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The articles in this volume are grouped in four parts.

Part 1 concentrates on indenture in the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean and includes four diverse, but inter-related chapters. They reveal newly-emerging, impressive trends in the study of indenture, departing from the over used neo-slave scholarship.

The chapters in part 2 re-examine personal narratives of indentured labourers, the continuous connection between the Caribbean and India as well as education and Christianization of Indians in Trinidad. The analysis of personal accounts of indentured servants themselves certainly provides an alternative perception to archival information written mostly by the organizers of indenture.

Part 3 focuses on ethnicity and politics and shows that in segmented societies like Suriname, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago institutional politics and political mobilization are mainly ethnically based.

Part 4 addresses health, medicine and spirituality-themes which, until recently, have received little attention. The first article examines the historical impact of colonialism through indentureship on the health, health alternatives and health preferences of Indo-Trinidadians, from the period between 1845 to the present. The second examines the use of protective talismans by Indian indentured labourers and their descendants. It is a contribution to psychological research on the spiritual world of Indian immigrants, enslaved Africans and their respective descendants, with special reference to the use of talismans.