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PALGRAVE SERIES
IN INDIAN OCEAN
WORLD STUDIES
LABOR ON THE
FRINGES OF EMPIRE
Voice, Exit and the Law
Alessandro Stanziani
Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies
Series editor
Gwyn Campbell
McGill University
Montreal, Canada
This is the first scholarly series devoted to the study of the Indian Ocean
world from early times to the present day. Encouraging interdisciplinarity,
it incorporates and contributes to key debates in a number of areas includ-
ing history, environmental studies, anthropology, sociology, political sci-
ence, geography, economics, law, and labor and gender studies. Because it
breaks from the restrictions imposed by country/regional studies and
Eurocentric periodization, the series provides new frameworks through
which to interpret past events, and new insights for present-day policymak-
ers in key areas from labor relations and migration to diplomacy and trade.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14661
Labor on the Fringes

of Empire
Voice, Exit and the Law
EHESS-PSL and CNRS
Paris, France
Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-70391-6 ISBN 978-3-319-70392-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70392-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017961111
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.
Cover illustration: © TAO Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This book is devoted to all those who did not give up their
fights for freedom.
Acknowledgements
This book benefited from the many discussions and assistance from col-
leagues, friends and students. In India, I found the help and benevolent
criticism of organizers of the biannual meeting at the Association of Indian
labor History—Rana Behal, Chitra Joshi, and Prabhu Mohapatra, as well
as from the participants to these workshops that I had the great pleasure
to see growing over time from a small event to a huge world conference.
A special thanks also to my colleagues and friends interested in global
labor history—Andreas Eckert (Re-work, Berlin), Marcel Van Der Linden
(IISG Amsterdam), and Ulbe Bosma (IISG, Amsterdam). I also benefited
from the comments of specialists in African history—Frederick Cooper
(NYU), Gareth Austin (Cambridge University), Babacar Fall (University
Cheik Anta Diop, Dakar), Richard Roberts (Stanford). Gwyn Campbell
(McGill) and Claude Markovits (CNRS, Paris) provided valuable insights
in discussions of the Indian Ocean World. Global History specialists
helped me in connecting the different chapters. First of all, friends with
whom I have shared joint projects for several years: Jeremy Adelman
(Princeton), Sven Beckert (Harvard), Sebastian Conrad (Freie University,
Berlin), Sheldon Garon (Princeton), and Masashi Haneda (Tokyo
University). Also: William Gervase Clarence Smith (SOAS, London),
Patrick O’Brien (LSE), Giorgio Riello (Warwick), and Thirtankar Roy
(LSE). In Paris, Paul-André Rosental (Sciences-Po), and Gilles Postel-
Vinay were constant readers of my efforts. I also benefited from discus-
sions with colleagues at the EHESS: Corinne Lefèvre, Natalia Muchnik,
Xavier Paulès, Antonella Romano, Silvia Sebastiani, Larissa Zakharova,
and Ines Zupanov.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In addition, I greatly benefited from the valuable suggestions of two

anonymous referees.
However, the best insights and suggestions came from my students at
the EHESS: discussions during and outside my seminars strongly contrib-
uted towards improving my efforts.
Contents
1 Introduction: Progress and (Un)Freedom 1

Labor and Freedom: Perspectives from the “Old World” 3
Abolitionism in India 5
Mauritius Island: Immigrants and the Limits
of Contractualism 7
French Abolitionism 9
Sources and Power 11
References 22
2 Coercion, Resistance and Voice 31

Economic Theories of Coercion 31
Power, Labor and the Colonial State 34
Rights and Legal Status 36
Resistance: Exit and Runaways 40
Resistance: Voice and the Use of the Law 43
Rights, Labor and Inequalities 48
References 59
3 Utilitarianism and the Abolition of Slavery in India 67

Introduction 67
From Pre-colonial to Colonial Slaveries 69
Utilitarianism, Abolitionism and Indian Slavery 77
ix
x Contents
India, Britain and the Empire: Slavery and Sovereignty

1830s–1840s 85
Abolition in Practice 94
General Rules of Labor 99
Conclusion 113
References 128
4 Slavery, Abolition and the Contractarian Approach

in the Indian Ocean: The Case of Mauritius 137
From Slavery to Indentured Immigration in the Indian
Ocean: An Overview 137
Indentured Immigrants in the Indian Ocean 141
Indentured Immigrants in Mauritius:
The Overall Picture 145
Living Conditions and Abuse by Planters 147
What Were the Laborers’ Complaints? 153
Resistances 155
Penalties and Inducement 157
Savings, Repatriation and Contract Renewal 161
Conclusion 164
References 172
5 How Do You Say “Free” in French? 177

Abolitionism in France and the French Empire 178
Rules of Labor and Rights: Slaves vs. Domestic Servants 182
The Multiple Abolitions of Slavery 186
Empire on a Rock: Immigrants and Coercion on Reunion
Island—From Slavery to Indentured Immigrants 197
Engagisme After Slavery 200
Labor, Violence, and the Use of the Law 203
Feeding the Immigrants: Abuses, Benevolence,
and Colonial Welfare 208
Conclusion 218
References 236
Contents
xi
6 The Welfare State and the Colonial World, 1880–1914:

The Case of French Equatorial Africa 251
Slavery and Abolition in British Africa: An Overview 252
French Penetration in Africa and FEA, 1870–1890 257
Scandals and Violence: The Brazza Mission 260
Labor in French Equatorial Africa: From Local Slavery
to Colonial Bondage 265
The New Labor Contract in France 272
Law and Justice 277
Labor and the Rule of Law 281
Conclusion: The Social State and the Heart of Darkness 290
References 305
7 Conclusion: Voice, Exit and the Law in Historical

Perspective 317
References 323
Index 325
List of Tables
Table 4.1 Male workers on estates directly managed by their owners,

1874149
Table 4.2 Working people on absentee owners’ estates, 1874 151
Table 4.3 Complaints lodged by workers, Courts of First Instance, 1875 153
Table 4.4 Complaints lodged by landowners against workers, 1875 157
Table 4.5 Labourdonnais estate accounts, 1871 159
Table 5.1 Reunion island sugar exports 214
Table 5.2 Reunion Island rice imports, special trade, in francs 215
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Progress and (Un)Freedom
In 1873, on Reunion Island, an Indian with an iron collar around his neck
and chains attached to his feet, knocked at the door of the Court of
Appeals of Saint-Denis de la Réunion. He declared he was regularly
beaten, shackled and thrown into jail by his master, even though he was
theoretically free. He had already lodged several complaints with the
Immigration Protection Society, which nevertheless refused to take legal
action against the white planter. When the planter learned of the com-
plaints, he had the laborer chained and flogged. It was several years before
the court finally sentenced the planter to pay the Indian meager damages.1
Like him, more and more “coolies” (Indian and Chinese immigrants)
took their cases to court; despite the indifferent and sometimes corrupt
judges, the coolies persisted. Little by little, they began setting aside small
amounts of money; after five, seven or sometimes ten or twelve years they
went home to India. Disasters frequently befell them during these return
voyages: the ships were old, often overloaded and exposed to the dangers
of the crossing, and the white officers had no misgivings about abandon-
ing the vessels along with their passengers. The scandals multiplied, but no
real solution was found.2
Worse still, the expansion of European colonial empires led to violent
treatment and coerced displacement of laborers. The port of Aden, a
British protectorate located far from Reunion Island, was an important
© The Author(s) 2018 1

A. Stanziani, Labor on the Fringes of Empire,
Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70392-3_1
2 A. STANZIANI
commercial center on the way to Marseille and London, which were

henceforth connected to the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal. Aden was
also a haven for slaves escaping from Africa or from the Persian Gulf itself,
where they were employed as pearl fishermen. In 1878, thirteen Africans
landed in Aden, claiming to be Siddi sailors. Eleven of them worked as
pearl divers for the same owner; they requested and were granted asylum.3
Later on, however, they were transferred as “free servants” to new British
masters in Aden or to other British possessions in India and southern
Africa.
After the Indian Ocean, the African continent was in turn divided up
during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The European powers
had no scruples about raping, killing and torching villages in the name of
progress and civilization. The extreme violence perpetrated on the indig-
enous populations was coupled with fear, solitude and the ruthless pursuit
of profit that reigned in the concession companies. It was still a world in
which men from the four corners of the globe crossed paths: ships sailed
up the African rivers and along the coastlines, manned by slave labor from
India, the Persian Gulf countries and China, along with Europeans, mainly
commissioned and non-commissioned officers—Russians, Poles, Swedes,
Germans and, of course, Britons. Some of them, like Joseph Conrad, had
already served in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic. But the shipwrecks
Conrad had experienced, which went virtually unnoticed by the public,
were relatively insignificant compared with the villages burned down, the
women raped and killed, and the men and children massacred in the
Congo.4
We like to believe in the progress of civilization—of our civilization.
The abolitions of slaveries and serfdom in the late eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries were undoubtedly turning points that should not be
overlooked.5 Starting in 1790, the number of abolition acts and slaves
liberated by them was unprecedented. Some 500,000 slaves were emanci-
pated in Saint-Domingue in 1790, a million Caribbean slaves between
1832 and 1840, 30 million Russian serfs in 1861, four million slaves in the
U.S. between 1863 and 1865, and another million in Brazil in 1885.
Abolitions in Africa at the turn of the nineteenth century affected an esti-
mated 7 million people.6 One must also take into account the significant
rates of manumission prior to general abolition in Russia and Brazil, as
well as in the Ottoman Empire and Islamic societies in general from Africa
to Southeast Asia.7
INTRODUCTION: PROGRESS AND (UN)FREEDOM 3
Yet in the Indian Ocean, Africa and the Americas, even after slavery was
officially ended, the world of labor continued to be a world of unequal and
sometimes extreme exploitation and violence, in which the boundary line
between freedom and unfreedom—so clear-cut in theory—was far less
obvious in practice. Only a thin, shadowy line separated—or rather, uni-
fied—them over time and space. This book explains why.
Labor and Freedom: Perspectives

from the “Old World”
In the past as well as today, debates about abolition have essentially focused
on two interrelated questions: (1) whether nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century abolitions were a major break from previous centuries (or even
millennia) in the history of humankind during which bondage had been
the dominant form of labor and human condition8; and (2) whether they
represent an achievement specific to the Western bourgeoisie and liberal
civilization. Both questions are Eurocentric: they place the West at the
origin of historical dynamics without examining the active role other
actors and regions played in the process.
To avoid these pitfalls, we will assume first of all that so-called “free”
forms of labor and bondage were defined and practiced in relation to each
other, not only within each country and region, but also on a global scale.
Historians of slavery and abolition do not usually sit at the same table as
historians of wage labor in Europe and the West; these historiographies
operate as if they were completely disconnected histories. Over the last 20
years, a new historiography has stressed the connections between free and
unfree labor in a global perspective.9 We will follow this perspective here
in greater detail. The strength of global history lies not in collecting
second-hand banalities common to a number of different worlds, but
rather in arriving at a relevant representation of this multiplicity through
local specificities.10 Connections, entanglements and overall structural
dynamics do not necessarily demand a world synthesis11; instead, they
address specific questions using multiple scales.12
This book focuses on specific areas in India, the Indian Ocean and
Africa, a choice that requires some explanation. The Atlantic paradigm has
largely shaped our interpretation of modernity, made up of discoveries,
European supremacy, global capitalism, the passage from slavery to free
labor and a rather distinctive chronology. Slavery and U.S. independence,
4 A. STANZIANI
followed by the French and Haitian revolutions and the abolitionist

movement—all these events have informed our conceptions and practices
of freedom up to the present day. The specificity of the Atlantic Ocean,
particularly compared to the Indian Ocean-African perspective, has long
been a subject of debate. Conventional historiography tended to use ideal
types of slavery, sovereignty, colonialism and abolitionism, based more or
less on the Atlantic experience, as models for the study of other regions.13
Hence the highly critical attitude towards the view expressed by specialists
of Asian, Indian Ocean and African regions over the past twenty years.14
These specialists have contrasted the three areas with the Atlantic, starting
with the chronology. Unlike the Atlantic perspective, which divides history
into before and after the fifteenth century, we find in the Indian Ocean
World (IOW) and Africa a long period stretching first from antiquity to the
rise of Islam (the eighth to the tenth century); then from the global IOW-
Africa of Islamic, Mughal and Ming-Qing powers to the coexistence of
these polities with Western empires (the eleventh to the eighteenth cen-
tury); and finally, the dominance of the West in the nineteenth century.15
This chronology is particularly relevant with regard to labor relationships:
in the IOW and Africa there was no clear shift from slavery to wage labor
but rather a coexistence of different forms of bondage, dependence and
servitude that has continued to this day.16 Furthermore, the legal question
of slavery was debated in the Atlantic in reference to slaves who managed
to reach French or British soil.17 Though France and Britain took different
paths, and France, unlike Britain, developed positive law regarding slavery,
both powers agreed on the supremacy of their own rules and empires over
those of natives. However, such an approach was impossible in the Indian
Ocean. This was famously illustrated by the British view of Indian slavery:
until at least the mid-nineteenth century, it was considered a form of
domestic, customary relationship. In this case, there was no discussion,
comparable to the one in the Atlantic, of a uniform law or the value of
freedom until much later.18 The same was true, as we will see, in Africa,
where colonial powers adopted ambivalent attitudes towards local forms of
servitude and slavery before moving to more radical abolitionism.
However, we should not focus solely on these differences; it is also
important to keep in mind the connections and similarities between the
Atlantic and the areas under investigation here. Chattel slavery was not the
only form of labor coercion in the Atlantic; indentured labor coexisted
with it. Moreover, long after slavery was officially abolished, coercive
forms of labor persisted in Brazil, Latin America19 and to some extent in
the American South.20 Sovereignty was fragmented and under negotiation

in the Atlantic as well, and chartered companies played a role in both the
Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. From this viewpoint, what really distin-
guished the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic were the size, scope and dura-
tion of the East India Company.21 These new perspectives invite us to
think in terms of trans-oceanic connections rather than simple opposi-
tions. Knowledge, practices, people and institutions circulated on a mas-
sive scale between Africa, the Indian Ocean, Asia, Europe and the Atlantic;
a fact that must be taken into consideration.22 We already adopted this
multilevel approach in our previous works on Russian serfdom, the
Eurasian slave trade, and European labor, followed by slaves, seamen and
immigrants in the Indian Ocean between 1750 and 1914.23 In all those
cases, we sought to avoid ideal types of serfdom, slavery, and wage labor
and identify their historical meanings in a multilevel analysis involving
ideas, politics, the law, and economic and social relationships. In the pres-
ent book, I will be moving further along this path by investigating the
concrete possibilities laboring people had to protect themselves and
defend their rights. Our main aim is to overcome abstract considerations
regarding “disguised slavery” or “freed labor” when talking about inden-
tured immigrants and emancipated slaves. I will therefore begin by pre-
senting the general evolution of labor relationships and their institutions
in the broad regions concerned: the Indian subcontinent, the Indian
Ocean, and Africa. I will then focus on specific areas: Assam, the Mascarene
Islands, and the French Congo, and from there explore labor, legal and
social relationships.
Abolitionism in India
The case of India was extremely relevant in nineteenth-century historiog-
raphy and remains so today because it challenged predefined notions or
ahistorical definitions of slavery and freedom.24 To discuss the limits of
utilitarianism and the failure of nineteenth-century liberalism to conceive
of equal rights in the colonial context, it is necessary to examine abolition-
ism in India.25 Our approach is as follows: because it is impossible to deter-
mine whether or not Indian forms of bondage were equivalent to slavery
based on modern day definitions of slavery and forced labor, we have to
start from the notions, categories and practices of the period.
In this book, the study of abolitionism in India distances itself from
both subaltern approaches and colonial and post-colonial studies. Unlike
6 A. STANZIANI
these approaches, we intend to show that it is a mistake to oppose India to

Britain from the point of view of labor regulation. In fact, while British
norms and perceptions translated into various forms of bondage and slav-
ery in India, and thereby helped perpetuate slavery well after its abolition,
slavery itself predated any British intervention in the subcontinent. From
this perspective, abolitionism in India reveals the overall limits of British
abolitionism, and more generally the legacy of revolutionary abolitionism
in the period from 1780 to 1820.26
In past as well as current historiography, the question of slavery in India
intersected with two other quarrels: on the one hand, debates about abo-
litionism in general and in the Atlantic in particular, and on the other
hand, the conditions of wage earners in Britain. Some historians opposed
mild forms of slavery (in India) to “real slavery” (namely chattel slavery)
in the Americas, while a few others equated them.27 Similarly, some con-
sidered proletarianism a disguised form of slavery, just as they viewed
indentured immigrants as slaves. As a result, the actors and categories fluc-
tuated and were much harder to determine than clear-cut definitions of
slaves, proletarians, or free and unfree labor. Thus, the emphasis on
“Indian specificities” supported the claim that there was no real slavery in
India. It is no coincidence that this claim was made by the East India
Company (EIC) on certain occasions (e.g. when it sought to promote
Indian sugar production against competition from the American colo-
nies), by slave traders, and finally by certain British political leaders and
diplomats who feared that putting too much pressure on Indian elites
would endanger imperial stability.28 Conversely, radical abolitionists
described Indian debt bondage as slavery and, by the same token, attacked
the monopoly of the EIC. In this context, as we will see, utilitarianism and
Jeremy Bentham played a special role,29 influencing a number of colonial
leaders as well as EIC officials, including John Stuart Mill. The “Indian
question” affected labor debates, practices and institutions in Britain itself.
Henry Maine, who served in India, was in favor of repealing the Masters
and Servants Acts in Britain based precisely on the Indian experience and
the need to distinguish British servants from their Indian counterparts.30
Maine also advocated indirect rule as the key to preserving the stability of
the empire.31 Many colonial officers and elites believed that adhering to
local customs and indirect rule would ensure an easier rule, greater coop-
eration and fewer administrative costs.32 Their opponents, who supported
direct rule, insisted on the paramount importance of Britain’s civilizing
mission and the need to uphold order and justice. The mutiny of 1857
reinforced the position of those, like Henri Maine, who supported the
principle of indirect rule. This had definite repercussions, first in the Indian
Ocean, and later on the African experience, where Maine’s account of a
traditional society in crisis supplied a rationale for indirect imperial rule.33
Finally, the case of India will lead us to a discussion of how liberal utilitari-
anism was transmuted and implemented on the ground, its complex
notions of freedom and its ultimate failure to provide freedom and welfare
to Indian laboring people.
Mauritius Island: Immigrants and the Limits of Contractualism

Indentured immigration developed rapidly after the abolition of slavery.
Between 1834 and 1937, over 30 million migrants from India are esti-
mated to have gone to overseas British colonies such as Burma, Ceylon,
British Malaya, Mauritius, Fiji, the Caribbean and East Africa. Laborers
made up nearly 98 percent of the total movement of migrants from India
during the colonial period. The majority of these workers were employed
under indenture contracts owned by British capital. Slavery (in the
Caribbean and Mauritius Island) was replaced by another form of servi-
tude: “coolie labor” under indenture and the kangani/maistry systems.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, growing demand in
the West for raw materials and other tropical products led British coloniz-
ers to set up modern plantations as agro-industrial enterprises in several
colonies of the British Empire, including India. Sugar, coffee or tea
emerged as the most profitable products in the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius,
Malay and Ceylon, as well as in Assam, Bengal, the northern Himalayas
and southern parts of colonial India.
Indentured immigration in the Indian Ocean was therefore the com-
plement and historical follow-up to the history of abolitionism in India,
first of all because the market for indentured immigrants was part of a
complex, integrated labor market encompassing India, the Indian Ocean
and the rest of the world. Within this market, there were important con-
nections between peasant production, Assam and Bengal plantations,
colonial state labor requirements, the global dislocation of Asian empires
and polities, the transformation of labor in Europe and the rise of the U.S.
economy. The limits of liberal contractualism in the colonial regions are
the major issue here.34 According to one approach, the indenture contract
resembled forced labor and slavery, and contracts expressed a legal fic-
tion.35 In the aftermath of abolition—these critics argue—indentured
8 A. STANZIANI
immigration was essentially a form of disguised slavery.36 Even worse,

abolitionist legal acts failed to take into account the high rate of manumis-
sion and purchase of freedom in Islamic societies in areas such as Africa,
Southeast Asia and the Ottoman Empire, or the legal and social constraints
on freed slaves and serfs. Such an approach robs the abolition of slavery of
any historical significance37 while neglecting all the efforts indentured
immigrants made to fight for their own rights.
Several legal scholars have opposed this view, arguing that the inden-
ture contract was not considered a form of forced labor until the second
half of the nineteenth century, whereas prior to that date, it was viewed as
an expression of free will in contract.38 This argument joins recent trends
in the history of emigration that also stress the shifting boundary between
free and unfree emigration.39 We will develop an intermediate view: instead
of asking—in the abstract—whether indentured labor was free labor or
disguised slavery, we will examine the actual obligations and rights of
indentured people through an extremely detailed account of laboring peo-
ple by district and plantation, including individual cases. We will look at
labor and living conditions, health, the return trip, abuses, violence and
the defense of wages, as well as possible ways of resisting. We will also
study labor resistance, unions, law courts, and physical conflicts. The study
of Mauritius in particular will reveal the limits of liberal contractualism in
terms of rights and freedom.40 The experiences of immigrants and the
enormous difficulties they encountered in defending their rights demon-
strate the limits of formal equality before the law when it is not embedded
in procedural rights, impartial law courts and political freedom.
Taken together, India (Assam in particular) and Mauritius Island pro-
vide two powerful examples of the concrete implementation of liberal
utilitarianism and the functioning of the British Empire in the IOW. They
will allow us to identify the respective roles of overall policies and princi-
ples and how they were implemented and adapted at the local level. In
every instance, utilitarianism and free contract meant unequal rights
between masters and indentured immigrants (and former slaves). At the
same time, whereas in some areas of India the British authorities had to
negotiate the use of labor with local elites, we will see that in Assam the
brutality and domination of British rule was almost unlimited, while in
Mauritius compliance with contractual rules was imposed mostly because
the planters were French. The question is whether French approach to
rights and freedom brought more “voice” (in Hirschman’s meaning, as
explained in Chap. 2) to subaltern and laboring people.
French Abolitionism
Countless comparisons have been made between the French and British
Empires dating back at least to the eighteenth century. There have been
general comparisons41 and comparisons concentrating on specific areas
(the Atlantic, Asia, the Indian Ocean and Africa).42 Some works compared
the two empires in terms of sovereignty and rights,43 others focused on
military concerns,44 the economy,45 labor, slavery and abolitionism,46 and
still others on cultural values and intellectual history.47 We do not intend
to provide another comparative overview of the two empires. Instead, we
will study in detail how the French connected abolitionism in the colonies
to labor relationships in the mainland, why they were opposed to each
other and how the principles were implemented in specific contexts. These
policies will be compared with what “freedom” meant to former slaves
and new immigrants and the actions they undertook to gain it. After sum-
marizing the main French political and intellectual attitudes towards slav-
ery from the eighteenth century to 1848, we will take a close look at the
debates that took place between 1848 and 1851, when labor became the
focal point of reforms both in France and in its colonies. We will offer a
completely new view of the relationship between the two, and hence of
the impact of the 1848 revolution on labor in a global perspective.48
We will then move to Reunion Island, which affords a direct parallel
with Mauritius while formally belonging to a different empire. In this case
as well, we will explore detailed plantation, district and police archives in
order to depict daily life, labor and resistance. Compared to Mauritius,
Reunion Island engaged in the widespread use of so-called “benevolent”
forms of colonialism, which were not in fact based on charity, much less on
legal rights, and in the end resorted to harsh treatment and subsidies for
immigrants.
In the next chapter, we will follow the transfer of British and French
labor rules and practices from the Indian Ocean to Africa. Imperial and
colonial histories put too much emphasis on the relationships between the
“core” and the “periphery”: India vs. Britain, Africa vs. Europe, and so
forth. Here we would like to introduce a more complex approach in which
Indian-Indian Ocean-African connections offer a multicentered view of
imperial dynamics. The shift from the Indian Ocean to Africa reflects
actual historical dynamics, with the transmission of institutions, people
and notions between India, Britain and Africa (e.g. definitions of slavery
and of servants, the role of Henry Maine in defining both imperial
10 A. STANZIANI
s overeignty—indirect rule—and labor institutions).49 The slave trade had

connected Africa to the Indian Ocean at least since the ninth century and
expanded considerably after that, well before the arrival of Europeans.
During the nineteenth century, abolitionist movements and European
powers gradually turned their attention away from the Atlantic and the
Indian Ocean to Africa as the last resort of slavery (together with the
Ottoman Empire). This shift was at once ideological, intellectual and geo-
political. In the major syntheses of the history of abolition and colonial-
ism, slavery in Africa is presented as a distinct phase, albeit linked to the
preceding phases.50
The point of this chapter is not to put forward yet another view of
imperialism and the contradictions between abolitionism and imperial
expansion in Africa, or produce a typical “area study” looking for the spec-
ificity of a given region in Africa. Instead, we will highlight an aspect that
has been usually neglected by historians: the relationship between aboli-
tionism in Africa, on the one hand, and the evolution of labor law and the
emergence of the welfare state in Europe on the other. The exclusion of
colonial subjects from these new rules, in France as well as in the British
Empire, generated a sharp divide between labor conditions and move-
ments in the mainland and those in the colonies. Although there is a large
bibliography stressing the contradictions between the welfare state and the
colonial world in the late colonial period,51 the same tension at the very
origin of the welfare state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
ries has been entirely ignored. We aim to fill this gap by arguing that from
the start, the welfare state adopted a protectionist stance against foreign
and colonial workers. What accounts for this?
The abolition of slavery in Africa was accompanied by the scramble for
the African continent and what Lenin and traditional Marxist writers used
to call “imperialism.” More recently, historians of Africa have tended to
present this history differently: it was, to be sure, a form of imposition by
the European powers, but at the same time, the Europeans were forced to
take into account the local actors, who were far less passive than they had
been portrayed in Marxist literature.52 We will bring out the tensions
between Western notions of labor, freedom and abolition and the multiple
practices in use in the various regions of Africa. Abolition was definitely
not an indigenous African concept53; masters could free slaves through
manumission; slaves could sometimes redeem themselves.54 This book will
show that these practices were related to the ones in previous periods,55
notably to the fact that the expansion and management of labor in Africa
were supported by the abolition of slavery in India and the Indian Ocean
and the introduction of indentured immigration, as well as the forms of
sovereignty in the colonial context.56 We will pay special attention to
French Equatorial Africa, which was described by French colonial elites at
the turn of the century as the Cinderella of French colonial possessions.57
Here French attitudes were the most brutal, profits were low, control over
the local population was weak and legal rights for the local population—
already limited in other colonies—were almost non-existent. Yet the limits
of European abolitionism in Africa testify not only to those of imperialism
but also to a broader connection between neocolonialism and the trans-
mutation of capitalism in Europe itself, notably, the second industrial rev-
olution and the emergence of the welfare state. We will show that new
rules more favorable to working people in France (and Britain as well)
purposely excluded colonial “subjects” who were considered too back-
ward to comply with them correctly. In fact, as we will see, companies
operating in Africa were convinced they could not assume the same cost of
labor as in France because indigenous labor was less productive. Labor
unions, on the other hand, had just been admitted to the political arena
and they were negotiating better conditions for workers than at any time
since the industrial revolution. Thus, while they criticized colonialism,
they also thought that immigration should be stopped and the new wel-
fare benefits could not be extended to colonial labor. Their opposition was
based on two concerns: first, they saw immigrants as competitors of the
national labor force, who would consequently be underpaid; and second,
they feared that unions would lose the difficult negotiations with capital-
ists and the government if they included all labor—national and colonial—
in the new welfare project.
To sum up, all the chapters show the reciprocal though asymmetrical
connections between Western Europe (especially Britain and France) and
India, Africa and the Indian Ocean, and certain parts of them in particular.
This approach demands that we specify our sources and methods of
analysis.
Sources and Power

Our work is based on three main categories of sources: archives of colonial
institutions and main actors; the archives of estates and plantations; and
judicial archives. On the whole, these sources testify to the mediation of
scribes, middlemen and judges due to the slow acquisition of literacy
12 A. STANZIANI
uring the period under study. The general process of the passage from
d
the oral to the written world expresses the gradual domination of some
social groups over others and some societies over others.58 In colonial
societies, writing was central to the expression of colonial authority, which
was reflected in ethnography, political administration59 and in legal codifi-
cation.60 At the same time, the richness of the documents and their signifi-
cant number demonstrate that the conventional opposition between the
literate elites and “the others” was already on the wane in the nineteenth
century, judging by, among others, the magnificent works by Jeffrey
Brooks on Russia,61 Pier Larson and Clare Anderson on the Indian
Ocean,62 and the numerous collections of letters and songs written by
English sailors.63 These sources stand as unique testimonials and examples
of an important form of self-expression. They are not the only ones. The
correspondence between estate owners, shipbuilders, captains, concession
companies and institutions offers enlightening perspectives: these sources
reveal, for example, how hard it was for these “hegemonic” actors to coor-
dinate their actions due to lack of information as well as divergent inter-
ests. No doubt their voice carried more weight than that of the laborers,
but they were often divided, as the archives of estates and plantations in
India, Africa and the Indian Ocean show. Through these documents, we
can grasp how estate owners, planters and concession companies evaluated
their workforce, kept track of their expenses, recorded breaches of con-
tract and translated them into days of labor and/or monetary penalties,
gave laborers permission to engage in commerce or to marry, and so on.
On the island of Mauritius, landowners had to choose between managing
their estates directly and employing an overseer. We will see that they cal-
culated profitability according to race (i.e. the attitude of Africans towards
work compared to that of Chinese and Indians) and sex. The justification
for these differences was based on the real or presumed productivity of the
laborers as well as their obedience and subordination within the estate
power structure. The plantation archives reveal the conflicts that arose
among estate owners, their complicated relationships with colonial author-
ities and the fact that planters were focused solely on extracting as much
extra labor as possible from their workforce with little concern about
medium-term productivity or profitability. Violence and abuse were an
integral part of this world. Runaways, days and hours of absence and ill-
ness, and penalties expressed in monetary terms or days of labor indicate
resistance on the part of laborers and the planters’ dogged determination
to regulate and control the production process. The considerable variations
from one estate to the next can be traced to a number of variables: direct
or indirect management, the origin of the laborers, the size of the estate,
contract length, and so on. The penalties imposed on immigrants and the
abuses they suffered were rooted not only in an economy of institutional-
ized extortion, but also in an extreme interpretation of the Masters and
Servants standards of colonial law. The goal was to retain an unpaid work-
force for as long as possible. The slow evolution of the world of labor took
place precisely in the relationship between tolerated violence and
extortion.
In French Equatorial Africa, the concessions formed a system of virtual
monopoly supported by the colonial state and supervised mainly by over-
seers rather than by company shareholders. The concession company
archives provide information on how labor was described, named and
used. In theory, the laborers were not slaves, but they were also resolutely
unpaid. No distinction was made between voluntary labor and labor ser-
vice (corvée) in the records of labor performed. In this particular context,
the archives show that items relating to forced recruitment, labor service
and tax payment were all listed under the same heading as “services.”
Contrary to the situation in Mauritius and Reunion Island, in the Congo,
concession companies were encouraged to produce detailed budgetary
accounts for the authorities and shareholders in Paris as well as summary
reports on labor, the recruits’ living and working conditions and any pen-
alties imposed. In contrast to other colonial contexts, in this case penalties
did not require justification. The very fact of being a native and therefore
“indolent” and “insubordinate” was sufficient grounds for punishment.
This book will make wide use of judicial archives. The “effectiveness of
law” reveals an anxiety widely shared among historians and expresses a
particular approach to law. Laws are placed on the statute book but they
could quickly become dead letters. Such laws are said to have little impact
on the “real lives” of most people. Therefore, historians want to know to
what extent laws were enforced. This view misses the point: judicial statis-
tics reveal not how rules affect the behavior of ordinary people, but merely
the extent to which they are formally enforced. As a legal historian has
pointed out, there may, for example, be little enforcement and widespread
disobedience or little enforcement and loss of compliance.64 We will dis-
cuss this methodological question at length in the next chapter. For now,
suffice it to say that in studying “law in action” we must keep in mind that
the amount of litigation does not indicate the impact of rules on “real
life,” but rather the extent to which people could access the means to
14 A. STANZIANI
enforce their legal rights.65 The sources often show interactions between
multiple authorities—overseers, estate owners, and so forth; and interme-
diaries, local communities, chiefs, and laborers. We will examine how the
law was used in concrete situations, by whom and what impact it had on
labor and social inequalities. We will see that, in the end, unequal rights,
ordinary violence and coercion were part and parcel of everyday life. But
why? How can we possibly explain persistent legal, political, economic and
social inequalities despite the abolitionist acts and the French, the American
and the Haitian revolution? Why did coercion, violence and forced labor
outlive not only abolitionism but also technical progress and the industrial
revolution?
To answer these questions, before moving on to discuss empirical evi-
dence, we need to say a few words about approaches and methods.
Categories such as coercion, power, rights and freedom address the deli-
cate balance between ahistorical concepts arising from economics, sociol-
ogy, political science and philosophy, on the one hand, and historical
materials on the other. The next chapter will be devoted to examining how
these two perspectives can be reconciled. We aim to make a convincing
case for our approach, which consists in seeing categories “in action”,
understanding what they meant in their historical context and how they
evolved in the hands of the actors themselves. We are not giving up the
dialogue with social sciences, quite the contrary; we are inserting these
disciplinary perspectives into appropriate historical contexts.”
Notes
1. ANOM FM SM SG/Reu c 382 d 3323.
2. Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848 (London:
Verso, 1988); Gwyn Campbell, Alessandro Stanziani, eds., Bonded Labour
and Debt in the Indian Ocean (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013);
William Gervase Clarence-Smith, ed., The Economics of the Indian Ocean
Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London: Frank Cass, 1989);
Seymour Drescher, Abolitions. A History of Slavery and Antislavery
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Martin Klein, ed.,
Breaking the Chains. Slavery, Bondage and Emancipation in Modern Africa
and Asia (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993).
3. British Library (BL), IOR (Indian Office records), Records of the
Settlement of Aden, R/20/A/508, 1878.
4. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Le Congo (AEF) au temps des grandes com-
pagnies concessionnaires, 1898–1930 (Paris-Le Haye: Mouton, 1972); Paul
Lovejoy, Transformations of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2000); Suzanne Miers, Richard Roberts, eds., The End of Slavery in
Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988); Paul Lovejoy,
Transformations of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
5. Useful bibliographies: Frederick Cooper, A. McGuinness, Thomas Holt,
and Rebecca Scott, Societies after Slavery. A Select Annotated Bibliography
of Printed Sources on Cuba, Brazil, British Colonial Africa, South Africa
and the British West Indies (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press,
2004); Marcel Dorigny, eds., A Historical Guide to World Slavery (New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Joseph C. Miller,
Slavery and Slaving in World History: A Bibliography, 1900–1996 (Armonk,
NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999); Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les traites négrières
(Paris: Gallimard, 2004).
6. Drescher, Abolitions.
7. Moses Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York: Viking
Press, 1980), Claude Meillassoux, Anthropologie de l’esclavage (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1986); Orlando Patterson, Slavery and
Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982); James Watson, ed., Asian and African Systems of Slavery
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980).
9. Tom Brass and Marcel van der Linden, eds., Free and Unfree Labor: The
Debate Continues (Berne: Peter Lang, 1997); Alessandro Stanziani, ed.,
Labor, Coercion and Economic Growth in Eurasia, 17th–20th Centuries
(Leiden: Brill, 2012); Marcel van der Linden, ed., Workers of the World
(Leiden: Brill, 2008); Stanley Engerman, ed., Terms of labor (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1998).
10. Just a few references: Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2016); Dominic Sachsenmeier, Global
Perspectives on Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011); J.R. McNeill, Kenneth Pomeranz, eds., The Cambridge World
History, Vol. 7, parts 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2015). Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Aux origines de l’histoire globale (Paris:
Collège de France/Fayard, 2014).
11. Samuel Moyn, Andrew Sartori, eds., Global Intellectual History (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2013). Christopher Bayly, The Birth of
the Modern World, 1780–1914 (London: Blackwell, 2004); John Darwin,
After Tamerlane. The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400–2000 (London:
Penguin Book, 2007); Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the
World. A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2014); Jane Burbank, Frederick Cooper, Empires in
16 A. STANZIANI
World History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). Sebastian

Conrad, What is Global History? (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2016).
12. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Du Tage au Gange au XVIe siècle. Une conjonc-
ture millénariste à l’échelle eurasiatique,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences
Sociales, 2001, 51–84; “Connected Histories. Notes Towards a
Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia”, Modern Asian Studies, 31, 3
(1997): 735–762.
13. Drescher, Abolitions. David Armitage, Michael Braddick, eds., The British
Atantic World, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). On
the unity of the British Empire: Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the nation,
1707–1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
14. On the distinctiveness of the Atlantic compared to the Indian Ocean:
William Gervase Clarence-Smith, ed., The Economics of the Indian Ocean
Slave Trade (London: Frank Cass, 1989); Gwyn Campbell, ed., The
Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London: Frank
Cass, 2004); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–
1700: A Political and Economic History (New York: Longman, 1993);
Edward Alpers, Ivory and Slaves: Changing Patterns of International Trade
in East and Central Africa to the Later Nineteenth Century (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975); Abdul Sheriff, Slaves,
Spices and Ivory in Zanzibar: Integration of an East African Commercial
Empire into the World Economy, 1770–1873 (London: James Currey, 1987);
Robert Harms, Bernard K. Freamon, David W. Blight, Indian Ocean
Slavery in the Age of Abolition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
15. On the long history of the Indian Ocean, among the others: Janet Abu-
Lughod, Before European Hegemony. The World System A.D. 1250–1350
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); André Wink, Al-Hind, The
Making of Indo-Islamic World, 3 volumes (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Philippe
Beaujard, Les mondes de l’Océan indien (Paris: Colin, 2012).
16. Richard Allen, European Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean (Athens, Ohio:
Ohio University Press, 2015); Edward Alpers, The Indian Ocean in World
History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Michael
Pearson, The Indian Ocean (New York: Routledge, 2003); Abdul Sheriff,
The Indian Ocean. Oceanic Connections and the Creation of New Societies
(Hurst: 2014); Richard Allen, European Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean
(Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2015).
18. Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth Century India: The
British in Bengal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
19. Robert Conrad, Children of God’s Fire (University Park, PA: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984).
20. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 (Freedom

and Southern History Project, University of Maryland, 1985–2013);
Gavin Wright, Old South New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy
after the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Steven Hahn, A
Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from
Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge: MA, Harvard University Press,
2003); Eric Foner, Reconstruction: Americas’s Unfinished Revolution,
1863–1867 (New York: Harper 2002, orig. 1988).
21. H.V. Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke, John Reid, eds., Britain’s Oceanic Empire.
Atlantic and the Indian Ocean World c. 1550–1850 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012). In particular, see chapters by Robert
Travers and Philip Stern.
22. Just a few references in a bourgeoning literature: Sugata Bose, A Hundred
Horizon. The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2006); Donna Gabaccia, Dirk Hoerder, eds.,
Connecting Seas and Connecting Ocean Rims. Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific
Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s to the 1930s (Leiden:
Brill, 2011); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (New York: Kopf, 2015);
Bowen, Mancke, Reids, Britain’s Oceanic Empire.
23. Alessandro Stanziani, Bondage. Labor and Rights in Eurasia, 17th–20th
centuries (New York: Berghahn, 2014); Sailors, Slaves and Immigrants in
the Indian Ocean World, c. 1750–1914 (New York: Palgrave, 2014).
24. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard Eaton, eds., Slavery and South Asian
History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Dharma Kumar,
“Colonialism, Bondage, and Caste in British India”, in Martin Klein, ed.,
Breaking the Chains. Slavery, Bondage, and Emancipation in Modern
Africa and Asia (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1993):
112–130; Gyan Prakash, Bonded histories. Genealogies of Labor Servitude in
Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Jan
Breman, Labor Bondage in West India (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007).
25. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1959). Martin Moir, Douglas Peers, Lynn Zastoupil, eds., J.S. Mill’s
Encounter with India (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999);
Bhikhu Parekh, “The Narrowness of Liberalism from Mill to Ralws”,
Times Literary Supplement, Feb. 25, 1994: 11–13; Uday Singh Mehta,
Liberalism and Empire. A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal
Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Jennifer Pitts, A
Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
26. Andrea Major, Slavery, Abolitionism and Empire in India, 1772–1843
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
It was then announced that the chosen few were to muster at
Brescia to meet the officers appointed to act as censors and to
chaperon them during a tour of the Front, which was to occupy six or
seven weeks, and which would cover at least 3,000 kilometres.
From Rome to Brescia is quite a long journey, via Milan, where
one has to pass a night.
There was quite a big gathering at the reception of correspondents
in the quaint little Town Hall where we assembled, as, in spite of the
weeding-out process which had taken place in Rome, no fewer than
forty-one papers were represented—twenty-six Italian, six French,
seven English, and two Swiss.
As was to be expected, Italian journalism was widely represented.
It had no less than twenty-six correspondents, and every town of
importance in Italy appeared to have sent someone.
I cannot recall the names of all the talented fellows who had been
despatched from every corner of the Peninsula to record the doings
on the Italian Front.
First and foremost, of course, was Luigi Barzini, without whom the
assemblage would have been quite incomplete, as he is probably
the most popular of press writers in the world to-day. In Italy, in fact,
he is a sort of institution, and it is certainly no exaggeration to state
that he is as well-known by sight as the King or General Cadorna.
Then there were Benedetti, Baccio Bacci, Fraccaroli, Gino Piva,
Giovanni Miceli, and Aldo Molinari, the black and white artist and
photographer, to cite only a few names in the brilliant attroupement
of Italian journalistic talent.
The French Press had six representatives: the Temps, Jean
Carrère, one of the best known and most popular of foreign
correspondents, who speaks Italian like his mother tongue; the Petit
Parisien, Serge Basset; the Echo de Paris, Jules Rateau; the
Journal, Georges Prade; the Illustration, Robert Vaucher; and the
Petit Marseillais, Bauderesque. As genial and typically French a crew
as one could meet anywhere.
The English Press was also well to the fore. The Times, as the
most powerful of British journals on the continent, was appropriately
represented by a giant in stature, W. Kidston McClure, as amiable
and erudite a gentleman as ever stood six feet eight inches upright in
his socks, and who, by reason of his great height, raised The Times
a head and shoulders above the rest of us.
W. T. Massey was the Daily Telegraph, a good and solid
representative of the older type of modern journalism; J. M. N.
Jeffries the Daily Mail young man, a slender stripling with brains, and
bubbling over with a sort of languid interest in his work, but who, in
his immaculate grey flannels and irreproachable ties, somehow gave
the impression of just going on or coming off the river rather than
starting on a warlike expedition; Martin Donohoe, the Daily
Chronicle, the very antithesis of Jeffries, burly and energetic, and in
every way a typical representative of Radical journalism, which was
further represented by Ernest Smith of the Daily News.
Gino Calza Bedolo, one of the youngest and most talented of
rising Italian journalists was “lent” to the Morning Post for this
occasion by his paper, the Giornale d’Italia, and a very able and
spirited representative did he prove, as the readers of the Morning
Post must have found.
And lastly, the Illustrated London News, by your humble servant,
sole representative of English pictorial journalism with the Italian
Army in the Field.
There were no Americans, as with the somewhat curious
exception of the two Swiss, only the allied nations were admitted. I
may add that everyone had to wear a white band round his coat
sleeve bearing the name of the paper he represented.
We were received by General Porro, Sub-Chief of the Italian
General Staff, on behalf of the Generalissimo, and he made a cordial
speech of welcome, in which he introduced us to the officers of the
censorship and detailed the arrangements that had been made to
enable the correspondents to see as much as possible of the
operations.
Everything for our big journey had been planned out with true
Italian thoroughness, even to providing every one of us with a set of
large and reliable maps, whilst on the head of giving permission to
see all we desired there was no cause for complaint, as we were to
be allowed to go everywhere along the Front; the only reason for
disappointment being in the information that immediately after the
tour was finished we should be obliged to leave the war zone until
further orders.
It was therefore to be a modified version of the modern method of
shepherding the war-correspondents as initiated by the Japanese in
the Russo-Japanese War; however, the latitude given as to freedom
of action was very generous.
Censorships were established at important centres such as
Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Belluno, and Udine, and visits to the
various positions along the Front within fairly easy distance of these
places were allowed.
The Correspondents were expected to have their own motor cars,
and, of course, pay all expenses, but the Government supplied
horses or mules for the mountaineering work whenever necessary. It
had been made known in Rome that we should have to provide our
own transport, so there had been a general clubbing together with a
view to sharing cars and thus dividing up the expenses which were
bound to be heavy. Little coteries were thus formed, and, as might
have been anticipated, the three nationalities were segregated.
When I had got to Rome I found the car-parties were already
formed, and there was no room for me amongst the English, but I
was lucky enough to be introduced to two very nice young fellows,
Italians, Gino Calza Bedolo, of the Giornale d’Italia, and Aldo
Molinari, of the Illustrazion Italiana, who gladly let me take a share in
their car, as they both spoke French and were very keen on going
everywhere and seeing all there was to see. I felt I had really fallen
on my feet and was going to have an interesting time, and so it
turned out, as will be seen.
The array of correspondents’ cars was quite imposing, and as
most of them were packed full up with baggage and decorated with
the national flag of the occupants the effect may be imagined. It was
certainly a memorable occasion for Brescia, and a crowd assembled
outside the Town Hall to watch the strange scene.
The utmost cordiality sprang up immediately, not only amongst the
Correspondents but with the Censors also, who were all officers
selected for their thorough knowledge of French and English, and as,
of course, it was also necessary that they spoke these languages
fluently, this in itself helped not a little to establish at once a friendly
relationship between us all.
The good fellowship shown by the Italian journalists towards their
French and English confrères was quite remarkable from the very
start. On the evening of the day of the reception at Brescia they
invited us to a banquet to celebrate the occasion, and gave us a
delightful accueil and a splendid dinner. Belcredi, Vice-President of
the Italian Association of Journalists, was in the chair, and made a
great speech, in which he expressed the pleasure of himself and his
confrères at meeting us at Brescia, and emphasizing the sincerity of
the friendship between Italy and the Allies.
Jean Carrère, of the Temps, and McClure, of The Times,
responded eloquently in Italian on behalf of the French and English
correspondents, after which all formality ceased and the utmost
camaraderie ensued, although we had only known each other a few
hours it was also already like a gathering of old friends. It was an
evening to be remembered and of the happiest augury, as will be
seen.
CHAPTER VII
Brescia—Rough sketch of arrangements—A printed itinerary of tour

—Military passes—Rendezvous on certain dates—The “off-days”—
Much latitude allowed—We make a start—Matutinal hour—First
experience of freedom of action—Like schoolboys let loose—In the
valley of Guidicaria—First impression of trenches on mountains—A
gigantic furrow—Encampments of thousands of soldiers—Like the
great wall of China—Preconceived notions of warfare upset—
Trenches on summits of mountains—A vast military colony—Pride of
officers and men in their work—Men on “special” work—“Grousing”
unknown in Italian Army—Territorials—Middle-aged men—“Full of
beans”—Territorials in first line trenches—Modern warfare for three-
year-olds only—Hardy old mountaineers—Heart strain—The road
along Lake Garda—Military preparations everywhere—War on the
Lake—The flotilla of gun-boats—The Perils of the Lake—A trip on
the “Mincio” gun-boat—I make a sketch of Riva—A miniature
Gibraltar—Desenzano—Nocturnal activity of mosquitoes—Return to
Brescia—Something wrong with the car—Jules Rateau of the Echo
de Paris—Arrange excursion to Stelvio Pass—A wonderful motor trip
—The Valley of Valtellino—The corkscrew road—Bormio—The Staff
Colonel receives us—Permits our visiting positions—Village not
evacuated—Hotel open—Officers’ table d’hôte—We create a mild
surprise—Spend the night at hotel.
CHAPTER VII
One was not long realizing that it would have been impossible to
have obtained a real conception of the terrific character of the
mountain warfare and the indefatigable work of the soldiers if one
had not been enabled to see it for oneself at close quarters.
A better starting point than Brescia for an extended tour of the
whole of the Front would have been difficult to find, as it commands
comparatively easy access to the principal positions in this sector.
With a reliable car and no “speed limit” the radius you could cover in
a day was remarkable as we soon discovered.
It may possibly be of interest at this juncture to give a rough sketch
of the “arrangements” that we found had been made for us by the
Headquarters Staff. A printed itinerary was given to each
correspondent, from which he could gather at a glance the
programme, subject only to occasional modifications as events might
warrant, for every day of the tour.
The first impression, of course, was that we were to be on a sort of
“personally conducted tour,” and no little disappointment ensued, but
it was soon found that, although you had to adhere to it in its main
points, there was really not any irksome restriction, as will be seen.
The scheme briefly was that the whole party should assemble at
certain dates in the towns where Press Censorship Headquarters
were established, and then officers were detailed to accompany the
different parties to the positions along the Front nearest to these
centres in order to explain the nature of the operations going on, and
to give any other information required.
Salvo condotti, i.e., military passes, were issued to everyone;
these passes were for use on the road and in the positions, and had
to be renewed at each censorship, otherwise they were valueless.
Although therefore it was obligatory to present yourself at all these
points de repère at certain dates, you could choose your own road to
get to them and halt where you pleased en route.
The “off-days,” when you were not officially visiting the positions,
were to give you the opportunity of writing your articles and
submitting them to the Censor, as obviously nothing could be posted
without the official visé, though, of course, this did not prevent you
from getting off as soon as you were through with him and had
received your fresh permit and making for the next stopping place.
The latitude the arrangement gave to each car was demonstrated
at once. We were booked to remain in Brescia for eight days, during
which period there were to be no “official” excursions anywhere. Our
passes were handed us, and we were free to go where we pleased
so long as we turned up on time at Verona, the next stopping place.
The reason for this pleasing relaxation at the very commencement
of the tour did not transpire; perhaps it was an oversight when the
programme was drawn up; anyhow, my companions suggested our
taking advantage of it and getting away from Brescia as soon as
possible and making for the nearest positions. So we started off the
next morning at the matutinal hour of 5 o’clock.
We had somehow thought our idea was quite original, but we
found that several of our confrères had gone off even earlier than us,
but in another direction; we therefore had the road we had chosen all
to ourselves.
As there was no particular reason for us to return that day, we
decided to put up somewhere for the night, and took our handbags
with us. The zone of operations we were going to is a popular region
for tourists in peace time, so there was no fear of not finding lodgings
somewhere.
It was a glorious summer morning, and as we sped along in the
invigorating air through sleepy, picturesque villages and wide tracts
of tranquil country, covered with vines and maize-fields, towards the
distant mountains, it was difficult to realize that we were not on a
holiday jaunt but on our way to scenes of war.
To me especially the feeling of entire freedom of action was
particularly delightful after the anxious weeks I had spent in Udine
and on the Isonzo front, when the mere sight of a carabinieri would
make me tremble in my boots for fear I was going to be arrested.
Now, with my salvo condotto safe in my pocket and my
correspondent’s “brassard” on my coat sleeve, I could look
carabinieri and all such despots in the face without misgivings of
unpleasant happenings.
There must have been some subtle tonic effect in the atmosphere
that morning, for my companions were equally elated, and we were
positively like three schoolboys let loose: even the chauffeur was
infected by our boisterous spirits, and for the first few miles he
pushed the car along at its top speed with reckless impetuosity.
The firing line we were making for was in the sector comprised
between the Stelvio Pass and the Lake of Garda. In the valley of
Guidicaria we reached the trenches, and had our first impression of
the magnitude of the operations the Italians are undertaking.
What had been accomplished here during the three months since
the war started was en évidence before our eyes. I was fully
prepared from what I had seen on the Udine front for something
equally astonishing in this sector, but I must confess the scenes
before me, now that we were in touch with the troops, filled me with
amazement. The achievements on the middle Isonzo were great, but
here they were little short of the miraculous.
It was almost unbelievable that what we saw was only the work of
three short months. Trenches and gun emplacements confronted
you on all sides.
A sort of gigantic furrow wound through the valley and climbed the
mountain like some prehistoric serpent, till lost to view away up on
the summits more than two thousand metres above; and round
about this fantastic thing were numberless little quaint grey shapes
dotted here and there on the rocks, and often in positions so steep of
access that you wondered how they got up there at all, and for what
purpose.
These were the encampments of the thousands of Italian soldiers
who have accomplished all this marvel of mountain warfare, and in
the teeth of the Austrians and of nature as it were as well, and have
carried the line of entrenchments across wooded hills, meadows,
torrents and snow-clad slopes.
It is safe to assert that, with the exception perhaps of the great
wall of China, never before in the history of warfare have operations
of such magnitude been undertaken. In many places the trenches
had to be actually blasted out of the rock, and were reinforced with
concrete or anything that military science or nature could offer to
render them still more invulnerable.
As we advanced further into this impressive zone of military
activity you realized that all your preconceived notions of mountain
warfare were upset.
Along the big military highway constructed by Napoleon (see page 45)
To face page 74
Instead of the fighting taking place in the valleys and passes as

one would have expected, the positions and even the trenches were
frequently on the very summits of what one would have taken to be
almost inaccessible peaks and crags, and in some places actually
above the snow-line.
The whole region was positively alive with warlike energy, and
what was only a few months previously a desolate and uninhabited
area, had been transformed into a vast military colony, so to speak.
I was much struck with the pride of both officers and men in their
work, and the evident pleasure it gave them to shew us everything,
though, of course, our salvo condotti acted as open sesame
everywhere. Visitors, still less pressmen, are not always welcome,
especially when they turn up unexpectedly as we did.
Not the least astonishing feature of all these operations to my
mind was the fact that men of branches of the service one does not
usually associate with “special” work were working at it as though to
the manner born.
The Bersaglieri, for instance, who are men from the plains, were
doing sappers’ jobs amongst the rocks, or stationed high up on the
mountains where you would have only expected to find Alpini; but
they were all, I was told, gradually getting accustomed to their
unaccustomed work, and often developing undreamed of
capabilities, while their cheerfulness under the circumstances was
always astounding, even to their own officers.
“Grousing” appears to be an unknown quantity in the Italian Army.
I had a little chat with a sergeant of a Territorial regiment. He spoke
French fluently, and told me he had lived several years in Paris. He
was now in charge of a small detachment in a particularly exposed
spot.
To my surprise I learned that the greater part of his regiment was
composed of men well on in years, as one understands soldier life,
most of them being close on forty, and that in his particular
detachment he had several who were nearer fifty, though they did
not look it. Yet they were as cheery and “full of beans” as the
youngsters, he told me.
The reason for putting men of “territorial” age in first line trenches I
could not manage to ascertain, for however good physically they
may be for their age, one would have thought that their place was in
the rear and that younger men would always have been found in the
van.
It is indisputable that modern warfare is not for “veterans,” but, as
our friend, Rudyard Kipling, would put it, for “three-year olds only,”
for only youth can stand for any length of time the terrific physical
and moral strain it entails.
I learned that there are a few hardy old mountaineers fighting
shoulder to shoulder with the youngsters up on the peaks; but these,
of course, are exceptions such as one will find anywhere, for the
capability of endurance is no longer the same as it was when on the
right side of thirty, and the strain on the heart at these altitudes
especially is enormously increased. But to revert to our excursion.
Our road for some distance skirted the shore of Lake Garda, which
is intersected by the Austrian frontier at its northern end, where the
important fortified town of Riva is situated.
Here again the extraordinary preparedness of Italy was
demonstrated. There were military works everywhere—barricades of
barbed wire and trenches right down to the edge of the water—with
men behind them watching and in readiness for any emergency.
The war had even been carried on to the Lake itself, in the form of
a flotilla of serviceable gun-boats which had made its appearance,
almost miraculously, so it is said, within a few hours of the opening of
hostilities, and practically bottling up the Austrians in their end of the
lake.
This “fleet” was continually out patrolling—night and day and in all
weather. What this means will be realized by anyone who knows
Lake Garda, for there is probably no expanse of water in the world
where navigation is more exposed to sudden peril than here. It bears
the evil reputation of being the most treacherous of Italy’s inland
seas. Owing to its peculiar configuration and entourage of
mountains, tempests arise so unexpectedly that unless a vessel is
handled by an experienced skipper it has but little chance to reach
its port safely if it is caught in one of these Lake Garda hurricanes.
A gale from the North-East will raise waves equal to anything the
open sea can produce. Italy’s inland Navy is therefore exposed to
other perils than the guns of the Austrian batteries.
I was lucky enough to get a trip on the gun-boat “Mincio,” and saw
much of great interest on board. Everything was carried out on
strictly naval lines, so much in fact that one might have imagined
oneself out at sea, this illusion being heightened by the strong wind
blowing at the time and the unpleasantly lumpy seas which kept
breaking over us.
The officers and crews of these boats are all picked men from the
Royal Navy, and I was told that they have taken to their novel duties
with the greatest enthusiasm. The “Mincio” which was of about 150
tons, carried a very useful-looking Nordenfeldt quick-firer, mounted
on the fore-deck, and also a big searchlight apparatus.
There are other boats of the same class, and the little “fleet” had
already given good account of itself, whilst curiously enough, so far it
had escaped entirely scot free from mishap, in spite of the
endeavours of the Austrian gunners.
We steamed up the Lake till we were as near as prudence would
permit to the fortifications which protects Riva, for me to make a
sketch of it, but we did not remain stationary long as may be
imagined.
Seen from the Lake, the fortress of Monte Brioni reminds one
singularly of the Rock of Gibraltar in miniature, and it is said to be so
honeycombed with gun embrasures as to be equally impregnable,
and it is known that this impregnability is further guaranteed by
mining the Lake in its vicinity.
I rejoined my companions in the car at a harbour some distance
down the Lake, and we then made for Desenzano, where we thought
we would spend the night as it was already late. It is a quaint little
town on the lake shore, and we had no difficulty in getting rooms. To
our surprise a very good hotel was open, as every place at first sight
appeared to be shut up since there were no tourists to cater for.
There was no sign of military activity here, as it is many miles from
the Front, but whatever was wanting in this respect was made up for
by the nocturnal activity of the mosquitoes. I don’t think I ever
experienced anything to equal their ferocity anywhere. I have since
been told that Desenzano is notorious, if only by reason of its annual
plague of these pests of the night, and that they are a particular tribe
indigeneous to the place.
We returned to Brescia the following day. Our excursion had been
very pleasant and instructive in every respect, but what we had seen
only whetted one’s appetite for more. Life here in this provincial town
seemed very tame when you remembered what was going on so
comparatively short a distance away.
I should, therefore, have liked to get off again at once into the
mountains, but it was not so easy, and for a reason that admitted of
no argument. Something had gone wrong with the car, so our
chauffeur told us, and it could not be put right for a few days. This
was only what all motorists have continually to put up with, so there
was nothing for it but to grin and bear it.
At this juncture one of my French confrères, Jules Rateau, of the
Echo de Paris, a very jovial fellow, with whom I had become very
friendly, and to whom I had confided my troubles, invited me to go for
a trip with him in his car, his own companion having had to go to
Milan for a few days. I gladly accepted, and we arranged to attempt
to get as far as the positions on the Stelvio Pass. This meant again
staying away a night, as we learned it was far too arduous a journey
to be done in a single day.
Our intention was to make Bormio our first stage, sleep there and
push on to the Stelvio the following day.
It would be impossible to conceive a more wonderful motor trip.
For scenery it is probably unsurpassed in the world. I have never
seen anything to equal it. Our route part of the way went along that
most romantic of lakes Idro. The road, which is magnificent, follows
all the sinuosities of the shore on the very edge of the water, winding
in and out, and in many places passing through tunnels in the cliff-
like rocks.
You somehow had the feeling that one ought not to be on a
warlike expedition in such glorious surroundings, for the grandeur of
it all overwhelmed you.
Further on we passed through the valley of Valtellino, famous for
its grape vines, and for several miles we were driving past the
curious terrace-like vineyards in the mountain side, looking so
peaceful in the glorious sunshine. Then, as we gradually ascended,
the scenery changed, and we were in amongst gaunt, forbidding
mountains, towering above the road on either side.
All trace of cultivation disappeared by degrees; nature here no
longer smiled, grim pine forests made black patches against the
rugged slopes; there were traces of early snow on the high peaks,
and the air was becoming chilly. The contrast with the tender beauty
of the lower part of the valley was impressive in the extreme.
We were now approaching the area of military operations, and
occasionally we heard in the far distance the dull boom of guns. The
ascent became steeper, and at length the road left the valley and
began to climb up through the mountains by a series of corkscrew
turns that are so familiar in mountainous districts, but here the
acclivity was so steep that the turns were correspondingly numerous,
and it was a veritable nightmare of a road.
Our car, a Daimler of an old model, with a big, heavy tonneau,
soon began to feel the test and commenced to grunt and hesitate in
a manner that was not at all pleasant, considering that we were on
the edge of a precipice and there was no parapet.
The way the chauffeur had to literally coax the panting engine at
each turn makes me shudder even now to think of—every time I fully
expected it would fail to negotiate it, and we should go backwards
and be over the edge before he could put the break on, so little
space was there to spare. The only thing to do was to sit tight and
trust to luck. However, we reached the top safely, and at length
arrived at Bormio.
We had been advised that the first thing to do was to ascertain the
whereabouts of the commanding officer of the division and get his
permission to visit the positions, as it lay entirely within his discretion.
Our Salvo Condotti being subject to such restrictions as might be
deemed necessary at any place.
There was no difficulty in discovering the Headquarter Staff
building; it was a short distance from the town, in a big, new hotel
and hydropathic establishment, with fine park-like grounds. In peace
time it must have been a delightful place to stay in.
The General was away, but we were received by a Staff Colonel,
who spoke French. On seeing our papers he made no objection to
giving us permits to visit any position in this sector, and even went so
far as to suggest that we should go the following day up to the fort on
the Forcola close to the Stelvio Pass, and that an Alpino could
accompany us as guide. It was probable that we should be under fire
a good part of the way, he added, but what we should see would be
sufficiently interesting to compensate for the risk.
We gladly accepted his suggestion, so it was arranged we should
start early the next day as we had a stiff climb before us. We then
went back to the village.
It was getting towards nightfall, and the narrow main street
recalled vaguely Chamonix. It was crowded with Alpine soldiers, and
in the dusk they conveyed some impression of mountaineering
tourists, the illusion being heightened by the clank of their hobnailed
boots on the cobbles and the alpenstoks they all carried.
The village had not been evacuated as most of them are near the
Front, so there were women and children about. The principal hotel
was open, and we got two good rooms for the night, and what was
more to the point, for we were both famished after our long drive,
one of the best dinners I have had anywhere in Italy, the big cities
included. It was a table d’hôte for the officers, but we were informed
there was “probably no objection” to our dining at it.
Our appearance in the dining room created no little surprise, as we
were the only civilians present, our Press badges especially exciting
much comment, as this was the first time that correspondents had
been here.
Following the lead of my colleague, I bowed first to the Colonel,
who was at the head of the table, then to the rest of the officers
present, and we sat down at a small table by ourselves, amidst the
somewhat embarrassing attention we were attracting. This soon
wore off, however, as Italian officers are gentlemen not Huns, and it
was evidently realised that we had permission to come to Bormio or
we should not have ventured to be there.
CHAPTER VIII
On the summit of the Forcola—We start off in “military” time—Our

guide—Hard climbing—Realize we are no longer youthful—Under
fire—Necessary precautions—Our goal in sight—An awful bit of
track—Vertigo—A terrifying predicament—In the Forcola position—A
gigantic ant-heap—Unique position of the Forcola—A glorious
panorama—The Austrian Tyrol—The three frontiers—Shown round
position—Self-contained arsenal—Lunch in the mess-room—
Interesting chat—The “observation post”—The goniometre—Return
to Bormio—Decide to pass another night there—An invitation from
the sergeants—Amusing incident.
CHAPTER VIII
The summit of the Forcola is only nine kilometres as the crow flies
from Bormio, but we were told that it meant covering at least three
times that distance to reach our destination, and the hard climb
would make it appear much more.
We therefore got off in military time in the morning, and went a bit
of the way in the car till we came to a sort of wayside châlet, quite
Swiss in appearance, where a detachment of Alpini was stationed.
On presenting our letter from the Colonel at Headquarters, the
Officer in command ordered one of his men to accompany us, so
leaving the car here to await our return, we started off without delay.
Our guide, a brawny and typical young Italian mountaineer, leading
the way at a pace that soon compelled us to ask him to slow down a
bit.
We had been advised, as we were unaccustomed to climbing, not
to “rush” it at first, as we had at least two hours of strenuous
plodding to reach the fort, and it was a very hot day, which would
make us feel the strain the more.
To our athletic cicerone this was evidently but an ordinary walk in
the day’s work; in fact, so light did he make of it that he obligingly
insisted on carrying our overcoats and other paraphernalia in spite of
his being encumbered with his rifle, ammunition belt and heavy
cape.
We were not long in discovering that the stiffness of the climb we
were undertaking had not been exaggerated, and also that we were
neither of us as young as we had been. This latter point in particular
I recollect was irritatingly brought home to me at one time when we
were really making splendid progress as we thought. Some Alpini, in
full marching order, caught us up and passed us as easily as if we
had been standing still. However, it was no good being discouraged
because we were no longer youthful, and we continued to make our
way slowly but surely up the winding rocky track.
We had got about half way, and so far there had been nothing in
the nature of an incident, and no indication whatever that we were
actually right up at the Front and within range of the Austrian
batteries, for a dead silence had reigned in the mountains all the
morning.
Suddenly, as we were crossing a comparatively level bit of
boulder-strewn ground, the report of a big gun resounded in the still
air, and in a few seconds we heard a wailing sort of shriek
approaching, and an instant after the loud crash of a shell bursting a
short distance away.
We stopped and looked at each other, uncertain what to do as
there was no cover anywhere near. Our guide settled it for us without
a moment’s hesitation.
“The Austrians have seen us, that’s why they have commenced
firing in this direction; they probably think we may be part of a
detachment of troops going up to the fort—we must hurry on, and
with intervals of a couple of hundred yards or so between us.”
There was no time to lose, for whilst he was speaking another
shell burst nearer than the previous one.
So off we went again with the Alpino leading the way. Rateau was
in the centre, and I brought up the rear. Two hundred yards are not
much on the level, but on a steep mountain track the distances are
difficult to estimate, so the soldier was quite out of sight at times from
where I was.
The firing still continued in a desultory manner, shells dropping
aimlessly here and there, with no particular object so far as one
could judge, but probably with the idea of hampering any movements
of troops on the mountain. Meanwhile there was no response
whatever from the Italian batteries. They were letting the Austrians
waste their ammunition since they were so minded.
Our goal at last came into view high above on the summit of a
cyclopean wall of rock and seemingly an inaccessible point to reach.
It looked an awful place to climb up to and only to be tackled by
mountaineers, yet somewhere on that precipitous height there was
surely a means of ascent indistinguishable from below; and so it
proved.
The track now became more and more steep and zig-zag, till at
length the windings terminated, and there appeared a long straight
stretch, going without a break along the face of the bluff, up to the
summit at an angle of at least 60 degrees. Even now when I recall it,
it makes me shudder.
It was certainly not more than a couple of feet in width, and
overhung an abyss hundreds of feet deep. The mere aspect of it
almost gave me vertigo.
Hesitation, however, was out of the question after coming so far;
moreover, I was now quite alone, as my companions had already
reached our destination; I had to go on.
Within a few yards of the top I happened unconsciously to look
down. The effect produced by the sight of the yawning gulf beneath
me was terrifying: a giddiness came over me, my knees began to
tremble, and had I not managed to turn and clutch frantically at a
projecting piece of rock I should have lost my balance and fallen
over.
I shut my eyes and held on for a few minutes, not daring to stir;
then, with a strong effort of will, I pulled myself together sufficiently to
edge along with my face to the rock and grasp hold of some barbed
wire outside the opening leading into the fort; then, of course, I was
safe.
Almost needless to add that when I got inside I did not relate my
perilous experience. You are not supposed to be subject to vertigo
when you tackle mountain climbing; it might prove awkward for your
comrades.
A wonderful spectacle confronted me as I looked round. The
Forcola is nearly 10,000 feet high, and here, right on the summit,

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Labor on the Fringes of Empire: Voice,

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Labor on the Fringes

Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies

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© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: © TAO Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

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In addition, I greatly benefited from the valuable suggestions of two

1 Introduction: Progress and (Un)Freedom 1

2 Coercion, Resistance and Voice 31

3 Utilitarianism and the Abolition of Slavery in India 67

India, Britain and the Empire: Slavery and Sovereignty

4 Slavery, Abolition and the Contractarian Approach

5 How Do You Say “Free” in French? 177

6 The Welfare State and the Colonial World, 1880–1914:

7 Conclusion: Voice, Exit and the Law in Historical

Table 4.1 Male workers on estates directly managed by their owners,

Introduction: Progress and (Un)Freedom

© The Author(s) 2018 1

commercial center on the way to Marseille and London, which were

Labor and Freedom: Perspectives

followed by the French and Haitian revolutions and the abolitionist

the American South.20 Sovereignty was fragmented and under negotiation

these approaches, we intend to show that it is a mistake to oppose India to

Mauritius Island: Immigrants and the Limits of Contractualism

immigration was essentially a form of disguised slavery.36 Even worse,

s­ overeignty—indirect rule—and labor institutions).49 The slave trade had

Sources and Power

Lovejoy, Transformations of Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University

World History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). Sebastian

20. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 (Freedom

Brescia—Rough sketch of arrangements—A printed itinerary of tour

Instead of the fighting taking place in the valleys and passes as

On the summit of the Forcola—We start off in “military” time—Our

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6 The Welfare State and the Colonial World, 1880–1914:

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