Pe­ter Hanoomans­ingh

Pre­sent­ed at New Per­spec­tives

on In­den­tured Labour Con­fer­ence

Uni­ver­si­ty of Mau­ri­tius,

De­cem­ber 5-7, 2011

Part one of this edit­ed ver­sion, which was pub­lised in the Sun­day Guardian on March 4, de­scribed the par­tic­u­lar­ly re­pres­sive na­ture of labour con­trol in Mau­ri­tius in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. At­ten­tion was placed on the labour leg­is­la­tion of 1867 which aimed specif­i­cal­ly at the free In­di­an pop­u­la­tion in the colony. In to­day's sec­ond in­stall­ment, I con­clude with a dis­cus­sion on the dis­tinct fea­tures of colo­nial gov­er­nance in Trinidad when com­pared with Mau­ri­tius.

At­lantic space

There had been lit­tle no­tice in Eng­land of the new­ly emerg­ing traf­fic in In­di­an in­den­tured labour to Mau­ri­tius. The prox­im­i­ty of Mau­ri­tius to In­dia was one rea­son be­hind the lack of re­al op­po­si­tion in Eng­land to the traf­fic. The ear­ly traf­fic of con­tract­ed In­di­an labour was there­fore sub­ject to min­i­mal im­pe­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion. It was, how­ev­er, an­oth­er mat­ter when In­di­ans were to be trans­port­ed to the West In­dies. Then the mid­dle pas­sage con­tin­ued to haunt the dis­course on labour of the "coloured races" on sug­ar plan­ta­tions. I've termed it an 'At­lantic space' to sig­nal a shift in the terms of dis­course on labour and mi­gra­tion of coloured races. For, when it came to con­sid­er­a­tion on the trans­port of In­di­an work­ers to the West In­dies, a num­ber of oth­er is­sues came to the fore which were all premised on the dis­tance and sep­a­ra­tion that work­ers would have to en­dure. The sep­a­ra­tion sug­gest­ed a de­gree of per­ma­nence that hint­ed at a con­di­tion of en­slave­ment...The pro­pos­al for in­den­tured work­ers from In­dia then en­tered an At­lantic dis­course in which the vin­di­ca­tion of eman­ci­pa­tion hov­ered over the terms and con­di­tions by which a new sys­tem of im­mi­grant labour would be in­sert­ed in the West In­dies. In re­al terms it meant that the mi­gra­tion of In­di­an work­ers across the At­lantic be­came sub­ject to im­pe­r­i­al pol­i­cy al­most from the out­set. The re­ports of the fate of "Glad­stone's Coolies" in British Guiana im­pelled the Colo­nial Of­fice to play an ac­tive role in the traf­fic. It was in as­sum­ing its pa­ter­nal role as pro­tec­tor of ex-slaves mi­grat­ing from oth­er West In­di­an is­lands that the Colo­nial Of­fice in­tro­duced the Or­der in Coun­cil of 1838 which re­quired that con­tracts be con­clud­ed in the re­ceiv­ing colony and ad­di­tion­al­ly, that these con­tracts were to be lim­it­ed to a sin­gle year's du­ra­tion. This leg­is­la­tion had the ef­fect of strong­ly dis­cour­ag­ing planters from im­port­ing labour pri­vate­ly...Ul­ti­mate­ly what this spelt for West In­di­an colonies was that any im­mi­gra­tion from dis­tant lands would have to be fi­nanced from pub­lic funds. This meant that planters them­selves would have less di­rect in­volve­ment in the re­cruit­ment of labour in Trinidad than they did in Mau­ri­tius.

Pow­er in the hands of colo­nial au­thor­i­ties

In Trinidad, gov­ern­ment had dis­cre­tionary pow­er to al­lot or with­hold labour to any es­tate based on cri­te­ria premised on colo­nial pol­i­cy. This of course placed con­sid­er­able pow­er in the hands of colo­nial au­thor­i­ties in par­tic­u­lar, the Sur­geon Gen­er­al and Pro­tec­tor of Im­mi­grants. These two of­fi­cials were ac­cord­ed roles as leg­is­la­tors since they were both mem­bers of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil. The au­thor­i­ty grant­ed med­i­cine in Trinidad un­ri­valled in any of the colonies I have stud­ied; nei­ther was the Pro­tec­tor of Im­mi­grants so patent­ly pa­ter­nal­is­tic as it was in Trinidad. The role of Pro­tec­tor of Im­mi­grants ar­guably was de­vel­oped first in Trinidad. It was in that "isle of ex­per­i­mente" that was first pro­posed the Pro­tec­tor of Slaves in 1812. In con­trast, the at­tempts to im­pose sim­i­lar of­fi­cial po­si­tions in Mau­ri­tius were met with near vi­o­lent re­sis­tance by colo­nial elites and planters in that is­land. Trinidad, how­ev­er, could be re­gard­ed as unique in terms of how pa­ter­nal­ism was con­sti­tut­ed through dis­course and ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture. The Pro­tec­tor was an ap­point­ed ex of­fi­cio in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil...ad­vised on the an­nu­al re­quire­ments of in­den­tured labour­ers for the colony and had the pow­er to de­ny al­lot­ments to es­tates con­tra­ven­ing cer­tain reg­u­la­tions. Med­ical su­per­vi­sion al­so de­vel­oped in­to a crit­i­cal func­tion in the sys­tem of in­den­ture­ship pro­vid­ing a mech­a­nism for the im­pe­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion be­tween em­ploy­er and labour­er. Or­di­nance 13 of 1870 re­strict­ed the al­lot­ment of in­den­tured im­mi­grants on­ly to those es­tates which had pro­vi­sions for hos­pi­tal ac­com­mo­da­tion...Whilst it was un­law­ful in Trinidad to in­den­ture an im­mi­grant to an es­tate with­out a prop­er hos­pi­tal, in Mau­ri­tius there was no such pro­vi­sion. Pa­ter­nal dis­cours­es were rou­tinised means of le­git­imis­ing in­den­ture­ship: in so do­ing what was need­ed to be shown was not on­ly the suc­cess of the new sys­tem of labour for the plan­ta­tions but some demon­stra­tion that In­di­ans had them­selves been im­proved in their moral dis­po­si­tion, cul­tur­al habits and state of mind. In these dis­cours­es there was an in­ter­est in the moral trans­for­ma­tion of in­di­vid­u­als and more fo­cus came to be placed on vis­i­ble in­di­ca­tors of in­ter­nal dis­po­si­tion such as idle­ness and in­tem­per­ance rather than va­grancy and de­ser­tion.

What is in­ter­est­ing to note is that the In­di­an work­er was con­sti­tut­ed in these dis­cours­es as wage work­er, as in­di­vid­u­als with­out the tra­di­tion­al bonds to au­thor­i­ty. This was a per­spec­tive that ran against pat­ri­mo­ni­al ex­pec­ta­tions of work­er as ser­vant, where def­er­ence and sub­or­di­na­tion were equal­ly im­por­tant: this was a view from a bu­reau­crat not a plan­ta­tion own­er-an ur­ban-in­dus­tri­al view rather than a rur­al-agri­cul­tur­al per­spec­tive. Trinidad dur­ing the lat­ter half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry was a high­ly porous space and colo­nial of­fi­cials sought to en­cour­age a more set­tled pop­u­la­tion by the open­ing up of Crown lands. Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, there was con­sid­er­able oc­cu­pa­tion­al di­ver­si­ty and mo­bil­i­ty with jobs avail­able in the trades, in ma­jor pub­lic works and in the pro­fes­sions where many British West In­di­ans found em­ploy­ment. The es­tates them­selves of­fered at­trac­tive in­cen­tives for time-ex­pired In­di­ans to stay on while they used their con­tract­ed work­force as guar­an­tee of con­tin­u­ous and re­li­able labour. When ef­fec­tive earn­ings de­clined in the years of cri­sis be­gin­ning 1881, free In­di­ans be­gan to drift away from sug­ar. The het­ero­ge­neous flow in­to the colony, the ex­ten­siv­i­ty of un­set­tled land, the pos­si­bil­i­ties of so­cial and oc­cu­pa­tion­al mo­bil­i­ty, seemed to place be­yond con­sid­er­a­tion the con­fine­ment of free In­di­ans to sug­ar dis­tricts. In­stead what emerged in dis­cours­es on gov­er­nance is a grow­ing con­cern with the con­gre­ga­tion of crowds rather than the move­ment of in­di­vid­u­als or small groups. In 1881 the colo­nial po­lice had clashed with sec­tions of the ur­ban float­ing pop­u­la­tion over cer­tain prac­tices dur­ing the an­nu­al Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions. The fol­low­ing year, the Peace Preser­va­tion Or­di­nance was passed which gave the Gov­er­nor the pow­er to end the Can­boulay pro­ces­sion. Once this Or­di­nance was giv­en ef­fect in 1883, colo­nial ad­min­is­tra­tors found that it im­pact­ed in their de­ci­sions re­gard­ing the fes­ti­vals of the In­di­an pop­u­la­tion... The colo­nial state could not be seen to play favourites with the In­di­ans. The lan­guage of colo­nial of­fi­cials demon­strat­ed a grow­ing aware­ness of a pub­lic space: here terms such as "rights" and the "sub­ject" came to be em­ployed. Con­tain­ment and sep­a­ra­tion were for the pat­ri­mo­ni­al world, Trinidad was be­ing forced to reck­on with the emer­gence of pub­lic spaces.

Con­clu­sion

The in­dus­try of Mau­ri­tius, un­like its West In­di­an sug­ar ri­vals, was dom­i­nat­ed by res­i­dent planters who in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry came in­to heavy de­pen­dence on British com­mer­cial hous­es. Trinidad's sug­ar in­dus­try, in con­trast, came un­der the purview of ab­sen­tee planters or com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es based in Britain. Im­pend­ing dis­or­der among sub­ject races was not­ed by colo­nial elites to be out­side the sphere of labour: they saw this in vis­i­ble signs in the con­gre­ga­tions of peo­ple and in the threat­en­ing pub­lic protests of work­ers march­ing to the Pro­tec­tor of Im­mi­grants of­fice. Where­as in Mau­ri­tius, it is the fear of be­ing ac­cost­ed in nav­i­ga­tion­al spaces-in the in­ter­sti­tial spaces be­tween plan­ta­tions-in Trinidad it is the fear of con­gre­ga­tions in ur­ban spaces. Mau­ri­tius-be­cause of its prox­im­i­ty to In­dia and the more in­flu­en­tial po­si­tion its planters had over the re­cruit­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion process-was able to em­ploy more ef­fec­tive­ly the 'new im­mi­grant' to bar­gain against the 'old im­mi­grants'. Planters were able to se­cure a con­tin­u­ous and time­ly traf­fic in labour from In­dia un­like the West In­di­an colonies which de­pend­ed on sea­son­al sail­ings. One re­sult of this eas­i­er avail­abil­i­ty of labour, how­ev­er, was that planters in Mau­ri­tius post­poned in­vest­ment in new tech­nol­o­gy and opt­ed in­stead to re­ly on the con­trol over wages. This is why it be­came all the more crit­i­cal once cri­sis en­veloped the in­dus­try to de­fine or re­it­er­ate the de­f­i­n­i­tion of In­di­ans as trop­i­cal labour. Con­tain­ment pre­dom­i­nat­ed over moral trans­for­ma­tion.. One dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of Trinidad was its high de­gree of ur­ban­i­sa­tion which was no­table even be­fore eman­ci­pa­tion. The het­ero­ge­neous "ac­cu­mu­la­tion of men" as Fou­cault termed it, forced on colo­nial ad­min­is­tra­tors dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories to ac­count for is­sues con­cern­ing the gov­er­nance and dis­ci­plin­ing of sub­ject races. This was where ex­pla­na­tions based on no­tions of racial pro­cliv­i­ties vied with no­tions of moral dis­po­si­tion. With this dis­persed and mo­bile pop­u­la­tion colo­nial ad­min­is­tra­tors in Trinidad rather than im­pose a con­tain­ment of dis­tinct pop­u­la­tions cat­e­gorised by race or oc­cu­pa­tion­al sta­tus, in­stead im­posed a net of moral leg­is­la­tion in tan­dem with in­creased ur­ban polic­ing. Dis­ci­plin­ing of plan­ta­tion work­ers was there­fore re­ac­tive and ex­em­plary, dis­tinct from the con­tin­u­ous sur­veil­lance em­ployed by the Mau­rit­ian colo­nial state.