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Escaping Local Risk by Entering Indentureship: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Indian Migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2019

Alexander Persaud Open the ORCID record for Alexander Persaud [Opens in a new window]
Alexander Persaud*
Affiliation:
Alexander Persaud is Assistant Professor, Robins School of Business, University of Richmond, 102 UR Drive, Richmond, VA 23173. E-mail: apersaud@richmond.edu.
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Abstract

Of the millions of Indians who migrated internationally in the long nineteenth century, over one million went as indentured servants in a massive South-South migration. I test how price volatility in origin markets in India affected out-migration under indentureship contracts from 1873–1916 to four major destinations around the world. Using new, unique district-level flows calculated from roughly 250,000 individual records, I show that indentureship take-up is consistent with migrating to escape local price volatility.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 79 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 447 - 476
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2019 

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Footnotes

I thank Achyuta Adhvaryu, Raj Arunachalam, Martha Bailey, Hoyt Bleakley, John Bound, Charlie Brown, Latika Chaudhary, Christian Dippel, Prachi Jain, Ajin John, Gaurav Khanna, David Lam, Suresh Naidu, Samuel Norris, Kevin O’Rourke, Paul Rhode, Jeff Smith, Gonzalo Vasquez-Bare, Dean Yang, several anonymous referees, and many seminar participants at the University of Michigan, the 2016 NBER DAE summer institute, Princeton University (EconCon), the Economic History Association, Oxford University, and NEUDC for feedback on this project. Bill Collins and several anonymous reviewers provided insightful feedback during the review process. Anuraag Aekka, Michael Henry, Roman Klimke, Heather Smallwood, and Varsha Swamy provided excellent research assistance. Staff at the National Library of Australia, the National Archives of Guyana, the National Archives of Jamaica, the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal assisted in record location. I thank the Michigan Institute for Teaching and Research in Economics (MITRE) and the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School for research trip funding. For clarity in the historical context, I use colonial spellings and place names when appropriate.

References

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