Becoming Coolies: Rethinking the Origins of the Indian Labour Diaspora, 1772-1920.

成为苦力：重新思考印度劳工侨民的起源，1772-1920 年。

• 批准号: AH/M004910/1
• 负责人: Crispin Bates
• 金额: $ 78.49万
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2015 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FM004910%2F1
• 关键词: Becoming; Coolies; Rethinking; Origins; Indian

Between the 1830s and 1920s over 1.3 million Indians migrated as indentured labourers to locations across the world. Criticised both at the time and since as a 'new system of slavery', this 'first wave' of Indian labour migration has been negatively portrayed as the cynical exploitation of a passive Indian labour force. Those who migrated have been presented as the victims of colonial coercion and dupes of unscrupulous middle men, who exhibited no role in the decision making process, and no influence over their individual or collective outcomes. As a result nineteenth-century Indian labour mobility has often been regarded as qualitatively different to, and disconnected from, a 'second wave' of voluntary, skilled Indian migration, beginning in the 1950s, which is often regarded as the 'legitimate' root of the modern day Indian Diaspora. This project sets out to dispute such assumptions by seeking to understand nineteenth-century indentured labour migration around the Indian Ocean in the context of a longer and more diverse history of Indian labour mobility. By situating indentured labour alongside the contemporaneous migrations of soldiers, slaves and service providers from the Indian subcontinent, it will explore the extent to which existing networks, connections and communities helped to shape the processes and experiences of indenture. Drawing upon previously misinterpreted or under-utilised resources in India, Britain, France, Mauritius, Réunion, Sri Lanka and South Africa - including the personal correspondence of migrants themselves - it will assess the degree to which indentured labourers were able to make conscious and informed decisions about if, when and where to migrate. It will also explore the ways in which migrant labourers in the Indian Ocean were able to improve their status and renegotiate real or imposed identities by moving between different categories of labour, and how far they could utilise kinship and other networks to take control of the sources of labour supply. Convict indents, emigration certificates, ship registers and migrants' letters will be used to suggest a broader and more varied movement of Indians overseas than has hitherto been realised. By tracing the vitally important continuities and interconnections between different forms of labour migration, and placing migrant agency, experiences and outcomes at the centre of the analysis, this project will explore the processes of migration in a way that goes beyond the reproduction of conventional colonial and nationalist tropes of indentured victimhood, exploitation and abuse. Instead it will offer a new approach to the migrant experience that seeks to understand the impetuses and consequences of migration from a subaltern perspective, opening up possibilities for radically reinterpreting the nature and importance of migrant agency in the early formation of the Indian Diaspora.

在19世纪30年代至20年代，超过130万印度人作为契约劳动者迁移到世界各地。在当时和之后，人们都批评这是一种“新的奴隶制”，这种“第一波”的印度劳动力迁移被负面地描述为对被动的印度劳动力的玩世不恭的剥削。移民者被描述为殖民胁迫的受害者和肆无忌惮的中间人的愚弄，他们在决策过程中没有发挥任何作用，也没有对他们的个人或集体结果产生任何影响。因此，19世纪的印度劳动力流动经常被认为与始于20世纪50年代的第二波自愿、有技能的印度移民在性质上不同，也与之脱节。印度的第二波移民通常被认为是当今印度侨民的“合法”根源。本项目试图在印度劳动力流动的更长和更多样化的历史背景下理解19世纪印度洋周围的契约劳动力移徙，以此驳斥这些假设。通过将契约劳工与同期来自印度次大陆的士兵、奴隶和服务提供者的移徙联系在一起，它将探讨现有的网络、联系和社区在多大程度上有助于塑造契约的进程和经验。它将利用印度、英国、法国、毛里求斯、留尼汪岛、斯里兰卡和南非此前被误解或未得到充分利用的资源--包括移民本身的个人通信--来评估契约劳动者在多大程度上能够在是否、何时以及在哪里迁移的问题上做出有意识和知情的决定。它还将探讨印度洋的移徙劳工如何能够通过在不同类别的劳工之间流动来提高自己的地位，重新谈判真实或强加的身份，以及他们可以在多大程度上利用亲属关系和其他网络来控制劳动力供应来源。罪犯契约、移民证书、船舶登记簿和移民信件将被用来表明印度人在海外的流动比以往任何时候都要广泛和多样化。通过追踪不同形式的劳动力移徙之间极其重要的连续性和相互联系，并将移徙机构、经验和结果置于分析的中心，本项目将以一种超越传统殖民和民族主义比喻的方式探讨移徙进程，这些传统的殖民和民族主义比喻包括契约受害者、剥削和虐待。相反，它将提供一种新的移民体验方法，试图从微观角度理解移民的推动力和后果，为从根本上重新解释移民机构在印度侨民早期形成过程中的性质和重要性开辟了可能性。

项目成果

Bhartiya Rashtravad Banam Girmit Pratha

巴蒂亚·拉什特拉瓦德·巴南·吉米特·普拉塔

• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: Pratiman
• 作者: Ashutosh Kumar

Remigration of Indian Subalterns in the Colonial Indian Ocean

殖民地印度洋中印度底层的重新迁移

• DOI: 10.1353/cch.2021.0010
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
• 作者: Bates C

'Not made by slaves': the ambivalent origins of ethical consumption

“不是奴隶制造的”：道德消费的矛盾起源

• 发表时间: 2015
• 期刊: Open Democracy
• 作者: Andrea Major

Introduction

介绍

• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-45763-1_1
• 发表时间: 2020-05-28
• 期刊: Jefferson’s Revolutionary Theory and the Reconstruction of Educational Purpose
• 作者: Burch KT

Indian Overseas Migrants in the Colonial Era: exploring the origins and contribution of 19th century Indian labourers

殖民时代的印度海外移民：探究19世纪印度劳工的起源和贡献

• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Spotlight on Research
• 作者: Bates C