Stifled at birth: Private emigration from Bombay to British Guiana in the mid‐nineteenth century

Abstract

The article commences with a general analysis of the labour problems confronting Guianese planters at emancipation and their efforts to tap the seemingly inexhaustible source in India. Its main thrust is to ascertain why, despite repeated clamour by the sugar planters for these invaluable labourers, Indian immigration was confined to the Bengal and Madras Presidencies. It concludes that the attempt to introduce labour from the Bombay Presidency by private enterprise failed not because of a clash of interests between Bombay mill‐owners and colonial planters but purely because the Bombay authorities deplored emigration overseas whatever the economic advantages.