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Coolies of Capitalism : Assam Tea and the Making of Coolie Labour / Nitin Varma.

By: Material type: TextTextLanguage: English Series: Work in Global and Historical Perspective ; 2Publisher: München ; Wien : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, [2016]Copyright date: ©2016Description: 1 online resource (250 p.)Content type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9783110463170
Subject(s): Additional physical formats: No title; No titleDDC classification:
  • 331.2043372095416209034 22/ger
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Content -- List of Tables and Graphs -- List of Figures -- Introduction -- 1. Tea in the Colony -- 2. Contracts, Contractors and Coolies -- 3. Unpopular Assam -- 4. Drink and Work -- 5. Dustoor of Plantations -- 6. Gandhi baba ka Hookum -- 7. Epilogue -- Bibliography
Title is part of eBook package: Asian Studies Contemporary Collection eBook PackageTitle is part of eBook package: EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2016Title is part of eBook package: EBOOK PACKAGE History 2016Summary: "Coolie" is a generic category for the "unskilled" manual labour. The offering of services for hire had various pre-colonial lineages. In the nineteenth century there was an attempt to recast the term in discursive constructions and material practices for "mobilized-immobilized" labour. Coolie labour was often proclaimed as a deliberate compromise straddling the regimes of the past (slave labour) and the future (free labour). It was portrayed as a stage in a promised transition. The tea plantations of Assam, like many other tropical plantations in South Asia, were inaugurated and formalized during this period. They were initially worked by the locals. In the late 1850s, the locals were replaced by labourers imported from outside the province who were unquestioningly designated "coolies" in the historical literature. Qualifying this framework of transition (local to coolie labour) and introduction (of coolie labour), this study makes a case for the "production" of coolie labour in the history of the colonial-capitalist plantations in Assam. The intention of the research is not to suggest an unfettered agency of colonial-capitalism in defining and "producing" coolies, with an emphasis on the attendant contingencies, negotiations, contestations and crises. The study intervenes in the narratives of an abrupt appearance of the archetypical coolie of the tea gardens (i.e., imported and indentured) and situates this archetype's emergence, sustenance and shifts in the context of material and discursive processes.
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Frontmatter -- Content -- List of Tables and Graphs -- List of Figures -- Introduction -- 1. Tea in the Colony -- 2. Contracts, Contractors and Coolies -- 3. Unpopular Assam -- 4. Drink and Work -- 5. Dustoor of Plantations -- 6. Gandhi baba ka Hookum -- 7. Epilogue -- Bibliography

Open Access unrestricted online access star

https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2

"Coolie" is a generic category for the "unskilled" manual labour. The offering of services for hire had various pre-colonial lineages. In the nineteenth century there was an attempt to recast the term in discursive constructions and material practices for "mobilized-immobilized" labour. Coolie labour was often proclaimed as a deliberate compromise straddling the regimes of the past (slave labour) and the future (free labour). It was portrayed as a stage in a promised transition. The tea plantations of Assam, like many other tropical plantations in South Asia, were inaugurated and formalized during this period. They were initially worked by the locals. In the late 1850s, the locals were replaced by labourers imported from outside the province who were unquestioningly designated "coolies" in the historical literature. Qualifying this framework of transition (local to coolie labour) and introduction (of coolie labour), this study makes a case for the "production" of coolie labour in the history of the colonial-capitalist plantations in Assam. The intention of the research is not to suggest an unfettered agency of colonial-capitalism in defining and "producing" coolies, with an emphasis on the attendant contingencies, negotiations, contestations and crises. The study intervenes in the narratives of an abrupt appearance of the archetypical coolie of the tea gardens (i.e., imported and indentured) and situates this archetype's emergence, sustenance and shifts in the context of material and discursive processes.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 15. Jun 2019)

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