Slavery Dbq Essay

After the abolition of slavery in the 1800s, colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific islands needed a new source of labor for their industries. They found the labor that they needed in indentured servants. Although indentured servitude solved the labor problem, it was an unfair system. The major cause of this change in labor was anti-slavery movements and finally the emancipation of all slaves. It caused the colonial powers to import contracted laborers from Asia. Most of the workers came from India and went to the island of Mauritius. (Document 4) Thousands of Asian Indian workers were needed because the quantity of work required to keep the plantations successful was massive. The work that could be provided by the natives was not nearly

The contract stated what work they would do, what their hours would be, their wages, and conditions of their return passage. Document 7, a British Guiana Indenture Agreement, states that servants will work everyday except Sundays and holidays and a strong and capable man will earn one shilling for a day of work. A disable man, a child, or a woman will earn considerably less than this. It also states that housing, medical attendance, and an appropriate diet will be provided to the servant. However, a lot of the time the plantation owners and masters did not stick to the contract. As document 8 shows, many laborers were not happy with their treatment. Ramona, a servant indentured to T.T. Poynton states that he is overworked and underpaid. He also says that he is not given days off and that he works such long hours that he doesn't get a chance to eat. Along with these complaints, most indentured servants did extremely laborious work on sugar and cotton plantations. They did the undesirable work that nobody else would do. As the Asian Indian laborers did back breaking work in the fields, Europeans and masters supervised them. This is shown in one of the photos of Document 5. The other photo shows the contracted laborers lined up awaiting their plantation assignments. The photos of indentured servitude resemble slavery. It was an arrangement that was not equally beneficial to the servants and their masters. The indentures servants faced many injustices and were treated almost as badly as