Maternal welfare and reproductive politics on the plantation in the age of indenture, 1834-c.1920.

Plantations were not only sites of production, but also of reproduction. After the abolition of slavery, indentured labourers were having babies and raising children on plantation grounds across the British Empire. This project explores how the British colonial government and emerging multinational corporations tried to assert influence over reproduction, maternity and kinship structures on plantations. It analyses how eugenics, demography, race and class shaped British reproductive politics and maternal welfare provision. Tracing how plantation regimes were reproduced across Jamaica, Fiji, Mauritius and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), this project shows how reproductive politics and indentured labour regimes were interconnected.