Indian indenture system

The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers[1] from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833,[2] in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean,[3] Natal (South Africa), East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka,[4] Malaysia,[5] Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Sri Lankan, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.

  1. ^ Documentary heritage submitted by Fiji, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and recommended for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register in 2011'
  2. ^ "Indian indentured labourers – National Archive". Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 10 February 2019.
  3. ^ Sherry-Ann Singh, Department of History University of the West Indies St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. "The Experience of Indian Indenture in Trinidad: Arrival and Settlement". Archived from the original on 17 April 2022. Retrieved 10 February 2019.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ Richard B. Allen (29 March 2017). "Asian Indentured Labor in the 19th and Early 20th Century Colonial Plantation World". doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.33. Archived from the original on 12 February 2019. Retrieved 10 February 2019.
  5. ^ The British and rubber in Malaya, c. 1890–1940, 2005, James Hagan, Andrew Wells – University of Wollongong