Jonathan Connolly. 2024. Worthy of Freedom: Indenture and Free Labor in the Era of Emancipation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 272 pp.

examines how Indian indentured labour migration became 'normalized' after the abolition of slavery in the British empire.He does so through a case study of Trinidad, British Guiana and Mauritius from 1834 to 1878.While many studies have examined indenture in relation to slavery, either showing how it resembled slavery or arguing that indenture was a voluntary process, Connolly concentrates on the relationship between the emancipation of slaves and indentured labour, with a particular focus on how the colonial state used indenture to reshape the meaning of post-slavery free labour, and how the meaning of freedom and free labour changed from the 1830s to the 1850s.There was a public scandal when indenture was initiated in the 1830s.Colonial secretary Lord Russell refused to allow indentured labour migration to British Guyana in 1840 for fear that it may 'lead to a dreadful loss of life on the one hand or, on the other, to a new system of slavery' (p. 2) Two decades later, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who succeeded