Interview with Patricia Mohammed: The Status of Indo-Caribbean Women: From Indenture to the Contemporary Period

The following interview with Patricia Mohammed discusses the status of Indo-Caribbean women from indenture to the contemporary period. The interview seeks to understand why Indo-Caribbean women have been marginalized in the general historiography of the Caribbean and how the status of Indo-Caribbean has evolved in a predominantly patriarchal Caribbean plantation system. Some central questions in the interview are as follows: Are women better off in the Caribbean than their ancestral home in India. Are they still subjected to patriarchal trends in the home and at the work place, or any other place in the Caribbean? If they are, what sort of strategies Indo-Caribbean women have used to improve their situation? How are Indo-Caribbean perceived by other ethnic groups in the Caribbean. The interview reveals that while an unknown segment of Indo-Caribbean are trapped in a male dominated Caribbean, some they have turned adverse circumstances to their advantage, some have participated in all sectors of society and have made significant social, economic and political contributions to their respective communities. Some have become role models for the young Indo-Caribbean women to emulate

Book Review: Bindi: Multifaceted Lives of Indo-Caribbean Women

Review of Bindi: Multifaceted Lives of Indo-Caribbean Women by Rossanne Kanhai; Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2011

East Indian Women and Leadership Roles During Indentured Servitude in British Guiana 1838-1920

The following article examines leadership roles among indentured East Indian women in British Guiana (now Guyana). The research shows that leadership roles among indentured East Indian women were not as broad as those among indentured East Indian men. The main reasons for this are that Indian women were recruited from the lower ranks of Indian society, which stymied leadership roles, and the authoritarian structure of the plantation system, which supported patriarchal trends. Moreover, the colonial records do not reveal leadership roles among Indian women because the records are based on imperial domination and exploitation, reflecting anecdotal rather than analytical evidence. The article shows that in spite of restrictions, indentured Indian women did engage in leadership roles on the sugar plantations but were not as open about these roles as their male counterparts were. Nonetheless, their engagement in leadership roles was instrumental in turning adverse circumstances to their advantage, and they used strategies that were not altogether obvious to the supporters of patriarchy

Book Review: Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa: From the Margins to the Centre

Review of Women and the Informal Economy in Urban Africa: From the Margins to the Centre by Mary Njeri Kinyanjui, Zed Books, London, 2014

Book Reviews

Book reviews of: William F. Winter and the New Mississippi: A Biography. By Charles C. Bolton Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Pp. vii, 368. Illustrations, map, acknowledgements, notes, index. $35.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781617037870. Born of Conviction: White Methodists and Mississippi’s Closed Society. By Joseph T. Reiff. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Acknowledgements, illustrations, map, notes, index. Pp. xxi, 384.$35 Hardcover. ISBN: 9780190246815). In Katrina’s Wake: The U.S. Coast Guard and the Gulf Coast Hurricanes of 2005. By Donald L. Canney. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010. Foreword, notes, index. Pp. xv, 228. $27.50 cloth.) Slavery, Race and Conquest in the Tropic: Lincoln, Douglas and the Future of America. By Robert E. May. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Acknowledgements, illustrations, maps, notes, index. Pp. xi, 296.$80 cloth, $26.99 paper,$22 e-book. ISBN: 9780521132527.) Rivers of Sand: Creek Indian Emigration, Relocation, and Ethnic Cleansing in the American South. By Christopher D. Haveman. (Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Illustrations, preface, acknowledgments, notes on terminology, index. Pp. ix, 414. Trouble in Goshen: Plain Folk, Roosevelt, Jesus, and Marx in the Great Depression. By Fred C. Smith (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. Acknowledgements, illustrations, map notes, index. Pp. xi, 214. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781617039560.) Builders of a New South: Merchants, Capital, and the Remaking of Natchez, 1865-1914. By Aaron D. Anderson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013. Acknowledgments, illustrations, photographs, notes, graphics, index. Pp. 279.$40 cloth. ISBN: 978-1- 61703-667-5.) Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana- Florida Borderlands 1762-1803. By David Narrett. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Acknowledgements, illustrations, notes, index. Pp. xi, 365. $45 cloth,$44.99 e-book. ISBN: 978-1-4696-1833-3.) Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South. By Brian Craig Miller. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015. Illustrations, acknowledgments, appendix, notes, index. Pp. xvi, 257. $79.95 cloth,$29.95 paper. ISBN: 0820343327.) Signposts: New Directions in Southern Legal History. By Sally E. Hadden and Patricia Hagler Minter, eds. (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2013. Acknowledgements, illustrations, index. Pp. xi, 480. $69.95 cloth,$26.95 paper, $26.95 ebook. ISBN: 978-0-8203-4499-7.) The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. By Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Pp. 325.$32.50 Cloth. ISBN: 9780807835722.

A Comparative Analysis of Two Failed Indenture Experiences in Post-emancipation Caribbean: British Guiana (1838-1843) and Danish St. Croix (1863–1868)

El siguiente artículo analiza dos experimentos fallidos de introducir trabajadores contratados de la India en Guyana Británica (1838–1843) y St. Croix danesa (1863–1868). En ambas colonias caribeñas, los estancieros se apresuraron a substituir la pérdida de la mano de obra de esclavos africanos con unos cientos de trabajadores contratados de la India. La intención era de salvar la industria azucarera, sin embargo no se daban los mecanismos apropiados como para hacer funcionar propiamente el sistema de labor por contrato. Por ende, los trabajadores fueron maltratados en cada uno de las etapas de servidumbre por contrato. En concreto, los trabajadores de la India fueron maltratados durante la contratación, durante la travesía de la India al Caribe, y en las haciendas. Los estancieros intentaron, particularmente en Guyana Británica, de esconder el maltrato de los trabajadores. No obstante, inspecciones individuales e indagaciones por parte de grupos como Friends of India y the Anti-Slavery Society, además de relatos de los mismos trabajadores expusieron los males de labor por contrato en ambas colonias. Después de los primeros cinco años de trabajo por contrato, la corona británica y el gobierno colonial de la India detuvieron el transporte de trabajadores de la India a ambas colonias. En Guyana Británica, si no en St. Croix danesa, el sistema de labor por contrato fue restablecido en 1845. English: The following article analyzes two failed Indian indenture experiments in British Guiana (1838–1843) and Danish St. Croix (1863–1868). In both Caribbean colonies, the planters rushed to substitute the loss of indentured Indians. While the plan was to save the sugar industry from ruin, the right mechanisms were not in place for the proper functioning of the indentured labour system. Consequently, the labourers were mistreated at every stage of indentured servitude. Specifically, Indians were mistreated during recruitment, on the sea voyage from India to the Caribbean, and on the plantations. The planters tried, particularly in British Guiana, to conceal the mistreatment of the labourers. However, private inspection and investigation from interest groups such as Friends of India, the Anti-Slavery Society, and accounts from the labourers themselves exposed the evils of indenture in both colonies. The British Crown and the colonized Indian government subsequently stopped the shipping of Indian labourers to both colonies after the first five-year experiment with indenture. The contract labour system was eventually resumed in British Guiana in 1845 but not in Danish St. Croix

The Repatriation, Readjustment, and second-term migration of Ex-Indentured Indian Laborers from British Guiana and Trinidad to India, 1838-1955

This article examines the readjustment and remigration of ex-indentured Indian laborers from India to the Caribbean. The author shows that there was a small but steady influx of ex-indentured Indian laborers or second-term Indian migrants to the Caribbean. The central question is why ex-indentured Indians returned to the Caribbean to again work under an abusive indenture system? The author contends that desperate conditions along with the restrictive caste structure in India as well their Caribbean experience forced ex-indentured Indian laborers to re-indenture themselves for a second and even third time

Post-Emancipation Indenture and Migration: Identities, Racialization and Transnationalism

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