The deepest dye : obeah, Hosay, and race in the Atlantic world / Aisha Khan.

Aisha Khan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University.

When the British Empire abolished slavery, Caribbean sugar plantation owners faced a labor shortage. To solve the problem, they imported indentured "coolie" laborers, Hindus and a minority Muslim population from the Indian subcontinent. Indentureship continued from 1838 until its official end in 1917. The Deepest Dye begins on post-emancipation plantations in the West Indies-where Europeans, Indians, and Africans intermingled for work and worship-and ranges to present-day England, North America, and Trinidad, where colonial-era legacies endure in identities and hierarchies that still shape the post-independence Caribbean and its contemporary diasporas.