The Joseph departs the West African coast with African contract workers

The Diane reached Cayenne with 308 African workers recruited along the West African coast. Historian Serge Daget reports the workers were engaged for six years. This post-abolition recruitment aimed...

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 reached Cayenne after a 47-day crossing from the West African coast. A contemporary account later identified D’Chimbo as one of the African immigrants who arrived in 1858. He was assigned...

The Cayenne court sentenced D’Chimbo to imprisonment and police surveillance for assault, theft, and vagrancy. The judgment reflects how colonial authorities interpreted his actions through criminal...

After a four-year gap, the Réaumur arrives with 550 Indian workers embarked and 534 recorded as arriving. The four-year interruption reflected the fragile finances and administration of colonial...

After completing her six-year contract, Yacine Biram boarded the Lawrence for return across the Atlantic. She was among a very small share of African contract workers in Guiana who were able to...

France and Britain sign a convention regulating the recruitment and treatment of Indian workers for French colonies. It followed British objections to French recruitment of Africans through the...