No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Making a Labour Shortage in Post-Abolition British Guyana
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 June 2011
Extract
On 4 January 1836, less than two and a half years after Parliament abolished slavery in British colonies, John Gladstone, Liverpool merchant and father of William Ewart Gladstone, dictated a letter to his nephew at the Calcutta shipping agency Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. Gladstone explained that he had heard that the firm had recently sent ‘a considerable number of a certain class of Bengalees, to be employed as labourers, to the Mauritius’, and that he was interested in exploring the possibility of making similar arrangements for certain colonies in the West Indies, where he himself owned sugar plantations.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1997
References
Notes
1 Aline Gladstone was F.M. Gillander's aunt, and her husband had sent the young man to Calcutta to promote his own interest there. In India, Gillander entered a partnership with G.C. Arbuthnot and set up a separate agency. Tinker, Hugh, ‘The Origin of Indian Migration to the West Indies’ in: Frank, Birbalsingh ed., Indenture and Exile: The Indo-Caribbean Experience (Toronto 1989) 65Google Scholar, citing Checkland, S.G.. The Gladstones: A Family Biography, 1764–1851 (Cambridge 1971) 318.Google Scholar
2 Parliamentary Papers (HC) 1838 no. 232, ‘Orders in Council for the Regulation of Masters and Employers, and Articled Labourers in the Colony of British Guiana’ (hereafter PP (HC) 1838, ‘Masters and Labourers') enclosure no. 1 in Gladstone to Glenelg, 28 February 1838.
3 PP (HC) 1838 ‘Masters and Labourers’, Enclosure no. 1 in Gladstone to Glenelg, 28 February 1838.
4 Ibid.
5 PP (HC) 1838, ‘Masters and Labourers’, Gladstone to Glenelg, 22 February 1838, enclosure no. 2, Gillanders, Arbuthnot & Co. to John Gladstone, 6 June 1836.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. Enclosure 2 in number 4, Hobhouse, India Board, to Gladstone, 25 February 1837, 23.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid. In 1836, the favourable rates once reserved for West India produce was extended to muscovado produced in India.
14 Ibid.
15 ‘Papers Respecting the East India Labourers' Bill’, extract from India Public Consultation no. 26 of 1 February 1837, letter from Government of India to Law Commission, 15 May 1836.
16 Geoghegan, Note on Emigration from India, 3; ‘Papers Respecting the East India Labourers' Bill’, 1839, F. Millett, Secretary to the Indian Law Commission, to H.M. Prinsep, Secretary to the Government of India. General Department, 16 September 1836.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., enclosure in Light to Normanby, 13 April 1839: British Emancipator, 9 January 1839.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 PRO CO 885/1 xii. James Spedding, ‘Memorandum on the Hill Coolie Papers’. 26 August 1839; printed by command, 1839, 1–2.
22 Ibid.
23 Spedding, ‘Memorandum’, 3.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.. 5, emphasis is original.
26 Cited in Scoble, John. Hill Coolies: A Brief Exposure of the Deplorable Conditions of the Hill Coolies, in British Guiana and Mauritius, and of the Nefarious Means by Which they Were Induced to Resort to These Colonies (London 1840) 1.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., 7–8.
28 ‘Coolie Export Enquiry’, Dickens Committee, 1838–1839 (Calcutta 1839) [also found in PP (HC) 1841 XVI nos. 287, 483] (hereafter ‘Dickens Committee Report’), appendix: petition addressed to the Honourable Alexander Ross, President of the Council of India, Calcutta, Town Hall, 10 July 1838.Google Scholar
29 “Report of the Committee on Coolies’ (Calcutta 1839). appendix: petition addressed to the Honourable Alexander Ross, 10 July 1838.Google Scholar
30 Ibid.
31 ‘Papers Respecting the East India Labourers' Bill’, Public Department no. 27 of 1838 (22 August 1838), Government of India to Court of Directors.
32 For more on projections of free labour see especially Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca 1966)Google Scholar, and Prakash, Gyan, Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (New York 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 ‘Dickens Committee Report’ (Calcutta 1839), appendix: Henley, Dowson & Bestel to H.T. Prinsep, Secretary of the Government of Bengal, 23 July 1838. The firms and merchants in whose behalf Henley, Dowson & Bestel wrote were, besides itself, J.A. Walker & Co., L.A. Richy, Thomas Francis, P.W.G. Dowson, C. Langloiz, T. Tiron & E. Pandelle, M. Audibert, G. Mathios, V. Perdreaut, W.E. Browne, J.M. Dove, J. Allen.Google Scholar
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.