An overview of Indian Indentureship in Guyana, 1838-1917

 By Basdeo Mangru

(Basdeo Mangru received his doctorate in History from the University of London. He is currently Associate Professor of History at York College, City University of New York.)

 For a considerable time studies on the Indian diaspora in the Caribbean have been overshadowed by works focusing on the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the brutality meted out to slaves on the sugar plantation. Even today historical works on the Caribbean tend to portray the region as predominantly Black, although Indians form a sizable percentage of the English-speaking Caribbean. It was only in 1988, during the