Violence, Resilience and the ‘Coolie’ Identity: Life and Survival on Ships to the Caribbean, 1834–1917

This essay looks at the migrants’ long journey from India to the plantation colonies, and examines the life on board ships in great detail. In doing this, it makes the overall argument that the oceanic journey was of great significance in the formation of the ‘coolie’ identity, as a lot of the ‘emotional work’ that was required to transform the migrant into a ‘coolie’ took place in the depots and on board ships. In this sense, life on ships was both a microcosm of, as well as a precursor to, the life on plantations. The essay also sees violence – not just in its physical or ‘spectacular’ forms, but also in its routinised forms – as a crucial agent that broke the migrants’ old sense of self, allowing them to reassemble the fragments and assume the ‘coolie’ identity.