"We are pleased to hear that you have succeeded in engaging a number of Hill Coolies to proceed to British Guiana... Since the emancipation of the Negroes, our greatest difficulty has been to obtain steady and continuous labor. The Negroes, though free, work only when it suits them, and we cannot depend on them during the critical sugarcane harvest. The Coolies, being bound by contracts for five years, will provide the reliable labor force we desperately need to maintain our sugar production."
��� Letter from a British plantation owner in British Guiana to a labor recruitment agent in Calcutta, 1838
The labor recruitment strategy described in the letter was most directly a response to which of the following nineteenth-century developments?
- The abolition of chattel slavery within the British Empire, which created severe labor shortages on colonial plantations.Cevap
- BThe voluntary migration of Asian industrial workers seeking high-wage factory employment in urban centers of the Americas.
- CThe direct political annexation of South Asia to establish agricultural settler colonies for British working-class emigrants.
- DThe development of internal combustion engine transport, which allowed for rapid transoceanic passenger travel.
Cevap
The abolition of chattel slavery within the British Empire, which created severe labor shortages on colonial plantations.
The correct option is correct because the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833 created a severe labor shortage on Caribbean sugar plantations, as formerly enslaved Africans sought autonomy and resisted returning to plantation fields. This led colonial authorities and plantation owners to recruit indentured laborers from India and China under five-year contracts to maintain production.
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Anahtar Kavram
The growth of global indentured labor networks as a direct consequence of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery.