In this seminar, we will discuss the arrival of new migrants from China and India in the Caribbean (focusing on Trinidad especially), including the local consequences of this emigration.

Seminar questions

• How were the lives of Asian immigrants to the Caribbean controlled and how was this resisted?
  
• What were relations like between Asian immigrants and different groups already present in the Caribbean? What factors shaped them?
  
• Did migrants from Asia preserve their cultural forms in the Caribbean? How did they shape local societies?

Required reading

Everyone should read the following primary source:

Sewell, William Grant, The Ordeal of Free Labor in the British West Indies (New York, 1861), pp 117-134. [Available from Google Books]

In addition, everyone should read two of the following:

Brereton, Bridget, Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad, 1870-1900 (Cambridge, 1979), chapter 9.

Cross, Malcolm, 'East Indian-Creole relations in Trinidad and Guiana in the Late Nineteenth Century', in David Dabydeen and Brinsley Samaroo (eds), Across the Dark Waters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 14-38.

Look Lai, Walton, 'The Chinese Indentureship in the British West Indies and its Aftermath', in Andrew R. Wilson (ed), The Chinese in the Caribbean (Princeton, NJ, 2004), pp. 3-24.

Further reading

See Reading List for the lecture on 'New West Indians'.