Bonded Labour

After slavery, forms of indentured labor met global capitalism's need for cheap, disposable labor. The famous "coolie trade" - mainly Asian laborers transferred to colonial Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas, as well as to the Arab world - was one of the largest migration movements in global history. Indentured contract workers are perhaps the most revealing example of bonded labor in the grey area between the poles of chattel slavery and free' wage labor. This interdisciplinary volume addresses historically and regionally specific cases of unfree labor relations from the eighteenth century to the present day.