Abstract
This paper tries to show the basic pattern of Indian emigration and the role it played in the process of integration of South and South-east Asia into the world economy during the period of 1890 to 1920. A brief examination of relevant statistics reveals that emigration of unskilled workers from the Madras Presidency to Burma, Ceylon and Malaya under "the kangany(or maistry) system" was numerically by far the most important, over shadowing and partly replacing "indentured emigration" mainly via Calcutta to the more distant British colonies. Thus the first part of the paper compares the nature of the kangany and maistry recruited emigration with that of the indentured, and argues that the deliberate and extensive adaptation of patriarchal and caste-oriented social system developed in South India to the production process of capitalist enterprise as a form of labour control was the main cause of former's success, while the way in which the latter controlled coolie emigrants, despite the more individualist-looking form of contract, was essentially a centuries-old coerced one. The second part of the paper looks at the economic basis of the kangany and maistry systems. That work in South India and Burma was of a seasonal nature, and that the demand for labour was heavily male-oriented were main factors that explain the constant and huge flow of temporary male labour in both directions, which enabled both the sending and host economies to keep down the total cost of reproduction of labour power. Such flow was essential to the growth of export economies, as it not only provided them with cheap labour but helped its effective control through the retention of the Indian social system.
