Colonial indenture created the template for neoliberal contracting and subcontracting

Evidence

The indenture period also formalized the transnational labor market by instituting components of contracting and subcontracting as a neoliberal economic strategy; by creating a massive, temporary reserve workforce; and by generating new categories of ”legal” and ”illegal” migration with the new frame of a global racial system. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 458

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that 19th-century indenture prefigured late-20th-century neoliberalism is provocative — worth chasing the specific mechanisms of subcontracting-era colonial labor.
• XREF: Reverses the common narrative that subcontracting is a recent capitalist innovation; connects to Milgrom’s and other institutional economics readings on how labor markets were formalized. — connects to: Colonial indenture served as a flexible legal device far beyond labor — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 433