The Livret system: the interface of accounting and indentured labor in British Guiana

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 145-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas N. Tyson ◽  
Shanta S.K. Davie
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
British Guiana ◽  
Indentured Labor ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Sugar Plantations

Between 1838 and 1920, over 200,000 Indians immigrated to British Guiana (BG) as indentured workers on sugar plantations (estates). During this period, different labor types (freedmen, indentured workers, and free immigrants) coexisted on the same BG estates and were paid the same wages for comparable tasks. In 1873, in response to a commission of enquiry to improve the treatment of workers, the BG legislature introduced the Livret system. Livrets were to be kept by each indentured worker and contain the cumulative wages earned during the indenture period. In theory, Livrets would promote greater productivity, help mitigate pay disputes, and enable hard-working immigrants to end their indenture in less than five years. This article describes the Livret system and speculates on the reasons for its introduction and early abandonment. It contributes to the growing body of literature that critically assesses the interface of accounting and labor during the British colonial period.

Barbuda and the Provisioning of the Codrington Estates on Antigua

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-67
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Food Crops ◽  
Sugar Production ◽  
Unique Form ◽  
The People ◽  
Sugar Plantations ◽  
Labor System

For most of the colonial period, the Codrington family had exclusive control over the island of Barbuda. Deploying the labor of enslaved African workers, they developed the island into an important source of food and other supplies to provision their sugar plantations on nearby Antigua. This chapter examines how Barbuda’s natural resources, built landscape, and labor system were all directed toward that purpose. In particular, it compares the Codringtons’ management strategies with those of Samuel Martin and William Byam, who sub-leased the island from 1746 to 1761. In addition, Anderson argues that enslaved people on Barbuda experienced a unique form of bondage geared toward herding and cultivation of food crops rather than sugar production. It also examines how the particular environmental conditions on Barbuda both offered opportunities and presented challenges for the people lived and worked there.

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democracy’?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamas Wells
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Dominant Narratives

To understand the dominant narratives described in this book, they need to be situated within the context of Myanmar’s modern history and the ways different political actors – whether independence leaders, colonial administrators, military leaders or activists – have narrated that history. This is not an attempt to construct a unitary history of Myanmar, but rather to locate and uncover struggles over the meaning of democracy during these different periods and how they shape contemporary political uses of the word ‘democracy’ amongst the networks of activists and democratic leaders that I studied. The third chapter explores the example of contrasting meanings of democracy between British colonial administrators and the Thakin independence leaders in the late colonial period in Burma.

scholarly journals “Imperium in Imperio”: The Corporation, Mining, and Governance in British Southeast Asia, 1900–1930

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
DAVID BAILLARGEON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
State Model ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Corporate Ventures

This article examines the history of mining in British Southeast Asia during the early twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the histories of the Burma Corporation and the Duff Development Company, which were located in British-occupied Burma and Malaya, respectively. It argues that despite being represented as “rogue” corporate ventures in areas under “indirect” colonial rule, the contrasting fates of each company—one successful, one not—reveal how foreign-owned businesses operating in the empire became increasingly beholden to British colonial state regulations during this period, marking a shift in policy from the “company-state” model that operated in prior centuries. The histories of these two firms ultimately demonstrate the continued significance of business in the making of empire during the late colonial period, bridging the divide between the age of company rule and the turn toward state-sponsored “development” that would occur in the mid-twentieth century.

Political Violence in Consolidated Democracies: The Development and Institutionalization of Partisan Violence in Late Colonial Jamaica (1938–62)

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-218
Author(s):  
Andrew Dawson
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Contributing Factors ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Class Divisions

Past research suggests that although political violence in mature democracies is rare, it does occasionally occur along ethnic, religious, and/or linguistic lines. Jamaica is an exceptional case in that it is a relatively mature democracy that experiences political violence between demographically similar groups. This article examines the origins of political violence in Jamaica—that is, the conditions that led to its development, intensification, and institutionalization during the late colonial period. Through original archival research, this article supports past findings identifying personality politics, the politicization of race/class divisions, and clientelism as contributing factors to the development of political violence. The research also, however, makes a major new contribution by providing evidence that colonial nonintervention during the early stages of political violence was a crucial factor leading to its escalation and then institutionalization. This finding gives the British colonial state a different and more central role than the extant literature suggests and has broader implications for all democracies.

scholarly journals The condition of the slaves on the sugar plantations of Sir John Gladstone in the colony of Demerara, 1812-49

2002 ◽  
Vol 76 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 243-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Sheridan
Keyword(s):  
High Mortality ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
British Guiana ◽  
Slave Revolt ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sugar Plantations

Reconstructs the business activities of the Scottish-born Liverpool merchant and plantation owner John Gladstone, placed within the context of slavery and the abolition of slavery, and the general colonial history of British Guiana, particularly in the Demerara colony. Author describes how Gladstone acquired several plantations with slaves in Demerara, and how he responded to the increasing criticism of slavery, and the bad conditions of slaves in these Demerara plantations. He describes how Gladstone was an absentee owner in Jamaica and Guyana, where he never set foot, and depended on information by his plantation attorneys or managers, who generally painted too positive a picture of the slaves' conditions, which in reality were characterized by high mortality rates, disease, and abuse of slaves. Also discusses the Demerara slave revolt of 1823 affecting some of Gladstone's plantations.

British Rule and Tribal Revolts in India: The curious case of Bastar

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 1619-1644 ◽  
Author(s):  
AJAY VERGHESE
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Indian Government ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Princely State ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Colonial Policies

AbstractBritish colonial rule in India precipitated a period of intense rebellion among the country's indigenous groups. Most tribal conflicts occurred in the British provinces, and many historians have documented how a host of colonial policies gave rise to widespread rural unrest and violence. In the post-independence period, many of the colonial-era policies that had caused revolt were not reformed, and tribal conflict continued in the form of the Naxalite insurgency. This article considers why the princely state of Bastar has continuously been a major centre of tribal conflict in India. Why has this small and remote kingdom, which never came under direct British rule, suffered so much bloodshed? Using extensive archival material, this article highlights two key findings: first, that Bastar experienced high levels of British intervention during the colonial period, which constituted the primary cause of tribal violence in the state; and second, that the post-independence Indian government has not reformed colonial policies in this region, ensuring a continuation and escalation of tribal conflict through the modern Naxalite movement.

Dispossession, Un-freedom, Precarity

2021 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-219
Author(s):  
Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
The People ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Citizenship Laws ◽  
Laws And Regulations

The partition of the Indian subcontinent forced millions of people to flee to the other side of the borders, freshly demarcated by the British colonial rulers just on the eve of their departure from South Asia. Almost a decade-long migration of people could not, however, settle the boundaries and lives of the people once and for all. The postcolonial rulers retained many of the draconian laws of the late colonial period, like the Foreigners’ Act in India, and laced them with new laws and regulations, thus leading to greater dispossession of people of homes, generating widespread situations of un-freedom, and creating countless refugees and stateless persons, mostly forced to survive in sites of precarious life, without any right to have rights. The concern of this contribution is this politics of dispossession in postcolonial South Asia and its relation with citizenship laws of the region.

Intermarriage in colonial Malaya and Singapore: A case study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Roman Catholic and Methodist Asian communities

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 302-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Rerceretnam
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Grassroots Level ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Divide And Rule ◽  
First And Second Generation ◽  
Generation Migrant

Colonial race relations are regularly portrayed in light of the attempts to divide and rule colonialised Asian communities. While this article does not challenge this view, it attempts to uncover a hitherto hidden level of interaction and even intermarriage at the grassroots level in colonial Malaya and Singapore. With the exception of the various Peranakan communities that predated British rule, little to no evidence exists to show that interaction and especially intermarriage existed within early first- and second-generation migrant communities during the British colonial period. The findings show how colonial attempts to encourage a heightened sense of race and its frailties may have fallen short among some sections of the Asian community.

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