Indo-Caribbeans or Indian-Caribbeans are Indian people in the Caribbean who are descendants of the Jahaji Indian indentured laborers brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority are descendants of Indians or other South Asians who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, engineers, doctors, etc. beginning in the mid-20th century.
Indo-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese, are people of Indian origin who are Guyanese nationals tracing their ancestry to the Indian subcontinent. They are the descendants of indentured servants and settlers who migrated from India beginning in 1838 during the time of the British Raj.
Leonidas was a labour transport ship (schooner) that played an important role in the history of Fiji. She had been earlier used to carry indentured labourers to the West Indies, having transported 580 Indian indentured labourers to St Lucia in 1878. Captained by McLachlan, the ship departed from Calcutta, India on 3 March 1879 and arrived at Levuka, Fiji, on 14 May that year. The indentured labourers who disembarked were the first of over 61,000 to arrive from the Indian subcontinent over the following 37 years, forming the nucleus of the Fiji Indian community that now numbers close to forty percent of Fiji's population.
Pericles, named after the Athenian leader Pericles, was a 1,598 ton, iron hulled, three masted sailing ship, that was built by W. Hood & Co of Aberdeen, and launched in July 1877 to transport wool for the Aberdeen Line.
Ganges was the first of three Nourse Line ships named for the Ganges river in northern India.
Unlike the bulk of Fiji's Indian population, who are descendants of Indian indentured labourers brought to Fiji between 1879 and 1916, the Gujaratis came to Fiji as free immigrants beginning in 1904. While the indentured labourers, on becoming free, generally took up farming, the Gujaratis were traders and craftsmen. In the Indo-Fijian population as a whole, the caste system disappeared within a few years of indenture, but the Gujaratis still maintain it and very rarely marry outside their caste. The Gujaratis continue to maintain strong links with India, usually sending their sons and daughters to be married there while the rest of Fiji's Indian population have little contact with their country of origin.
Boyne was a 1,403 ton, Nourse Line sailing ship that T.R. Oswald of Southampton built in 1877. She was referred to as the "Hoodoo Ship" for the number of mishaps that occurred to her. She wrecked in 1886.
Hereford was a 1456-ton iron sailing ship with two decks and one cemented bulkhead which was built in 1869 by J. Elder & Company at Glasgow for the Merchant Shipping Company of London. She was chartered by the New Zealand Shipping Company in the 1870s and made three voyages to Lyttelton, New Zealand with approximately three hundred emigrants each time. The first voyage in 1874 took 87 days, and the second took 80 days, arriving in Lyttelton on 19 January 1878. In 1881, she was stranded on Ingleby Reef near Port Phillip Heads, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and towed off on 12 March 1881 by a tug.
The Moy was a 1,697 ton, iron sailing ship with a length of 257.6 feet (78.5 m), breadth of 38.3 feet (11.7 m) and depth of 23.2 feet (7.1 m). She was built by Russel & Company for the Nourse Line, named after the River Moy in northwest of Ireland and launched in May 1885. She was primarily used for the transportation of Indian indenture labourers to the colonies. Details of some of these voyages are as follows:
The Rhone, formerly known as Gilroy, was a 1,768 ton, iron sailing ship with a length of 259.2 feet, breadth of 39.9 feet and depth of 23.2 feet.
The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than one million Indians were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large Indian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, to Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
British Peer was a 1428-ton three-masted iron sailing ship built for the British Shipowners Company at the Harland and Wolff yards in Belfast, Ireland, in 1865. She was 247.5 feet (75.4 m) long, 36.4 feet (11.1 m) wide and 22.5 feet (6.9 m) deep. She was bought by the Nourse Line in 1883, and was the fastest vessel in their fleet until British Ambassador was commissioned. In 1878, however, British Peer's sailing power was compromised when alterations were made to increase her tonnage by lengthening her hull by 32 feet (9.8 m), and she was never as fast again. She carried a crew of 23, including her master.
SS Virawa was a 3,334-ton steamship. She was built for the British-India Steam Navigation Company in 1890. She was one of the early B.I.S.N. ships to use telemotor steering gear.
Indo-Jamaicans or Indian-Jamaicans, are the descendants of people who came from the Indian subcontinent to Jamaica. Indians form the third largest ethnic group in Jamaica after Africans and Multiracials.
Indo-Grenadians or Grenadians who trace their roots to India, form the largest minority group in Grenada. This term is not generally recognized by Grenadians or indeed Caribbeans. They usually refer to themselves simply as Grenadian or possibly Caribbean. This group was first introduced during the second half of the 19th century when Grenada experimented with indentured labour. By the second half of the 20th century Indians were so integrated into Grenada’s society that a distinct Indian cultural identity was generally invisible. In addition, Indians were involved in every aspect of Grenadian life. Currently there are over 12,000 Grenadians of Indian and mixed-Indian descent.
Indo-Fijians or Indian-Fijians are Fijian citizens of fully or partially South Asian descent, including descendants who trace their heritage from various regions of the Indian subcontinent. Although Indo-Fijians constituted a majority of Fiji's population from 1956 through the late 1980s, discrimination and the resulting brain drain resulted in them numbering 313,798 (37.6%) out of a total of 827,900 people living in Fiji as of 2007. The term Indo-Fijians refers to the Indian subcontinent, not only modern day India, formally the Republic of India.
Indo–Saint Lucians or Indian–Saint Lucians, are Saint Lucians whose ancestry lies within the country of India, primarily the modern-day Indian states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh in Northern India. In 1859, the British began transporting indentured workers from British India to work on plantation estates in Saint Lucia, which had become a British colony in 1814. The first ship carrying 318 indentured workers from India, the Palmyra, arrived in Saint Lucia on 6 May 1859, and the last ship carrying Indian indentured workers, the Volga, arrived on 10 December 1893.
The Indian community in Saint Kitts and Nevis is made up of Indo-Kittitians, Indo-Nevisians, non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin. Indo-Kittitians and Indo-Nevisians are nationals of Saint Kitts and Nevis whose ancestry lies within the country of India. The community originated from the Indian indentured workers brought to Saint Kitts and Nevis by the British in 1861 and 1874 respectively. By 1884, most of the community had emigrated to Caribbean nations with larger Indian populations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname.
The majority of Fiji's islands were formed through volcanic activity starting around 150 million years ago. Today, some geothermic activity still occurs on the islands of Vanua Levu and Taveuni. Fiji was settled first by the Lapita culture, around 1,500 – 1,000 years BCE, followed by a large influx of people with predominantly Melanesian genetics about the time of the beginning of the Common Era. Europeans visited Fiji from the 17th century, and, after a brief period as an independent kingdom, the British established the Colony of Fiji in 1874. Fiji was a Crown colony until 1970, when it gained independence as the Dominion of Fiji. A republic was declared in 1987, following a series of coups d'état.
