Beyond Indenture

Crispin Bates is Professor of Modern and Contemporary South Asian History at the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Visiting Professor in the Graduate School of African and Asian Studies, Kyoto University. He has authored, coauthored and edited a total of 15 books including a history of South Asia from 1600 to the present, entitled Subalterns and Raj (2007), and a series of seven volumes concerning the history of the Indian uprising of 1857, entitled 'Mutiny at the Margins' (2013–2017). In 2015–2018, he led 'Becoming Coolies', an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)–funded project on the origins of Indian overseas labour migration in the Indian Ocean, for which he conducted research in archives throughout the Indian Ocean region.

'Beyond Indenture is a fitting tribute to the late Brij V. Lal, scholar and individual extraordinaire. It places the history of indentured laborers from India alongside a variety of overseas labor from India. The result is a volume with a good mix of both familiar and unusual topics. The shared theme across the essays is the resilience and grit of people even under exploitative conditions. It makes this a stand-out volume on the subject.' Mrinalini Sinha, University of Michigan

• Introduction Crispin Bates; Part I. Agency and Resistance: 1. Negotiating Power in Colonial Natal: Indentured Migrants in Natal, 1860–1911 Goolam Vahed; 2. Stewed Plums, Baked Porridge and Flavoured Tea: Poisoning by Indian Domestic Servants in Colonial Natal Prinisha Badassy; 3. Labour Resistance in Indenture Plantations in the Assam Valley Rana Pratap Behal; 4. A Forgotten Narrative of the Satyagraha Campaign: The Treatment of Prisoners between 1907 and 1914 Kalpana Hiralal; 5. Toilers across the Seas: Racial Discrimination and Political Assertion among Sikhs in Canada Chhanda Chatterjee; Part II. Remigration: 6. The Remigration of Hindostanis from Surinam to India, 1878–1921 Chan E. S. Choenni; 7. Not So Anchored: The Remigration of Indians within the Caribbean Region Lomarsh Roopnarine; 8. On the Move: Remigration in the Indian Ocean, 1850–1906 Yoshina Hurgobin; Part III. Gender and Family: 9. Intimate Lives on Rubber Plantations: The Textures of Indian Coolie Relations in British Malaya Arunima Datta; 10. Labouring under the Law: Exploring the Agency of Indian Women under Indenture in Colonial Natal, 1860–1911 Nafisa Essop Sheik; 11. Gujarati 'Passenger Indians' in the Eastern Cape since 1900: Business, Mobility, Caste and Community Sheetal Bhoola; 12. The Eurasian Female Workforce and Imperial Britain: Harnessing Domestic Labour by People of Mixed Racial Descent Rochelle Almeida; Part IV. Legacies: 13. After the Long March: Colonial-Era 'Relief ' for Burma Indian Evacuees in Visakhapatnam District, 1942–1948 Emma C. Meyer; 14. Opposing the Group Areas Act and Resisting Forced Displacement in Durban, South Africa Brij Maharaj; 15. Indo-Fijians: From Agency to Abjection Brij V. Lal; 16. New and Old Diasporas of South–South Asia: Sri Lanka and Cyber-Nationalism in Malaysia Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake.