It was still slavery
Context: In 1838, with the abolition of slavery at its onset, the British were in the process of transporting a million Indians out of India and into the Caribbean to take the place of the recently freed Africans (freed in 1833) in indentureship. Women, looking for what they believed would be a better life in the colonies, were specifically sought after and recruited at a much higher rate than men due to the high population of men already in the colonies.^([)^(citation needed)^(]) Women had to prove their status as single and eligible to emigrate, as married women could not leave without their husbands. Many women seeking escape from abusive relationships were willing to take that chance. The Indian Immigration Act of 1883 prevented women from exiting India as widowed or single in order to escape.^([28])^([29])
Arrival in the colonies brought unexpected conditions of poverty, homelessness, and little to no food as the high numbers of emigrants overwhelmed the small villages and flooded the labor market. Many were forced into signing labor contracts that exposed them to the hard field labor on the plantation. Additionally, on arrival to the plantation, single women were "assigned" a man as they were not allowed to live alone. The subtle difference between slavery and indentureship is best seen here as women were still subjected to the control of the plantation owners as well as their newly assigned "partners"
After the end of slavery, the West Indian sugar colonies tried to use the labor of emancipated slaves; families from Ireland, Germany and Malta; and Portuguese people from Madeira. All these efforts failed to satisfy the labour needs of the colonies due to high mortality of the new arrivals and their reluctance to continue working at the end of their indenture. On 16 November 1844, the British Indian Government legalised emigration to Jamaica, Trinidad and Demerara (Guyana). The first ship, Whitby, sailed from Calcutta for British Guiana on 13 January 1838, and arrived in Berbice on 5 May 1838. Transportation to the Caribbean stopped in 1848 due to problems in the sugar industry and resumed in Demerara and Trinidad in 1851 and Jamaica in 1860.^([)^(citation needed)^(]) This system of labour was coined by contemporaries at the time as a "new system of slavery", a term later used by historian Hugh Tinker in his influential book of the same name.^([43])
The Indian indenture system was finally banned in 1917.^([44]) Although the system was officially suspended, those who were serving indentures at that time were required to complete their terms of service, thereby extending the system into the early 1920s.^([45]) According to The Economist, "When the Imperial Legislative Council finally ended indenture...it did so because of pressure from Indian nationalists and declining profitability, rather than from humanitarian concerns."^([4)
During the mid-19th century, thousands of Chinese laborers were contracted, often under deceptive or coercive means by slavers called crimps, to work in plantations across the Caribbean, Peru, and Hawaii. These migrations were a direct consequence of colonial powers seeking cheap labor post-slavery abolition, with Chinese trade docks being forced open by the unequal treaties following the Opium Wars.^([46])
These workers endured grueling labor conditions.^([46]) A Yankee plantation manager in Hawaii is quoted as saying, "They have to work all the time — and no regard is paid to their complaints for food, etc., Slavery is nothing compared to it."^([47]) These laborers were part of a larger post-abolition system that replaced chattel slavery with contract slavery. Testimonies from Chinese workers in Cuba document abuse, overwork, and limited legal recourse.^([)