The Curious Case of Montowinie (Emigration Pass 887½)

When the second indenture ship, Berar, arrived in Fiji on 29 June 1882, the names and particulars of the Indians on board were recorded in the General Register of Indian Immigrants. The 'Indian Indentured Labour Series List' in the National Archives of Fiji and later historical accounts co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of Pacific history Vol. 55; no. 4; pp. 475 - 491
Main Author Mishra, Margaret
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Routledge 01.10.2020
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
East Indians
Emigration
Emigration and immigration
Fiji
Gardens & gardening
Immigrants
indenture
Indentured servants
Infants
Women
Fiji
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Summary:When the second indenture ship, Berar, arrived in Fiji on 29 June 1882, the names and particulars of the Indians on board were recorded in the General Register of Indian Immigrants. The 'Indian Indentured Labour Series List' in the National Archives of Fiji and later historical accounts conclude the head count of immigrants on the Berar with E-Pass number 887. Curiously, these records have omitted a minute historical detail captured in the General Register - the scrawled entry relating to an Indian woman called Montowinie hastily appended at the end of the records, after the infants. Although she was not assigned an Emigration Pass at the point of departure from Garden Reach in Calcutta, Montowinie was allocated a most unusual pass number, 887½. This historical account sets out to rescue this pass-less indentured woman from the margins and reclaim her as a missing body from Fiji's indenture history.
Bibliography:Includes illustrations, notes, table
ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:0022-3344
1469-9605
1469-9605
DOI:10.1080/00223344.2019.1700104