Indian Ocean
The islands of the Indian Ocean, especially Mauritius, with extensive sugar cane plantations sought a cheaper workforce than emancipated workers negotiating for higher wages. Mauritius was the country of coolitude, the 'Great Experiment' of widespread recourse to indentured labor having started there. Mauritius acted as a hub or plaque tournante for this indentured population of coolies, receiving and onward dispatching hundreds of thousands of coolies to Africa and the Indies through the Aapravasi ghat.
Read more about this topic: Indentured Servant
Famous quotes containing the words indian and/or ocean:
“The Indian is one of Nature’s gentlemen—he never says or does a rude or vulgar thing. The vicious, uneducated barbarians, who form the surplus of overpopulous European countries, are far behind the wild man in delicacy of feeling or natural courtesy.”
—Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)
“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)