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The night represents almost universally a special, liminal or "out of the ordinary" temporal zone with its own meanings, possibilities and dangers, and political, cultural, religious and social implications. Only in the modern era was the night systematically "colonised" and nocturnal activity "normalised," in terms of (industrial) labour and production processes. Although the globalised 24/7 economy is usually seen as the outcome of capitalist modernisation, development and expansion starting in the late nineteenth century, other consecutive and more recent political and economic systems adopted perpetual production systems as well, extending work into the night and forcing workers to work ...
“Coolie” is a generic category for the “unskilled” manual labour. The offering of services for hire had various pre-colonial lineages. In the nineteenth century there was an attempt to recast the term in discursive constructions and material practices for “mobilized-immobilized” labour. Coolie labour was often proclaimed as a deliberate compromise straddling the regimes of the past (slave labour) and the future (free labour). It was portrayed as a stage in a promised transition. The tea plantations of Assam, like many other tropical plantations in South Asia, were inaugurated and formalized during this period. They were initially worked by the locals. In the late 1850s, the local...
This book provides a historical background to the formation of the Indian capitalist class from before British colonial rule in India. It analyses the nature of that class, the ways in which it changed under colonial rule, and the state of independent India; it also sets some of the peculiarities of capitalist organization in India and the ideology of big capital in their historical context. The evolution of the working class in India is analysed in its dialectical interaction with global capital and Indian capitalism. The author challenges the view that the tensions within working class movements caused by caste, communal divisions or gender discrimination are to be attributed to primordial loyalties, emphasizing instead the influence of the deliberate strategies adopted by capitalists and of changes in the structure of global and Indian capitalism. Finally, the book investigates the impact of capital-friendly liberalization on the fortunes of the working class in the Third World.
Presenting a new approach towards the social history of working classes in the imperial context, this book looks at the formation of working classes in Scotland and Bengal. It analyses the trajectory of labour market formation, labour supervision, cultures of labour and class formation between two regional economies – one in an imperial country and the other in a colonial one. The book examines the everyday lives of the jute workers of the imperial nexus, and the impact of the ‘Dundee School’ of Scottish mechanics, engineers and managers who ran the Calcutta jute industry. It goes on to challenge existing theories of imperialism, class formation and class struggle – particularly thos...
This handbook provides an indispensable reference guide to most aspects of the history of India’s railways. The secondary literature is surveyed, primary sources identified, statistical and cartographic data discussed, and a massive bibliography made available.