Dear Editor,
Early last September, with CARICOM’s Third Regional Conference on Reparations scheduled from the 17th to the 19th, I wrote to the Caricom Secretary-General Carla Barnett/Caricom Reparations Commission Chairman Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles requesting they initiate a process that would give substance to their addition in 2024 of “deceptive indentureship of Asians” alongside Indigenous genocide and African enslavement within its broader reparations framework.
I emphasized that indentureship should in no way be compared, much less equated, with slavery, since the two systems were legally and institutionally different with enslaved persons treated as “property” with no payment for their services throughout their lives and their children also becoming “slaves”. I suggested, however, that their recognition of the exploitative nature of indentureship should now be developed into a distinct historical, legal and economic case based on the proposition that indentureship was represented by the British as a contractual system. The fundamental question being whether the system was actually established and administered in accordance with the laws and contractual obligations under which it purported to operate.
Britain and its colonial authorities directly managed the indentureship system by authorizing, regulating and supervising the recruitment, transportation, employment and repatriation of Indian and Chinese labourers. The system also served a clear economic purpose: to supply plantation colonies with controlled labour after emancipation and thereby sustain the plantation economy that had previously depended upon enslaved labour.
I suggested that CARICOM consider requesting a formal legal opinion, or pursuing an appropriate judicial or international legal mechanism, to determine the following five questions:
1. Legality of recruitment
Whether the recruitment, enlistment and transportation of Indian and Chinese persons to British Caribbean colonies under systems of indentured labour, where such recruitment involved deception, misrepresentation, concealment of material conditions, coercion or lack of informed consent, were lawful under the laws applicable at the time, including the law governing contracts and the protection of British subjects and colonial labourers.
2. Validity of the contracts
Whether an indenture contract obtained through deception, material misrepresentation, concealment of the true conditions of employment, or other circumstances preventing genuine and informed consent was legally valid and enforceable against the indentured person.
3. Responsibility of the British imperial authorities
Whether the British Crown, Parliament and/or colonial authorities that authorized, regulated, supervised or facilitated the system of indentured labour bore legal responsibility for ensuring compliance with the laws, regulations and contractual protections governing the recruitment, transportation, employment, treatment and repatriation of indentured labourers.
4. Coercive enforcement
Whether the use of penal sanctions, imprisonment, restrictions upon movement, compulsory continuation of plantation service, or other coercive measures to enforce indenture contracts was consistent with the contractual and legal rights of indentured labourers; and, where such measures were unlawful or constituted breaches of those rights, whether responsibility attached to the relevant colonial authorities.
5. Restitution consequences
Where the recruitment, transportation, contractual enforcement, treatment or repatriation of indentured labourers was unlawful or constituted breaches of legal obligations, what legal consequences followed for the British Crown and colonial authorities, and do those consequences include an obligation of restitution to the affected persons, their descendants or their successor communities?
I suggested those questions be examined separately in relation to Indian and Chinese indentureship and, where necessary, separately for the different Caribbean colonies. The systems were not identical, and the historical record should determine the particular responsibilities of the imperial and colonial authorities in each case. Such an inquiry would also avoid the unproductive argument over whether indentureship should be characterized as “slavery.”
I proposed that there was also a broader historical issue that deserves consideration – that abolition of slavery did not bring the Caribbean plantation economy to an end. In British Guiana, Trinidad and other colonies, Asian indentured labour became an important source of labour for plantations following emancipation. The imperial system therefore replaced one form of controlled plantation labour with another.
The economic consequences were substantial. The wealth produced by indentured labour contributed to the continuation and profitability of Caribbean plantation agriculture and to the British economy. Yet the descendants of the people who supplied that labour have inherited deleterious social and economic consequences from a system in which Britain and its colonial authorities played a central regulatory role.
This raised an important question for the reparations movement: if the continuing consequences and inherited economic structures of slavery provide a basis for seeking reparations from Britain, should the continuing consequences and inherited economic structures of indentureship not also be examined?
Sincerely,
Ravi Dev
Discussion