GUYANA INDENTURED SERVANTS “From Whence They Left: Paying homage to Indentured Servants 1834-1920”

GUYANA INDENTURED SERVANTS “From Whence They Left: Paying homage to Indentured Servants 1834-1920”

“The Indian indentureship program started as early as 1834. By 1839, about 6,100 labourers, of whom only 100 were women, arrived in Mauritius, Australia and British Guiana. By 1916-1917, the period preceding the abolition of Indian indentureship, 1,194,957 labourers had left India on ships, many of which had been slavers, and transported to Mauritius, British Guiana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Grenada, St. Lucia, the Colony of Natal, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, Reunion Island, Surinam, Fiji, Australia, East Africa and the Seychelles. Those emigrants, departed for personal reasons, with a variety of dreams and aspirations, as immigrants do, that drove them to seek out a new life. They left loved ones behind forever, setting the stage for the evolution of a diaspora that today touches every corner of the world, and encompasses decorated and recognized professionals, prominent world leaders, entrepreneurs and academics, to touch on only a few professions in which they excel. With the passage of time, and 176 years between then and now, much has been forgotten, and little has been done to preserve that aspect of Indian emigration, apart from scholarly works and academic studies on the subject of Indian indentureship and the answer it provided the British plantocracy’s labour question during the post-abolition period.”