Fragments of empire
Subtitle: capital, slavery, and Indian indentured labor migration in the British Caribbean
By: Madhavi Kale.
Series: Critical histories
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 235
Subjects: Indentured servants -- Caribbean Area -- History.; Indentured servants -- India -- History.; Labor supply -- Caribbean Area -- History.; Slave labor -- Caribbean Area -- History.; India -- Emigration and immigration -- History.
Description: When Great Britain abolished slavery in 1833, sugar planters in the Caribbean found themselves facing the prospect of paying working wages to their former slaves. Cheaper labor existed elsewhere in the empire, however, and plantation owners, along with the home and colonial governments, quickly began importing the first of what would eventually be hundreds of thousands of indentured laborers from India.

In Fragments of Empire, Madhavi Kale draws extensively on the archival materials from this period, reading planters' correspondence, legal documents, newspaper reports, imperial papers, and speeches. She argues that imperial administrators sanctioned and authorized distinctly biased accounts of post-emancipation labor conditions and participated in devaluing and excluding alternative perspectives.

As she does this she highlights the ways in which historians, by relying on these biased sources, have perpetuated the acceptance of a privileged perspective on imperial British history.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [205]-227) and index.