Indenture and Abolition

This thoroughly-researched and well-documented book looks at several of the key aspects of the phenomenon of Indian indentured labour in the West Indies, from beginning to end–from the methods of recruitment in Northern India, the conditions of potential labourers in the Calcutta depots and aboard ships in transit; through conditions on the plantations in British Guiana (Guyana) and the protests and strikes against abuses; to the final abolition campaign in India and its success in 1918.

“Basdeo Mangru is a careful and thorough scholar who has studied the sources in great detail, including records which have scarcely been examined by earlier writers on the Indian diaspora . . . A sound contribution to West Indian and Imperial history.”
–Donald Wood, University of Sussex

“. . . will make a lasting impact on Indo-Caribbean scholarship. He is meticulous, original, and above all committed to his subject.”
–David Dabydeen

“. . . Erudite, lucid scholarship. Mangru’s meticulous research produces long-awaited and convincing evidence of the struggles of the Indians for their rightful place in the Caribbean.”
–Frank Birbalsingh, York University

$22.95

Out of stock

Publication Date: 1993

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-920661-32-1
Page size: 5.75″ x 8.75″
152 pages

Basdeo Mangru, the first M A graduate of the University of Guyana and former lecturer there, received his PhD in South Asian Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of Benevolent Neutrality: Indian Government Policy Towards Labour Migration to British Guiana, 1854-1884 (London, 1987), and he has published extensively in journals and in anthologies. Dr Mangru has won several awards and distinctions, including the Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellowship in the United Kingdom (1978-1981) and the Rockefeller Residency Fellowship in the Humanities, at the Asian American Center, City University of New York (1990-1991). He currently lives and teaches in New York.