In the 1830s, indentured labourers were introduced into the British colonies to replace the freed slaves on the sugar plantation. The rise of wage labour within this period is often explored within the context of the decline of contracted labour, and the developing abolitionist movement that would slowly dismantle the transatlantic slave trade and transatlantic slavery. This was as a result of the depletion of the Taino race within the Caribbean and the need for cheap labour to carry out the manual labour needs in the sugar plantations. Over two million Asians, Africans, Indians and South Pacific islanders signed long-term labour contracts in return for free passage overseas, modest wages, and other benefits in hope of a better life (Craton 1997 p415). These indentured workers came to the West Indies with their different religious beliefs, culture, intellectual concepts and ways of life. This is the main reason for the distinct, intermixed nature of the West Indies even to this day. The major groups smuggled in under contracts of indentured labours when the Tainos were proven to be inadequate within the West Indies were the Caucasians, Africans, Asians, and Indians.
Governor Nicolas Ovando arrived in Española (also called Hispaniola) in 1502 with 2,500 men on thirty ships. The first thing he did was sort to develop the Columbus labour theory. He
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Never the less, a man by the name of Bartholome de las Casas tried to protect the remaining Taino by appealing to the Counsel of the Indies. Upon his appeal, the Crown passed a body of legal provision known as the New Laws which forbade the enslavement of the Taino in the way that Africans were enslaved as property. However, the encomendero resisted the New Laws and the Crown was forced to cancel the laws. By the late 1590s the Taino were virtually extinct (Beck