Recruitment and Distribution of Indentured Indians

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the ways in which indentured Indians were recruited from India to labor on Danish St. Croix. The evidence shows that some indentured signed the labor contract on their own accord while others were duped. However, it is difficult to determine what percentage left of their own free will and how many were forced into contracts. Nevertheless, it is argued that by the 1860s, some of the irregularities in the recruitment, emigration and transportation of indentured Indians from India across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans to Danish St. Croix were remedied, although deceitful practices in the overall indenture labor scheme continued. The chapter also shows where the laborers were distributed on specific locations/plantations on the islands and argues that the location of the laborers determined the intensity of their contracts in terms of their approach, their isolation and their eventual access to the wider society.