In 1838, with the abolition of slavery at its onset, the British were in the process of transporting a million Indians out of India and into the Caribbean to take the place of the recently freed Africans (freed in 1833) in indentureship. India’s population provided the British Empire with a ready source of cheap and mobile labourers.
Many Indians agreed to indenture which increased dramatically after the abolition of slavery in 1834. They were sent, sometimes in large numbers, to plantation colonies producing high value crops such as sugar in Africa and the Caribbean.