Purba Hossain
speaker
85 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 21 May
Purba Hossain’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So Calcutta in 1833, if you take the year that the Slavery Abolition Act is passed in the British Parliament, Calcutta is a very, very important city already in South Asia.
It is a port city.
It is a really quite massive port traffic connecting East Asia, China on the one hand, all the way up to Europe.
In the 19th century, Calcutta is the capital under the East India Company, later under the British Crown.
But also there are multiple important shipping companies and merchant companies based in Calcutta.
And in fact, when Gladstone in 1836 writes to Calcutta-based merchant company where his cousin works to ask if Indian labour is a possible way of bringing labour into the Caribbean and a way of ensuring that sugar production is not stalled.
stalled, they had this conversation that is very focused on what Calcutta can provide.
The idea is that the merchant companies based in Calcutta can kind of run the operations at the port city side, but there would be labour recruiters going into different parts of eastern India, into villages and towns and cities, entice people in, in some cases, as we know now, kidnap people and bring them to the port.
So the voyages were actually an extremely important part of the indentured experience.
And maybe I'll start with the caveat that this changes quite a lot.
In the 1830s and 40s, we see really long voyages with the coming of steelships and much improved steamship engineering.
In the 1880s and 90s, it does change quite a bit.
It is a lot quicker once you get to the end of the 19th century, yes.
But surprisingly, people's understanding of the ships and the voyages does not change as a complete overhaul.
For context, in the 1830s, 40s and 50s, if you go from Calcutta to Mauritius, it takes about one and a half months.
If you go to Fiji, it takes about four months.
If you go to Jamaica, it can take up to five months.
It depends on the time of the year and all those other geographical concerns as well.
That a large part of becoming an indentured migrant and becoming used to the system of having an overseer, becoming one labourer amongst many and following very particular kind of almost the synchronised system of waking up at a particular time, being allowed on deck at a particular time, living with other indentured migrants.
Most of the indentured men, women and children were living under the decks.
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