ABSTRACT
Indian labourers began to arrive in Trinidad in 1845. The contracts or indentures under which they came involved them being assigned to a sugarcane plantation for ve years. If they signed up for a second ve years they would have their passage paid back to India, or, if they chose, they could have land of their own instead of a passage back. With the incentives to stay laid out in this way, most chose to stay, and a community of Indian villages developed on the previously unused land of the island. Although Indians eventually constituted over forty per cent of the population on the island, for a number of generations they remained a primarily rural and somewhat marginalized segment of the population.
