In the 1840s, as apprenticeship ended and sugar boomed, Mauritius turned to a new labor system that would reshape its society: indentured migration from India. This episode follows the first ships carrying girmitiyas to the island, the contracts they signed, the brutal work in the cane fields, and the surprising ways these migrants built communities, kept their languages, and eventually became the majority. We trace the role of figures like Adolphe de Plevitz, who exposed abuses, and the sirdars who mediated between planters and laborers. Through letters, plantation records, and the memories of descendants, we see how indenture was neither slavery nor free labor, but something new—a system that created a distinct Mauritian identity out of sugar, resilience, and the sea.
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