Country: St. Lucia
Group: East Indians
Date Finalized: 10/29/2020
Team: Ann Thomas (Lead), Rebekah Kamer, Arisha Khan
Content Warning: slavery
Approximate Time Period: 1845-1917
After the emancipation of African slaves in St. Lucia, planters in the west Indies were desperate for cheap and reliable labor and turned to India as a source for indentured servants (Guilbalt & Charles, 1998). Between 1845 and 1917, hundreds of thousands of indentured Indian workers who were lower caste and rural people came to the Caribbean. They had hopes of saving money by working and returning home for a better future. “The labor contracts under which East Indians worked varied, but as a rule, they were bound to work on a designated estate for five years in return for a wage, housing, clothing, food and medical care. After five years they could choose between owning ten acres of land or ten pounds sterling or they could, after a further five or ten years of industrial residence, get a free passage back to India” (Harmsen 2001). Only half of those indentured in St. Lucia returned to India. Many Indians were denied their free passage back to their homeland and became economic hostages after the Immigration Fund ran out of money. They were forced to settle in St. Lucia with no way of going back to their families.
The data quality for this write up is coded as a 2 due to the amount of information that was available about East Indians in St. Lucia. Many details about their forced labor are unknown so it can’t be coded as a 3.
Sources
- Guilbault, J., & CHARLES, E. (1998). St. Lucia. Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Encyclopedic History REANNOUNCE/F05: Volume 2: Performing the Caribbean Experience, 377.
- Harmsen, Jolien. “The East Indian Legacy In St Lucia.” St Lucia Online, St Lucia Hotel & Tourism Association, 2001, www.slucia.com/visions/2002/indian.html.
- All About St. Lucia (n.d.). Saint Lucia History. Retrieved October 23, 2020, fromhttps://allaboutstlucia.com/history/