Indies; frequently, they are fatal. Often, the same weapon is used and the same motive—jealousy—is cited.

Some of the conditions that historically shaped the lives of “coolie women” endure, and not only in the Caribbean. Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen argued in 2013 that regions in India (and elsewhere) with shortages of women are at higher risk of gender-based violence, a problem prophesied by the historical example of indentured women. Indenture-like conditions and contracts still fetter immigrant laborers (many of them South Asians) in the Persian Gulf. Descendents of indentured laborers—including the large Guyanese diaspora in New York City3—continue to struggle with social problems rooted in indenture and colonialism: alarming rates of intimate partner violence, alcoholism, poverty, and gender inequality.

The legacy of exploited female labor continues to haunt thegratification, and for procreation. (This, too, was work: their wombs were factories for future workers.) The ongoing violence against women in the Caribbean challenges now, as it did then, popular narratives of the region as a getaway. It is an escape only for some.

Initially, the travel postcards of the Caribbean represented the power of colonizer over colonized—they were taken at the behest of imperial officials to further their goal of marketing the colonies as tourist destinations. But as time passed and photography became more affordable, subjects gradually exerted more control over images of themselves. Around 1900, the descendants of the indentured—and some of the formerly indentured—began to sit for photographs as customers, choosing their own dress and backdrops.

These images, handed down by families, provide a striking contrast to