Mrinalini Sinha, “The Abolition of Indenture and the Space-Time of Global History”

Mrinalini Sinha, University of Michigan

This talk offers a series of reflections on the challenges and limits of contemporary frameworks of global history through a detailed study of the movement for the abolition of indenture. The abolition of the indentured labor system, which had been put in place in the aftermath of Atlantic slavery to substitute emancipated African slaves with indentured Indians on colonial plantations overseas, provides a challenge for existing global historical frameworks that tend to privilege space over time. This talk makes the case for a return to the “temporal,” through an exploration of the concept of an “interregnum,” to understand the much-neglected movement for the abolition of indenture or what following the abolition of Atlantic slavery has been called the “second abolition.”