Historian Cleve McD Scott is calling on the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Indian Heritage Foundation (SVG IHF) to remove what he describes as a misleading line routinely included in its official Indian Heritage Day announcements.
In its press release commemorating Indian Heritage Day 2026, the Foundation stated that following the abolition of slavery in 1838, “there was a shortage of labour, as many of the newly freed slaves refused to work on the estates,” prompting the arrival of 2,474 Indian indentured laborers between 1861 and 1880.
Scott contends that this narrative has been repeated annually and misrepresents the socio-economic realities of post-emancipation Saint Vincent. He has urged the Foundation to delete the line from its official releases and simply state that East Indians arrived as indentured laborers.
“While they have omitted the push factors I urge them to simply say East Indians came as Indentured labourers,” Scott stated.
To challenge the claim that freed workers simply “refused to work,” Scott highlighted historical evidence from W.G. Sewell’s 1861 account, The Ordeal of Free Labor. Sewell visited Saint Vincent in April 1859, two years before the arrival of the first East Indian indentured ships.
Sewell’s findings indicated that agricultural difficulties on the island stemmed from a lack of capital rather than a lack of labor:
Insufficient Wages: Field labor wages in Saint Vincent did not reach one shilling per day, whereas significantly higher wages were paid in neighboring islands such as Trinidad.
Lack of Inducements: Landowners and estate managers made little to no effort to offer fair compensation or reconcile free workers to estate labor.
Land Ownership: Because estate labor was unprofitable, formerly enslaved workers took independent action to purchase interior land and cultivate their own properties.
Sewell noted that he doubted assertions that any Saint Vincent estates were abandoned solely because labor could not be procured at a remunerative cost, arguing that laborers were justified in quitting unprofitable estate work for better livelihoods.
Scott maintains that correcting this line in future releases will ensure a more accurate representation of history as the nation marks Indian Heritage Day on Wednesday, October 7, 2026.
