East Indian Indentureship

To what extent do you agree that the Indian indenture laborers helped relieved the post emancipation problems.

Trinidad was a Spanish colony from the time of Christopher Columbus from when he landed in 1498. It had remained under control from the Spanish until it was seized by the British in 1797. The Europeans had developed sugar plantations around the island of Trinidad and numerous amounts of labour were needed to facilitate the sugar production on plantations. Due to this factor the Europeans had sort Africans through the slave trade. Slavery had already existed in Africa long before the Europeans started a slave trade there. The Europeans had captured, kidnapped and bought Africans to the Caribbean to work on these plantations.

The Europeans imported systems of production to the Caribbean that began to take the shape of industrial enterprises with the intention of highlighting and accumulating huge profits. The basis of such wealth depended on the enslavement of people. Slavery was the initial labour system used by Europeans on their plantations in the Caribbean. The sugar plantations were community organized to meet the demands of the sugar production. For over 100 years the slave trade grew into a huge and successful business. It brought untold misery to the Africans and unprecedented wealth for the Europeans. Without a doubt it was mostly successful for the British who dominated the slave trade. With regards to untold misery of slaves the planters had treated their slaves cruelly, and when the slaves became ill or infirm, they were abandoned on the streets and left to fend for themselves. Life was circumscribed by the plantation system and the masses of the people were slaves subjected to the whims and fancy of their owners. It was atrocities such as these that moved several persons to call for an end to the slave trade.

On 1 August 1838 full freedom was granted to the slaves. In both Trinidad and Tobago, many of the ex-slaves moved off the plantations....