Bits, shillings, and dollars: slavery, indenture, and circulating silver in British Guiana, 1800s–1900s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the use of coins by enslaved and indentured communities in nineteenth-century British Guiana and the visual imagery of these practices. Both Afro-Guianese and Indo-Guianese people appropriated the portability of coins for spiritual and aesthetic purposes as a response to the common experience of a violent plantation society. The development of photography during the migration of Indian indentured labour to British Guiana and the popularisation of the image of Indian indentured women wearing jewellery made from coins as representative of indenture at large, however, has overshadowed this shared history. By charting the afterlife of minted coins across economic, spiritual and aesthetic realms, this article offers a more nuanced understanding of worn silver and the people who wore it.