The Diane brings the first documented African labor convoy to Cayenne

Order no. 419 defines worker booklets and their delivery in French Guiana. The booklet recorded work engagements and enabled officials to monitor workers’ movements. It was a tool of post-emancipation...

Order no. 464 organizes work engagements and booklet inspections. It required people aged 14 to 60 without sufficient resources to show regular work, and imposed repeated administrative checks. For...

A local order creates a special immigration commissioner, part of the administrative apparatus for recruiting and distributing contracted labor. After formerly enslaved people resisted plantation work...

A contract between the French maritime ministry and the firms Le Campion and Théroulde provides for the introduction of 3,000 Indian workers to French Guiana during 1855–1857. The agreement reflects a...

Order no. 698 sets local procedures for introducing Indian and African contracted workers, including the assignment of workers to employers and checks on contracts and transport. The same framework...

The ship Sigisbert-Cézard reaches French Guiana with Indian workers recruited from Pondicherry and Karikal. The surviving memorial register lists 822 people embarked and 801 arrivals. The names and...

The Diane returned to Cayenne with 322 more African contract workers. The two voyages of January and June 1856 brought 630 people in total. The colonial labor program treated these people as a...

A colonial decision authorized the Marine administration to acquire 53 contracts from African workers brought by the Diane for prison services. This shows how the state itself used indenture to...

Yacine Biram, a Senegalese woman brought to Guiana under a six-year labor contract, married M’Bisame Diouf, who had arrived in 1854 on the same ship. Their marriage documents family formation among...

The Joseph sailed from the West African coast carrying 340 African immigrants toward Cayenne. Later Guyanese accounts identify D’Chimbo among this group. The migration took place within a French...