Indian Immigrants and the Legacy of Marronage: Illegal Absence, Desertion and Vagrancy on Mauritius, 1835–1900

Itinerario

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 98-110

  Allen, Richard B ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84966546197     PISSN: 01651153     EISSN: 20412827     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0165115300022725     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. On Indian immigration to Mauritius and other British colonies during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see: C. Kondapi, Indians Overseas, 1838–1949 (New Delhi 1951)
2. I.M. Cumpston, Indians Overseas in British Territories, 1834–1854 (London 1953)
3. Panchanan Saha, Emigration of Indian Labour, 1834–1900 (Delhi 1970)
4. Hugh Tinker, A Nexa System of Slavery: The Export of Indian labour Overseas, 1830–1920 (London 1974)
5. Huguette Ly-Tio-Fane Pineo, Lured Away: The Life History of Indian Cane Workers in Mauritius (Moka 1984)
6. Walton Look Lai, Indentured Labor, Caribbean Sugar Chinese and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918 (Baltimore and London 1993)
7. K.O. Laurence, A Question of labour: Indentured Immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917 (New York 1994).
8. Tinker's characterisation of Indian immigration in these terms (A New System of Slavery, 19)
9. has been seconded by K. Hazareesingh, History of Indians in Mauritius (London and Basingstoke 1975) 20 ff
10. Maureen Tayal, ‘Indian Indentured Labour in Natal, 1890–1911’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 14 (1977) 519–547
11. A.R. Mannick, Mauritius: The Development of a Plural Society (Nottingham 1979) 45
12. Ravindra K. Jain, ‘South Indian Labour in Malaya, 1840–1920: Asylum, Stability and Involution’ in: Kay Saunders ed., Indentured labour in the British Empire, 1834–1920 (London and Canberra 1984) 158–182
13. M.D. North-Coombes, ‘From Slavery to Indenture: Forced Labour in the Political Economy of Mauritius, 1834–1867’ in: Saunders ed., Indentured labour, 78–125.
14. The tendency to liken indentured labour to slavery has been challenged recently by Edward D. Beechert, ‘Reflections’ in: Brij V. Lal, Doug Munro and Edward D. Beechert eds, Plantation Workers: Resistance and Accommodation (Honolulu 1993) 319
15. Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834–1874 (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) chapter 1.
16. Contemporary accounts of early immigrant living and working conditions are to be found in the reports of the Mauritian-based ‘Committees of Inquiry on the State and Condition of the Indian Labourers Employed in the Mauritius’ (PP 1840 XXXVII [58] 18–35, 45–68, and PP 1840 XXXVII [331] 12–94, 107–183) and a Calcutta-based commission of inquiry (PP 1841 XVI [45] 4–12).
17. Report of the Royal Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Treatment of Immigrants in Mauritius (hereafter 1872 Royal Commission) para. 3180. PP 1875 XXXIV.
18. See, for example: P.J. Barnwell and A. Toussaint, A Short Histoiy of Mauritius (London 1949)
19. Auguste Toussaint, Histoiredes iles Mascareignes (Paris 1972)
20. Hazareesingh, History of Indians
21. North-Coombes, ‘From Slavery to Indenture’.
22. K.L. Gillion. Fiji's Indian Migrants (Melbourne 1962)
23. Adrian C. Mayer, Indians in Fiji (London 1963)
24. Ravindra K. Jain, South Indians on the Plantation Frontier in Malaya (New Haven and London 1970)
25. Ralph Shlomowitz, ‘Markets for Indentured and Time-expired Melanesian Labour in Queensland, 1863–1906’. Journal of Pacific Histoiy 16 (1981) 70–91
26. ‘Melanesian Labor and the Development of the Queensland Sugar Industry, 1863–1906’, Research in Economic History 7 (1982) 327–361
27. Adrian Graves, ‘Truck and Gifts: Melanesian Immigrants and the Trade Box System in Colonial Queensland’, Past and Present 101 (1983) 87–124
28. Toyal, ‘Indian Indentured Labour in Natal’
29. Jan Breman, Taming the Coolie Beast: Plantation Society and the Colonial Order in Southeast Asia (Delhi 1989).
30. See the articles in: Lal, Munro and Beechert eds, Plantation Workers
31. especially Doug Munro, ‘Patterns of Resistance and Accommodation’, 1–43.
32. J.H. Bernardin De St. Pierre, Voyage à l'ile de France, part 2 (Paris 1834) 120–121
33. M.J. Milbert, Voyage pittoresque à File de France au Cap de Bonne-Esperance et à l'ile de Ténériffe, part one (Paris 1812) 218, and part 2, 170
34. Baron d'Unienville, Stalistiques de l'ile Maurice et ses dépendances suivie d'une notice historique sur cette colonic et d'un essai sur l'ile de Madagascar, part 1 (Second edition, Maurice 1885–1886) 256.
35. Reported by the 1872 Royal Commission, para. 1960.
36. 1872 Royal Commission, para. 664.
37. Roland Lamusse, ‘The Economic Development of the Mauritius Sugar Industry III: The Sources of Capital and System of Crop Finance’, Revue agricole et sucriere de l'ile Maurice 43 (1964) 354–372.
38. Second Report of the Select Committee on Sugar and Coffee Planting: Together with the Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix, para. 3755. PP 1847–1848 XXIII [137].
39. 1872 Royal Commission, 10 (para. 17).
40. Colony of Mauritius, Report of the Prison Committee on the Prison Establishment, 1857.
41. 1872 Royal Commission, para. 236.
42. Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, Table 6.4.
43. Mauritius, Report of the Prison Committee, Appendix B.
44. By way of comparison, illegal absence and desertion accounted for 53.3 per cent of all complaints against Indian indentured labourers in Fiji between 1885 and 1906 (Brij V. Lal,‘ “Nonresistance” on Fiji Plantations; The Fiji Indian Experience, 1879–1920’ in: Lal, Munro and Beechert eds, Plantation Workers, 209).
45. On marronage rates on early nineteenth-century Mauritius, see: Richard B. Allen, ‘Marronage and the Maintenance of Public Order in Mauritius, 1721–1835’, Slavery and Abolition 4 (1983) 219.
46. Desertion and absenteeism accounted for 14.8 per cent of all charges lodged against Melanesian labourers in Queensland's Mackay District between 1871–1907. Clive Moore, ‘The Counterculture of Survival: Melanesians in the Mackay District of Queensland, 1865–1906’ in: Lal, Munro and Beechert eds, Plantation Workers, 80–81.
47. In 1889–1890, more than sixteen per cent of the contract labourers in Samoa were runaways. Doug Munro and Stewart Firth, ‘Samoan Plantations: The Gilbertese Labourers’ Experience, 1867–1896’ in: Lal, Munro and Beechert eds, Plantation Workers, 117. The number of such runaways fluctuated from 16.6 to 12.6 per cent between 1891 and 1894, and dropped to approximately four per cent a year between 1895 and 1898.
48. AIR 1862: PP XXXV, Appendix G (No. 44)
49. 1872 Royal Commission, para. 772.
50. 1872 Royal Commission, para. 704.
51. AIR 1869, para. 55. See also: Nicholas Pike, Sub-tropical Rambles in the Land of the Aphanapteryx (New York 1873) 474.
52. 1872 Royal Commission, paras 879–882.
53. 1872 Royal Commission, para. 883.
54. 1872 Royal Commission, paras 2934–2947.
55. Richard B. Allen, ‘The Slender, Sweet Thread: Sugar, Capital and Dependency in Mauritius, 1860–1936’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 16 (1987) 177–200.
56. Colony of Mauritius, Blue Book for 188, X1, X4.
57. See Beechert and Carter (n. 3).
58. In particular, see the essays by Dough Munro, Edward Beechert and Michael J. Gonzales in: Lal, Munro and Beechert eds, Plantation Systems.