Searing studies of labour movements
BOOK REVIEW
First, we need to settle a simple question. Who and what do we mean when we use the term labour? For long, it has conjured up the figure of the unionised industrial worker, particularly in this country, although historically he (part of the dominant idea of the worker as a male) has represented a minuscule segment even in the industrialised West. Over recent decades, however, the term has stretched to include the wide spectrum of the working class and all manner of labour relationships, and historians, too, have expanded the scope of their research to encompass the multidimensional identities of workers.
Thus, Labour Matters: Towards Global Histories brings together a range of studies about the labouring poor that cuts across geographies and temporalities. And as good history should, it provides a view from below and exhibits a clear affinity with the experiences of the workers that go beyond the nationalist paradigm. The book is a festschrift for Sabyasachi Bhattacharya and very likely it will make this exceptional economics and social historian who urged researchers to bring to light the submerged histories of the urban poor, the irregularly employed and the ‘sub-proletariat’ proud.
It uses the methodology of anthropology and oral histories to weave together riveting narratives of the working class in different time and spatial zones — the convict labour regime in the Andamans, Chinese migrant workers in Israel, the historical drinking problem of the Chilean working class, the Russian industrial worker of the early 20th century. Even more interesting are the accounts of successful strikes that were launched without the protection of trade unions.
There is a significant focus on migration in this selection because of the great transformational impact it had. South Asian indentured labour, says Marcel van der Linden, the well-known global labour historian and one of the editors of the book, constituted the dominant part of the forced labour regimes of the 19th century. Close to 30 million South Asians were transported across the seas to distant colonies of the British Empire in the century after slavery was legally abolished in 1833. This massive displacement occurred at the same time as the movement of nearly 60 million Europeans to the Americas and Oceania, and one of the outstanding essays here is a fascinating exploration of the contrasting regimes that regulated this cross-current of labour migration.
Anil Persaud’s elegant and searing narrative of the transportation of millions of South Asian coolies to the West Indies and English (white) labour to New Zealand and Australia tells us how the coolie’s body became the site for mapping new medical and administrative knowledge to satisfy with utmost efficiency the plantation industry’s demand for good labour.
His essay, Transformed over Seas: “Medical comforts” aboard Nineteenth-Century Emigrant Ships, details with quiet irony and extensive research how the British turned the enterprise of ferrying of indentured labour from this part of the world to White-owned plantations in the Caribbean into a precise science. Much research was expended by the colonial power on how to feed, house and fruitfully engage the coolies on the voyages which could be quite often a killing journey. Thus, the food they were supplied (Madras diet or Bengal diet?), the exact inches allotted to each man, woman and child on board for sleeping, was calculated on the principle of “minimum light, minimum space, minimum diet and minimum air” to deliver the maximum labour power.
But, notes Persuad, fellow at the International Institute of Social History at Amsterdam, there was a crucial difference between slave labour and indentured workers. Whereas slave labour relied on investing the black body with strength, indentured labour was invested with “knowledge” — of being from the “hardy” agricultural races. All of which brings back uncomfortable memories of how the Nazis used Jewish prisoners as war workers. Resistance of workers to oppressive labour regimes, whether through overt measures or through the expediency of escaping, is explored imaginatively by different writers. Chitra Joshi, associate professor of history at the University of Delhi, analyses the use of convict labour — and it was extensive — to build the vast infrastructure of empire in an essay that weaves together the connected narratives of labour, crime and punishment.
Other essays examine the issue of migration and mobility, both as a form of protest against invidious forms of oppression and exploitation, and as a response to economic pulls. In a more contemporary context, Rafiul Ahmed says migration can also be a strategy of identity formation. His far too short essay on the Musahars of the Middle Gangetic plains makes the claim that migration is not merely a rational economic strategy to push and pull factors, but clearly a distinctive feature of their resistance to the power of the dominant caste.
Is labour history relevant in this globalised age? This volume shows that well-researched micro-historical studies offer an understanding of processes that are important to societies, specially in developing countries.
LABOUR MATTERS
Towards Global Histories
Edited by Marcel van der Linden & Prabhu P Mohapatra
Tulika Books
338 pages; Rs 695