The Indentured contract and its Impact on Labor Relationship and Community Reconstruction in British Guiana

Abstract

This paper focuses on the indenture contract1 as a legal instrument that inspired the reconstruction of social institutions and community within a specific labor relationship in British Guiana. The signing of the indenture ruptured age old traditions that were fragmentarily transplanted to a hostile social space for reconstruction. That social space characterized by a labor repressive system was the sugar plantations of post-emancipated British Guiana. This paper analyzes the reconstruction of social institutions and community not only as inducements to divide and control the labor market, but as modes of relations existing in relations of production. It begins with an introduction to the postemancipated labor market realities of British Guiana that birthed the indentured movement from Asia to the Caribbean. It continues with a critical exploration of how the indenture contract impacted the reconstruction of social institutions and community.