ABSTRACT

This paper presents a case study of an African/Indian Ocean plantation located in Mauritius, focusing on the daily lives of indentured labourers during the nineteenth century. Bras d’Eau National Park was a sugar estate that functioned from 1786 to 1868. During the 1830s, colonial landowners shifted from a reliance on enslaved labourers, who came primarily from Mozambique and Madagascar, to indentured labourers primarily originating in South Asia. Four hundred and fifty thousand men, women and children travelled to Mauritius to live and work on sugar estates. Household excavations were conducted in the detached houses and line barracks that make up the plantation domestic quarter. Domestic artefacts from these village spaces, such as South Asian smoking pipes, glass bangle fragments, buttons from second-hand British military uniforms, cowrie shells, rice bowls and traces of a diet based on pulses-and-rice suggest a persistence in South Asian cultural practices while also demonstrating a creative engagement with material culture from across the region. Grounded in comparative plantation archaeology, this study of the landscape and material culture at Bras d’Eau represents one of the first full investigations of nineteenth-century indentured men, women and children’s daily practices.

摘要

本文介绍了一个位于毛里求斯的非洲/印度洋种植园的案例研究，重点研究了十九世纪契约劳动者的日常生活。布拉索非国家公园（Bras d'Eau National Park）是一座糖业庄园，始建于1786年至1868年。在1830年代，殖民地土地所有者从对奴隶制工人的依赖（主要来自莫桑比克和马达加斯加）转向主要来自南亚的契约劳工。45万男人，妇女和儿童前往毛里求斯在制糖厂生活和工作。在构成人工林家庭区的独立式住宅和线营中进行家庭挖掘。这些乡村空间中的家用物品，例如南亚烟斗，玻璃手镯碎片，二手英国军服的纽扣，贝壳，饭碗和基于豆类和稻米的饮食痕迹表明了南亚文化习俗的持久性，同时也展示了该地区物质文化的创造性参与。植根于比较种植业的考古学，对布拉索地区的景观和物质文化的这项研究代表了对19世纪男女，儿童日常习俗的首次全面研究之一。