Migrations of Indentured Servants ‘Summary’

Post-Emancipation
 On August 1, 1834, slavery was abolished by the British until 1838
(Emancipation).
 Slave revolts, home grown abolition movements, religious arguments,
government policies and the economy led to this Abolition Act.
 Small territories such as Antigua and the British Virgin Islands became free
overnight, while others went through ‘Apprenticeship’ (slaves worked
unpaid for long time).
 Issues confronting both the Europeans and Africans were mainly on the
price of labour.
 Africans in small Caribbean islands went back to the plantations and
accepted offered wages due to their few options.
 Previous slaves in British Guiana (now Guyana) could have become small
farmers.
 The Europeans claimed more labour was needed for expanding the sugar
industry. They were searching for a good source of cheaper labour.
 The Africans felt that, while Europeans were making claims of a labour
shortage, it was they who created the shortage by not paying the Africans a
fair wage.
Indentureship
 Indentureship was used to solve labour problems in the British West Indies.
 Indentured servants agreed to enter into a contract to work in the Caribbean
for a period of time (5-10 years) for a minimum wage.
 Their outward passage would be provided and they had the option of either
accepting a return passage to their country of origin once the period of
indentureship was completed or receiving a grant of land.
 Europeans tried experiments on Europe, then to the Caribbean, Africa, India
and China.
Experiments In Indentured Immigration
 Europeans first tried to ‘whiten’ the ethnic balance in the British West
Indies. Between 1834-46, Portuguese went to Trinidad and British Guiana
and the British and Germans went to Jamaica.
 Europeans were bad at labour due to the tropical conditions. They then
moved to towns to become shopkeepers.
 Big labour lands offered high wages to other labourers from smaller labour
lands e.g. Barbados & Grenada. These migrations decreased the labour in
the Eastern Caribbean, as well as decline when migrants saw that the offered
wages were not much better than the wages back home.
 Africans had no interest in migrating. Majority of them who entered the
Caribbean as a labour force by the 1860s were those who had been freed
from ships were still plying the slave trade.
 The seas were policed to stop other nations from bringing slaves into the
New World because of the abolishment of the slave trade by the British in
1807.
 Little of the freed Africans were sent back home; instead they were dropped
in the British Caribbean to increase labour supply. They too soon drifted off
the fields for other work.
 In 1838, 396 Indians arrived in Guyana. They were good planters. This
system lasted ‘til 1917.
 Chinese labour were recruited from Canton & Hong Kong (mainly for
British Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica).
 They too drifted off the fields because they found business and commerce
more suited to their talents.
India proved to be a satisfactory source of labour. In 1845, many Caribbean
countries began importing Indian indentured labour. The graph above shows the
approximate amount of Indian indentured servants migrated until its end in 1917.
Migration Routes of the Indentured Servants between 1834-1919
Indentureship and the Plural Society
 Price of labour was the crucial factor governing the entry of Indians into
Caribbean society and culture.
 The Indians came from bad conditions mainly in northern India and were
willing to work for small wages offered.
 Africans didn’t trust people who accepted poor conditions of work, who
thereby shut out themselves from making good wage demands on the
planters. The Indians however, remained apart on the plantations, despite the
alien environment they were in.

Impact
Ethnic Composition
 Indentured migrants added to the diversity and complexity of the Caribbean
society and culture.
 The rush of the indentured immigrants created many groups and subgroups,
and the tensions among them go unresolved today, mainly in countries
where they form a significant amount of the population.
 The Africans, whites, Portuguese, Chinese and Indians and other minorities
had their own lifestyle and language which merged to form the different
dialects we have today.
 The mixing of the religions, races, and cultural practices also took place.

Ethnic composition in Guyana