The History of Indentureship and South Asian Slavery

Scattered throughout the remains of the British and to a lesser extent the French empires in Africa, Southeast Asia, the West Indies and the Pacific, are today found long-settled people of Indian origin. Most of them are descendants of Indian indentured labourers who were exported continually from India beginning in 1834 to meet the shortage of labour on European plantations caused by the abolition of slavery. Altogether, some one million Indians were thus transplanted. The labourers left India under an apparently voluntarily accepted contract which stipulated, among other things, the condition of employment, remuneration for labour, and an optional free return passage to India at the end of ten years "industrial residence" in the colonies. They had departed, moreover, under the firm belief that they would return soon, after they had acquired the fortune, they were told awaited them in the colonies. Many did return; but for the majority, the intended sojourn was, in the course of time, transformed into permanent displacement. The life and struggle of these labourers in the colonies has bequeathed a legacy whose full implications have yet to be grasped.