Seminar: The First Crossing and the Transition from Slavery to Indentureshi

This seminar explores Theophilus Richmond’s journal of the Hesperus, one of the first ships carrying Indian indentured migrants to the Caribbean after the abolition of slavery. Dr Mark Tumbridge will examine the text’s wider context, with particular attention to the enigmatic figure of the Black slave who appears in the journal, and how his presence reshapes understandings of creolization in Guyana.
Abstract
Following slavery, the indentureship system in the Caribbean operated from 1838 until 1917. One of the first ships to make the crossing from India to the Caribbean was John Gladstone’s Hesperus, carrying 170 migrants and arriving in British Guiana on 5th May 1838, a date now celebrated every year in Guyana as Arrival Day. Theophilus Richmond was the surgeon on the ship – The First Crossing is the published text of his journal on board.
This seminar will not only give an overall context for the journal, but will primarily be focused on the Black slave who appears in Richmond’s work. As a quintessential example of a subaltern subject, at once enigmatic, paradoxical and emotive, his elusive presence has changed our understanding of the history of the creolization process, the encounter between Indian indentured migrants and the formerly enslaved Africans, in Guyana.
The seminar will read short extracts from the work, discuss the form and content, and also view documents from the archive relevant to the journey.

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Selwyn College, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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