'At their perfect command'? The struggle of/(over) post-emancipation rurallabour

In a collection which refuses to recognize the presence of Marxist contribu tions to its subject, a number of essays in this book adhere to imperial or neoclassical economic historiographic traditions, both of which are not ju st problematic but also revisionist in their approach to the issue of pre- and post-emancipation forms of unfree labour: Privileging empiricism, and f or the most part eschewing theory, revisionism attempts to depoliticize ana lysis of relations such as slavery, indenture and bonded labour in colonial contexts. Symptomatic examples of this revisionist argument - as applied t o rural labour in South Africa, India and the Caribbean during the latter p art of the nineteenth century - are examined and the reasons for their shor tcomings explored.