Indentured Labor and the Migrations of Empire

After slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834, plantation owners looked for new sources of cheap labor, and the system of indenture filled the gap. Under indenture, workers signed contracts, usually for five years, to work on plantations far from home in return for wages, passage and sometimes a return ticket. Between 1834 and 1917 more than a million Indians traveled as indentured laborers to colonies such as Mauritius, Trinidad, British Guiana, Natal and Fiji.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers went to Cuba, Peru and elsewhere, often under deceptive or coercive conditions. Conditions could be harsh, with low pay, strict penalties and high death rates, and critics called indenture a new system of slavery, although workers were legally free and some chose to stay and build new communities. In South Africa, the young lawyer Mohandas Gandhi developed his methods of nonviolent resistance while defending Indian migrants' rights between 1893 and 1914. Indian indenture ended in 1917.