The ending of Indian indentured emigration: The road to 2017

Indian indentured emigration to sugar colonies across the globe ended in 1917. By then more than one million men, women and children had left India, most never to return. In 2017, the centenary of the abolition of indentured emigration was celebrated in all the former colonies to which Indian indentured labourers had gone. This chapter looks at the events which brought about the abolition. More generally, it looks at aspects of the scholarship on Indian indenture and the debates which have animated it, such as whether indenture was slavery by another name. The author advocates a more nuanced reading of a complex historical phenomenon.