Verene Shepherd is a Jamaican professor in the Department of History at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies. She teaches courses on women and gender in Caribbean history and supervises graduate thesis’ at both the Master’s and Doctoral levels on women and gender. Popular topics for most of her research are Migration and Diasporas, Jamaican Economic History during slavery, and Caribbean Women’s history. One of Shepherd’s most popular works are Maharani’s Misery. Shepard uses the case of Maharani as a starting point in her analysis of the tensions that occurred on emigrant ships as well as the race and class and gender-based strains that marked the indentured servants’ system as a whole.
Maharani’s Misery is about a ship, Allanshaw, that sailed from Calcutta to Guyana on July 24, 1885. This ship had 660 indentured laborers and 41 crew members. During the voyage there were seventeen deaths, one of these was Maharani. Maharani was a young Indian woman whose cause of death was decided as sexual assault. There were two men that were accused, one was a black ship sailor named Ipson and the other was a white man. Ipson was charged with rape and had to go on trial as soon as the ship landed in Georgetown while the other man wasn’t investigated. The testimonies provided by the emigrants and officials on the ship were very contradictory and raised many questions about the treatment of indentured laborers. It felt as if they were being forced to not reveal too much information out of fear of losing their job. One of the things that Shepherd looked into in this book was why Maharani’s case was so popular. A few of her thoughts of why it was so popular was that Maharani could have been in high caste or the seamen wanted to get rid of Ipson due to his race. Indentured servitude happened right after slavery was abolished so blacks were still looked down upon during this time.
This work shared many connections with Laura Putnam’s, The Company They Kept. Putnam’s book was about how the different social structures that was created by the banana plantation affected gender roles in the Americas. Putnam studied how people always tend to migrate in regard to personal benefits. She noticed how men will move willingly, not knowing anyone, while women tend to move towards to areas someone that they know lives. Both of these stories share the connection that women had to always be very precautious of their surroundings, especially men. In indentured servitude, it wasn’t popular for women to be involved so when they did, they got paid more money. Since they had trouble recruiting women they would resort to lying, deception, and even kidnapping. This relates to Putnam because many of her research found that women wouldn’t move in places where they knew no one. Women have always been raised knowing to follow different rules than men. Since kids, they were taught to come home early and to never walk alone at night.
Another story that shared themes with Maharani’s Misery was Peter Blanchard’s, “Slave Voices in Wars of Independence.” His book was about how thousands of slaves enlisted during the wars for independence in South America under the promise of personal freedom. Blacks were recruited by both sides in these conflicts and their loyalties resided with whomever they believed would emerge victorious. Blanchard talk about how enslaved women experienced discrimination because they couldn’t join the military if they were women. Many men had the opportunity to have their enslavement traded for freedom if they joined the military. It was unfair that enslaved women weren’t given this same opportunity. This story was like Maharani’s because of the overarching theme that ethnic women weren’t seen as human. Something important that Verene Shepherd talked about in Maharani’s Misery was that men thought “lower-class” women were “naturally promiscuous” and thus “could not be raped.”
An important asset that Shepherd brought was placing Maharani’s experiences within the wider context of sexual abuse of women in the Atlantic world. She spoke about how enslavers claimed ownership over the bodies of enslaved women and thus used them at will. She also discussed the testimonies and how most of them were defending the men and going against Maharani. The possibility of rape was discounted by some of the emigrants and subordinate crew familiar with the treatment of lower-caste and lower-class women. In her book she says, “Were they afraid of reprisals or of prejudicing their chances of being allowed on future passages?” Shepherd makes good use of these testimonies provided by the emigrants. Shepherd questions what evidence was needing in order to be convicted of rape. Other Indian women have been raped on emigrant ships, but their cases were never elaborately investigated. This is what led Shepherd to choose this story because she was interested in what made Maharani’s case differs from others. There was very few information that Shepherd left unanswered due to her extensive research. She covered many crucial components of indentured servitude and didn’t really leave the reader to wonder about much. A limitation in this story and what Shepherd left unanswered was that she did not aim to settle the debate over the nature of indentured women’s experiences. She concisely summarized strengths and weaknesses of the “neo-slavery” and the “material benefits” theses. She elaborated very concisely about both arguments but, she remained unbiased. However, it is understandable because Shepherd wants the readers to make up their own minds about the case.
Overall, Shepherd’s work conveys her research regarding tensions occurring on emigrant ships as well as the characterizations of the indentured servant’s system and brings their stories to light. ‘