Sources for Analyzing the Social and Economic Contexts of the Diaspora on the Coromandel Coast

Abstract

Terms such as bonded labor, enslaved labor, and indentured labor are sometimes used interchangeably to describe the variety of conditions in which marginalized workers found themselves on the Coromandel Coast between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. While this might be an issue of analytical precision, it is also an issue of the many linguistic and material sources of evidence used to describe labor in Tamil Nadu. This chapter explores the varied sources—archaeological, archival, and literary—that inform the context in which members of the South Indian diaspora migrated, either through their own volition or otherwise, to varied ports in the Indian Ocean. Taking the Coromandel Coast as its focus of study, this chapter makes three interrelated points: 1) South Indian commercial agricultural and rural industry—such as rice cultivation and textile weaving—played a dynamic role in the political and commercial activities of the Indian Ocean region; 2) there is an archaeological record that documents the long-term contexts and conditions for indenture contracts in the nineteenth century; 3) sources comparable to those used in the historical archaeology of the Atlantic provide a limited view into the contexts of diasporic communities.