About Enslaved Ex-slaves, Uncaptured Contract Coolies and Unfreed Freedmen: Some Notes about ‘Free’ and ‘Unfree’ Labour in the Context of Plantation Development in Southwest India, Early Sixteenth Century–Mid 1990s

Abstract

In the literature on plantation development in Asia, the issue of ‘free’ versus ‘unfree’ labour has been very much debated. To start with, a first group of scholars argues that from the workers' point of view the decision to work on the plantations seems to have been a rational and conscious choice (see for example: Galenson 1984; Emmer 1986). They stress that a high degree of social differentiation in the various Asian societies has made low-class people leave their areas whenever an improvement in their position seemed possible. Most plantation workers came from areas where they had only limited or no access to the means of production and where many of them were indebted to local landlords and/or moneylenders. For low-caste Indian labourers, the opportunity to work on plantations meant a way out of their depressed conditions in their caste-ridden villages.