Get Slaves, Freedmen, And Indentured Laborers In Colonial Mauritius - Loc

They worked under contract as skilled stonemasons, blacksmiths, and carpenters although hundreds of them were slaves. After the legislative changes of 1767 these Indian immigrants were allowed to start businesses, buy land and own slaves.

Between 1834 and 1920, approximately 1,500,000 indentured labourers, of whom 85% were from India, were sent to British colonies, one third to Mauritius, one third to the British West Indies, and the rest to Natal.

Indentured labourers came from India to replace the slaves as a source of cheap labour to work in the sugar cane plantation. They changed the face of Mauritius as a prosperous sugar producer in the British colonies.

Indentured labour was a system of bonded labour that was instituted following the abolition of slavery. Indentured labour were recruited to work on sugar, cotton and tea plantations, and rail construction projects in British colonies in West Indies, Africa and South East Asia.

The sirdar of these labourers was called Sooroop who was assisted by Subaram. In all, there were 30 males and 6 females among Arbuthnot's indentured workers, some of their names were Callachaund, Dookhun, Bhomarah, Bhoodhoo, Bigna, Champah, Lungon, and Budhram.

Indentured servants first arrived in America in the decade following the settlement of Jamestown by the Virginia Company in 1607. The idea of indentured servitude was born of a need for cheap labor. The earliest settlers soon realized that they had lots of land to care for, but no one to care for it.

The success of the 'Great Experiment' in Mauritius led to its adoption by other colonial powers from the 1840s, resulting in a world-wide migration of more than two million indentured labourers, of which Mauritius received almost half a million.

Between 1834 and 1920, almost half a million indentured labourers arrived from India at Aapravasi Ghat to work in the sugar plantations of Mauritius, or to be transferred to Reunion Island, Australia, southern and eastern Africa or the Caribbean.