The study of Indian indentured servitude in the British Empire has largely been confined to the histories of slavery or free labor. Few scholars have connected indenture to larger processes in the British Empire. This dissertation examines the global nature of Indian indenture to find how trends in colonial power were inflected in the relationship between the state and the indentured worker. This dissertation uses the colonial experience in South Asia as a basis for its global history. It contends that the history of the colonial rule of law in the subcontinent was of deep importance to the mechanisms of indenture. By looking at archival records from the United Kingdom, Trinidad, Fiji, and elsewhere, this dissertation finds that officials in the indenture colonies were attempting to transform indebted Indian peasants into indentured workers. This process was inflected by the experience of colonial rule elsewhere. At first, this meant the implementation of ideas tied to imperial liberalism. Following the challenges to British colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century, the indenture colonies mirrored a wider movement towards conservative governance. The ways in which the colonial state attempted to control and manipulate workers underwent a dramatic shift. In the indenture colony, colonial power exerted both authoritarian and paternalist tendencies. This dissertation uses the governorships of Arthur Hamilton-Gordon in Trinidad and Fiji to explore this shift. This dissertation makes its argument by focusing on the indenture colonies of Trinidad and Fiji. In doing so, it moves beyond the model of studying indenture that has looked at the British Empire as a whole, or otherwise in specific colonies or sub-regions. Using Trinidad and Fiji allows for a deep understanding of continuity and change. For example, Trinidad can be used to examine indenture’s beginnings, as the colony began to import Indian indentured labor in 1842, while Fiji can be used to understand late indenture. Furthermore, colonial officials, ideas of authority, capital, labor, and goods were always circulating throughout this global empire. The study of Trinidad and Fiji allows for a critical understanding of such exchanges and this dissertation uses both to explore bureaucratic offices, law, financial systems, governance, protest, medicine and health, and global agitation in Indian indenture. “The Currents of Restless Toil” is an in-depth study into the nature of colonial governance in the indenture colonies of Trinidad and Fiji. It explores the nuances of colonial power, providing a window into the theory and practice that shaped the restless toil of Indians across the world.

This thesis examines modalities of identity and representation for the Indo-Fijian diaspora and its second shift diasporic remove in Liverpool, Sydney, Australia. Indo-Fijian Literature in English, Fiji-Hindi, Memoir form of Indo-Fijian diasporic writings along with representations of Indo- Fijians in other texts are examined in the first instance to enable siting of various identities and representations. This is used as a springboard to engage with instances of production; expression and consumption of Popular Culture in Indo-Fijian diasporas are examined towards a critical inquiry into the problematic of Indo-Fijian diasporic identities and representations. The problem at hand is the issue of identity and representation between the binaries of homogeneous constructs of a people and their lives and that of heterogeneous modalities that takes in difference and the place of the individual and their everyday lived space in the Indo-Fijian diaspora. Modes of identity and representation in its various modes, literary, non-literary narratives and in the production, expression and consumption of popular culture is examined in this thesis towards a construct of a diaspora, of a people, beyond convenient reductive homogeneous constructs. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (D. Min.)--Columbia International University, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 240-246).

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No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 200-221).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1971. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-173).

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on September 14, 2009). Thesis advisor: Dr. Paul Bolls. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-173).