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“Given that work is the primary guarantor of morality and order within liberty….”
[1]Thus begins the decree outlawing vagrancy and begging which accompanied the decree of April 27, 1848 abolishing slavery in all French territories. Indeed, to the government authorities and former enslavers, abolition did not mean the end of the labor-intensive production or low market value of products and foodstuffs destined for exportation to the metropole. In order to maintain this system, two ministerial decrees – that of February 13 and March 27, 1852 – put in place a labor law that limited the mobility of formerly enslaved people in order to compel them to work on the colonial plantations and resorted to “regulated immigration” The strict social controls and labor constraints imposed by these two decrees were reinforced by local orders, such as the one known as Gueydon after the name of the governor who proclaimed it in Martinique in 1855.
Through the framework of “regulated immigration,” which was governed and subsidized by the State, more than 96,000 laborers, both men and women, crossed the oceans (lien vers Charles Dangaix) with 79% coming from India and the rest from Africa and China between 1853 and 1889 to reach a Caribbean colony holding employment contracts lasting five, six, eight, or ten years: more than 10,000 in Guyana, 37,000 in Martinique, and 49,000 in Guadeloupe. According to the terms of their contract, these “immigrants” were required to work on behalf of the person who purchased their contract upon their arrival in the colony and to perform the work that the contract holder, their employer, assigned to them, whatever it might be. In return, the employer owed them a salary, predetermined and set by the State, as well as lodgings, food, clothing, and medical care. An essential characteristic of this system: the contract was fully binding for the “immigrant.” Although fundamental, this condition was not spelled out in their contract. By using this form of forced labor, employers sought to exert downward pressure on the salaries of formerly enslaved people and to counter their social and political demands.
In the first decade, a portion of these “immigrants,” although they were indeed free and had signed up voluntarily as the legislation required, had been misled about the conditions of their employment. Others, 94% of the African “immigrants,” had been purchased by French recruiters from markets selling human beings on the coast of Africa, according to the process known as “ransoming of captives.” The workers-to-be had nothing to say in the matter; they were purchased and this purchase led irrevocably to the imposition of a work contract of ten years to be carried out across the Atlantic – a contract to which they appeared to have entered freely and voluntarily in full knowledge of the terms.
Nonetheless, upon arriving in the colony everyone, regardless of their geographical origin or the mode of their recruitment or hiring, became “immigrants,” a administrative status that placed them outside of common law. They were, moreover, subject to a particularly repressive labor law through which all absences were doubly penalized and which imposed penal sanctions on workers who did not fulfill their contractual obligations. Thus, their conditions of life and work were at best difficult, at worst execrable.
Yet, at the conclusion of their initial contract, a very large majority of workers re-signed. The administration effectively offered only two other options: prove that one has an economic activity or be repatriated, which was a fantasy for many. But they did not possess the means to establish themselves in business and repatriation, although contractually required by the administration, was possible for only a small number.
With the conditions imposed on them, many workers filed complaints, refused to work, or illegally abandoned their place of work or even the colony. For those who remained, when they finally escaped indentured servitude, they retained the status of “immigrant,” limiting a portion of their rights. This status transferred to their children born in the colony, who were subject to it until they reached the age of majority.
Despite being relegated to a subordinate status all their lives, they did not allow themselves to be boxed in and seized rights that were normally forbidden to them, such as the right to vote. Moreover, they rapidly learned the linguistic, cultural, and social codes of the group with whom they spent their days: the people who were formerly enslaved.Facing the sugar crisis of the 1880s, the colonial authorities put an end to the introduction of new “immigrants” to Martinique in 1883 and to Guadeloupe in 1889. For Guyana, the decree was imposed by Great Britain in 1877 in the wake of several scandals involving the mistreatment of “immigrants” from India. Nonetheless, indentured servitude endured well beyond these dates: periods of commitment had not expired, workers continued to re-sign contracts, and, beyond that, for those who stayed on site, the status of “immigrant” followed them until their death.
[1] [1] Décret du 27/04/1848, reproduit dans Schmidt, L’engrenage de la liberté caraïbes – XIXe siècle, 2005, p. 381.
Published in december 2024