To add to this, Indians could choose to return back home to India after their contract was over. Of course lots decided to stay, but some did return.
Thank you making note of this. The Guyanese I know have an oral history of being decieved and compelled. They were tricked into getting on board a boat and once there not allowed to leave. They were heart broken that their families did not know what happened to them. The return to India was offered later as reparation. But by then they had built entire lives and had new families of their own. The British did not call it slavery because slavery was outlawed by this time.
The author's heavy reliance on a historical narative authored by the U.S. military probably contributed to the rather sanitized recounting of the role Britain had in imigrating 286,000 Indians to Guyana.
I am curious to know if anyone else here shares this history in their family.
Frankly, I think the reason that it is not more often referred to as slavery is because it wasn’t officially referred to as such contemporaneously. But there is legitimate debate around the differences between Indian indentured servitude and slavery.