Servants, sirdars, and settlers1995

Servants, Sirdars and Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834-1874 is an account of Indian indentured labour in Mauritius over a period of forty years and is an important contribution to the study of labour migration. The book challenges the dominant interpretations of the indentured labour system, which are sharply divided, viewing the system as either a 'new form of slavery' or a 'release' from domestic oppression. Marina Carter moves away from both of these extreme positions and carefully differentiates the concepts of slavery and indenture. Breaking new ground by using immigration office statistics which describe life-events of Indians in Mauritius, she analyses death and return rates of men, women and children during and post indenture, and traces the marriage patterns of first generation immigrants. The author thus provides glimpses of a world of indenture where immigrants are not merely passive players in a colonial drama. She charts the interactions of the indentured servants with their sirdars and the transformation of part of the community into permanent settlers. Marina Carter establishes that returning labourers played an increasingly significant part in labour mobilization and describes how sirdars became the sociocultural leaders of the immigrant Indians during the time of early village settlements in Mauritius. Several hundred thousand Indians entered as immigrants during 1834-74 and later settled permanently on the island to become the largest community in a multi-ethnic state.