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Lecture: New West Indians

With the formal dismantling of systems of slavery across the Caribbean from the 1830s, planters lost much of their direct control over workers. Fearing a ‘flight from the estates’ in some areas, they looked to new sources of labour – particularly from South and East Asia – and to new forms of labour control: indentureship.

Lecture reading

Angrosino, Michael V., ‘Sexual Politics in the East Indian Family in Trinidad’, Caribbean Studies, 16 (1976), pp. 44-66.

Brown, Laurence, ‘Arthur Gordon in Trinidad, Mauritius and Fiji (1866-1880)’ in David Lambert and Philip Howell (eds), Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 204-227.

Clarke, Colin G., East Indians in a West Indian Town, San Fernando, Trinidad, 1930-70 (London, 1986).

Dabydeen, David and Brinsley Samaroo (eds), Across the Dark Waters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean (Basingstoke, 1996).

Gowricharn, R., 'Ethnogenesis: The Case of British Indians in the Caribbean', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 55 (2013), pp. 388-418.

Jayawardene, Chandra, ‘Religious Belief and Social Change: Aspects of the Development of Hinduism in British Guiana’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 8 (1966), pp. 221-40.

Johnson, Howard, ‘Immigration and the Sugar Industry in Trinidad during the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Caribbean History, 3 (1971), pp. 28-72.

Kumar, Ashutosh, Coolies of the Empire: Indentured Indians in the Sugar Colonies, 1830-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

La Guerre, John and Ann Marie Bissessar (eds), Calcutta to Caroni and the Indian Diaspora (St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, 2005, 3rd edition).

Lai, Walton Look (compiler), The Chinese in the West Indies, 1806-1995: A Documentary History (Kingston, 1998).

Laurence, Keith O., ‘The Evolution of Long-term Labour Contracts in Trinidad and British Guiana after Emancipation’ in Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd (eds), Caribbean Freedom: Economy and Society from Emancipation to the Present: A Student Reader (London, 1993), pp. 141-151.

Laurence, Keith O., A Question of Labour: Indentured Immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875-1917 (London, 1994).

Laurence, Keith O., Immigration into the West Indies in the 19th Century (London, 1971).

Look Lai, Walton and Tan Chee-Beng (eds), The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean (Boston, 2010).

Look Lai, Walton, Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918 (Baltimore, 1993).

Mangru, Basdeo, A History of East Indian Resistance on the Guyana Sugar Estates, 1869-1948 (Lewiston; Lampeter, 1996).

Maurits S. Hassankhan et al. (eds), Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour: Historical and Contemporary Issues in Suriname and the Caribbean (London: Routledge, 2017).

Ramdin, Ron, Arising from Bondage: A history of the Indo-Caribbean people (London, 2000).

Ramesar, Marianne Soares, Survivors of Another Crossing: A History of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880-1946 (St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, 1994).

Richardson, Bonham C., ‘Caribbean Migrations, 1838-1985’, in Franklin W. Knight and Colin Palmer (eds), The Modern Caribbean (Chapel Hill, 1989), pp. 203-228.

Roberts, G. W. and Byrne, J., ‘Summary Statistics on Indenture and Associated Migration Affecting the West Indies, 1834-1918’, Population Studies, 20 (1966), pp. 125-134.

Roopnarine, Lomarsh, The Indian Caribbean: Migration and Identity in the Diaspora (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2018).

Roopnarine, Lomarsh, ‘Indian Migration during Indentured Servitude in British Guiana and Trinidad, 1850-1920’, Labor History, 52 (2011), pp. 173-191.

Roopnarine, Lomarsh, Indo-Caribbean Indenture: Resistance and Accommodation, 1838-1920 (Kingston, Jamaica, 2007).

Samaroo, Brinsley & Bissessar, Ann Marie (eds), The Construction of an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora (St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, 2004).

Sanjek, Roger (ed.), Caribbean Asians: Chinese, Indian, and Japanese experiences in Trinidad and the Dominican Republic (New York, 1990).

Schwartz, Barton M., ‘The Failure of Caste in Trinidad’, in Barton M. Schwartz (ed.), Caste in Overseas Indian Communities (San Francisco, 1967), pp. 117-148.

Schuler, Monica, “Alas, Alas, Kongo”: A social history of indentured African immigration into Jamaica, 1841-1865 (Baltimore and London, 1980)

Seesaran, E. B. Rosabelle, From Caste to Class: the Social Mobility of the Indo-Trinidadian Community 1870-1917 (Trinidad, 2002).

Shepherd, Verene A., Transients to Settlers: The Experience of Indians in Jamaica, 1845-1950 (Warwick, 1994).

Smith, R. T. and Jayawardene Chandra, ‘Hindu Marriage Customs in British Guiana’, Social and Economic Studies, 7 (1958), pp. 178-194.

Tikasingh, Gerad, ‘Social Change in the Emerging East Indian Community in Late 19th Century Trinidad’, Journal of Caribbean Studies, 1 (1980), pp. 120-138.

Tinker, Hugh, A New System of Slavery (London, 1974).

Wahab, Amar, ‘Mapping West Indian Orientalism: Race, Gender and Representations of Indentured Coolies in the Nineteenth-Century British West Indies’, Journal of Asian American Studies, 10 (2007), pp. 283-311.

Weller, Judith Ann, The East Indian Indenture in Trinidad (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, 1968).

Wilson, Andrew R. (ed), The Chinese in the Caribbean (Princeton, NJ, 2004).

Wood, Donald, Trinidad in Transition: The Years After Slavery (London, 1968).