Empire, Indian Indentured Labour and the Colony: The Debate Over ‘coolie’ Labour in New South Wales, 1836–1838

Cullen, Rose

doi:10.1080/14490854.2012.11668404

Cited by 20 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…As Rose Cullen has shown, in 1836 and 1837 the entrepreneurs John Mackay, formerly from India, and J. R. Mayo from Mauritius, had suggested drawing upon the Mauritian precedent to recruit Indian indentured labor as "a quick fix" for the labor shortage in New South Wales. 49 Bourke had established a committee to investigate the possibility, but decided to ignore its recommendation that Indians be recruited with certain protections.…”

Section: R E D I S T R I B U T I N G L a B O Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reforming Everywhere and All at Once: Transitioning to Free Labor across the British Empire, 1837–1838

2018

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In late 1837 and early 1838 the British imperial government was preparing for an empire-wide transition from bonded to nominally free labor. This article builds upon recent scholarship that promotes a holistic, global approach to this transition, by narrowing the temporal frame and expanding the spatial. We emphasize interconnectivity and simultaneity rather than chronological succession, and we analyze the governance, rather than the experience, of this transition. Our approach is founded upon analysis of correspondence passing from every British colonial site through the Colonial Office in 1837–1838. We suggest that this hub of imperial government sought to reconcile the persistence of different conditions in each colony with the pursuit of three overarching policy objectives: redistributing labor globally; distinguishing between the moral debts owed to different kinds of bonded labor, and managing tradeoffs between security, economy, and morality. We conclude that the governance of the transition to free labor is best conceived as an assemblage of material and expressive elements of different spatial scales, whose interactions were complex and indeterminate. Through these specific governmental priorities and a particular communications infrastructure, these elements were brought into critical alignment at this moment to shape a significant transition in relations between people across the world.

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Section: R E D I S T R I B U T I N G L a B O Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reforming Everywhere and All at Once: Transitioning to Free Labor across the British Empire, 1837–1838

2018

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“…Thus scholars such as Rose Cullen, Tony Ohllson, Janet Doust and Angela Woolacott have used these debates to elucidate emerging Australian ideas about race, class and identity. 4 They have been less concerned with the light these debates shed on wider histories of indenture across the empire, or on metropolitan and colonial British attitudes towards Indian labourers themselves. Conversely, studies of British abolitionist and humanitarian responses to indenture have tended to take an 'Atlantic-centric' approach, concentrating primarily on the intersection between indenture and debates about 'free labour' in the sugar colonies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Hill Coolies’: Indian Indentured Labour and the Colonial Imagination, 1836–38

Major

2017

South Asian Studies

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This paper uses debates about Indian migrant labour that took place in New South Wales in 1836-8 to problematize enduring tropes about indenture and the 'typical' Indian labour migrant, which have their roots in British anti-slavery discourse of the late 1830s. By juxtaposing abolitionist assumptions against ongoing debates about Indian labour migration in other parts of the British Empire, it explores the economic, political and moral/ideological imperatives that underpinned the representation of indenture during this formative period. By placing metropolitan British anti-indenture literature alongside arguments for Indian migration made by settlers from the Australian periphery of empire, it explores the ways in which racial, imperial and commercial discourses intersected in the representation of the so-called 'hill coolie' as the quintessential Indian labour migrant. In doing so, it seeks to destabilise persistent representations of the Indian migrant as passive victim of indenture and suggest a more complex set of identities and interactions.

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English as Efficiency: New Indentured Labour and the Capital of Australian Universities

Chakraborty

2022

Transnational Spaces of India and Australia

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Empire, Indian Indentured Labour and the Colony: The Debate Over ‘coolie’ Labour in New South Wales, 1836–1838

Cited by 20 publications

References 0 publications

Reforming Everywhere and All at Once: Transitioning to Free Labor across the British Empire, 1837–1838

Reforming Everywhere and All at Once: Transitioning to Free Labor across the British Empire, 1837–1838

‘Hill Coolies’: Indian Indentured Labour and the Colonial Imagination, 1836–38

English as Efficiency: New Indentured Labour and the Capital of Australian Universities

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