The Overseer State

Slavery, Indenture and Governance in the British Empire, 1812–1916

Sascha Auerbach

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009315784
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

In this compelling work, Sascha Auerbach offers a bold new historical interpretation of late-stage slavery, its long-term legacies, and its entanglement with the development of the modern state. In the wake of abolition, from the Caribbean to southern Africa to Southeast Asia, a fusion of government authority and private industry replaced the iron chains of slavery with equally powerful fetters of law and regulation. This 'overseer-state' helped move, often through deceptive and coercive methods, millions of Indian and Chinese indentured laborers across Britain's imperial possessions. With a perspective that ranges from Parliament to the plantation, the book brings to light the fascinating and terrifying history of the world's first truly global labor system, those who struggled under its heavy yoke, and the bitter legacies left in its wake.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Maps and Tables
• List of Plantations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Paper Chains for Iron Chains
• 1 “Not Fit for the Enjoyment of Freedom”: Amelioration and the Origins of the Overseer„-State,„ 1812–1834
• 2 “To Go and Look for Law”: Early Responses to the Overseer-State, 1823–1836
• 3 “A Most Imperfect Act of Abolition”: Apprenticeship and Early Indenture in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, 1834–1842
• 4 “A System Entirely Favorable to the Poorer Class of Natives”: Health, Moral Reform, and Coercion in the Indenture System, 1840–1864
• 5 “Man, in His Natural State … Must Either Be Led by Conviction, or by Force”: Magistrates, Workers’ Agency, and State Violence, 1840–1873
• 6 “They Must Know Their Master, and He Must Know Them”: Labor Governance and Sovereignty on the Imperial Frontier in Southeast Asia, 1867–1890
• 7 “They Have Made the Government Arbitrary Enough”: The Decline of the Overseer-State, 1870–1904
• Conclusion: The Persistent Legacies of the Overseer-State
• Bibliography
• Index