ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, I suggested that instead of arising from a traumatic dispersal, a diaspora could be caused by the expansion from a homeland in search of work, in pursuit of trade or to further colonial ambitions. These circumstances give rise respectively to a labour diaspora, a trade diaspora and an imperial diaspora. In this chapter I am concerned with the first and third categories (trade diasporas are discussed in Chapter 4). I have taken as my central example of a labour diaspora the Indian indentured workers deployed in British, Dutch and French tropical plantations from the 1830s to about 1920. The Italians who made the transatlantic crossing, mainly to the USA and Argentina, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries form another possible candidate group (see Gabaccia 1992, Baily 1995).1
