Slavery and indentureship in Guyana: a comparative perspective

By Winston McGowan

During recent weeks this newspaper has published several articles and letters pertaining to a controversial issue in Guyanese history. The issue is whether slavery endured by Africans here in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was identical or similar to the experience of indentured labourers brought to this British colony after the abolition of African slavery especially from India.

This issue became a matter of serious consideration among scholars especially after 1974 when a book written by a distinguished historian, Hugh Tinker, entitled A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830-1920 was published by the prestigious Oxford University Press. In general individuals who hold the view that the two systems of labour were identical or similar are much better informed about indentureship than about slavery. On the other hand, persons with reasonable knowledge of both systems tend to conclude that it is a falsification of history to equate them.

In view of the current debate I have decided to republish with minor modification an article which appeared in this column almost twelve years ago under the title “Slavery and Indentureship in Guyana.” At that time, July 1997, the question was not as contentious as it seems to be today. That article stated the following:

“In 1834 the British Government legally abolished slavery in British Guiana. It decided, however, that the slaves should serve their white masters for a few additional years as what it termed ‘apprentices’, before they became free.

“The grant of freedom on 1st August 1838 was followed in the subsequent years by the exodus of a substantial number of former apprentices from the plantations to pursue an independent existence. This exodus, which was expected, created a labour crisis which threatened to ruin the country’s plantation-based sugar economy.

“In anticipation of this development some planters began during the apprenticeship period (1834-1838), to seek to create an alternative labour force to Africans by bringing into the colony immigrants with whom they had concluded a contract, to work for a fixed period, usually five years. This contract was called an ‘indenture’. Consequently, in historical literature these labourers are often referred to as ‘indentured workers’ and the system to which they were subjected is usually termed ‘indentureship’.

“Some of the indentured labourers were Portuguese from the Atlantic island of Madeira, about 30,000 of whom came to British Guiana between 1835 and 1880. There was also a smaller number of indentured immigrants from China, about 14,000 between 1853 and 1880.The vast majority of indentured workers, however, were Indians from India. It is estimated that about 238,000 were brought to British Guiana between 1838 and 1917.

“It was due largely to the labour provided by these contracted workers that the plantation system and the sugar industry in British Guiana survived and eventually recovered, after the marked decline which they suffered in the wake of the withdrawal of the labour of many of the ex-apprentices after 1st August 1838.Indentureship became at least the third system of human labour exploitation in Guyanese history, following unmitigated slavery which ended in 1834 and apprenticeship or modified slavery from 1834 to 1838.

“Indentureship has been called ‘a new form of slavery’ by some scholars. This description is partly a reflection of the obvious fact that there are some basic similarities between all systems of labour exploitation in the same way that all forms of democracy or dictatorship, for example, have common elements.

“Both slavery and indentureship had the same fundamental objective. They were designed to provide a cheap, constantly available and easily controllable labour force. But more than anything else it was the regimented social and industrial control, buttressed by an unjust legal system, which placed indentured labourers at a marked disadvantage, that has caused some scholars to regard indentureship as very much akin to slavery. For example, the pass laws, that is to say, the requirement that slaves and later indentured labourers should have written permission from their masters if they wished to proceed beyond a certain distance from their plantation, existed in both systems. Both systems were designed to immobilize labour, binding it perpetually to the plantation. Planters were simply not happy with any system in which labour was free and mobile. This was the main reason why they sought to extend control over indentured labourers by inducing them to sign a second contract at the expiration of the first.

“Apart from the immobilization of the labour force, slavery and indentureship had several other common features. Both slaves and indentured workers, especially the former, had little hope of gaining redress for abuses and other grievances. They were also both subject to ill-treatment by the ‘drivers’ on the estates. Furthermore, the harshness of the system prompted slaves and indentured immigrants to resist in active and passive ways.

“Ultimately both slavery and indentureship were systems of human exploitation and manipulation. The indentured immigrants, like the captive Africans, found themselves in an intolerable situation for they were subject to laws in the formulation of which they had no say and over the application of which they had no control. In both systems the power of control was exercised by the planters through the local legislature and the executive and administrative institutions.

“These important similarities between slavery and indentureship, however, cannot or should not obscure the fact that there are many major differences between these two systems of labour. One very obvious difference was the fact that indentured immigrants, unlike the captive Africans, for the most part did not come to Guyana against their will. Although many Indian immigrants in particular were cajoled, enticed and even tricked into leaving India, they virtually all came to Guyana as a result of a contractual arrangement. In striking contrast slaves were brought from African in chains against their will. This journey from the point of enslavement to Guyana was accompanied by resistance at every stage, demonstrating their total opposition to servitude and their forced migration, the largest in human history, from their beloved homeland, Africa.

“A second major difference between slavery and indentureship was in the legal status accorded to the victims. Slaves were legally the private property of their owners. Indentured immigrants, on the other hand, were not legally a piece of property. This difference helps to explain the disparity in their treatment.

“Thirdly, indentured immigrants, unlike captive Africans, were paid wages in return for their labour. Admittedly, however, the wage rates were very low and were not the result of any bargaining process between the workers and the planters.

“There was also a very marked difference in discipline under the two systems. The discipline of slaves was legally left largely to the jurisdiction of their owners, who made the rules and imposed and executed the penalties on slaves whom they considered delinquent. Not surprisingly, such punishment was marked by excessive cruelty, including incredible torture.

“In marked contrast, the discipline of indentured labourers, was entrusted to the magistrate courts where decisions were guided by various ordinances passed by the local government to regulate relations between masters and indentured workers. Though the system weighed heavily against the indentured immigrants, the penalties to which they were subjected were far less onerous than those experienced by slaves, especially in terms of physical brutality.

“Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the two systems of labour, however, was the most obvious one, namely the fact that African slavery was almost invariably for life, whereas indentureship was for the duration of the contracted period, usually five years. Indentured immigrants could look forward to an end of their lot and the possibility of returning home, perhaps with savings, at the termination of their contract. About 75,000 or nearly one-third of the Indian immigrants returned to India. In striking contrast, African slaves had little chance of becoming free, except by running away or staging a successful rebellion, and no prospect of ever returning to their home in Africa.

“These and other major differences between slavery and indentureship are often overlooked or underemphasized in views which tend to approximate the two systems and to refer to indentureship as ‘a new form of slavery’. Although there were similarities between these two forms of labour, the differences were much more striking.”

In short, in view of these and other considerations, it would be very wrong to present Indian indentureship as identical, equivalent or similar to the slavery experienced by Africans in Guyana. To do so would be to distort or falsify history.

Furthermore, although this is not the subject of this article, it would be even more ludicrous to equate the oceanic voyage of indentured immigrants from India to Guyana with the Atlantic crossing of captive Africans literally in chains to these shores. The marked difference in mortality during these two types of voyages is one indication of this indisputable fact.