's demands. Thus, it has been argued by historians
that this act officialised the new system of labour as being a replacement for
slavery.<fnref n="34" /> Still, these regulations were only for the port of Calcutta and let other ports
such as Madras and Bombay unregulated, meaning that exportation to Réunion was
thus easily done through these ports.

A year after the enactment of this law, the *Bengal Hurkaru* was highly critical
towards it. A reader anonymously wrote: "the criminal imbecility of the Colonial office
has thoughtlessly granted permission to the West Indies Islands to substitute the free
labourers of the East for slaves who chains have been knocked off".<fnref n="35" /> Indeed, an
Order of Council directly by the Colonial Office in England was given to authorise the
forced migration of indentured workers to British Guiana. As this letter from the
Government of India reveals: "the local Government are much embarrassed, when
an application is made for licence to export to a colony which hitherto we have had
no dealing of communication of any kind".<fnref n="36" /> It therefore seems that there was poor
communication and a lack of clarity around who made the decisions when it came to

<footnote n="34">³⁴ Sudipto Mitra and Purba Hossain, "Protests in Print: Resistance against Indian Indentured Labour in Nineteenth Century Bengal", in *The Nation and its Margins: Rethinking Community*, ed. Aditi Chandra and Vinita Chandra (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 90.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ "Exportation of Labourers", *Bengal Hurkaru*, 15th June 1838.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">³⁶ *Further Papers Respecting East-India Labourers, East India Company*, London, (1842), 6.</footnote>
authorising the permits to the colonies. As explained before, the Superintendent had
the power to give a permit of his own authority, but he still contacted the Colonial
Office instead of the Government of India. Similar uncertainties existed in the export
of indentured workers to French colonies such as the Isle of Bourbon, which will be
discussed later. This example reveals a complex overlapping administrative system
in which the actors themselves were unsure about who exercised what power upon
the would-be indentured labourers.

The earliest complaints against the system of indenture came from India and
the locations of departure of indentured emigrants, especially Calcutta. When looking
at the *Bengal Hurkaru*, in nearly all of the issues of the newspaper there are
mentions of the "exportations of coolies" and readers - men and women - would
address the newspaper to convey their opinion on the subject. This newspaper
positioned itself against indenture and thus published a great number of
anti-indenture messages.

It was argued by contemporaries that the system of indenture resembled
slavery in many ways. In a report regarding the subject on indentured labour, an
1838 edition of the *Bengal Hurkaru* stated that "men have been kidnapped (...) the
voyage has been (...) of such a nature as to remind us strongly of the horrors of the
middle passage; (...) in some instances they have been worked down to skeletons."<fnref n="37" />
A recurrent argument against the emigration of workers was that they were being
recruited through deceit, they were lied to about the place they were being sent to
and the money they would earn. Conditions on the plantations would prove to be

<footnote n="37">³⁷ “The Exportation of Coolies”, *Bengal Hurkaru*, 22nd June 1838.</footnote>
awful and mortality rates aboard ships during the voyage were also very high, as
suicides aboard ships during the voyage were frequent.

Discussions against indenture culminated in a series of events during 1838.
Firstly, as Hossain and Mitra mentioned, on 15th June that year, around 150 people
petitioned for a public meeting to discuss the exportation of indentured workers from
the city.<fnref n="38" /> The meeting that had been called for was held in Calcutta's Town Hall on
the 10th July of 1838. This public meeting assembled much of the colonial and local
elite.<fnref n="39" /> The *Bengal Hurkaru* reported over 400 people attending the meeting; it
resulted in a petition to be presented to the President of Council by Mr. Young on the
behalf of those who met for the meeting. It was stated in the petition that "if the
present system be continued and extended, that the coast ports of India will soon
resemble the slave marts of Africa, and the Mauritius become a slave emporium for
the world, and the evils so long inflicted on the Negro race will be transferred to the
inhabitant of British India".<fnref n="40" /> Finally, Thomas Dickens also asked for an inquiry on the
state of indentured workers, which he would become a part of with five other
members including an Indian man: Russomoy Dutt.<fnref n="41" /> Indeed, the Government of
India appointed a committee to report on the conditions of Indian labourers who were
being sent to various colonies, which resulted in the publication of a report in 1839.<fnref n="42" />

<footnote n="38">³⁸ Sudipto Mitra and Purba Hossain, “Protests in Print: Resistance against Indian Indentured Labour in Nineteenth Century Bengal”, in *The Nation and its Margins: Rethinking Community*, ed. Aditi Chandra and Vinita Chandra (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), 91-92.</footnote>

<footnote n="39">³⁹ Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ *Report of the Committee Appointed by the Supreme Government of India, to Enquire Into the Abuses Alleged to Exist in Exporting from Bengal Hill Coolies and Indian Labourers*, (Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1839), 285.</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ J. Young, “The Cooly Trade”, *Bengal Hurkaru*, 11th July 1838.</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² *Report of the Committee Appointed by the Supreme Government of India, to Enquire Into the Abuses Alleged to Exist in Exporting from Bengal Hill Coolies and Indian Labourers*, (Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1839).</footnote>
On the 11th July 1838, the Government of India stopped emigration to the West Indies from Calcutta and they suggested the Government of Bombay should also stop emigration to the West Indies and to Mauritius.<fnref n="43" /> This decision was taken by a member of the Governor-General's council, William Willberforce Bird whose father was William Willberforce's cousin. William Bird also appointed the Committee to inquire about the export of Hill Coolies. Tinker has argued that this meeting and the demands made by Mr. Young had a direct impact on the Government of India's decision the next day.<fnref n="44" /> However, it seems that even Lord Auckland in a letter sent the 9th July 1838 was starting to question such immigration to distant colonies as their power over such colonies was not sufficient.<fnref n="45" /> It is possible that the meeting of the 10th July 1838 might have had an impact on the decision of suspension the next day, as the Government of India (or Government of Bengal, also referred as Fort William) was also based in Calcutta, so they must have heard about such a meeting. Still, there are no direct references to the meeting in the letters sent by the Government of India, so it is hard to be certain about its impact. However, there is little doubt that the debates in Calcutta's newspapers by those opposing the indentured system did have an effect on the decision of the Government of India to suspend emigration.

Further regulations to ensure the suspension of Indian immigration were enacted in 1839. With the Act XIV of 1839 a fine of Rs 200 would be made to anyone who was found guilty of continuing indentured emigration. It is believed that if a fine existed, and especially if it was put in place one year after the start of the suspension, some ships must have continued the emigration scheme and be found

<footnote n="43">⁴³ Further Papers Respecting East-India Labourers, East India Company, London, 1842.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ Tinker, 65-66.</footnote>

<footnote n="45">⁴⁵ Further Papers Respecting East-India Labourers, East India Company, London, 1842, 7.</footnote>
guilty.<fnref n="46" /> If the plantocracy relied so heavily on the new emigration of labourers that one could imagine that there was still emigration to colonies even if it was banned. It is also easily imaginable that emigrants could still be brought to Mauritius from India because of the geographical closeness of both colonies, one could also imagine that some ships even brought emigrants to the West Indies even if the distance is quite significant.

b) Press mobilisation to suspend indenture.

In the context of the immediate post-slavery era, various societies were founded in order to continue the fight against the exploitation of indigenous communities throughout the British Empire. Furthermore, several Indian newspapers began to help lead debates around the system of indenture, including publications such as *The Friend of India*, *Bengal Hurkaru* and *The Englishmen*. These have been thought as major leaders in early resistance against the system of indenture.<fnref n="47" /> These different actors actively fought against the system of indenture which was rapidly coined as being “a new system of slavery”. Thus, growing attention came to the Indian and thus British public on the question of indentured immigrants being sent to British colonies, most importantly Mauritius.

Multiple newspapers were publishing reports on the condition of indentured emigrants being recruited and departed from ports. The most influential was *The Friend of India*, an evangelical newspaper published weekly, another influential

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ An example of a ship transporting labourers after the suspension will be discussed later, however there is no mention of it being fined, as it left from Pondicherry a French port.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ Purba Hossain, “Protests at the Colonial Capital: Calcutta and the Global Debates on Indenture, 1836–42.” *South Asian Studies* 33, n° 1 (2017): 43-44.</footnote>
newspaper was the *Bengal Hurkaru*. Purba Hossain has argued concerning these
newspapers that they “played a formative role in the movement resisting the new
system”.<fnref n="48" /> It is believed by the author that information concerning the exportation of
indentured labourers first came from India and then arrived in Britain to Anti-Slavery
Societies and members relayed information they received from India but also from
the West Indies. Thus using arguments that had been raised throughout the British
Empire, abolitionists in Britain then argued against the system of indenture in Britain
and tried to influence the British public against it.

The main British actor against the early system of indenture was the British
and Foreign Anti-Slavery society. The society was founded in 1839 by members who
had actively participated in the abolition of slavery. Yet, the newspaper edited by the
society entitled *British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter* only began publishing in
1840, meaning that the members' views before the suspension is hard to identify.<fnref n="49" />
Still, as soon as January 1840 in their second number of the newspaper, Joseph
Sturge published an article about indenture and argued that “emigration (...) has
generally been accompanied by much fraud and injustice, as well as by [sic.]
dreadfull mortality (...) although slavery is legally abolished in our colonies, its spirit
yet remains in full force”.<fnref n="50" />

Even before the founding of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society,
Joseph Sturge, a Quaker and a member of the Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society,
along with Thomas Harvey and John Scoble, toured the West Indies in 1837 to
inquire and see for themselves the state and conditions of people of African descent

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ The *British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter* will throughout the dissertation be abbreviated as the *Anti-Slavery Reporter*.</footnote>

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ Joseph Sturge, "The Immigration Question", *Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 29th January 1840.</footnote>
after the abolition of slavery and to write about the system of apprenticeship they
were subject to.<fnref n="51" /> During that time, even if this was not their main objective, these
men also collected information about the new form of labour that was being tested.

Sturge and Harvey visited the colonies of Jamaica, Antigua, Barbados,
Montserrat and St. Lucia. While Scoble, accompanied by a certain Dr. Lloyd, went to
British Guiana.<fnref n="52" /> After his visit to the colony, Scoble stated in a speech at an
Anti-Slavery meeting that "to reduce the value of labour, and to demoralize the
negroes, hordes of East Indian idolaters are to be introduced to be sacrificed in their
turn to Mammon and Moloch".<fnref n="53" /> Thus referring to Gladstone's and other planters'
plan to introduce a new East Indian labour force to replace ex-slaves on plantations.
Most probably, because of the few Indian workers that had been brought to British
Guiana, Scoble must have been aware of the situation in Mauritius and thought that
the same situation would result in the West Indies if Indians were brought in greater
numbers.

Publications and reports on the poor conditions of those who had been sent
before the ban continued even during the suspension of immigration. Indeed, the
suspension of emigration did not stop indenture as a whole, but only the emigration
of new labourers to British colonies. Most of the British-based anti-indenture reports
were published during the interruption of emigration.

The authors within the Anti-Slavery Society based their rhetoric on three main
arguments to criticise the indentured system. First, that indentured workers were

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ See Joseph Sturge and Thomas Harvey, *The West Indies in 1837*, (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1838).</footnote>

<footnote n="52">⁵² Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="53">⁵³ John Scoble, *Speech delivered at the Anti-Slavery Meeting in Exeter Hall, on Wednesday the 4th of April 1838*, (London: Central Negro Emancipation Committee, 1838), 21.</footnote>
subject to deceit from recruiters and secondly that the introduction of new labourers
would affect the newly free populations (i.e. ex-slaves) in British colonies. Finally,
they alerted the public of the exploitation and condition of the labourers on
plantations. After the report of poor conditions on the Belle-Vue plantation in the
*British Emancipator* newspaper, an investigation was ordered by Henry Light the
Governor of British Guiana. It was Mr. Wolseley, the Government Secretary,
accompanied by Captain Coleman who was to report on the conditions of the
plantation; they were also joined by John Scoble on the estate. Wolseley reported
that:

> Never did I behold a more sickening or melancholy spectacle than that which
> was presented to us in this building; here we found 84 miserable looking
> objects, most of them in the act of bathing their feet, some writhing under
> sores of the most frightful description, others suffering from fever and bowel
> complaint, and to aggravate this mournful scene, one corpse on the floor
> (covered with a shroud), to which before we left the estate another was
> added.<fnref n="54" />

In a pamphlet published in 1840, Scoble alerted about the abuses indentured
workers were subject to on the plantation:

> It was known that a large number had fled from Belle-Vue, and were found on
> plantation Herstelling, on the opposite side of the river, where they declared
> that, in consequence of the severity of the treatment they had endured from
> their manager (...) they would rather die than go back.<fnref n="55" />

<footnote n="54">⁵⁴ Letter from W. B. Wolseley to Governor Light, March 1838, CO 111/163, f. 283.</footnote>

<footnote n="55">⁵⁵ John Scoble, *British Guiana: facts! Facts!! Facts!!!*, (London: Johnston & Barrett, 1840).</footnote>
Moreover, in a letter from Mr. Young to James Stuart, the attorney of the
plantation Vreed-en-Hoop, it was reported that: “Coolies of Vreed-en-Hoop
had-been, flogged, and that two of them, in consequence of ill-treatment, had fled
from the estate, and had since perished in the neighbourhood of Mahaica”.<fnref n="56" />

While deceit from recruitment, abuses of officials who were supposed to
protect immigrants and the effects of immigration on free-labourers were important
arguments for the debates around indenture, the conditions of indentured labourers
on the plantations were also as influential, especially during the period of suspension
of emigration. It seems overall that resistance and critique against the system of
indenture came first from India when they heard what indentured labourers told once
they returned to their home country, and the arguments exposed in India were then
used by those fighting the system in Britain.

Different actors mobilised against the system of indenture, whether it be in
India with the local newspapers that relayed the information about the workers'
condition in the colonies, or in Britain where the different societies alerted the British
public.

c) Finding alternative sources of indentured labour.

Even if Indian emigration for the West Indies was halted, this did not mean
that indentured emigration stopped altogether. Indentured labourers started arriving
in British Guiana as early as 1834 and they came from various places whether it be

<footnote n="56">⁵⁶ Correspondence relating to the condition of Hill coolies and of other labourers, House of Commons Papers (1839) XXXIX.55 (463), 83.</footnote>
from the West Indies or from Europe. Indeed, numerous labourers came from the islands of the Bahamas, Antigua and Nevis but also from Africa and Portugal. They pre-dated Indian indentured workers in British Guiana as emigration was not yet authorised to the West Indies (only to Mauritius), so planters sought to find workers and encourage immigration to the colony.<fnref n="57" />

Immigration to Guiana started the same year as the abolition of slavery in 1834, first by private enterprise then immigration would become public affair as it was funded by the Government. Whilst Portuguese indentured immigrants from the Azores were first brought to Trinidad in 1834, a year later in 1835 they were introduced to British Guiana. In total between 1835 and 1845, 6,209 indentured emigrants were shipped from the Portuguese islands of Madeira, Cape Verde and the Azores to British Guiana between 1838 and 1845.<fnref n="58" /> Other European immigrants came, from Germany, Malta, Britain and France, although they came in much smaller numbers than those from Portugal. It has been argued by Jo-Anne S. Ferreira that “Portuguese, among others, were imported throughout the West Indies to increase the European population vis-à-vis the African population”.<fnref n="59" /> Creoles constituted a major part of the ethnic composition of the West Indian colonies, it was seen by the British colonists as necessary to counterbalance the ethnic composition of the colony by encouraging immigration from Europe. However, reports state that Europeans died in great numbers due to illnesses and thus African and Asian labourers were preferred by planters.<fnref n="60" />

<footnote n="57">⁵⁷ See Appendix B for a table on the number of immigrants in British Guiana from 1834 to 1843.</footnote>

<footnote n="58">⁵⁸ G W Roberts et J Byrne, « Summary Statistics on Indenture and Associated Migration Affecting the West Indies, 1834-1918 », *Population Studies* 20, n° 1 (1966): 129.</footnote>

<footnote n="59">⁵⁹ Jo-Anne S. Ferreira, “Madeiran Portuguese Migration to Guyana, St. Vincent, Antigua and Trinidad: A Comparative Overview”, *Portuguese Studies Review* 14, n° 2 (2006): 65.</footnote>

<footnote n="60">⁶⁰ Report Dr. Bonyun's on the state of immigrants to Governor Henry Light, January 1848, CO 111/250, f. 24-137.</footnote>
Earlier attempts at recruiting workers for emigration to the West Indies had failed. Indeed, in 1806 the British Government brought around 200 Chinese immigrants to Trinidad, however in 1838 only 22 immigrants remained on the island due to the poor working conditions on the island.<fnref n="61" /> However, in 1811 there was a report from a Parliamentary Committee to investigate the prospects of an organised emigration from China to the West Indies to discuss possible immigration schemes to encourage immigration to the sugar colonies. It was in 1843, during the first suspension of Indian emigration to the West Indies that Chinese emigration was authorised to British Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica. In 1843 a total of 2,150 immigrants were licensed to come from the Straits of Malacca to Guiana to work as indentured labourers on plantations.<fnref n="62" />

Lastly, the most important group of indentured labourers who were imported to the colony during the first suspension was Africans, in particular from Sierra Leone and the Kroo Coast. The main argument for the forced migration of these populations was that the British recruiters tricked them into forced migration as a way out of slavery. However, recruiters were liberating them to only contract them as a source of forced labour on the plantations. As Richard Anderson has argued: "The legal process through which captives on board slave ships became liberated Africans was simultaneously an act of emancipation and colonization, as freed slaves were assigned new tasks designed to fulfill the labor and defense needs of Britain's Atlantic empire."<fnref n="63" /> In a minute of the Court of Policy in British Guiana, Governor James Carmichael Smyth argued in 1836 that:

<footnote n="61">⁶¹ Richard B. Allen, Re-conceptualizing, 230.</footnote>

<footnote n="62">⁶² See Appendix C.</footnote>

<footnote n="63">⁶³ Richard Anderson, "The Diaspora of Sierra Leone's Liberated Africans: Enlistment, Forced Migration, and "Liberation" at Freetown, 1808-1863", *African Economic History* 41 (2013): 101.</footnote>
A sense of duty, a desire to promote, by every means in my power, the welfare of an important province intrusted to my government, and, above all, a wish to contribute towards the sum total of human happiness, and in so much to diminish the amount of human misery, have governed my conduct upon the present occasion. This magnificent country will, for ages to come, amply repay the capitalist, and enable him to employ any number of labourers. The liberated Africans are undervalued, ill-treated, and neglected in the island of Cuba. (...) Here, on the contrary, the service of the liberated Africans will be valued, and he will be treated accordingly.<fnref n="64" />

Britain was two-faced. On the one hand, former anti-slavery activists denounced slavery, while on the other hand, anti-slave rhetoric was used by indenters to recruit workers in a supposedly freer form of labour. Meanwhile, the British State was repaying planters for their loses with the abolition of slavery, which they were reinvested into indentureship. However, the Colonial State did not authorise immigration from West Africa until 1841, they tried to regulate the immigration by nominating an Emigration Agent for each colony of the West Indies in authorised ports in Africa, thus copying the system that was in place for Indians. So, from between 1841 and 1845 during the first suspension of Indian emigration a total of 5,829 “liberated Africans” were brought to British Guiana.<fnref n="65" /> Most of them came from Sierra Leone and the Kroo Coast but also from the island of St. Helena and some from slave ports in Brazil and Cuba.

<footnote n="64">⁶⁴ Correspondence between Secretary of State for Colonies and Governor of British Guiana, respecting Immigration of Labourers. House of Common Papers (1840), XXXIV.121 (151), 47.</footnote>

<footnote n="65">⁶⁵ G. W. Roberts & J. Byrne, "Summary Statistics on Indenture and Associated Migration Affecting the West Indies, 1834-1918", *Population Studies* 20, n° 1 (1966): 130.</footnote>
It may be argued that these experiments with immigration from various places of the British Empire to British Guiana were used as a base to build but also to renew the system of indenture of Indian indentured workers. It also permitted planters to have access to a steady source of labour during the immediate post-emancipation era during which Indian emigration was banned. So, even if humanitarians both in India and Britain advocated for the suspension of the emigration of Indians to sugar-colonies in particular Mauritius but also British Guiana, the emigration of other indentured labourers did not stop and was used as an alternative source of labourers during the ban. However, with the renewal of Indian emigration in 1845, Indian indentured labourers would form the largest contingent over other immigrants.

**B/ An affirmation of British colonial power: regulating the indentured system.**

In the first years of the indentured system in Mauritius but also in British Guiana, the system of labour was relatively unregulated: at least it was not codified as such in British law. Indeed, it was mainly a private enterprise led by planters before first being regulated in 1837. Ashutosh Kumar has estimated that around 7,000 immigrants were sent to work on plantations before there were any regulations to the system.<fnref n="66" /> After the first ban on emigration the British Colonial State intended to better control the system by reaffirming its position towards its colonies, but most importantly towards the private enterprise of the East India Company. It is believed

<footnote n="66">⁶⁶ Kumar, Coolies of the Empire, 57.</footnote>
that the regulation of the indentured system was aimed at justifying and making what
the British Government believed would be a more "humane" system. The idea was to
cut short criticisms from abolitionists and humanitarians who had pointed towards the
abuses of the system.

a) Plantocracy lobbying for indenture and its renewal.

While the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society met for the first time in Exeter Hall for the World Anti-Slavery convention on the 12th and 13th of June 1840, the British Parliament was debating to lift the ban on indenture.<fnref n="67" /> Since the beginning of the suspension of indentured emigration, the Mauritian and West Indian British plantocracy were lobbying for the renewal of Indian immigration. Their main argument was that they needed labour as there was shortage of workers because newly freed populations of African descendants were reluctant to work on plantations. Even if they managed to maintain a steady immigration flow of indentured labourers from Portugal and West Africa, they wanted more labourers which meant they would need to fight against the suspension of Indian emigration. Both merchants and planters were advocating for the renewal of the indenture system in India, Mauritius, British Guiana and in Britain.

It did not take long for discussion of the renewal of the indentured system to
be taken seriously. Indeed, the British merchants who were involved in shipping
indentured labourers from Indians ports, in Calcutta especially, backed by the
Mauritian plantocracy, were fighting for the renewal of emigration only two weeks

<footnote n="67">⁶⁷ Kale, *Coolies of the Empire*, 112.</footnote>
after the suspension of emigration. A petition was sent by merchants to the
Government of India on the 23rd of July 1838. In their petition, they denied all the
accusations that were made against the system. For instance, they argued that:
"nothing can be more unjust in assertion, or more forced argument, than the anology
said to subsist between the now abolished slave trade, and the free labour market
established between those we represent and the natives of this country".<fnref n="68" /> One of
the main arguments for those in favour of indentured emigration was the right for
British subjects to be free of movement and work where they pleased inside the
empire, which the suspension of indentured emigration did not permit. Indeed they
stated that "it is a question involving the rights of British subjects (...) to carry their
manual labour to the most productive market".<fnref n="69" /> Furthermore, another argument was
forwarded by those in favour of indenture: the overpopulation of India and the
"civilising mission" by the British. As noted in the Bengal Hurkaru: "the introduction of
Indian labourers into this island must be beneficial to British India, not only by ridding
her of her superabundant population, but on the return of numbers of them, by
providing her with a future supply of workmen who will have acquired a competent
skill and knowledge of the culture and manufacture of sugar".<fnref n="70" />

In the West Indies too, planters, merchants and other members of the colony
were petitioning the Queen for the renewal of Indian emigration. Even if they were
receiving immigrants from Portugal and Africa as discussed above, planters felt the
need for Indian immigration. A petition from British Guiana dated from the 23rd
December 1839 gathered seven hundred and seventy-three signatures for the

<footnote n="68">⁶⁸ Report of the Committee Appointed by the Supreme Government of India, to Enquire Into the Abuses Alleged to Exist in Exporting from Bengal Hill Coolies and Indian Labourers, (Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1839), 281.</footnote>

<footnote n="69">⁶⁹ Ibid, 282.</footnote>

<footnote n="70">⁷⁰ *Bengal Hurkaru*, 19th July 1839.</footnote>
renewal of indentured emigration and the grant of a loan from the British
Government to pay for immigration.<fnref n="71" /> They used the same arguments as those
mentioned above and wanted to “pursue a liberal and enlightened course of policy”.<fnref n="72" />

As early as 1840, the renewal of indentured emigration from India was being
discussed, the BFASS (British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society) reported that: "the
plain fact is, however, that the island of Mauritius is again to be opened to the
importation of labourers from India; and we entertain a full conviction that, in spite of
all protectorships, it will be a substantial renewal of the slave-trade"<fnref n="73" /> Indeed, there
were already discussions in Parliament to re-introduce the indentured system in
Mauritius. Thus showing the power of the plantocracy lobby, with many absentee
plantation owners who were in Britain and who lobbied and influenced Parliament in
favour of its renewal. This was done through organisations such as the Mauritius
Free Labour Association and the West India Association, of which Gladstone was a
member for example. Moreover, Historian Riyad S. Koya has argued that "Charles
Anderson, a member of the Mauritius inquiry, arrived in London in 1840 to advocate
for Mauritian planters (...) A consensus had evolved: to remedy incidents of
kidnapping, fraud, and deceit in the recruitment of indentured labour, the
Government of India would regulate the border between land and sea".<fnref n="74" /> Thus,
debates were going on and pressure by planters for the system's renewal was being
discussed in Britain.

<footnote n="71">⁷¹ *Papers Relative to the West Indies: 1841*, Command Papers (1841) XVI.1 (321), 68-69.</footnote>

<footnote n="72">⁷² Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="73">⁷³ Anon. "Imminent renewal of the Coolie slave-trade", *Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 12th February 1840.</footnote>

<footnote n="74">⁷⁴ Riyad S. Koya, "The Regulation, Division, and Multiplication of Emigrant Labor: The Border between Land and Sea in Colonial India, 1834–1922", *Journal of World History* 32, n° 1 (2021): 52.</footnote>
b) Regulation of the indentured system by the Colonial State.

As mentioned above, indentured emigration from India had not been
regulated until 1837. However in order to renew emigration it was believed that
more regulations had to be put in place in order to limit abuses. The Committee
which was appointed to look into the abuses of the system stated that: "that no
regulation that can be devised will completely extirpate all abuses in India".<fnref n="75" /> Still,
they argued that if the system was to be renewed the Government should put
measures in place to limit abuses of the system. These new regulations were a
reaffirmation by the British Crown of the rules that were put in place for Mauritius
under the Act of 1837, but also came with new regulations.

Indentured immigration from India would first be authorised to Mauritius with
the Act XV of 1842. This act was passed in December in India but was imposed from
London. This act would serve as a blueprint for regulations in the West Indies later
when immigration was renewed. Most importantly, this act stated that Emigration
Agents were assigned by the Governor of Mauritius to the ports of departure:
Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. Emigration agents were to ensure that ships were
correctly chosen to transport labourers, that labourers were in good health,
explaining the destination of emigration but also the nature of their work once in the
colony. These were, in theory, practices that were already in place with the Native
Emigrants Act of 1837 that was passed in India. With the new regulation of 1842 the
nature of how these agents were paid changed, while before they were paid per
emigrant that shipped, now agents had an annual salary. This was done in order to

<footnote n="75">⁷⁵ Letter from Secretary to Government of India to Committee on Exportation of Hill Coolies; Report of Committee and Evidence, House of Commons Papers (1841), XVI.287 (45), 10.</footnote>
limit abuses as agents were motivated by the number of immigrants they managed to ship. Provisions for immigrants on board ships was now also regulated to ensure a good voyage, "five gallons per week and Rice, Bread, Biscuit, Flour, Oatmeal, or Bread Stuffs, to the amount of seven pounds weight to every week (...) for every such Passenger".<fnref n="76" /> Moreover, a Protector of Immigrants was also appointed in Mauritius and was supposed to ensure that rules aboard the ship and during the voyage had been respected and that workers could disembark in Mauritius. Even if these regulations meant more protection for indentured labourers departing from Indian ports, these new laws only concerned their departure and nothing was done to change their working conditions on the plantations.

Further regulations were enacted the following year under the Indian Emigration Act of 1843. This act encouraged the recruitment of more female emigrants, without giving precise numbers of the exact proportion of women expected on ships as would be done in the second half of the 19th century. It also limited emigration only from the port of Calcutta, stopping emigration from other ports. The reason that emigration was limited to Calcutta, may have been because planters believed at the time that workers that came from Madras were not as disciplined and good workers than those from Calcutta. Finally, the act stated that a Protector of Emigrants would be assigned by the Governor-General in Council of India to ports of embarkation to ensure that the agent nominated by Mauritius would respect the new laws on emigration. This may have been done in fear that Agents chosen by Mauritius would not completely respect the new regulations and a further level of regulation had to be put in place to ensure the safety of immigrants. Thus,

<footnote n="76">⁷⁶ Emigration Act, Act No. XV. of 1842. Accessed from: https://www.indiacode.nic.in/repealed-act/repealed_act_documents/A1842-15.pdf</footnote>
multiple levels of power were being exercised in the ports of India not only by the East India Company, but also by the colonies.

It was only in November 1844, that indentured emigration from India would be authorised again to the West Indies with the Act XXI of 1844. This time the system of emigration was not only for British Guiana but also began the stream of immigrants to Trinidad and Jamaica. In the same way that had been done for Mauritius, colonies in the West Indies appointed Emigration Agents in Indian ports to control emigration. In order to pay for the costs of the passages and the return-passages of immigrations, and also the Emigration Agent's salary and other expenses, Governor Light in British Guiana ensured that a loan of 500.000 pounds would be given by Britain.<fnref n="77" /> The loan would eventually be paid back through taxes on the inhabitants of the colony, including indentured labourers. It is believed that the loan provided by Britain to the West Indian colonies, in order to recruit indentured labourers was to help them keep the *status quo* of the colony and the sugar economy of the plantations. This also demonstrated the power of influence of planters, merchants in London, and the complicity of the British Government in the emigration of indentured labourers to its colonies.

Overall, the Colonial State felt that they had to regulate the emigration of indentured labourers to justify its return. This was also a way to make laws and regulations uniform and the same for each colony where immigrants were to be sent to. In this sense, Radhika Mongia has argued that “State regulation of Indian migration became part of the civilising mission integral to liberalism”.<fnref n="78" /> Regulations

<footnote n="77">⁷⁷ Ordinance No. 15 of 1844, September 1844, CO 113/1.</footnote>

<footnote n="78">⁷⁸ Radhika Mongia, *Indian Migration and Empire: A Colonial Genealogy of the Modern State* (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 49.</footnote>
were a way of legitimising and rationalising the system, and ultimately a way of
subjecting Indian British subjects and civilising them through indenture.

c) A Legal Conundrum:Indian indentured labourers to the French Isle of Bourbon colony.

The system of indenture was not confined to the British Empire, but was also
used by other European colonial powers such as the French and the Dutch. Overall,
there seems to be a gap in historical studies for the beginning of the importation of
indentured emigrants to the Réunion, most studies on indentureship focus on the
period after 1848, when slavery was abolished in French colonies. However, Indian
immigration began before that point, yet few historians seem to have taken into
consideration earlier periods of the indenture system. Early Indian immigration was
first tied to slavery in the French colony of Reunion, better known as the Isle of
Bourbon. The importation of Indian slaves to the island started as early as the
seventeenth century by the Portuguese.

After the ban of the slave trade by Napoleon in 1815 (only effective from
1826), planters sought a new source of immigration to supply the demand of the
plantations. Indian immigration was one of the solutions. By the beginning of the
nineteenth century, in 1826 and 1829 regulations were created around the nature of
the indenture of Indians and their immigration to the island.<fnref n="79" /> French historian

<footnote n="79">⁷⁹ “Engagisme et immigration”, *Département de la Réunion* 974, https://www.departement974.fr/sites-culturels/index.php/Archives/pr%C3%A9sentation-archives/archives-en-ligne-engagisme-et-immigration.html, Accessed April 9, 2022.</footnote>
Michèle Marimoutou Oberlé has shown that by 1830 around 3,000 Indians labourers had been brought to Réunion.<fnref n="80" /> However, Indians would not be brought to the French Antilles until the second half of the nineteenth century.

As stated in the British Report of the Committee against the abuses of the system, Calcutta was one the ports where Indian immigrants were sent to the Isle of Bourbon. Indeed we learn in 1838 from Captain Birch, the superintendent of the Calcutta Police that "a large export of Coolies has taken place to Bourbon (...) I know that orders are now in Calcutta to procure 10.000 for Bourbon, if possible".<fnref n="81" /> This shows the early involvement of Calcutta in procuring indentured workers for the French colony. It appears also that indentured workers could directly be recruited in Mauritius for the isle of Réunion rather than all workers departing from Indian ports.<fnref n="82" /> This shows the trans-colonial routes that were possible for indentured workers and how they could be transported from one colony to another, and even in this case from one empire to another, without returning to India.

The question remains however, of which regulations applied to these workers? In 1838, Birch explained that for their departure, British rules applied, with workers having to present themselves before a Magistrate and ships were controlled by him.<fnref n="83" /> However, he had not applied for a permit to the Governor Council to export Indians towards the French colony. Furthermore, he argued that "there are very good

<footnote n="80">⁸⁰ Michèle Marimoutou Oberlé, “Indentured labour from India in 19th century Reunion Island”, *Portail Esclavage Réunion*. https://www.portail-esclavage-reunion.fr/en/documentaires/abolition-slavery/after-abolition/indentured-l-abour-from-india-in-19th-century-reunion-island/, Accessed April 5, 2022.</footnote>

<footnote n="81">⁸¹ *Report of the Committee Appointed by the Supreme Government of India, to Enquire Into the Abuses Alleged to Exist in Exporting from Bengal Hill Coolies and Indian Labourers*, (Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1839), 23.</footnote>

<footnote n="82">⁸² *Bengal Hurkaru*, 9 July 1838.</footnote>

<footnote n="83">⁸³ *Report of the Committee Appointed by the Supreme Government of India, to Enquire Into the Abuses Alleged to Exist in Exporting from Bengal Hill Coolies and Indian Labourers*, (Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1839), 21.</footnote>
rules in Bourbon for the protection of Coolies”.<fnref n="84" /> Thus, French regulations applied for the contract and working conditions of the labourers. This demonstrates the trans-imperial levels of indentureship, but also that the rights of the workers and their conditions were much harder to regulate once they entered another colonial empire, as no conventions existed between both empires on the conditions for these labourers. The only trace of such protection on a trans-imperial level is the Act XXXII of 1837 mentioned in the Report of the Committee that protected British Indian subjects who departed from French ports to Mauritius.<fnref n="85" />

Furthermore, did the British suspension on indenture have any effect on Indian immigration towards the Isle of Bourbon? It seems that it did limit immigration from ports controlled by the British such as Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. However this did not stop the French from pursuing immigration of indentured workers from their ports, most importantly Pondicherry. *The British Emancipator* stated in 1839 that “Though the exportation of Hill Coolies has been banned under the British flag, the trade will still be carried on to a considerable extent: number of them have been shipped to Bourbon under the French flag”.<fnref n="86" /> In the report of the Committee, they stated that they were worried about indentured servants coming out of other European ports/settlements in India. On this matter, Tinker has argued that “the illegal export of coolies was mainly carried on through Pondicherry”, confirming the concerns in the report by the Committee.<fnref n="87" />

Finally, a case can be found mentioned by *The India Gazette* of a ship of indentured workers being sent from Pondicherry to Mauritius after the suspension of

<footnote n="84">⁸⁴ Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="85">⁸⁵ Ibid, 151.</footnote>

<footnote n="86">⁸⁶ *British Emancipator*, 9 January 1839.</footnote>

<footnote n="87">⁸⁷ Tinker, *A New System of Slavery*, 70.</footnote>
emigration had been implemented. It is said that a ship departed from the port of Pondicherry in November 1838 (4 months after the ban on emigration) to Mauritius for a contract of 5 years of servitude to a French planter on the island.<fnref n="88" /> The labourer did not complain of the working conditions, but this shows that the ban on emigration was not completely effective and that ships still could depart from French ports to Mauritius. There is no trace of any legal procedure about this case, on the part of the Indian Government.

***

Overall, the first suspension on indenture from British India was first supported and led in India by opposing forces against the system. It has been shown that Indian newspapers actively participated in the early debates around the indentured system. Anti-slavery societies in Britain also voiced their concerns about the system with the help of pamphlets and meetings. However, as the ban on emigration was enacted by India, sugar colonies in the West Indies sought alternative sources of labourers especially with Portuguese, Chinese and African immigrants. After the ban was enacted, a ferocious debate and lobbying came from planters and merchants all over and from every level of the British Empire for the renewal of the indentured system. Once discussions about its renewal started, the British colonial state regulated the system to ensure its stability and what they believed would limit abuses of the system towards labourers. In reality, these new regulations did not limit abuses against labourers and were only focused on departure and not to working conditions on plantations. Finally, the question was raised of the effects of the suspension on a trans-imperial level. The suspension of

<footnote n="88">⁸⁸ *The India Gazette*, 14th December 1842.</footnote>
immigration did not prevent labourers going to the Isle of Bourbon and also to Mauritius from the French ports of Pondicherry.

This first period of the ban on indentured immigration would prove to be a first rupture of the system. At the same time, it served as a founding period for the indentured system as it brought regulations, uniformisation and extension of indenture through the British Empire with its renewal in 1842 and 1845. However, this would not be the only moment of rupture of the system as only a few years after its renewal the system would be halted again after the Sugar crisis of the late 1840s.
# Chapter 2: Protectionism and Free-Trade: the second suspension of the indentured system, (1846-1852).

Between the renewal of the system of indenture in 1845 and the second ban on immigration in 1848, a total of 11,860 immigrants entered British Guiana from India.<fnref n="89" /> Only 3 years after the renewal of indentured emigration to the West Indies the system was once again suspended. On June 12th 1848, a ship carrying indentured Indian labourers arrived at the colony. The next such ship was not until 1851. This suspension of indentured emigration seems even more overlooked by historians than the first one. Few have written about it, apart from William A. Green, in his book *British Slave Emancipation*, which covered the effects of the Sugar Duties Act on the West Indies and the condition of indentured labourers.<fnref n="90" />

The reasons for this second interruption of the system appear to be different than the first one. Indeed, as discussed above the first suspension of indenture emigration appeared to be for humanitarian reasons. This interruption seems to be for economic reasons mostly tied with the effects of the Sugar Duties Act of 1846 which impacted planters severely, and thus indentured servants too.

This chapter shall explore the second episode of the suspension of indentured emigration with a focus on British Guiana. A general overview of the Sugar Duties Act and its effects on British Guiana and on the system of indenture shall be given. It will be shown that the colony was going through a period of political and social

<footnote n="89">⁸⁹ Edward Jenkins, *The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs*, Caribbean Press 2010 (Guyana, 1871), 296.</footnote>

<footnote n="90">⁹⁰ William A. Green, *British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).</footnote>
unrest, which impacted the suspension of emigration to the colony. Finally, its
renewal in 1851 shall be analysed.

A/ Sugar Duties Act 1846: Protectionism vs. Free-trade debate
around indentured emigration.

Sugar prices were exceptionally high in Britain after the 1833 Emancipation Act. The British Government introduced high duties on sugar from the British West Indies to subsidize free labour in order to compete with slave economies like in Brazil or Cuba. However, during the 1840s, the question of free-trade for sugar was raised. This meant the plantocracy felt threatened by the British Government as the economy of plantations in the West Indies was based on sugar. The Sugar Duties Act passed in 1846 would prove to be devastating for plantation owners, which subsequently affected indentured labourers.

a) A general context to the Sugar Duties Act of 1846 and the question of free-trade.

Discussions around proposals to reduce duties on foreign sugar had been ongoing in Parliament in London from 1841 until 1846. In continuation to the long campaign of boycott against slave grown sugar decades before (1791-92 and in the 1830s), this was met with opposition by Anti-Slavery Society. As early as September 1840, the BFAAS stated that they were opposed to: "the introduction into the British
market of slave-grown sugar".<fnref n="91" /> They also published a circular entitled *To the friends of the negro, and to all those who were instrumental in procuring the abolition of slavery in the British colonies*, in which they alerted the British public on the discussion around the possible reduction of duties on slave-grown sugar.<fnref n="92" /> However, this would prove to not be enough to resist the free-traders, whose main argument was that the whole British population should have access to sugar and that its price had to be reduced. Indeed, as Green has shown: "The *per capita* consumption of sugar in the United Kingdom fell from 20 lb. in 1830 to 15 lb. in 1840 and in the latter year, the price of the product reached its highest level since 1818".<fnref n="93" /> Thus, the consumption of sugar in Britain decreased because of its price rising over the years.<fnref n="94" />

Ideas of free-trade had been growing since the end of the 18th century in Britain and gained momentum from the 1840s onwards. On the 25th June 1846, the Corn Laws, which regulated the import and export of foreign grown cereals, were repealed. William A. Green has argued that: "This landmark victory for the free trade interest was the first decisive step in dismantling an imperial system of trade and navigation".<fnref n="95" /> Indeed after this measure, the discussion around duties on foreign sugar accelerated as it was shown that protectionism was losing support with the passing of this new measure.

Planters had been battling against free-traders and the possible competition with slave-grown sugar. A dissident voice against the Government was James Matthew Higgins, an absentee proprietor of several plantations in British Guiana who

<footnote n="91">⁹¹ Anon, "On the high price of sugar", *The Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 9th September 1840.</footnote>

<footnote n="92">⁹² Anon, "The Sugar Question", *The Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 3rd April 1844.</footnote>

<footnote n="93">⁹³ William A. Green, *British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 218.</footnote>

<footnote n="94">⁹⁴ See *Appendix D* for further information on comparative prices of sugar production between British West Indies, Cuba and Brazil.</footnote>

<footnote n="95">⁹⁵ William A. Green, *British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 217-218.</footnote>
largely contributed to the debate in favour of protectionism over sugar from British colonies. He often wrote in the newspaper *The Times* exposing his opposition to possible new laws around the free-trade of sugar. On the 3rd August 1846 he lamented for landowners in Britain who had been affected by the repeal of the Corn Laws, and stated the plantocracy that: "ruin to us planters (...) means total and irrecoverable extinction of income - scantily clad and starving children - destitute widows and orphans (...) for [sic.] who ever pitied an insolvent nigger driver?".<fnref n="96" />

The Sugar Duties Act was passed in 1846 by Parliament. Most importantly Vict. 8 and 9 equalised import duties of sugar from British colonies and other foreign states. This meant that British sugar was put in competition with slave-grown sugar particularly with Brazil and Cuba, which produced the cheapest sugar at the time. The passing of this act created a severe crisis in the West Indies, which will be explored further below.

### b) The consequences of the Sugar Duties Act of 1846 in the British West Indies.

The Sugar Duties Act brought devastation to the West Indies and threatened the *status quo* imposed by the plantocracy who had been profiting from the sugar trade. Sugar prices in Britain had fallen with slave-grown sugar now available on the British market. This put many plantations out of business and the West Indies colonies entered a sharp decline, as will be shown in the following paragraphs.

<footnote n="96">⁹⁶ *The Times*, 3rd August 1846.</footnote>
Historian William A. Green has shown that the West India Bank based in Barbados with offices in other colonies "suspended cash payments in December 1847".<fnref n="97" />

This led to the nomination of a selected committee, led by Lord George Bentinck, who was appointed to look into the conditions and possible reliefs for colonies affected by the new laws. This resulted in the publication of eight reports between 1847 and 1848, on how the Sugar Duties Act impacted British colonies.

Since the abolition of slavery value of estates were dropping, however this decline was more severe after the passing of the new laws on sugar duties. For example Dr. William Ranken, who was in charge of representing the grievances of the British Guiana to the British Government, noted that: "The Kitty Estate was sold in the year 1829 for £63,500; it was sold in the year 1840 for £26,000; and it was sold in the year 1846 for £3,000".<fnref n="98" /> This is one example of the effects of the new laws on the colony's declining economy.

In 1847, Governor Light in Guiana alerted Earl Grey, Colonial Secretary, that: "as matters stood on the 31st of December 1847, half the estates in the colony must go out of cultivation".<fnref n="99" /> In a report of 1848, in Berbice alone (a region of British Guiana) 47 plantation estates were closed due to the effects of the Sugar Duties Act.<fnref n="100" /> Furthermore, on the Leguan Island in Demerara described, in the report on the conditions of British Guiana compiled in 1852, as "the garden of the colony" twenty plantations existed before the act, when the report was published only eight subsisted.<fnref n="101" />

<footnote n="97">⁹⁷ William A. Green, *British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 221.</footnote>

<footnote n="98">⁹⁸ Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting in E. and W. Indies and Mauritius Fifth Report, *Minutes of Evidence, Appendix*, House of Common Papers (1848), CH 52.204-207 (206), 128.</footnote>

<footnote n="99">⁹⁹ James Madden, *The Case of the Free-labour British Colonies*, (London: Thompson and Davidson, 1852), 96.</footnote>

<footnote n="100">¹⁰⁰ Return of Work of the Administrator General of Berbice, May 1848, CO 111/253, f. 242-244.</footnote>

<footnote n="101">¹⁰¹ Ibid.</footnote>
The Sugar Duties Act created a great frustration and dissatisfaction amongst planters of the West Indies and from the government of the colonies towards Britain. This will be further discussed below as the dissatisfaction grew immensely and caused political and social unrest in British Guiana, which is at the heart of the suspension of indentured emigration.

### c) Social uprisings on plantations.

Since foreign immigration had started racial tensions existed between immigrants and the Creole population. They had been introduced in response to what planters argued was a shortage labour because of ex-slaves not wanting to work for their former owners. However, it was argued that immigration was lowering wages which affected the Creole population which was implanted in the colony. In 1846, in a despatch sent to Secretary Gladstone, Governor Henry Light stated that: "The moral effect on the Creole labouring population, by the introduction of coolies, has been marked".<fnref n="102" /> These tensions were amplified with the crisis that followed the Sugar Duties Act.

Upon hearing news of the Sugar Duties Act's enactment, planters sought to lower wages for all workers on plantations, and announced a general 25% reduction of wages. In reality, historian Philip Harling has noted that: "wages fell 20 to 50 per cent throughout the British Caribbean in the decade after 1846, with the sharpest cuts coming in the late 1840s".<fnref n="103" /> This led to violent riots throughout the colony. The

<footnote n="102">¹⁰² *Correspondence relative to the Supply of Labour to W. Indies and Mauritius*, House of Commons Papers (1847), XXXIX.115 (325), 39.</footnote>

<footnote n="103">¹⁰³ Phillip Harling, "Sugar wars: the culture of free-trade versus the culture of anti-slavery in Britain and the British Caribbean, 1840-50" in *The cultural construction of the British world*, ed. Barry Crosbie and Mark Hampton (Manchetter: Manchester University Press, 2016), 66.</footnote>
phenomenon was not specific to British Guiana, but riots erupted all around the West Indies, especially in Guiana and Jamaica, because their economy heavily relied on sugar. For example, in September 1846 in Guiana, troops were sent to stop a riot on Leguan Island on plantation Success.<fnref n="104" /> Moreover, historian Walter Rodney has reported that in 1847, due to the reduction of wages, a strike of fourteen weeks took place in Guiana against the new measures.<fnref n="105" /> In 1848, Henry Barkly (who would become Governor the following year) reported that the Creole population started incendiaries on planters' houses and on crops to ruin planters' harvests and looted plantations in response to the reduction of wages.<fnref n="106" />

Henry Barkly (at the time planter but then future Governor of the colony) gave
an account of the state of the colony writing on the 2nd of February of 1848:

I wish I could send you a report of any improvement in affairs here, but there
is none, unless the fact of the strike being more general and the dearth of
money more complete can be considered such. We are still holding out for a
reduction, and the [sic] negroes more obstinate than ever. Even on estates
where they had been working at the guilder rates (as at Canfield and
Lochaber), they have struck, and are [sic] making common cause of it. It is
more than a question of wages with them; there is a bad spirit abroad
amongst them: they seem resolved to have possession of the estates
themselves, and are combining together to effect this object.<fnref n="107" />

<footnote n="104">¹⁰⁴ James Rodway, *History of British Guiana, from the Year 1668 to the Present Time: 1833-1893, Vol III, (Georgetown: J. Thomson, 1894)*, 67.</footnote>

<footnote n="105">¹⁰⁵ Walter Rodney, “Plantation Society in Guyana”, *Review (Fernand Braudel Center)* 4, n° 4 (1981): 656.</footnote>

<footnote n="106">¹⁰⁶ *Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting in E. and W. Indies and Mauritius Fifth Report, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix*, House of Common Papers (1848), CH 52.204-207 (206), 8.</footnote>

<footnote n="107">¹⁰⁷ *Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting in E. and W. Indies and Mauritius Fifth Report, Minutes of Evidence, Appendix*, House of Common Papers (1848), CH 52.204-207 (206), 7.</footnote>
Indians and other indentured immigrants seem to be absent from reports of strikes and Creoles alone were blamed for the strikes in contemporary sources. However, the fact that Indians did not participate in riots and strikes seems unlikely. Creoles may have been targeted for being accused of strikes to promote further immigration, in order to continue cutting down wages and by reducing the power of bargain from free-workers. In this sense, Barkly argued that: “[planters] look upon the Portuguese and coolies as their friends in any struggle which might take place”.<fnref n="108" /> This appears to support the image of indentured workers keeping stability as they were thought to be more “docile” and less rebellious than the free Creole population and thus a “means to control labour” in the colony.

As demonstrated above, the Sugar Duties Act passed in 1846 severely affected the West Indies, in particular British Guiana. Moreover, the Sugar Duties Act, decreased the value of estates and thus led to the reduction of wages which was met with resistance by workers. Even if there was no mention of Indians participating in resistance on plantation, it is most likely that they did and that Creoles were targeted as a way to justify further immigration. This also led to enormous unemployment in the colony and large numbers of vagrants, as explored further down.

<footnote n="108">¹⁰⁸ Ibid, 9.</footnote>
**B/ Political and social unrest in British Guiana, leading to the suspension of immigration.**

Not only did the new Sugar Duties Act create an economic crisis, it also resulted in political unrest in Guiana. Thus revealing the power of the West Indian plantocracy in Guiana and their control of local power. How they controlled local political institutions and how they tried to retain power from Britain but also how it impacted indentured immigration is what will be explored here.

**a) Struggling for Governance: local Guianese v. Metropolitan Colonial Power.**

One cannot understand the political unrest caused by the Sugar Duties Act in British Guiana, without a fine explanation of local governance. Two main political instances were in place in Guiana: the Court of Policy and the Combined Court. Both were inherited by the Dutch rulers before Britain took control of the colony in 1814 after the Napoleonic Wars. They continued operating under British rule, alongside the governorship which was the official representation of the British Crown locally.

First, the Court of Policy was established in 1732 and was the law-making body, writing and deciding the different acts that were passed in the colony. It consisted of 11 Members: The Governor, who had a casting vote, five members elected by the freeholders, and five officials.<fnref n="109" /> Thus, without the approval of the Governor no laws could be passed giving a great power to the Governor of the

<footnote n="109">¹⁰⁹ Frank A. Narain, "Historical Information Events & Dates on the Parliament of Guyana from 1718 to 2006", *Parliament of Guyana*, (2007): 30-35.</footnote>
colony. This chamber also had an executive function (until 1892). The Court of Policy was made for and by planters, because it was created during slavery but most importantly because to be an elected member of the court the candidate had to be an owner of a plantation.<fnref n="110" />

Secondly, the Combined Court was constituted of the Court of Policy and six elected members known as the Financial Representatives. This chamber's aim was to vote on economic decisions for the colony and it also gained the right in 1812 to control colonial expenditures. This had been fought against by the Colonial State in 1831, however the Court refused to raise taxes in response and was finally given back their power in 1835. Brian L. Moore has shown that the Combined Court was given the right to control colonial expenditure in exchange for a civil list to pay the salaries of officials in the colony.<fnref n="111" /> Furthermore, Moore has argued that "this was the first of several occasions on which imperial authorities were obliged to yield power or abandon principle in order to obtain a civil list".<fnref n="112" /> This proves to what extent planters controlled the colony and shows the strength of their bargaining power against officials in the colony and the British Government. This episode proves crucial to understand the political crisis of 1847-1848.

On the 30th of December 1847, the Combined Court agreed on a resolution that reduced by 25% the salaries of the Civil List in the colony in order to reduce public expenses. However, Lord Grey, Secretary of State for Colonies, in March 1848 refused this. In response, in September 1848, the Combined Court stated that

<footnote n="110">¹¹⁰ Henry G. Dalton, *The History of British Guiana: Comprising a General Description of the Colony; a Narrative of Some of the Principal Events from the Earliest Period of Its Discovery to the Present Time; Together with an Account of Its Climate, Geology, Staple Products, and Natural History* (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855), 45.</footnote>

<footnote n="111">¹¹¹ Brian L. Moore, *Race, Power and Social Segmentation in Colonial Society: Guyana after Slavery 1838-1891* (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1987), 84.</footnote>

<footnote n="112">¹¹² Ibid.</footnote>
it would not produce any revenue until its demands were met. Indeed they explained
that:

In the present state of the Colony, this Court cannot proceed to vote the
Estimate, or to take any part in raising the Supplies, as the sources of income
from which the Colonial Expenditure has hitherto been defrayed have ceased
to be productive, and this Court is consequently deprived of the means of
providing the necessary funds to support the Civil Government and
institutions of this Colony.<fnref n="113" />

This dispute between the Combined Court, the Governor and Lord Grey
resulted in a refusal from the Combined Court to carry out any further measures
putting a stop to revenue from the Colony to Britain. This dispute is linked to the
general crisis in the colony at the time: indeed members of the Combined Court were
planters and felt abandoned, but also threatened by the Government with the
passing of the Sugar Duties Act.

Because of the Governor's power with his casting vote, the Estimates were
still to be produced, even with the disagreement with the Combined Court.
Ultimately, this participated in greater tensions between the Combined Court and the
Governor. Indeed, their discontent was profound as they stated that: "the Estimates
has been carried by the casting vote of His Excellency, which, in matters of finance,
is unconstitutional, illegal, contrary to the usage of this Court, and opposed to every
principle of sound legislation".<fnref n="114" />

Clearly, planters did not want to let go of their power against the imperial
authorities and this reminiscent of "passive resistance" from planters was a way to

<footnote n="113">¹¹³ Documents relating to British Guiana, May 1848, CO 111/253. f. 209-217.</footnote>

<footnote n="114">¹¹⁴ Ibid.</footnote>
challenge the British authority embodied by Lord Grey and by the Governor. Indeed,
as Green has argued, planters believed that: "the wealth of the community and
almost every shilling of public revenue ultimately derived from the products of the
soil."<fnref n="115" /> Thus, they were entitled to the rights they had been given in the Combined
Court and it was believed by the plantocracy that they were those who were to
decide on the economic decisions of the colony.

Because of the sharp decline in the colony's economy, planters wanted to
recruit more labourers. William A. Green has noted that: "Citing the principles of free
trade, they demanded unrestricted access to the coast of Africa to procure
free-labour immigrants". Before 1848, the British Colonial State allowed British
Guiana and other West Indian colonies to take a loan of 500,000 pounds to
encourage immigration. However, with the political conflicts between the Combined
Court and the Colonial State, this was no longer possible. After 1848, the demand of
the Governor for a renewal of the loan to finance the transport of labourers was
reduced, due to the political unrest of the Combined Court. The Governor and Britain
managed to agree on a 150,000 Guianese dollars loan for immigration. However,
most of it was used as a sinking fund loan to cover the expenses of the previous
year. Because of this, planters argued that they preferred to concentrate on
Portuguese and African immigration instead of Indian immigration, which was
considered more expensive.

The preference for African and Portuguese labour expressed by planters can
be found in *The Morning Advertiser* quoting the *Royal Gazette* when it was stated
that: "Let the legislature, if it will, provide for African and Portuguese immigration; but

<footnote n="115">¹¹⁵ William A. Green, *British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Experiment, 1830-1865* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 220.</footnote>
we implore a pause it to pause ere it finally commits the colony to the intolerable burden of a costly, delusive, and unsatisfactory immigration of Coolies and Chinese, whose importation can prove of no lasting benefit". It seems that a newspaper that generally supported indentured immigration now appeared to frown upon Indian and Chinese immigration, arguing that immigration from India was too expensive and thus it was better to continue immigration from Portugal and Africa. The political and economic unrest in Guiana resulted in the suspension of Indian immigration between the end of 1848 and 1851, under the pressure of local Guianese authorities.

Thus, the political unrest in British Guiana caused by economic issues resulting from the Sugar Duties Act, is one of the main reasons for the second suspension of Indian immigration to the colony. However, it may be argued that the conditions of labourers because of the effects of the Sugar Duties Act also participated in its suspension.

### a) Suspending indenture to limit vagrancy.

Prior to the suspension of Indian immigration in 1848, several ordinances were passed in British Guiana because of the effects of the Sugar Duties Act and the economic crisis it created.

First and most importantly Ordinance no. 3 of 1848 reduced and limited contracts of indenture from 5 to 3 years. This was done because of plantations shutting down and thus requiring the employment of fewer labourers. Also, this permitted planters to relocate indentured workers from one plantation to another,
whereas before they had been assigned to a specific plantation. This meant, workers
were even more under the subjugation of the planters as they could be moved at any
time - in ways reminiscent of the slavery institution in Guiana.

Secondly, as explained before there was a general reduction of wages
throughout the colony, however with Ordinance no. 2 of 1848, planters could also
deduct from wages, the cost of housing if workers were occupying a house which
was the most common situation for indentured workers as they were bound to the
plantation.

Thirdly, Ordinance no. 4 of 1848 also repealed an ordinance of 1847 which
obliged plantations to have a doctor and a hospital to take care of labourers,
indentured and free workers. The reason for this is explained as followed in a
dispatch from Chief Justice Arridell to Governor Light: "[...] the first clause is unjust
and oppressive, by entailing a heavy expense or inflicting a heavy penalty on the
employer of immigrants".<fnref n="116" /> Thus, planters were depicted as victims of the Colonial
State and were the ones that had to be saved, instead of labourers needing help
from the colony rather they were presented as burdens for planters as they were too
costly. However, this heavily affected indentured labourers and the closing of
plantation hospitals could be a further factor to conditions for labourers degrading
during this crisis.

Because of the poor economic conditions at the time in the colony, vagrancy
and unemployment were prevalent amongst indentured labourers. Several acts were
passed because many immigrants were subject to vagrancy as the plantations they
had been assigned to were now no longer in need of workers. The general reduction

<footnote n="116">¹¹⁶ Ibid, 140.</footnote>
of the price of sugar caused the collapse of many plantations of the colony and led to
massive unemployment for indentured labourers that had been sent to the colony.
Thus, indentured labourers were left without work which made them "vagrants" in the
eyes of the colonial power. The *Anti-Slavery Reporter* noted that: "they are dying on
the highways in broad day (...) the whole of George Town and New Amsterdam
swarms with them".<fnref n="117" />

Officials in Guiana were aware of the situation described above and some
wanted to remedy the situation of indentured workers in the colony. In fact, Rawle
Farley has argued that: "planters feared that free labour in a British Guiana 'of
boundless forests' would scatter into the interior and adopt the wandering life of the
native aboriginal Indians".<fnref n="118" /> In this sense, a member of the Court of Policy, Mr.
Ferguson proposed the creation of an asylum to provide housing for Indian vagrants
in Georgetown.<fnref n="119" /> He argued that: "they must be placed under temporary, but
necessary and wholesome restraint".<fnref n="120" /> This was one of the methods put in place to
keep an available labour population available close to the plantations. In a
paternalistic sense (common in the nineteenth century even in Britain towards the
poor), Indians were seen incapable of providing for themselves, and could only be
saved through the intervention of the Colonial State.

However, Peter Rose, a member of the Combined Court and a
well-established planter, refused this motion because he thought too many
provisions for the poor already existed. Indeed, it is explained in the *Royal Gazette*

<footnote n="117">¹¹⁷ Anon, "Colonial Intelligence", *Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 1st December 1849.</footnote>

<footnote n="118">¹¹⁸ Rawle Farley, "The Rise of the Peasantry in British Guiana", *Social and Economic Studies 2*, n° 4 (1954): 95.</footnote>

<footnote n="119">¹¹⁹ *Despatches from Governor of British Guiana, on State of Dispute between Combined Court and Governor, respecting Estimates for Public Service*, House of Common Papers (1850), XXXIX.1(21), 96.</footnote>

<footnote n="120">¹²⁰ Ibid, 57.</footnote>
that Rose argued that: "They had [sic] already an almshouse, a Board of Church and Poors' Fund, Poor Law-Commissioners, and a large Staff for the relief of the poor".<fnref n="121" />

However, Indian indentured labourers did not have access to these institutions, for religious reasons these were limited to "inhabitants of the colony" which may be understood as those belonging to the church and thus excluded the Indian indentured workers.<fnref n="122" /> From this, it would appear that Rose did not completely disagree with the motion of supporting the poor of the colony, however because such institutions for the poor already existed he did not agree with planters having to also pay for new institutions for Indian immigrants.

The crisis impacted the West Indies in general, and the condition of labourers and vagrancy was not limited to British Guiana. Edward Jenkins reported that in Trinidad, Governor Lord Harris wrote in 1848 that "scarcely a week passes but reports are sent in from different parts of the colony of the skeletons of Coolies being found in the woods and cane pieces".<fnref n="123" />

Three main reasons appear to have led to the second suspension of Indian indentured immigration to British Guiana which have been outlined above. First, the economic unrest of the West Indies, secondly the bad condition of labourers and thirdly the political disagreements between the Combined Court and the British Imperial authorities. These are the main reasons that have been advanced for the suspension of Indian immigration between the end of 1848 and 1851. All three reasons appear to be closely linked, because of the economic unrest in the British sugar-colonies, political problems appeared but the conditions of indentured workers worsened. Thus, for the second suspension of Indian indentured immigration, it was

<footnote n="121">¹²¹ Ibid, 96.</footnote>

<footnote n="122">¹²² Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="123">¹²³ Edward Jenkins, *The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs*, Caribbean Press 2010 (Guyana, 1871), 282.</footnote>
not humanitarian reasons that were advanced but economic reasons and in the
same way as the first suspension other sources of labourers were sought by
planters.

b) Circumventing interruption.

As explained above, Indian immigration had been suspended and other
sources of indentured labourers were preferred. However, with the numbers provided
in Appendix A, it can be seen that immigration to British Guiana during the second
suspension was very limited even if planters did argue for and tried to promote
immigration from Africa and Portugal.

As early as January 1848, planters in Jamaica, Guiana and Trinidad, formed
petitions to ask for the promotion of emigration from Africa to the colonies. The
Anti-Slavery Society explained that planters asked for: "unrestricted access to the
coast of Africa, and to all other places where they may obtain fresh additions to their
free labouring population".<fnref n="124" /> Thus, using the same rhetoric as free-traders for the
passing of the Sugar Duties Act, planters advanced their need for African labour.
However, as demonstrated before there were already too many workers available in
the colony to the point where many were unemployed and considered vagrants. One
of the rare ships to have arrived during this period of interruption is the *Glentanner*
from the island of St. Helena with 404 labourers.<fnref n="125" />

On the contrary, historian Monica Schuler has put forward a different
argument for the reasons why immigration from Sierra Leone diminished. Indeed,

<footnote n="124">¹²⁴ *The Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 1st January 1848.</footnote>

<footnote n="125">¹²⁵ Despatches on Condition of Sugar-growing Colonies. Part I. British Guiana, House of Commons Papers (1851), XXXIX.1 (624), 97.</footnote>
she argued that because of the reduction of wages in the West Indies, wages were
the same in Guiana and Sierra Leone in 1850.<fnref n="126" /> Thus, indentured immigrants were
not attracted to depart from Africa to the West Indies. However, this was not the only
reason. It seems that more importantly, planters were not able to secure the
necessary funds to ensure immigration and that plenty of labourers were already
available in the colony. But also that the labourers that were present in the colony
were living in poor conditions and this discouraged further immigration.

As far as Portuguese immigrants were concerned, it seems that their few
numbers in 1848 and 1849 might be explained by the fact that in Madeira, officials
feared that immigrants would be mistreated. Indeed, in a dispatch between Barkly
and Lord Grey there is mention of Mr. Taggart the Portuguese ambassador in
London stating that they were in "imminent danger" and were "treated as veritable
slaves, even worse than the negroes from the coast of Africa".<fnref n="127" /> Even if Portuguese
immigrants are not the focus of this dissertation, it is important to note that their
immigration was also subject to interruption, and also that the state of immigrants
during this crisis in Guiana worried officials in Portugal.

By 1850 immigration from Madeira increased a lot, ensuring a new labour
force for planters before Indian immigration was renewed.<fnref n="128" /> It was argued by Barkly
that immigration was to increase due to an economic crisis at the time in Madeira,
thus "pushing" immigrants to leave the island towards Guiana. However, this reason
is unlikely to be true as this crisis had begun in 1847, not explaining why immigrants

<footnote n="126">¹²⁶ Monica Schuler, “Kru emigration to British and French Guiana 1841-1857” in *Africans in Bondage: Studies in Slavery and the Slave Trade*, ed. Paul E. Lovejoy (Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, 1986), 160.</footnote>

<footnote n="127">¹²⁷ *Despatches on Condition of Sugar-growing Colonies. Part I. British Guiana*, House of Commons Papers (1851), XXXIX.1 (624), 139.</footnote>

<footnote n="128">¹²⁸ See Appendix A.</footnote>
had not left Madeira earlier. Instead, the same reasons mentioned earlier also come
into account for Portuguese immigration.

The immigration from Madeira was welcomed greatly by Governor Barkly, who
stated that: "If the lower orders of the United Kingdom possessed the semi
acclimatized constitutions and the love of sobriety of these people, their immigration
would be the greatest blessing that could befall British Guiana; but, failing that, I
know of no arrangement so conducive to its prosperity as the continued influx of the
natives of Madeira".<fnref n="129" /> Thus, Barkly validated a racial categorisation of immigrants,
British being at the top, then Portuguese, suggesting that Indians and Africans were
at the bottom. In this sense, an important distinction between Portuguese and Indian
immigration should be made. Most importantly, as historian Brian L. Moore argued,
Portuguese immigrants served as "buffers between white and black".<fnref n="130" /> Immigrants
from Madeira, once installed in the colony, occupied a more important position in the
colony's economy than Indians. It has been argued by many that Portuguese owned
many of the retail shops in Georgetown to the point where in the 1850s they had a
monopoly on the retail trade, pushing out British owners from Water Street in
Georgetown.<fnref n="131" />

C/ 1851: The Renewal of Indian indentured emigration.

It did not take long for planters to argue for the return of Indian immigration. In
1851, the indentured immigration scheme for Indians was renewed but did not come

<footnote n="129">¹²⁹ Despatches on Condition of Sugar-growing Colonies. Part I. British Guiana, House of Commons Papers (1851), XXXIX.1 (624), 132.</footnote>

<footnote n="130">¹³⁰ Brian L. Moore, "The Social Impact of Portuguese Immigration into British Guiana after Emancipation", *Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y Del Caribe*, n° 19 (1975): 10.</footnote>

<footnote n="131">¹³¹ Ibid, 9-10.</footnote>
without protest from the Anti-Slavery Society. Moreover, the renewal of Indian immigration also came with changes, it is believed by the author that the Guyanese colonial state adopted a new strategy towards immigration after this interruption.

### a) Free-return passage and “unfree” laws around indentured labourers.

Discussions around the renewal of Indian immigration started in January 1850 in Guiana.<fnref n="132" /> This also came with the agreement between Guiana and Britain on an immigration loan, as had also been the case before the second suspension. Indeed, in January 1850 with the agreement of the Combined Court, Governor Barkly applied for a loan of 500,000 pounds for “promoting immigration”. In reality, the entire sum came to meet different expenditures, not only immigration. For instance, the loan was used to develop railroads, a drainage system etc. This led to the discontent of planters who felt that they “are not likely to be directly benefited by such improvements, and who therefore, naturally enough, prefer a general measure like immigration”.<fnref n="133" /> On the 21st of May 1851, the ship *Zenobia* arrived in British Guiana with 283 indentured workers. This was the first ship to have transported indentured workers from India to Guiana in three years.

A disagreement appeared to exist between the Government of India and Guiana when the renewal of immigration was being discussed. India wanted the

<footnote n="132">¹³² Despatches on Condition of Sugar-growing Colonies. Part I. British Guiana, House of Commons Papers (1851), XXXIX.1 (624),15.</footnote>

<footnote n="133">¹³³ Ibid.</footnote>
colony to continue paying for the return-passage for indentured workers. Through Ordinances 21 and 24 of 1850, the colony had enacted that they would pay for the return passage of indentured workers.134 Planters and most of the members of the Court of Policy disagreed with this and argued that it was for the labourers themselves to provide the money for their return passage. In April 1851, they argued that they “will not sanction the renewal of any further Coolie immigration, so long as it is saddled with the onerous and ruinous condition of a return passage at the end of five years, at the expense of the colony”.135 It was agreed that it would be to the indentured labourers to pay their return passage money through monthly taxes to the colony.136 By 1853, this proved to be difficult to put into practice, so the colony pushed indentured labourers to accept to re-indenture for another five years, claim a fifty dollar bounty and their free return passage when they had completed a total of ten years of indenture.137 This was done to avoid the colony from paying the return passages and to encourage immigrants to stay, so the colony could benefit from a great labour force available in the colony.

Overall, Nancy G. Cassels has argued that: “Not only did the planters of Mauritius and the West Indies circumvent and emasculate existing legislation to suit their own convenience, but also the Indian Government’s effort to define and condemn the practice of crimping<fnref n="138" /> for once and for all with Act XXIV 1852 failed due to insufficient penalties”.<fnref n="139" /> Thus, the layering of British colonial administration

<footnote n="134">134 Ordinances 21 and 24 of 1850, CO 113/2. f. 195-204.</footnote>

<footnote n="135">135 Despatches on Condition of Sugar-growing Colonies. Part I. British Guiana, House of Commons Papers (1851), XXXIX.1 (624), 336.</footnote>

<footnote n="136">136 Ibid, 170.</footnote>

<footnote>See also: Basdeo Mangru, “Abolishing The Return Passage Entitlement Under Indenture: Guianese Planter Pressure and Indian Government Response, 1838–1917”, *Caribbean Quarterly* 32, n° 3-4 (1986): 1.</footnote>

<footnote n="137">137 Despatches on Condition of Sugar-growing Colonies. Part I. British Guiana, House of Commons Papers (1851), XXXIX.1 (624), 343.</footnote>

<footnote n="138">138 A term mostly used to describe the recruitment through kidnapping and coercion of sailors.</footnote>

<footnote n="139">139 Nancy G. Cassels, *Social Legislation of the East India Company: Public Justice Versus Public Instruction* (New York: Sage Publications, 2010), 243.</footnote>
made it difficult for the Indian Government to apply its colonial sovereignty in
monitoring - and possibly protecting - Indian indentured immigrants, as
international/intercolonial migration theoretically remained the prerogative of the
metropolitan government (in conjunction with the governorship of the Crown Colony).

With the renewal of the indenture scheme of Indians the intention of planters
was to limit immigration to the port of Calcutta, as several reports from planters had
complained about the indentured workers that came from Madras.<fnref n="140" /> Indeed, it was
argued in a report from Commissioners for British Guiana that:

> Immigration should in future be confined solely to Calcutta, the immigrants
> from that part of India having succeeded as admirably as those from Madras
> must, I fear, be pronounced to have failed miserably, (...) professional
> beggars, and other idle or infirm people, were far more numerous in the
> vessels which came thence than in those from Calcutta.<fnref n="141" />

> Similarly, it was stated that: "the Madras immigrants seemed a sickly, weak,
> and lazy race, and the mortality among them was very great".<fnref n="142" /> Overall, it seems
> that certain populations of India were preferred over others, this is most probably
> linked to racial categorisations of peoples in India by European anthropologists.<fnref n="143" /> In
> this sense, it was believed by planters that they should adopt a new strategy during
> the second half of the nineteenth century by better controlling the perceived "quality"
> of their immigrants.

<footnote n="140">¹⁴⁰ Report of the arrival of ship Morley, May 1848, CO 111/253. f. 249-258.</footnote>

<footnote n="141">¹⁴¹ *Colonial Land and Emigration Coms. Eleventh General Report, Command Papers (1851), XXII.333* (1383), 81.</footnote>

<footnote n="142">¹⁴² *Ibid.*</footnote>

<footnote n="143">¹⁴³ Kaushik Ghosh, "A Market for Aboriginality: Primitivism and Race Classification in the Indentured Labour Market of Colonial India", in *Subaltern Studies X*, ed. by Gautam Bhadra, Gyan Prakash, and Susie Tharu (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 15.</footnote>
With the renewal of indentured immigration also came new regulations
towards breaching contracts and vagrancy. Indeed, with the experience of an
increased prevalence of vagrancy during the Sugar Act crisis the colony decided to
limit such issues, by making vagrancy unlawful. The new laws that were introduced
did not solely apply to vagrancy, but also to unemployment. Through Ordinance
no.21 of 1850, it was enacted that "it shall be lawful for any member of the Police
Force or Constable to stop any Cooly [sic.] immigrants whom he shall find on any
public street, highway or place".<fnref n="144" /> If found guilty they could be sentenced to fourteen
days' "hard labour". Furthermore, harsher regulations concerning the liberty of
movement of immigrants in the colony were enacted. Indeed, all immigrants were
supposed to have a "certificate of industrial residence" or what was also called a
passport to prove that they were dependent on a certain planter and that they had
the right to stay in the colony. Planters decided whether or not workers would be
permitted to leave the plantations. If found without the planters' authorisation,
immigrants could be sentenced up to fourteen days of jail or hard labour. With these
new Acts, planters now could access another source of forced labour from the very
same immigrants who were subject to forced migration. Through imprisonment and
hard labour, planters controlled the liberty of immigrant workers even more tightly.

Planters' aim in so acting was mostly to keep immigrants in the colony to
ensure a stable labour population through the different measures. It seems that the
colony and its planters wanted to get the most out of the immigrants they received

<footnote n="144">¹⁴⁴ Ordinance no. 21 of 1850, CO 113/2.</footnote>
before having to pay for their return passage. In this sense, the exploitation of unfree
labour was at the centre of planters' strategy towards indentured labour, profiting
indentured labourers' conditions in a far-away land where they were not used to local
customs and unable to bargain their workforce. Thus, through the control of
Guyanese political institutions planters were able to suit laws for their own interest
and reshape the system to their advantage with the renewal of immigration.

b) The Anti-Slavery Society's opposition to the renewal.

In opposition to the first suspension of Indian immigration to Guiana where the Anti-Slavery Society was involved in, here as it has been argued economic and political unrest were at the origin of this suspension. However, once discussions around the renewal of the system of indentured immigration commenced, the Anti-Slavery Society started publishing against its renewal. Yet, their views were ambivalent.

As soon as the Society learnt of discussions in Guiana about a new loan to
encourage Indian immigration, John Scoble stated that: "the scheme of Coolie
immigration (...) if adopted, (...) will effectually reduce the immigrants to a condition
as deplorable (...) as that of the slaves of that colony before emancipation".145 Thus
coining the system of indenture as a labour system close to slavery. Furthermore he
argued that there was no need for further immigration, thus wanting to protect the

<footnote n="145">¹⁴⁵ John Scoble, "Immigration in British Guiana", *Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 1st April 1850.</footnote>
freed population that was in the colony. In this sense, Scoble also warned that: "the moral degradation into which a community, such as that which exists in British Guiana, must necessarily be plunged by pouring in upon it, hordes of sensual and idolatrous Hindoos and barbarous Africans".<fnref n="146" /> Thus, non-christinised immigrants as a whole whether it be Indians or "liberated Africans" were seen as a threat to the emancipated Creole population who were in the process "of being civilised" by the British. This will be further discussed in the next chapter as arguments like this would be progressively more used by anti-immigration movements further during the century.

Alongside racialist discourse, the Society brandished a rather maternalising argument against immigration, to protect both new immigrants, and local Creoles. The Society argued: "a large proportion of the immigrants should get homesick and heartsick; that they should become the victims of despair, disease, and death."<fnref n="147" /> However, it should still be noted that the position of the Anti-Slavery Society on the opposition to the renewal of indentured immigration drew on different arguments than those they had put forward for the first one. Indeed, it was not the protection of the Indian immigrants that was sought, but rather the freed Creole population's well-being in the colony. Creoles were believed to be more "civilised" and "Christian" than new immigrants as they had been for longer under the influence of the British and thus the "civilising mission" of the British was in danger because of these new immigrants often being qualified as "idolaters" and "barbarous".

Another concern of the Anti-Slavery Society was the question of the return-passage and who was to pay for it and the debate between Guiana and India

<footnote n="146">¹⁴⁶ Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="147">¹⁴⁷ John Scoble, "The Immigration Ordinances of British Guiana and Trinidad", *The Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 1st November 1850.</footnote>
on this matter. Indeed, they worried that indentured labourers would not be able to leave the colony once there. They stated that: "the Bill will have the effect of preventing the greater portion of the immigrants from ever securing to themselves the privilege of a free passage home, and, therefore their emigration to Guiana will amount to a perpetual exile".<fnref n="148" /> Thus, at the end of their period of indenture, Indian labourers would be forced to stay in the colony, this was another way of keeping a large available workforce in the colony in order to reduce wages.

Furthermore, the Anti-Slavery Society was troubled with the distribution of immigration and who could contract them. Indeed, they seemed worried about the power given to planters, as they argued that: "These immigrants are to be brought into the colony at the public expense, therefore, have a right without distinction of class or occupation, to derive such advantages as they may from engaging them".<fnref n="149" /> Then again it appears that their concerns were about the small landowners, mostly Creoles, who would not be able to recruit indentured labourers under the new conditions.

The harshest reaction from the Anti-Slavery Society came from a certain Thomas Jones, who was the secretary of the Barbados Auxiliary branch. When he was informed of the new laws concerning the imprisonment and hard labour immigrants could be faced with, he answered that: "these Ordinances of the Governor and Court of Policy of British Guiana are incompatible with a state of freedom, repugnant to the spirit of the imperial Act abolishing slavery in these colonies, and, as reintroducing some of the worst features of that horrid system".<fnref n="150" />

<footnote n="148">¹⁴⁸ Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="149">¹⁴⁹ Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="150">¹⁵⁰ Thomas Jones, "Immigration Ordinances of British Guiana", *The Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 1st Janurary 1851.</footnote>
However, he still did not call for the end of such a system, only to not pass such laws that could impact the freedom of immigrants and called for "the best efforts of the Parent Society will be made".<fnref n="151" /> Indeed, the Anti-Slavery Society was going through internal conflict on the question of the free-trade of sugar, while some were in favour of it, others supported the protection of West Indian sugar. This internal disagreement meant the division of support and less ideas being promoted against immigration and the new ordinances passed against indentured labourers which limited their freedom of movement.

While the Anti-Slavery Society still alerted to the dangers of the system of indenture, it was no longer firmly opposed to its abolition. They had an ambivalent position, as they pointed to the abuse of the system but by focusing more on the effects it would have on the free Creole population of Guiana. One could ask if their position was not as radical as during the first suspension because they knew that they could not win against planters for the complete interruption of the system, or only if they cared less about Indian indentured population and they only wanted to secure the position of the Creole population of the West Indies which they had freed from slavery only a few decades ago.

***

This chapter has explored the second suspension of the Indian indenture system. As it has been argued this interruption happened for different reasons than the first. The economic and political unrest which originated from the Sugar Duties

<footnote n="151">¹⁵¹ Ibid.</footnote>
Act laid at the heart of this second suspension starting in 1848. This chapter through
the lens of indenture revealed the multiple decision-making layers of the British
Empire and exemplifies how a top-down/centre-periphery vista on the British Empire
is an oversimplification of its functioning: indeed, the metropolitan government could
be challenged by colonial settlers, if only they had the means to pass their own
legislation. From that perspective, Guianese institutions inherited from the Dutch
period set the British Crown Colony of Guiana aside from other Crown Colonies,
whereby legislative assemblies were directly controlled by the governor, a
representative of the British Crown. Somehow a reminiscence of the Dutch colonial
period, the Combined Court and Court of Policy tend to give Guianese planters some
sovereignty, which wrestled with British sovereignty in the case of Indian
indentureship to Guiana then. The Combined Court wanted to keep its powers over
the colony and felt threatened by London which resulted in years of political unrest
and the suspension of immigration. With the renewal of indenture in 1851, a number
of reforms to the system were brought, which restricted even further the freedom of
immigrants and compelled them to pay for their return-passage. This time around,
the Anti-Slavery Society had ambivalent arguments and less radical views, as they
did not call for the end of the system but only not to pass certain bills that would
restrict immigrants' freedom. In this sense, it seems that their priority was the Creole
population who were at the heart of the British civilising mission and who they felt
would be negatively influenced by Indian immigration. This was the last "official"
suspension of indentured immigration in British Guiana, still as will be explained in
the next chapter, suspension happened at a trans-imperial level but also it could be
considered that further, more minor suspensions happened through resistance by
indentured servants themselves during the second half of the nineteenth-century.
**Chapter 3: Resistance to Indenture in
Regional Perspective, (1853-1917).**

About the 1850s and 1860s, historian K.O. Laurence has argued that indentured immigration: “first stopped the headlong economic decline of British Guiana and Trinidad (...) and then brought them to substantial prosperity by 1870 as sugar production began to grow in direct proportion to immigration”.<fnref n="152" /> Still, the second half of the nineteenth-century saw the most important immigration of indentured labourers compared to the first two periods discussed before. In fact, between 1851 until the end of indentured immigration in 1917, a total of 226,139 immigrants entered the colony.<fnref n="153" /> Indian indentured immigration would not be officially questioned or suspended to British Guiana until the system ended in 1917. Yet, in 1866, the Chinese government suspended all immigration to British Guiana until the colony would provide for the immigrants’ return passage. As a matter of fact, Joseph Beaumont, who was firmly opposed to the system of indenture, commented that “The Chinese Government has shown a more active interest for its people.”.<fnref n="154" /> China, unlike the Indian Government, could play on its State sovereignty in the domain, and was thus unhampered by British regulations (whether metropolitan colonial or local) and thus was able to suspend Chinese immigration to the colony.

<footnote n="152">152 K.O Laurence, *Immigration into the West Indies in the 19th century*, (Kingston: Caribbean Universities Press, 1978), 66.</footnote>

<footnote n="153">153 See Appendix E.</footnote>

<footnote n="154">154 Joseph Beaumont, *The New Slavery: An Account of Indian and Chinese Immigrants in British Guiana*, 1871 (Georgetown: The Caribbean Press, 2011), 34.</footnote>
A number of different voices were raised against Indian immigration to the colony but also to the West Indies in general. Many anti-immigration movements came to be during the period that will be focused on in this chapter. Not opposed to indenture as a system of forced labour, these movements contested immigration, as will be further explored later.

During the second half of the nineteenth century through agreements with other European empires, the French and the Dutch, Britain permitted them to recruit indentured labourers from British India. However, in that specific case, the Government of India still retained power over their immigration and during several occasions immigration was suspended to these foreign colonies. The study of trans-imperial administration of indenture has long escaped historians' radar. However, it is necessary to shed further light on the agency of each actor within the British imperial network, as to the administration of immigration. This will be investigated in this section.

A third type of suspension in this later period is the resistance of indentured labourers themselves.<fnref n="155" /> As Gayatri Spivak, the “subaltern” were able to demonstrate their voice through insurgency and resistance.<fnref n="156" /> As a matter of fact, most accounts of resistance during the period of existence of the indentured system was during the second half of the nineteenth-century. Thus, even if immigration was not officially interrupted in the same way as it has been explored above, indentured labourers were actively participating in “suspending” temporarily production on plantations in British Guiana during this period. In the same way as historian Madhavi Kale has put it, it is believed that: “these women and men brought to their assigned roles

<footnote n="155">¹⁵⁵ Be Professor Lomarsh Roopnarine thanked for making this suggestion during a call in October 2021.</footnote>

<footnote n="156">¹⁵⁶ Gayatri C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in *Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea*. (ed.) Rosalind Morris, 13-64. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010).</footnote>
agendas, qualities, possibilities that those who directed them could neither anticipate
nor entirely manage".<fnref n="157" />

A/ Opposition to Indenture from the West Indies.

As mentioned above, during the second half of the nineteenth century different anti-immigration movements originated in the West Indies.. This does not mean that they did not exist before, but rather their voice became more present than ever before. Different actors took part in this anti-immigration movement, whether it was some of the progressive clergymen, local newspapers or associations of free Creole labourers.

a) Anti-Indenture/Immigration sentiment in the West Indies

Anti-immigration sentiment had existed since the beginning of the system of indenture, however the arguments raised became progressively visible after the renewal of immigration especially after the second interruption. About the period after 1851, Historian Walton Look Lai has argued that there was a "stabilization and 'Indianization' of the sugar production".<fnref n="158" /> Still, the main voices against immigration came from the Creole population and supporters of this ethnic group because of the

<footnote n="157">¹⁵⁷ Madhavi Kale, *Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery, and Indian Indentured Labor Migration in the British Caribbean*, Critical Histories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 10.</footnote>

<footnote n="158">¹⁵⁸ Walton Look Lai, *Indentured labour, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918*, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 178.</footnote>
racial tensions that were apparent between Creoles and Indian indentured servants
since the economic crisis of the Sugar Duties Act discussed above.

It was argued that the indentured immigration system participated in the pauperisation of the Creole class of the colony. These issues shaped racial tensions and would prove to be the start of a lasting conflict that still impacts Guyana today.

It is also important to understand that often those who supported the Creole
population (i.e the white class) were motivated by racial and cultural convictions. In
fact, missionaries that were opposed to immigration were mainly motivated by the
belief that it threatened the “civilising mission” of the British, even if they agreed that
indenture was a “modified slavery”. This can be seen for example in *The Demerara Martyr: Memoirs of the Rev. John Smith*, in which it is argued:

> The rising generation now verging to majority, who have never experience
> slavery, have not improved, I think, in the ratio that could be wished (...). This
> is to be attributed to the influence of Coolie immigration (...) two-thirds of all
> the wretched idolaters from Calcutta and Madras have been sent; and the
> filthy, heathenish baits imported by these Coolies, and exhibited before the
> eyes of our Creole population, is having an influence, especially upon the
> young, which will prove beyond all conception injurious.<fnref n="159" />

This sentiment of anti-immigration came from a perceived threat to the
"civilising mission" by the British and most importantly from religious organisations.

<footnote n="159">¹⁵⁹ Edwin A. Wallbridge, *The Demerara Martyr: Memoirs of the Rev. John Smith, Missionary to Demerara*, (London: Charles Gilpin, 1848), xvii.</footnote>
Alongside other arguments, similar sentiments were expressed in other West Indian colonies, such as Trinidad and Jamaica.

In Jamaica, immigration was not renewed until 1858 after the second suspension. Thus, it is only after that point that anti-immigration ideas appeared. Historian Walton Look Lai has shown that several organisations advocated against immigration by organising public meetings in Jamaica such as the London Missionary Society, the Jamaica Baptist Union and the Friends of the People.<fnref n="160" /> Moreover, Reverend Henry Clarke was a major leader of anti-immigration during the 1860s in Jamaica.

In Trinidad, anti-immigration ideas also fuelled the debate around indenture. In the *San Fernando Gazette*, a Creole newspaper, it was asked: "Shall we in order to procure labor for our sugar estates, continue to import a people who have contributed more to swell our record of capital offences more than any other nations inhabitants this country put together?".<fnref n="161" /> Thus to argue against immigration, Indians were portrayed as "undesirable immigrants" and it was not so much the cost of immigration of racial tensions between the Creole and Indians classes that surfaced, but the problems of alleged high conviction rates of Indian immigrants. However, they did not seem to address the very root of the problem: that the penal system had been built in order to keep Indians on the plantation which Joseph Beaumont (who will be further discussed later) argued: "the large proportion of these people (...) are forced into the position of criminals under the Labour Laws".<fnref n="162" />

<footnote n="160">160 Walton Look Lai, *Indentured labour, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918*, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 184.</footnote>

<footnote n="161">161 *The San Fernando Gazette*, 21st September 1878.</footnote>

<footnote n="162">162 Joseph Beaumont, *The New Slavery, An Account of the Indian and Chinese Immigrants in British Guiana*. (London: W. Ridgway, 1871), 32-33.</footnote>
Another important argument that fuelled anti-immigration discussion came from the fact that planters only paid two thirds of the price of immigration costs and the last third was at public expense. On this matter, the Sanderson Report (1910): read that “part of the financial burdens entailed by the wholesale importation of immigrants was cast upon the superseded native labouring population (...) Our people are taxed to maintain an institution which (...) served the interests of a small minority of the privileged class”.<fnref n="163" />

The cost of immigration had been under debate for a long time. As early as 1860, this had been highlighted. The *Bermuda Royal Gazette* reported that the Governor in British Guiana had tried to change this by putting all the expense of immigration on the planters.<fnref n="164" /> However, the Court of Policy, as explained in the previous chapter, was composed of planters and thus rejected the proposition.

In Jamaica, other immigration systems were discussed, for example in the *Antigua Observer*, it was argued in 1860 that: “an immigration of this kind, from the States would also give a permanent addition to the labouring population of the island and would, therefore, be infinitely preferable to the coolie system”.<fnref n="165" /> Thus, planters turned towards other forms of immigration, in the Economist a colonial journal, it was argued about Jamaica that: “they will not have the coolies, who are freemen, they want Africans, whom they can enslave”.<fnref n="166" /> Several arguments were used to attract but also to promote African-American immigration from the US. Not only were

<footnote n="163">¹⁶³ Report of the Committee on Emigration from India to the Crown colonies and protectorates. Part III. Papers laid before the committee, Command Papers (1910), XXVII.563 (Cd. 5194), 16.</footnote>

<footnote n="164">¹⁶⁴ *Bermuda Royal Gazette*, 7th February 1860.</footnote>

<footnote n="165">¹⁶⁵ *The Antigua Observer*, 27th January 1860.</footnote>

<footnote n="166">¹⁶⁶ As quoted in George Brizan, "The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission and Immigration to Jamaica 1840-1860", *Caribbean Quarterly* 20, n° 3-4 (1974): 47.</footnote>
African-Americans accustomed to agricultural labour (opposed to most Indian labourers) but they were also Christians and were already “civilised”.167 And as such, had entered the realm of ‘civilisation’ according to categories then. It has also been shown by Sebastian Page that “When abolitionists plotted tropical refuges for fugitive slaves, they usually had Jamaica in mind”.168 Thus, Jamaican planters preferred to turn towards African immigration rather than Indian immigration.

Because of a new sugar crisis in the 1890s, anti-immigration groups resurfaced. And because of this crisis, K.O. Laurence has argued that: “during the slack season the presence of so many indentured immigrants on the estates meant that those free labourers, both Indian and Creole, who depended wholly or in part on estate employment often could not get work”.169 Still, new immigrants were being shiped to the sugar colonies. Rather than to complete a lack of work-force, immigration continued to decrease the wages of free labourers.

The Sanderson Report concerning British Guiana, contained an important memorandum from the People's Association of British Guiana written in 1909. This was an association for the free coloured people of the colony, which was opposed to Indian immigration.170 Over the years, the group's influence grew to the point that when indenture was ended, seven out of fourteen elected representatives in 1909 came from the People's Association.171 Similarly, between 1894-1904 in Trinidad,

<footnote n="167">167 Sebastian N. Page, *Black Resettlement and the American Civil War* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 192.</footnote>

<footnote n="168">168 Ibid, 215.</footnote>

<footnote n="169">169 K. O. Laurence, “Opposition to Indentured Immigration in Trinidad (1845-1917)”, *Bulletin de La Société d’Histoire de La Guadeloupe*, n° 138 (2004): 70.</footnote>

<footnote n="170">170 Report of the Committee on Emigration from India to the Crown colonies and protectorates. Part III. Papers laid before the committee, Command Papers (1910), XXVII.563 (Cd. 5194), 15-22.</footnote>

<footnote n="171">171 Walton Look Lai, *Indentured labour, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918*, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004): 182.</footnote>
many anti-immigration members were appointed to the Legislative Council of the colony, which advocated for the end of the immigration scheme.<fnref n="172" />

Even if challenged by many different organisations in the different colonies of the West Indies, the system was not opposed by the colonial power and was not interrupted as already been discussed. And yet, this did not prevent political figures in British Guiana to continue the fight.

### b) Political figures in British Guiana, against indenture (1860s).

During the second half of the nineteenth-century, the fight against the system of indenture itself (and not only anti-immigration) continued. It seems that local political figures, especially in British Guiana were at the forefront of the debate against indenture. In fact, several figures raised their voices against the system of indenture, most importantly: William Des Voeux, Joseph Beaumont and James Crosby.<fnref n="173" />

All three figures were in office at the same time during the 1860s in British Guiana. After Des Voeux had served as a lawyer in Upper Canada from 1861 to 1863 he became a stipendiary magistrate between 1863 and 1869, first in the East Bank Demerara district and later in Upper Demerara.<fnref n="174" /> Joseph Beaumont was the Chief Justice from 1863 to 1869 in British Guiana and published an entire book to

<footnote n="172">¹⁷² Ibid, 173.</footnote>

<footnote n="173">¹⁷³ This section builds on the work of Baseo Mangru, and expands it. For Mangru's article, see: Basdeo Mangru, "The Hincks-Beaumont Imbroglio Partisans Politics in British Guiana in the 1860s", *Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y Del Caribe*, n° 43 (1987): 99-114.</footnote>

<footnote n="174">¹⁷⁴ William G. Des Voeux, *My colonial service in British Guiana, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Fiji, Australia, Newfoundland, and Hong Kong, with interludes*, (London: J. Murray, 1903), 24 & 115.</footnote>
argue against indentureship of Indians entitled *The New Slavery, An Account of the Indian and Chinese Immigrants in British Guiana*.<fnref n="175" /> Finally, James Crosby was appointed Agent General from 1858 until 1880, he had to check if regulations concerning the voyage of immigrants had been respected on their arrival. In reality he also served as Protector of Indians as he toured the colony to inspect estates and note the abuses that were done against labourers.

Thus, all three served together at the same time and they were actively participating in the colony's political organisation and had an important influence. Beaumont, argued that many of the magistrates applied the law in the interest of planters and that the interest of labourers was put aside. He stated that: "judicial independence becomes practically important, when the acts of the Executive Government or the interests or the privileges of the planters come into question, no Judge or Magistrate can decide adversely to them, without being exposed to the risk of punishment".<fnref n="176" />

William Des Voeux is thought to be the main actor for the Inquiry into the treatment of immigrants in British Guiana ordered by the British Government in 1870. Even if the report itself did not change or question the system itself to the point that it even recommended its continuation, it did shed light on the abuses that labourers were subject to. Still, they did not manage to stop the system of indenture, but they managed to (in a limited way) improve the living conditions of labourers in the colony.

Des Voeux argued that:

> Since the announcement of the Commission, the planters had made great exertions and had expended large sums with a view of improving the estates

<footnote n="175">¹⁷⁵ Joseph Beaumont, *The New Slavery, An Account of the Indian and Chinese Immigrants in British Guiana*. (London: W. Ridgway, 1871).</footnote>

<footnote n="176">¹⁷⁶ Ibid, 30.</footnote>
(...) hospitals were enlarged and improved, water-tanks erected, coolie barracks built or improved, and yards cleansed (...) some of the estates had had their aspect entirely altered.<fnref n="177" />

As explained, Beaumont warned that anybody contesting how the Guiana plantocracy administered indenture was in danger. The influence of the three men came to the point that they would all be censored by the Governor, as they were thought to pose a threat to the well-being of the colony. In this regard, Des Voeux argued that:

(...) what perhaps more than all caused the enmity of the ruling class was his disregard of what had apparently come to be accepted by the courts as a settled principle, viz. that when the evidence of "white" and "coloured" was opposed, that of the "white" must necessarily prevail.<fnref n="178" />

In 1868 a series of cases were ruled unlawful by Beaumont and by Des Voeux, after indentees had been convicted because of not performing the tasks they had been assigned. These cases became a controversy in the colony and it was expected that the ruling from Beaumont would be reversed.<fnref n="179" /> Because of this Beaumont was removed from his office after a petition in the Court of Policy which was supported by the Governor at the time. Mangru even showed that the West

<footnote n="177">¹⁷⁷ William G. Des Voeux, *My colonial service in British Guiana, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Fiji, Australia, Newfoundland, and Hong Kong, with interludes*, (London: J. Murray, 1903), 134.</footnote>

<footnote n="178">¹⁷⁸ Ibid, 122.</footnote>

<footnote n="179">¹⁷⁹ *Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Treatment of Immigrants in British Guiana*, Command Papers (1871), XX.483, 691, 751 (C.393 C.393-I C.393-II), 25.</footnote>
Indian Committee, a lobby group for planters in London, pressured the Government to take action against Beaumont.<fnref n="180" />

In a similar way, Crosby would be censored by Governor Francis Hinks. Des Voeux said concerning Crosby that: "his patient attention to the complaints of immigrants (...) his patient attention to the complaints of immigrants".<fnref n="181" /> Because of his views and positions in favour of immigrants which contravened those of the Governor and Court of Policy, Crosby was considered a threat against the Colonial power. Yet, by 1871, Crosby's status was not only restored but enhanced by his appointment as a member of the Court of Policy.<fnref n="182" />

Finally, even though Des Voeux is presented as an important and influential person in the colony, this did not last very long. In fact, he argued that his transfer from the East Demerara district to Upper Demerara was a way of decreasing his power. Indeed, his new residence was much further from Georgetown, the main city of the colony. He argued that: "For being compelled to live at a distance from town, [sic] whither I could go but rarely, I had practically no society".<fnref n="183" /> He also added that: "The planters of this district were among the most influential in the colony, and as they were a very united body, their displeasure was therefore the more formidable".<fnref n="184" /> Because of this transfer and the reduction of his power and influence of the colony, Des Voeux resigned from his office to become Administrator of the Government and Colonial Secretary in St. Lucia in 1869.

<footnote n="180">¹⁸⁰ Basdeo Mangru, "The Hincks-Beaumont Imbroglio Partisans Politics in British Guiana in the 1860s". *Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y Del Caribe*, n° 43 (1987): 111.</footnote>

<footnote n="181">¹⁸¹ William G. Des Voeux, *My colonial service in British Guiana, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Fiji, Australia, Newfoundland, and Hong Kong, with interludes* (London: J. Murray, 1903), 121.</footnote>

<footnote n="182">¹⁸² Harry Hergash, "The Protectors of the Rights of the Indians under Indentureship in British Guiana", May 6, 2019. Accessed from: https://www.stabroeknews.com/2019/05/06/features/in-the-diaspora/the-protectors-of-the-rights-of-the-indians-under-indentureship-in-british-guiana/</footnote>

<footnote n="183">¹⁸³ William G. Des Voeux, *My colonial service in British Guiana, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Fiji, Australia, Newfoundland, and Hong Kong, with interludes*, (London: J. Murray, 1903), 125.</footnote>

<footnote n="184">¹⁸⁴ Ibid, 126.</footnote>
c) Over to indentured servants in Guiana: the Anti-Slavery Society's changed perspective post-1850s.

As mentioned earlier for the second interruption of immigration, the anti-slavery society was less present in discussions around indenture. This was similar during the 1860s and 1870s, as they were more focused on abolition slavery in other parts of the world, especially in the United States, Cuba and Brazil. Still, the Anti-Slavery Society continued its fight against indenture and did publish some works. It is believed that with the retirement of the early members of the anti-slavery society that have been mentioned earlier in this dissertation such as John Scoble, it took some time for a new wave of members to bring back the fight against indenture to the forefront of the scene.

Seymour Drescher has argued on indenture that it served two purposes against the abolitionist discourse, first immigration "gradually reversed the decline of sugar exports in most of the British Caribbean" but also that "abolitionists were reduced to repeating the 'vaguest of pieties about the greater efficiency of free labor' without being able to specify how a wage labor economy would function or where it had so far done so".<fnref n="185" />

Still, the Anti-Slavery Society continued publishing regularly on the "coolie trade" in the 1860s and 1870s. They continued to criticise with limited effect. For example, Louis Alexis Chamerovzow, who served as Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society and participated actively in the abolition of slavery in the United States, wrote in 1860 in *The Antigua Observer* an article about the indentured system in the West

<footnote n="185">¹⁸⁵ Seymour Drescher, *Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery* (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 391.</footnote>
Indies and gave a number of points which the Government should act upon. When looking at these they are very similar to those that had been called out by the Anti-Slavery Society a few decades earlier. Thus, recruitment in India but also the conditions of workers were still to be criticised and did not change much since the beginning of the system even with the regulations and changes that the Government put in place to temper the abolitionists discourse.

The most important contributor to debates around Indian indenture in Britain was a member of the London Aborigines Protection and the Anti-Slavery Society. John Edward Jenkins born in South India in 1838, published in 1871 his book entitled *The Coolie: His rights and Wrongs*.<fnref n="186" /> He was also in close contact with the political actors in Guiana such as Des Voeux and Beaumont discussed previously. *The Morning Post* reported that Jenkins was sent out by the Aborigines' Protection Society to watch over the official inquiry.<fnref n="187" /> He used a quite different rhetoric than his predecessors in the 1840s. In fact, he included a whole sub-chapter on giving accounts directly from indentured immigrants themselves and tried to give a voice to those who he was trying to defend. For example here is a letter from a Muslim indentured servant:

TO GEO. WM. DES VOEUX ESQ. & c.

Sir, I have to Inform you that the treatment I receive in the Hospital of Plantation is this I went in the siek house about this three weeks ago and now last night the China nurse beat me very much and I then tell it to the head sick nurse he said that he do not care nothing about it that the China nurse should have beat me then more After then he took the light and burn[t] my head in

<footnote n="186">¹⁸⁶ Edward Jenkins. *The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs*, 1871, (Georgetown: Caribbean Press 2010).</footnote>

<footnote n="187">¹⁸⁷ *Morning Post*, 28th February 1871.</footnote>
the morning I went and complain to the manager He said to me he do not
care one — about the matter and that If the nurse did even kill me he is
nothing to do with my affair. I therefore think hard of this matter to see that If
any person ill use me and I complain to my employer and then no satisfaction
give to me

I am Your Obedient servant

his Dos MAHOMMED

X mark.<fnref n="188" />

Jenkins stood out in the Anti-Slavery Society enterprise: as the Anti-Slavery Society in Britain kept publishing about indenture, but actually did not see its fight against indenture as a prime one (as it had been in the 1830s), Jenkins's decision to give indentured servants a voice is striking. Traditionally, missionaries, politicians, planters from Guiana were given their say, not indentured servants. In publishing their testimonies unmediated - or so Jenkins wanted readers to believe -, he sought to get readers' attention and elicit their compassion.

Overall, even if the system of indenture changed very little during the second
half of the nineteenth century, many different organisations argued for the stop of
Indian immigration. Rare however were those who spoke in defence of the Indian
indentured servants, who rather tended to be cast as 'undesirables'. Whatever their
arguments, it was however obvious that the plantocracy and colonial government
were not ready to give up their power and to improve the quality of life of indentees
and thus tried to limit their power. The next section of this chapter will look into

<footnote n="188">¹⁸⁸ Edward Jenkins, *The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs*, 1817, (Georgetown: Caribbean Press, 2010), 115.</footnote>
indentured labourers from British India who were also employed by other European empires, most importantly the French and Dutch.

## B/ Trans-imperial indentureship, suspension of immigration to the other Guianas.

More than being transported from one part of the British empire to another, indentured labourers were also recruited by other empires. Historian Kate Marsh has noted that Indians labourers in other empires "were in an anomalous position – legally, geographically and culturally – and that they were not subject to only one colonial system."<fnref n="189" /> Thus, indentured labourers were in an ambiguous situation, as they found themselves dependent on two different empires. Through agreements with the French and Dutch, Britain agreed to send indentured labourers from India to foreign colonies.<fnref n="190" />

### a) Indian indenture to French Guiana (Cayenne).

Following the second abolition of slavery in France in 1848 by the 2nd Republic, planters in French colonies sought a new source of labour for the plantations. Léon Rivière argued that: "Without immigration, without transportation (...) [French] Guyana is lost! [French] Guyana is dead!" [personal translation].<fnref n="191" />

<footnote n="189">¹⁸⁹ Kate Marsh, "'Rights of the Individual', Indentured Labour and Indian Workers: The French Antilles and the Rhetoric of Slavery Post 1848', Slavery & Abolition 33, no. 2 (2012): 224.</footnote>

<footnote n="190">¹⁹⁰ The Danish with the colony of St. Croix will not be mentioned here, for further information on this subject see the works by Lomarsh Roopnarine.</footnote>

<footnote n="191">¹⁹¹ Léon Rivière, *La Guyane française en 1865 : aperçu géographique, historique, législatif, agricole, industriel et commercial* (Cayenne: Impr. du Gouvernement, 1866), 145. Original texte in French: "Sans l'immigration, sans la transportation (...) la Guyane est perdue ! la Guyane est morte!"</footnote>
First they transported African immigration from 1850 until 1862. In 1853 the first ship of Indian indentured labourers would be sent to the French Antilles to Martinique, then in 1854 to Guadeloupe. By mistake in 1856 the *Sigisbert César*, with 800 indentured immigrants on board, arrived in French Guiana (which will be the focus of this section), when in fact its final destination was supposed to be Guadeloupe. This arrival would begin the first wave of immigration to French Guiana between 1856 and 1861. These first years of Indian immigrants to French Guiana mainly came from the French-Indian port of Pondichéry and included French and British-Indian subjects.

In 1861, the Government of India made a deal with France through Act XLVI which authorised Indian immigration to French colonies from any French settlements in India but also from the British ports of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. This agreement was only a means for the British to better control immigration of their own subjects in India. These laws only set regulations to a practice that was already in place before, especially to the island of Réunion where greater numbers of immigrants had been transported illegally.

The set of laws established a “controlled” immigration from India to the French colonies. They had to respect a number of rules, for example French Emigration Agents could work in British ports to recruit indentees, but most importantly that British Consular Agents were to be present in French ports to regulate immigration whether it be in India but also in the sugar-colonies. Overall, the other rules for the condition of the voyage were similar to the British ones. The act was concluded for a
duration of 31 years starting in July 1862 and also gave the right to the Government
of India to stop at any time emigration from its ports.<fnref n="192" />

As for the British in the first years of existence of the system of immigration, it
did not go smoothly and the system of immigration would be suspended to French
colonies. At the end of the year 1867, the Madras Government alerted on the high
number of mortality of immigrants bound for French Guiana. This decision would be
confirmed by the Government of India on the 12th July 1867.<fnref n="193" /> It was argued by the
British Consul in French Guiana that: "at least one-half of those unfortunate
creatures died".<fnref n="194" /> Immigration to French Guiana would remain suspended until
1871. However, it is unclear if immigration was only suspended from Madras or by
the other ports too. This question should be explored further in future research and
by other historians, as little information has been published on this interruption in
French Guiana.

In fact, the Government of India suspended immigration to French Guiana in
1876. On this, David Northup has argued that: "The criticism stemmed less from any
worsening of the actual conditions of the laborers than from the changing political
climate".<fnref n="195" /> However, research carried here suggests that there were distinct signs of
ill treatments of indentured workers and the condition of labourers worried authorities
in India. It is thus unlikely that the condition of labourers was the main concern from
India, and that the political changes which happened in France did not affect the

<footnote n="192">¹⁹² *Mr. Geogheghan's Report on Coolie Emigration from India*, House of Commons Papers (1874), XLVII.421 (314), 33.</footnote>

<footnote n="193">¹⁹³ Jude. Sahaï, « De l'immigration tamoule à la Guyane », *CARBET*, n° 9 (1989): 114.</footnote>

<footnote n="194">¹⁹⁴ *Mr. Geogheghan's Report on Coolie Emigration from India*, House of Commons Papers (1874), XLVII.421 (314), 46.</footnote>

<footnote n="195">¹⁹⁵ David Northrup, "Indentured Indians in the French Antilles. Les Immigrants Indiens Engagés Aux Antilles Françaises", *Revue Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer* 87, n° 326-327 (2000): 256.</footnote>
decision of suspending immigration. Indeed, in a 28 September, 1876 letter to the
then British Secretary of State for India the Marquess of Salisbury, the
Governor-General of India in Council complained that:

it appears to us that it has now been clearly shown that the unhealthiness of
the Colony, under its present conditions, is such as to make it unsuitable as a
residence for natives of India, and that the work on the gold-washings, on
which they are mainly employed, is so obnoxious to their health, and the
situation of these washings so remote from the influence of the
Administration, that we cannot properly continue to allow our Indian subjects
to be imported for labour of this description.<fnref n="196" />

Criticism against the system of immigration to the colony was also visible in
the press. On immigration to French Guiana, an article in the *Anti-Slavery Reporter*
stated that: "the indifference [sic.] with which they are treated by the French
colonists, who seem to pay but little attention to the coolies, and consider them more
as animals of burden".<fnref n="197" />

Criticism also came from the French, especially Victor Schœlcher the député of Martinique and later Guadeloupe (two colonies, which received large numbers of indentured immigrants) argued while speaking of the treatment of Indian immigrants that: "They are less than serfs (...). They have no access to the courts (...). The so-called immigrants, by touching the colonial soil, lose their quality of adult men, they are reduced to the state of minors" [personal translation].<fnref n="198" />

<footnote n="196">¹⁹⁶ Correspondence respecting Discontinuance of Coolie Importation from India to French Guiana, Command Papers (1878), LXVII.425 (C.2053), 3.</footnote>

<footnote n="197">¹⁹⁷ Oliver Pegler, "Deplorable condition of Indian coolies in French Guiana", *Anti-Slavery Reporter*, August 1879.</footnote>

<footnote n="198">¹⁹⁸ Victor Schœlcher, *Restauration de la traite des Noirs à Natal*, (Paris: E. Brière, 1877), 8-9. Original texte in French: "Ils sont moins que des serfs (...). Ils n'ont pas d'accès aux tribunaux (...). Les</footnote>
After this suspension in 1876, immigration would not be continued and no British-Indians would be sent to French Guiana. In total, Nelly Schmidt has estimated that around 8,500 Indians were brought to French Guiana between 1856 and 1878.<fnref n="199" /> In 1892, François Hue stated that of these immigrants 4,223 died in the colony and only 675 Indians returned to their home-country.<fnref n="200" />

### b) Indian immigration to Dutch Guiana (Surinam).

Dutch Guiana started transporting indentured labourers in 1853, a decade before they abolished slavery in 1863. Thus indentured labourers and slaves worked side by side on Dutch plantations for a number of years. It is only when the Anglo-French Convention in 1861 was signed that the Dutch tried to start negotiating with the British to employ British-Indian indentured labourers in their colonies. An agreement between both empires would only be signed in 1870.

Historian Maurits Hassankhan has shown that: "the emigration regulations for British Guiana would serve as a guideline for the immigration regulations in Suriname".<fnref n="201" /> Overall, regulations also resembled those that had been agreed with the French in the sense that the British Consul oversaw immigration in Dutch ports and served as a Protector for Immigrants in the colony. Other clauses that were agreed with France also applied to Surinam.

<footnote>soi-disant immigrants, en touchant le sol colonial, y perdent leur qualité d'hommes majeurs, ils sont réduits à l'état de mineurs."</footnote>

<footnote n="199">¹⁹⁹ Nelly Schmidt, "Les migrations de main-d'œuvre dans la politique coloniale française aux Caraïbes pendant la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle", *Le Mouvement Social*, n° 151 (1990): 33.</footnote>

<footnote n="200">²⁰⁰ François Hue, *La Guyane Française* (Paris: Lecène, Oudin et Cie., 1892), 115.</footnote>

<footnote n="201">²⁰¹ Hassankhan, Maurits S, "The Indian indentured experience in Suriname. Control, accommodation and resistance 1873-1916", in: Maurits S. Hassankhan, Brij V. Lal, Doug Munro (eds.), *Resistance and Indian indenture experience. Comparative perspectives* (New Delhi: Manohar, 2014), 206.</footnote>
When the Anti-Slavery Society heard of the newly signed Convention with the Dutch, they commented that: "If we are not misinformed, the labour laws of Surinam, like those in the French colonies, are cruel and oppressive in the highest degree".<fnref n="202" /> The following year, they sent a letter to Lord Granville to show their remonstrances towards immigration to Dutch Guiana.

K.O. Laurence has also shown that a regular stream of immigrants to Dutch Guiana also came from Indian immigrants who had completed their indentured period from British Guiana.<fnref n="203" /> This was true especially in the 1880s where Surinam agents operated in British Guiana even if this was not allowed. Laurence has argued that planters preferred indentured labourers from British Guiana as they did not have to pay the passage of immigrants from India to the colony.<fnref n="204" />

However, as happened with French Guiana, it did not take long for the British Consul to report health issues in Surinam and thus immigration was suspended in August 1875. In fact, the Consul argued that: "unless proper measures are immediately taken to afford adequate hospital accommodation and medical attendance to Indian immigrants in Surinam, we shall find ourselves under the necessity of suspending emigration thither".<fnref n="205" /> Rosemarijn Hoefte has argued that this suspension went without notice from the Dutch as there was no demand for labourers from planters in 1874 and 1875.<fnref n="206" /> Surprisingly - or rather relaying the surprise of Surinam authorities that immigration had been suspended in 1876 - the

<footnote n="202">²⁰² Anon., "Immigration to Surinam from British India", *Anti-Slavery Reporter*, 1st July 1872.</footnote>

<footnote n="203">²⁰³ K. O. Laurence, *Immigration into the West Indies in the 19th century* (London: Caribbean University Press, 1971), 45.</footnote>

<footnote n="204">²⁰⁴ Ibid.</footnote>

<footnote n="205">²⁰⁵ As quoted in Rosemarijn Hoefte, *In Place of Slavery, A Social History of British Indian and Javanese Laborers in Suriname* (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 42.</footnote>

<footnote n="206">²⁰⁶ Rosemarijn Hoefte, *In Place of Slavery, A Social History of British Indian and Javanese Laborers in Suriname* (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 42.</footnote>
British Vice-Consul, Augustus Cohen, in Surinam wrote to the Earl of Derby and reported in a letter dated October 21, 1876 that:

> dated the 21st of August last, this Government has been informed that the order to be sent for the recruitment of labourers for this Colony cannot be executed in consequence of an edict issued by the Government of India last year, prohibiting the continuation of emigration to Surinam on the ground of the high rate of mortality of the Indian immigrants in 1874.<fnref n="207" />

The deaths in Dutch Guiana in 1874 were alarmingly high. Cohen reported that the death rate that year was of 18,5% for indentured labourers. Cohen used a quite surprising argument to justify such high rates, he argued that: "their parsimonious character, preferring to hoard up their earnings than to procure proper and sufficient nourishment may, in a great measure, have been the causes of the alarming number of deaths".<fnref n="208" /> Putting the fault on indentured immigrants themselves when they were supposed to be nourished by the planter, when in reality it is most probably because of the lack of medical attention and the spread of certain diseases.

Yet, the suspension would not last long, as immigration was renewed in 1877 after the Dutch and the British Consul argued that medical conditions had improved in the colony. From the 1890s Surinam turned to a new source of indentured labourers, Javanese labour, until just before WW2. Still they continued Indian immigration until 1916 when the British would also terminate the system of

<footnote n="207">²⁰⁷ *Reports respecting Condition of Coolies in Surinam*, Command Papers (1877), LXXVIII.407 (C.1861), 90.</footnote>

<footnote n="208">²⁰⁸ Ibid.</footnote>
indentured immigration. Overall, between 1873 and 1916 a total of 34,304 indentured immigrants officially entered Surinam.<fnref n="209" />

## C/ Protest and symbolic resistance: towards new forms of interruption?

Most of this dissertation has focused on colonial sites of power (India, metropolitan Britain, Guiana) and how they rivalled to administer indenture, which is made conspicuous at times of interruption of the system. However, it is believed that indentured labourers themselves also participated in other forms of suspension. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak has argued: “there is no unrepresentable subaltern subject that can know and speak itself (...) The problem is that the subject’s itinerary has not been left traced”.<fnref n="210" /> Thus, while retracing the history of indentured labourers is being progressively done by historians, this last section of this dissertation will attempt to think about how resistance from indentured labourers attempted in other ways to interruptions of the system in order to give them a voice.

### a) Historiographical difficulties of studying resistance of indenture.

As indentured labourers themselves have left little information about themselves, one is almost irremediably condemned to attempting to recover those

<footnote n="209">²⁰⁹ Rosemarijn Hoefte, “Plantations and Labour in the Caribbean in the Long Nineteenth Century”, *International Review of Social History* 57, n° 2 (2012): 262.</footnote>

<footnote n="210">²¹⁰ Gayatri C. Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in *Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea*. Edited by Rosalind Morris, 13-64. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 40.</footnote>
voices from colonial sources. While the colonial archives produced a detailed
account of indentured immigration, it is only from their perspective and thus are
biased because of the absence of the voices of the immigrants themselves.

Alternative sources, for instance oral interviews, lack for that period and are
only available for later generations of Guianan. From such oral sources, it may only
be very tangentially that the long 19th-century experience of living on the plantations
and of resisting passing through. At present, the author of this work has not been
able to access Guianese sources, which are little available. Still, the author will
attempt (with the limited access to sources available) to read between the lines of
the official and colonial sources and recover the agency of indentured labourers, who
were not only the victims of the system of indenture but they did resist the system. In
this sense, Ranajit Guha has rightfully argued that "the colonialist and neo-colonialist
historiographies these achievements are credited to British colonial rulers,
administrators, policies, institutions, and culture; in the nationalist and neo-nationalist
writings—to Indian elite personalities, institutions, activities and ideas".<fnref n="211" />

Moreover, anthropologist and political scientist James Scott's widely known
theory about peasants resistance may come in hand to think about resistance from
indentured labourers. Scott defined resistance from the peasantry as: "any act(s) by
member(s) of the class that is (are) intended either to mitigate or to deny claims (e.g.
rents, taxes, deference) made on that class by superordinate classes (e.g. landlords,
the state, owners of machinery, moneylenders) or to advance its own claims (e.g.
work, land, charity, respect) vis-à-vis these superordinate classes".<fnref n="212" /> It is this

<footnote n="211">211 Ranajit Guha, *Subaltern Studies I, Writing on South Asian History and Society* (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1-2.</footnote>

<footnote n="212">212 James Scott, "Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance." *Journal of Peasant Studies* 13, no.2 (1986): 22.</footnote>
pluri-modal resistance that this section investigates, this time undertaken by indentured labourers.

Most of the studies on resistance on indenture seem to focus on the later period of the system when it was at its highest points and thus the earlier years of indenture seem to have been overviewed by historians. Some have argued; such as Tyran Ramnarine, that revolts and disobedience from indentured labourers were more important starting in the 1860s because laws around indenture were harsher.<fnref n="213" /> However, this may be also explained by the fact that as the system went on in time, a higher number of new and old immigrants were now present in the colony and Indians represented nearly the majority of the population in British Guiana. In fact, by the end of the indentured system, in 1911 East-Indians represented 42% of the population in British Guiana, thus forming the largest ethnic group in the colony.<fnref n="214" />

Another argument that could be raised is that as more anti-indenture and anti-immigration arguments were being raised, strikes and revolts were being reported more to denounce the “incivility” of indentured-workers. A possibility is that maybe revolts were not more often only that they were being reported in official documents and in local newspapers to better argue against the system.

Periods of high discontent seem to appear, in fact Lomarsh Roopnarine has argued that between 1886 and 1889 there were about a hundred strikes in British Guiana.<fnref n="215" /> Thus, there seems to be an interconnectedness of revolts in the colony and also to an extent in the West Indies. It seems that these periods of high revolt

<footnote n="213">213 Tyran Ramnarine, "Over a Hundred Years of East Indian Disturbances on the Sugar-Estates of Guyana, 1869-1978: An Historical Review" in *India in the Caribbean*, ed. David Dabydeen (London: Hansib Publishing, 1987), 120.</footnote>

<footnote n="214">214 See Appendix G, G. W. Roberts, "Some Observations on the Population of British Guiana", *Population Studies* 2, n° 2 (1948): 186.</footnote>

<footnote n="215">215 Lomarsh Roopnarine, *Indo-Caribbean Indenture, Resistance and Accommodation, 1838-1920*. (Kingston: University of the West Indies, 2007), 50.</footnote>
were linked to sugar depressions especially in 1884-89 and 1894-99. Ranmarine has shown that during these depressions, wages of indentured labourers would be below what had been agreed in the different ordinances and that little could be done by the authorities.<fnref n="216" /> It is believed that these revolts could be considered as one form of suspension of the system of indenture as it paused production of sugar in the colony on many estates.

b) Indentured servants' resistance in British Guiana.

In the same way historians have shown for slavery, resistance happened at every stage of indenture whether it be in India before being embarked on ships, during the crossings but most importantly on the plantations themselves and even after their period of indenture. Here resistance on the plantations will be of particular interest. As Tyran Ramnarine has argued: "The plantations of Guyana had always been afflicted with insurrections and general unrest. Minor slaves revolts are recorded for 1731, 1741, 1762 and 1814".<fnref n="217" /> This would continue during the nineteenth century with the system of indenture.

Even if organised resistance has been hard for historians to identify through archives and sources, it is evident that resistance from labourers existed since the system of indenture was put in place. In fact, by looking at the Stipendiary Magistrates Records of Complaints for the Month of August 1839, it seems that the

<footnote n="216">²¹⁶ Tyran Ramnarine, “Over a Hundred Years of East Indian Disturbances on the Sugar-Estates of Guyana, 1869-1978: An Historical Review” in *India in the Caribbean*, ed. David Dabydeen (London: Hansib Publishing, 1987), 122.</footnote>

<footnote n="217">²¹⁷ Ibid, 119.</footnote>
first ship of indentured labourers brought by Gladstone had already attempted to go against their oppressors. Indeed it is stated that:

> Plantation Belle Vue against two hill coolie labourers for contumacious disobedience of orders, refusing to perform their work, and instigating others to do the same. One sentenced to a week's imprisonment; the other admonished and discharged. (...) two other hill coolies, who acted as ringleaders on the occasion, and attempted to set the authority of the magistrate at defiance, by declaring that if one coolie was sent to gaol they would all go.<fnref n="218" />

Thus, resistance of labourers started as soon as they were introduced in British Guiana. Not only was it resistance but it was organised, indeed these were not just individuals resisting alone, on the contrary there were “ringleaders” and they tried to push others to resist planters.

It seems that as the system continued during the 19th century, more attempts at strikes and revolts from labourers took place. As mentioned earlier periods of open resistance were often linked to sugar depressions and this is evident this study looked at the years of the second suspension where Creoles and Indian labourers protested by burning plantations down against the low wages. This would continue as a practice during the second-half of the nineteenth century and more and more revolts happened on the plantations.

<footnote n="218">²¹⁸ Correspondence between Secretary of State for Colonies and Governor of British Guiana, respecting Immigration of Labourers, House of Common Papers (1840), XXXIV.121 (151), 21.</footnote>
Even if the most evident forms of resistance are those that directly confronted the plantation and the colonial power, the most common resistance were symbolic resistance. Symbolic resistance is at the heart of Scott's theory of “everyday forms of resistance”, indeed he has argued that:

> Most forms of this struggle stop well short of outright collective defiance. Here I have in mind the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage (...) They require little or no coordination or planning; they make use of implicit understandings and informal networks; they often represent a form of individual self-help; they typically avoid any direct, symbolic confrontation with authority.<fnref n="219" />

These less “confrontational” forms of resistance were multiple, such as fleeing plantations, being sick, refusing to work, suicide etc. The most common and easily accessible form of resistance through archival sources is the desertion of plantations. Lomarsh Roopnarine has shown that: “In British Guiana from 1865 to 1890, 13,988 Indians deserted the plantations.<fnref n="220" />

Moreover, Roopnarine has argued, the number of convictions of indentured labourers in Guianese courts demonstrate two aspects of the plantation life, (1) that the plantocracy managed to use courts in their advantage, (2) but also that indentured labourers were not a “docile” population as they “were not willing to

<footnote n="219">²¹⁹ James Scott, *Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance*. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), xvi.</footnote>

<footnote n="220">²²⁰ Lomarsh Roopnarine, “Indian migration during indentured servitude in British Guiana and Trinidad, 1850–1920” *Labor History* 52, n° 2 (2011): 178.</footnote>