Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between debates indentured labour migration and wider interpretations of caste slavery, debt bondage and other forms of 'unfree' labour in India, in order to critically analysis the colonial assumptions that underpinned the emergence of the 'coolie' stereotype.

Paper long abstract:

Analogies between the so-called 'coolie trade' and slavery emerged almost as soon as the system of Indian indentured labour migration was implemented. High mortality on the early indentured voyages, long contracts, poor conditions and harsh labour regimes were all considered to replicate the experience of slavery, whatever the theoretical protections of contract labour. Assumptions about India's inexhaustible reserves of manpower, and raced, classed and gendered images of passive, ignorant, and abused Indian 'hill coolies' went largely unchallenged in abolitionist discussions of indenture that focused primarily on the impact of immigration on social and labour conditions the destination colonies. Yet early discussions of indenture were also deeply embedded in contemporaneous debates about the migrants' place of origin, taking place as they did at the same time as debates about the delegalisation of slavery in India. By analysing debates about indenture alongside orientalist tropes about the labouring Indian, and ongoing colonial debates about the conditions of servitude in India, this paper will explore how particular colonial stereotypes of the passive 'coolie' emerged, and why it came to have such longevity, despite indentured migrants themselves increasingly challenging this imposed identity.