Chanderbali, David Sinjeet
Description
The Introduction to this thesis provides a brief
survey of Indian indentured immigration into selected
colonies, and presents some of the conflicting interpretations
of Indian indenture. It also states the main object of
this study.
Chapter I discusses the factors that gave rise to
large-scale sugar cultivation by Europeans in Province
Wellesley, and examines the reasons why the local Malays
and the Javanese and Chinese immigrants were not adequately
responsive to the demand for...[Show more] indentured labour, and why the
planters continued to rely on the Tamils of Madras Presidency,
despite their reluctance to emigrate overseas permanently.
Chapter III attempts to establish the commencement
date of unregulated Indian indentured emigration to the
Straits, and provides some glimpses of the nature of the
early traffic. It goes on to trace the events that led to
the embargo on labour migration from India to the Straits,
and examines the negotiations that eventually brought about
the establishment of regulated indenture.
The measures taken to satisfy the planters’ labour
needs and the reasons why indentured recruitment, competing
with "free” recruitment for Ceylon and Burma, failed to yield
the number of labourers required are discussed in Chapter IV.
Chapter V examines the conditions in which the
emigrants were housed and otherwise looked after at the depot
at Negapatam. It establishes that bona fide indentured
recruits were substituted, and that frequent illegal use was made of Karikal as a port of departure. It also examines
whether the emigrants' treatment during the voyage to Penang
conformed with the legal requirements.
An account of the betrayal by two planters of
Governor Ord's promise to the government of India, which
involved the scandalous ill-treatment and neglect of a large
number of labourers is provided in Chapter VI. It also
discusses the punishment of the offenders, the headmen's
exploitation and chastisement of the labourers, and why it
was difficult for them to obtain redress.
The planters' illegal separation of the labourers
into first and second class gangs, the labourers' low earning
capacity and their inability to procure adequate food, and
the consequences that followed are discussed in Chapter VII.
Finally, Chapter VIII examines the quality of the
necessary provisions made for the labourers' accommodation and
medical treatment, and discusses the effects of the sexual
disproportion and of injuries on the labourers' health. The
discussion closes with an examination of the main causes of
the high mortality-rate among the labourers, which dealt
the coup de >?race to the system in 1910.
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