0

Subject: Caribbean History

Proficiency: General

Year: 2015

Topic: Was Indian Indentureship

in the British Caribbean a

new form of slavery?

1

2

Was Indian Indentureship in

the British Caribbean a new

form of slavery?

Rationale

3

I chose this topic as I had great interest in this area of research and I felt the need

to further examine it. The idea of knowing that there are descendants residing

amongst us, I had a great desire to understand more about their heritage because

I heard about it and even studied it so now I want to investigate to see if

Enslavement and Indian Indentureship were similar or not, already knowing that

they both came to do the same kind of work but yet after independence the poor

treatment of Africans continued.

4

Table of Contents

Rationale………………………......................................................................................2

Was Indian Indentureship in the British Caribbean a new form of slavery? ……...5

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..……………………………….13

Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..14

5

Introduction

In the 1600’s sugar was made “king”, meaning that it made the most profit and it

was the main crop(monoculture). The rise of sugar came about from the decline

of tobacco. Previously, tobacco enjoyed many years of profit but competition

form Virginian tobacco especially, lessened the demand for West Indian tobacco.

However, for the cultivation of tobacco, one needed a large labour force.

With emancipation in 1838, the enslaved became free to choose the nature

of their future existence. Most chose to escape from the plantations and find jobs

elsewhere. Therefore there was a demand for labour. To fill the void in the labour

situation, the planters had to resort to the immigration of labourers. Of all

attempts, Indian immigration proved most successful. There were two systems of

labour, there were both similarities and differences which will be examined in

greater detail

6

Was Indian Indentureship in the British Caribbean a new form of slavery?

Enslavement was forced labour. Enslaved were not paid for their labour

and were not provided with a way back home to their homeland Africa. Africans

were enslaved for life unless freed by masters. In addition to that, the children of

the enslaved were automatically enslaved; they took the status of the mother.

Unlike Indentureship which was contracted labour. Indentured labourers were

paid and had certain terms of contract that afforded them the opportunity to

return home for free (repatriation). They came willingly although some were

tricked and forced but nevertheless it was a contract which makes it temporary

unlike enslavement. Eventually it will end. Comparatively, their children were

born free. From a legal perspective, it would appear as the two systems are

different. One was considered property and the other was an avenue for upward

social mobility. On one hand one had no chance of earning a wage the other did.

Equally important, was the fact that the children of those indentured, actually had

a chance of making something of themselves rather than being born into captivity

without a say or choice.

7

Immigration was the solution to the problems of the planters. Immigration was

used to fill the void in the labour situation; the planters had to resort to the

immigration of labourers. Planters turned to Europe, Madeira and China.

However these labourers were disinclined towards labour and their immigration

did not last long. Immigration from India was more important as the suitability of

the Indians to estate work made them clear favourites. Many planters turned to

the system of indenture ship where they would sing an indenture. They tried the

Chinese and Madeirans first.

However, these groups failed to satisfy the planters’ needs. Isaac Dookhan said,

“Compared with the East Indians, the Chinese proved to be unsatisfactory

labourers even though they were hard working. Many of them had little or no

experience with and were not physically capable of agricultural labour particularly

of the West Indian plantation type.”1 In 1836, a Guyanese plantation owner, John

Gladstone heard that the British were using indentured labour from India.

Gladstone brought the first Indians to Guyana in May 1838 (396 people).

However, anti-slavery campaigners found evidence of flogging and other forms of

harsh punishment. 98 out of the 396 Indians had died. This is point that indicated

1 Isaac Dookhan, A Post-Emancipation History Of The West Indies (United Kingdom: Collins Educational, 1975), p. 50

8

that they were flogged and harshly punished, that shows that Indian

Indentureship was a new form of slavery.

Isaac Dookhan said, “ Indian immigration was begun on the initiative of

John Gladstone, father of the later famous British Prime Minister William Ewart

Gladstone, who held plantations in Demerara, and the first trial has been

appropriately called ‘the Gladstone experiment. The first group of 396 Indian

immigrants arrived in Guyana in May 1838 on board the ships Whitby and

Hesperus.

They were distributed amongst six sugar estates to labour under contract for five

years, and through their treatment was satisfactory on three of the estates, on the

others belonging to Andrew Colville (Belle Vue) and John Gladstone (Vreed-en-

Hoop and Vreed-estein), there was ill treatment, sickness and mortality. The

suspicions Of the Anti-Slave Society were immediately aroused, and through a

propaganda campaign it secured the appointment of a local commission to

investigate the immigrants’ condition.”2 This proved that planters still ‘ruled’ and

ordered the enslaved (Indians). These Indians came from the streets of Bombay,

2 Isaac Dookhan, A Post-Emancipation History Of The West Indies (United Kingdom: Collins Educational, 1975), p. 50

9

Punjab, Calcutta and Madras which were parts of embarkation. However, later on,

after 1838, they were drawn from Agra, Oudh and Bihar. They lowest class came

from the Gangetic Plains. Another point that would lead one to think that this was

a new form of slavery is that sometimes agents (persons appointed by the

government to recruit people) kidnapped Indians.

The ‘push factors’ or reasons why the Indians wanted to leave India were

because the establishment of the British Factory System in India destroyed Indian,

domestic industry such as the spinning of cloth, metal producing and leather

producing industries. “The establishment of the British factory system in India

destroyed Indian domestic industries such as the home spinning of cloth, and

created a mobile population subject to immigration.”3 These goods entering India

from Britain led to the closure of these industries which meant many Indians lost

their jobs.

Another factor was the increase in the Indian population dependant on land

for their livelihood contributed to the division of plots, to support the growing

population. The plots had become so small, that it reached uneconomic levels

which mean that they couldn’t make a living out of it. Also, displaced workers in

the cottage and agricultural industries in India made people wander in search of

work, many Indians experienced seasonal employment, and many Indians refused

3 Isaac Dookhan, A Post-Emancipation History Of The West Indies (United Kingdom: Collins Educational, 1975). P. 51

10

to live in large joint families and most wanted escape from bad mothers-in-law.

Other reasons are the village out casts and those who had quarrelled with relatives

wanted to leave, criminals escaping from the police, loafers, vagrants and even the

poor wanted a new life, wives were deserted, wives accompanying their husband

and widows leaving to escape Sati (wives would have to jump in the pyre of their

husband).

The ‘pull factors’ or reasons why they wanted to come to the West Indies

were that emigration to the West Indies promised to put them in possession of land

once more, they came because of the promise of higher wage in the West Indies

that couldn’t be obtained in India. They saw this as an opportunity to save and

promote a better lifestyle. The agricultural labourers in India were paid in gains or

in between 1½ pence to 2½ a day. Trinidad offered 2 shillings a day.

Some Indians believed that there would be non-agricultural work such as being a

police-officer, teachers, priests and clerks. They were also promised proper

medical care and better housing. Also when some Indians learnt about the savings

accumulated in the West Indies from friends who returned to India, they were

influenced to come to the Caribbean.

The flipside to the argument that yes Indian indenture ship was a new form

of slavery because of its negative effects and causes is that it also had constructive

rather than destructive and benefitting outcomes as well. Such impressions include;

11

the sugar industries were saved and sugar productions increased, social services

such as medical facilities began to expand as a result of the increasing population,

the increase led to a larger and more efficient police force, immigration led to the

diversification of the West Indian economy, immigrants became shopkeepers and

hucksters and also began to plant different crops. “Indians proved to be the right

kind of labourers for the sugar estates and it was mainly due to them that the sugar

industry achieved the measure of success it did.”4 The growth of the rice industry

in Guyana and Trinidad was due to the East Indians. Rice was grown for both

domestic uses as well as to export. They introduced the age old tradition skill in

irrigation used for rice growing. The entry of the various groups into the West

Indies led to the emergent of a plural society where the races are mixed.

Agreed slavery had some positive influences but the Indian indentureship

had more as it also proved most successful since it was at this time the British

officially ended slavery.

On the contrary, the enslaved were recruited firstly by hiring African middlemen

who would go to the interior to capture the Africans. Then they would get Africans

through raids (middlemen setting the African’s houses on fire and when they ran

out they were then captured).

4 Isaac Dookhan, A Post-Emancipation History Of The West Indies (United Kingdom: 1975), p. 51.

12

Another way of recruiting them was tribal wars. Tribal wars were waged to

get prisoners of war. Prisoners came from the defeated tribe. In this case, it was the

Africans against the Europeans. The Europeans always had the upper hand mainly

because of their superior weapons leading to the Europeans emerging ever

victorious and the Africans being imprisoned.

Coupled with kidnapping of the Africans, they were sold as payment for a

debt. Similarly, the Africans were sold as punishment for a crime. They were then

shackled and chained. They were yoked (held by their necks in a coffle). Without

hesitation, they journeyed to the coast (trek to the coast). This took weeks even

months. They were tortured. Many died.

During the middle passage, the trip from West Africa to the Caribbean, it

was cramped, suffocating for all captured, there were no washroom facilities, it

was dark and unsanitary. Furthermore, women were sexually assaulted apart from

those men and women who were physically and verbally abused.

Inasmuch as their agony, they tried to commit suicide by starving

themselves but to prevent the loss of an enslaved, they used a chisel to knock out

their front teeth and forcibly fed them.

Must be remembered are the two methods of physically obtaining an African

which are through scramble, where the planters rushed in and grabbed the desired

enslaved and auction where the highest bidder would get the African.

13

All this extreme anguish for the entire African population were in exchange

for raw material namely; sugar, rum, cotton, molasses, tobacco and indigo to be

made into goods.

In the final analysis, both were sourced by Europeans for colonies in the

West Indies. Differentiating them both are the notations that Indians were not

chained, they were also allowed the privilege of brining items from their homeland

unlike the Africans. Important to realize is that the Indians were encouraged to sing

and dance whereas the enslaved was not.

Although both slaves and indentured workers were overworked, underfed, had

menial if any access to medical attention, decrepit and overcrowded living

conditions and struggled to develop a family under such conditions it is important

to remember that the indentured labourers’ life in such conditions was salaried,

contracted and thus was at some point able to come to an end. As such we

cannot view indentured labour as a mere extension of slavery as the dynamic of

control had completely changed, it was not based on wage labour and contracts and

not merely imperialistic oppression.

In like manner, Africans may be whipped more and by the same token the Africans

were not paid whereas the Indians were. In the same fashion, Africans had, without

a doubt, no rights but rather slave laws that restricted them further. Dissimilarly,

14

the Indians had some rights but also Indian ordinances which also prevented

complete liberation

On balance, both enslavement and Indian Immigration were similar but were

legally different. Indentured labourers on the most part preserved a sense of dignity

and ‘self’ which, regardless of the decrepit living conditions and labour

exploitation, was a sense of identity stripped from enslaved from the moment they

became possessed and as such we see how the two although comparable are, and

will forever be, fundamentally different.

Bibliography

Claypole, William, and John Robottom. Caribbean Story. 3rd ed. Kingston: Carlong Publishers,

2006. Print.

Claypole, William, and John Robottom. Caribbean Story. Book 2. Kingston: Carlong Publishers,

2006. Print.

15

Dookhan, Isaac. A Post-Emancipation History Of The West Indies. United Kingdom: Collins

Educational, 1975.

Dookhan, Isaac. A Pre-Emancipation History Of The West Indies. United Kingdom: Collins

Educational, 1975.

Appendix

16

Figure 1. Indians planting sugar cane

17

Figure 2. Image of The Fatel Rozack.

Figure 3. Woman’s Emigration Pass.

18

Figure 4. African’s Trek To The Coast.

19

Figure 5. Layout of Slave Ship

20

Figure 6. Depiction Of African Brutality

Figure 7. Number of Enslaved deaths

1844-1871 1874/5-79/80 1880/81-1889 1890-99 1900-09 1910-17

N.W Provinces 16,027 7,130 11,385 15,274 9,968 5,000

Oudh 16,207 3,184 5,054 5,424 5,983 3,644

Bengal 9,877 727 428 200 63 46

Bihar 11,278 2,188 5,466 3,083 1,319 1,319

Orissa 378 45 37 21 77 999

Central India - 134 349 91 91 180

Central Provinces - - - - 2,922 22

Punjab - 75 695 99 778 202

Native States - 28 160 325 1,434 728

21

Miscellaneous 853 229 328 43 123 94

Total 38,413 13,740 23,902 24,588 22,717 10,870

Figure 8. Table displaying Indian immigrants’ origin and numbers..