Women, Gender and the Legacy of Slavery and Indenture

Description

The age of imperialism ushered in a new phenomenon of large-scale organized migration of labourers through the systems of slavery and indenture, which were devised to feed the colonial political-economy. Another feature of such migrations was that it led to the permanent settlement of the uprooted African and Asian labourers in the new lands. These developments, in the long run, intertwined the histories of the ‘ruler’ and the ‘ruled’, the so-called ‘civilized’ and the ‘uncivilized’ along with the people from various continents, thus giving rise to plural societies. The narratives, however, remained dominated by the colonial legacies and frames of reference. Today such historical colonial narratives are being challenged and clarified through multi-disciplinary academic engagements. The authors in this volume take gender as a prominent analytical category and raise new questions and understandings in the way we conceptualize, document and write about gendered migrations in the diaspora. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Foreword Introduction Part 1: Perspectives from the Diaspora on Indentured Migration Chapter 1: ʿA Most Callous Indifferenceʾ: Sukhdeiʾs Story Chapter 2: Gender and Resistance in Indian Indenture Life Stories: Oral History and the National Stage of Memorialization Chapter 3: Indentured Hindustani Women in Suriname Part 2: Perspectives from the ‘Home’ Country on Indentured Migration Chapter 4: Indentured Women and Hindi Print-Public Sphere in Early Twentieth Century India Chapter 5: Wives Across the Seas – ʿLeft behindʾ and ʿForgottenʾ? Gender and Migration in the Indian Ocean Region Chapter 6: Gender, Labour and Resistance: Mapping the Lives of Indentured Women in Natal, South Africa 1860-1914 Part 3: Gender, Sexuality and Agency Chapter 7: Unsettling Diasporas – Negotiation of Identities and Subversion of Categories: Asian Women in and Beyond Slavery at Mauritius, the Cape and Sri Lanka Chapter 8: Migrant Women Multiterritoriality Processes in Transnational Marriage Condition Chapter 9: Marriage, Concubinage and Extramarital Relations in Suriname and the Caribbean: Continuity and Change Notes on Contributors Index