164th Anniversary of the Arrival of the First East Indians to St Vincent – A Brief Comment

The St Vincent Times in a piece on the 164th anniversary of the East Indians to St Vincent, stated that “2,474 Indians arrived at Indian Bay, St Vincent and the Grenadines 164 years ago.”

I am not sure from where they got that information.

Each year the Indian Heritage Association re-enacts the arrival of the Indians at Indian Bay. I have for long wanted to raise this issue with the Association but have never gotten around to doing so. One gets the impression that Indian Bay was named after the arrival of the Indians there. The records show that the first Indians who arrived on June 1, 1861, were housed at the Commissariat Building at ‘New Edinboro’, as it was then. The fact that the Commissariat Building was used for housing them suggests that they might have landed at Edinboro. I have certainly not checked out the origin of the name Indian Bay but will certainly do so. The Barque Travacoure arrived from Madras with 260 Indians; 160 men, 62 women, 34 children under 10, 4 infants under 1 year ( 2 births having occurred on board)

The Lieutenant Governor at the time stated, “All the Agricultural body with very rare exceptions, in colonies requiring it are anxious for immigration and ready to contribute to legislation for the desired object. Comparatively few are willing to take the immigrants on their arrival. Each would prefer his neighbour to have the immigrants, and he retain the native labour…. The fact is illustrated by this colony in placing in juxtaposition the facility with which the Legislature deals with the subject in providing the funds, and the comparatively small number of registered applications for Immigrants.”

One got the impression from the literature at that time that the East Indians were brought in to solve a problem of labour shortage on the sugar estates. Let me state here that before the arrival of the Indians we had Portugese indentured immigrants from Madeira and Liberated Africans who were captured from slave ships, many taken to Sierra Lone from which many were brought to this colony. The British, of course, had made the slave trade illegal in 1807/8. In fact, even in 1862 one of the ships, the ‘Castle Howard’ bringing ‘Coolie immigrants’ as they were called officially, also had on board Liberated Africans. Again, the then Lieutenant Governor stated that there was some delay in the distribution of all the immigrants, many remained for several weeks without applications being made for them. He concluded by stating “I do not expect that I shall be justified for some time in applying for another ship.”

The planters wanted to avoid having to give into the demands of the emancipated Africans for higher wages and better working conditions by providing them with competition from the immigrants. The creole labourers were quite aware of the reasons behind the emphasis on immigration and complained that it was difficult for them to get work once the immigrants arrived in the colony. Their reaction was to emigrate particularly to Trinidad using the ferry services offered through the Grenadines. As an example, we find that in 1873 over 700-800 creole labourers left for Trinidad. There were of course other factors involved because the price for sugar affected the demand and supply of labour since at different times even many of the Indian indentured labourers began to move to Trinidad and Guyana where there were large Indian populations. Some of this was even encouraged by the local governments and planters especially on occasion when estates found themselves in financial difficulties. The fundamental thrust to immigration when one looks at what was happening in the society and economy was to weaken the bargaining power of black labour many of whom had already moved away from the estates and lived in villages which they had helped to create.

There are a number of other issues that I will try to address at some point later- issues that had to do with integration/interracial marriages between Africans and Indians and the period when some Indians began to see themselves as Vincentians rather than Indentured immigrants wanting to return to India.

Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian