By Satyendra Peerthum,
Historian, Writer, & Lecturer
The Genesis and Number of Early Indentured Immigrants in British Guiana
On 5th May 2024, in Georgetown, the capital city of the Republic of Guyana (formerly known as the colony of British Guiana) the annual national commemoration ceremony was held to mark the 186th anniversary of the arrival of the Indian indentured labourers in that small South American country. In December 1837, two ships the Hesperus and the Whitby left the port of Calcutta with 396 Indian indentured immigrants for a historic five-month journey.
On 5th May 1838, the two ships reached Georgetown, on the coast of northern Guyana. During the long and arduous sea voyage, 18 individuals died and there were only 22 females. They were sent to work on Gladstone’s two large sugar estates namely Vreed-en-Hoop and Vreed-es-Stein in Western Demerara near the Essequibo River on the north central Guyananese coast and 164 from the Whitby were taken to sugar estates in Palmyra in Berbice.
The importation of these first Indian indentured immigrants became known as the ‘Gladstone labour experiment’ and was one of the important events which marked the genesis of the Age of Indentured Labour in Guyana which would last for almost nine decades until 1928. However, the Guyanese experience with indentured labour had, in fact, started four years earlier. The planters were initially interested in seeking a labour force from Europe, the other Caribbean islands, and West Africa when faced with the realization of a gradually declining workforce. After all, during the second half of the 1830s, there was a gradual exodus of the apprentices as many of them bought their freedom, refused to work, and ranway from their owners and settled elsewhere in the colony where land was abundant.
In late 1834, British planters, based in British Guiana, sent recruiters to the Madeiras, a Portuguese territory in the North Atlantic Ocean to recruit Madeiran Portuguese agricultural workers. Several months later, 40 indentured peasants arrived from Madeira on the ship Louisa Baillie on May 3, 1835. By the end of that same year, at total of 429 Madeirans had arrived and were contracted as indentured labourers to various sugar plantations. Some of them came with their wives and children and were indentured for 3 years and were provided with monthly wages, rations, and a place to live. The Madeiran peasants were capable farmers since they were born and bred on a small and mountainous island where every square inch of the soil was precious.
In addition to the Portuguese who arrived during the mid-1830s, small groups of Germans and English farmers were also recruited. In 1836 and 1837, 44 Irish, 47 English labourers landed in Guyana, and 43 Scottish labourers arrived from Glasgow. In 1839, 209 Maltese and 121 Germans were added to the population. Many of these labourers did not adapt well to the climate and they suffered from a high mortality rate. In particular, the Maltese, who were indentured to Hibernia in Essequibo in western Guyana. 
The Arrival of the Indian & Non-Indian Indentured Immigrants:
A Heterogenous Workforce
It is important to note that between 1835 and 1838, more than 5,500 non-Indian indentured labourers were already working and living on the sugar plantations and elsewhere in the colony when the first Indian indentured workers arrived. This early labour system while supported and partially funded by the British colonial state was largely controlled and funded by the planters until the mid-1840s. By 1845, during that particular year, more than 800 Indian indentured men, women, and children were introduced while during the previous decade, more than 24,000 non-Indian contract workers has already been introduced.
During this period, even more than the Indian workers, it was the indentured workers from West Africa, the Caribbean, Madeiras, Europe, and elsewhere who played a key role in sustaining the Guyanese sugar industry during the transition from slavery through the apprenticeship system to the indentured labour system as the main source of labour. Furthermore, it was only in 1848, that the number of Indian workers being imported surpassed the number of non-Indian workers being introduced.
Overall, between 1838 and 1917, more than 239,000 Indians arrived while it was terminated in 1917, hundreds still continued to come with the last Indian arrivals taking place in 1926. Around two-thirds stayed on, while the remainder of them went back to India and emigrated to other parts of the former plantation world including Mauritius. At the same time, between 1835 and 1928, a total of 341,000 indentured workers came to Guyana out of which there were more than 102,000 non-Indian indentured workers who made up 30% of the total number of contract labourers imported therefore, the Indian immigrants made up 70% of the total during that period.
During the Age of Indenture, it is estimated that 30,685 Madeirans, 164 labourers from the Azores Islands (another Portuguese territory), 42,512 Caribbean former slaves, apprentices, Indian and African immigrants, and Liberated Africans, 13,355 Liberated and Indentured Africans from Sierra Leone. During the early Age of Indenture, there were also more than 300 Irish, German, Scottish and English workers, 14,189 Chinese workers, 819 Cape Verde labourers, 208 Maltese Europeans, and 70 black Americans mostly from the American South were brought to Guyana. Therefore, a truly heterogenous workforce and equally interesting, during the second half of the 1830s, some of the European, African, and Asian indentured workers in some of the cases were paid the same monthly wages and provided the same weekly rations by the Guyanese British planters. They greatly resented this fact as Europeans and caused most of them to return to their countries of origin after completing their first indenture contracts.
It is crucial to note that between 1835 and 1928, there was a regional indentured labour importation of around 42,512 contract workers from different parts of the Caribbean world which is important as it represents more than 12% of all the indentured workers introduced into Guyana. They came from around 15 British and European colonies and islands in the West Indies such as Barbados, Suriname, Trinidad, Monteserrat, Grenada, St. Vincent, Curacao, Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla, Jamaica, Nevis, and several other places. At first, they were African and Creole former slaves and apprentices, Liberated Africans and indentured Africans who emigrated as contract workers and also ex-Indian immigrants and their descendants who emigrated to Guyana.
The indentured labourers were drawn principally from northern and southern India such as districts located in present-day Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. In addition, they varied widely in terms of age, gender, religion, language, and caste. The largest group was single young males between the ages of fifteen and forty, while families, children, and single women made up the minority or less than 30%. The female-male ratio of Indian migrants was as low as 3 to 100, but climbed gradually to 40 to 100 towards the end of the indentured service. The disproportion of Indian females to Indian males in Guyana was higher among indentured Indians on the estates than among free Indians. The total female to male ratio went from 11 Indian women for every 100 Indian men in 1851, to 40 women for every 100 men in 1914.
The religious composition of the migrant group mirrored the religious distribution in India: 84 percent were Hindus while 15 percent were Muslims and other religions such as 1 percent Christian. The indentured labourers were recruited principally from the Viash and Sudras castes with some Brahmins and Kshatriya.
Lastly, the last Indian immigrants were imported in 1926 with the arrival of 173 indentured labourers and the last importation of 72 Indo-Caribbean and Afro-Caribbean contract workers in 1928 which marked the end of the Age of Indenture in Guyana. At the same time, the last returning immigrants were repatriated aboard the ship the M.V Resurgent in 1955. It was a little noticed event during that country’s post-indenture era as the Guyanese nation moved towards decolonization, self-government, and eventually independence in 1966 under President Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the son of Indian indentured labourers who came to Guyanese shores in 1901.
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Fig 1. The Indian Arrival Memorial was unveiled during an official ceremony in Palmyra, Berbice, Guyana in May 2022, located several kilometers outside of Georgetown where some of the first Indian Immigrants worked and lived in 1838 and after
(Source: The Guyana Chronicle, 2022)
Fig 2. The names of the first Indian Indentured Labourers to reach Guyanese shores in May 1838 including Peertum, a 28-year old Muslim labourer from Bihar
(Source: National Archives Department, IA Series,
British Parliamentary Papers from 1839 (UK, London, 1839)
Fig 3. List of Indentured Labourers from West Africa, Anguilla
an island in the Caribbean, Scotland, and Madeira working as field labourers
under 3-year indenture contracts in 1838 in Guyana
including their monthly wages and weekly rations such as Antonio Perreira and
his family of Madeira and George Hart of Scotland
(Source: National Archives Department, IA Series,
British Parliamentary Papers from 1839 (UK, London, 1839)
Fig 4 Extract of a Table showing the Importation of Indians and
Non-Indian Indentured Workers between 1835 and 1866. The contrast between the number of Indians and non-Indians imported between 1835 and 1845 becomes evident.
(Source: Dwarka Nath, A History of Indians in Guyana, 2nd Edition (London, UK)
Fig 5The Immigration Depot in 1880 where a group of newly landed Indian Indentured Labourers underwent a medical and corporal inspection by the Depot Medical Officer
(Source: Photo Collection, The National Archives of the Republic of Guyana)