Plantation Archives/Fugitive Archives: Emancipation, Indenture, and Religion in the Caribbean

The year 1838 signifies double histories in the Caribbean—the emancipation of enslaved Black workers and the arrival of the first group of South Asian indentured laborers. After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, South Asians were shipped to plantations across the Caribbean as indentured workers. They labored alongside emancipated Afro-Caribbean workers in segregated canefields. In this paper, I analyze the entangled histories of emancipation, indenture, and religion from the Caribbean plantation archives. First, I examine how the category “religion” was used to compare and categorize Black and South Asian workers. Then, I turn my attention to fugitives—workers who ran away from the plantations. Fugitive archives, I argue, persist as shadow records of the plantation. They forge errant routes, detours, and new directions for Black and South Asian Studies. Afro- and Indo-Caribbean religions underwent fugitive metamorphoses on the paths scribbled along the margins of the plantation archives.