Publisher's Synopsis
This volume seeks to assuage the notion of East Indian docility and passivity in the Caribbean by demonstrating that they responded resolutely to pressures. Based primarily on documentary evidence at the Public Records Office and the India Office Library and Records in England, the book argues that it was resistance, both overt and covert, rather than accommodation which asserted itself on the plantations in the indenture and post-indenture periods. Stymied by a lack of indigenous leadership and organization, and confronted by a powerful, influential plantocracy and repressive state apparatus, Indian workers had demonstrated consistently that they were not afraid to protest when aggrieved. The nearly 1000 strikes and 54 deaths attested to the militancy. By its concentration on relatively unexplored topics, this study seeks to make a contribution to Guyanese, Caribbean, and imperial history.
