Today, May 5th is “Arrival Day”, commemorating the arrival of several groups to this country, following the abolition of slavery on August 1, 1834. The agitation and petition for this day to be declared a Public Day was conducted by individuals and groups solely from the Indian-Guyanese community. When they made submissions to the Parliamentary Committee constituted to examine and make a recommendation on the issue, they uniformly recommended the day be named “Indian Arrival Day”. But when enacted, the Public Day became “Arrival Day”.
What must have been taken into consideration by the Executive was the “arrivals” following the abolition of slavery were not only from India, and there needed to be recognition of this fact, even though their descendants did not request such recognition. The genesis of “arrival” was the certainty of planters in countries such as British Guiana and Trinidad, that after Emancipation, they would face demands for higher wages that they would not be able to afford.
England had decided to abandon the mercantilist regime for its trade and opt for “free trade” where goods such as sugar could enter their markets without attracting the high duties that gave West Indian planters a great advantage. England, of course, was now more concerned that its manufactured goods from its own home factories could then enter the countries that accepted “free trade”.
Knowing it would be almost impossible to compete with sugar from those countries that still allowed slavery, the planters in the West Indies had three options – abandon their plantations, improve the efficiencies of their fields and factories and/or import cheaper labour than that which the freed slaves would insist on where there was land for them to move off the plantations if their demands for higher wages were not met.
In those territories such as Antigua and the smaller islands where there was other options for the freed slaves than returning to the plantations, the planters did not even have the Apprenticeship Scheme. In these small islands, wages of the freed slaves remained very low compared to Guiana. The planters imported some Europeans from Germany and Malta in 1835, but this scheme was not successful. In the same year, inducements were given to freed slaves from the West Indies and by 1838, some 5000 arrived from Barbados, St Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat and Nevis. There needs to be research conducted to discover when the first freed West Indians arrived in Guyana.
In 1835, Britain turned to the impoverished Portuguese island of Madeira and 429 Madeirans arrived that year starting on May 3 on the ship, the Louisa Baille. They came as “indentured labourers” which meant they had to work for a fixed number of years at a contracted labour rate. In 1838, planters explored another option, India – which had been plunged into poverty after the British conquest and destruction of the cotton industry which was transferred to England. The first Indians arrived in Guyana as indentured labourers on May 5 on two ships – the Whitby and the Hesperus that had left India at different dates.
The first batches of Portuguese and Indians suffered horrific death rates and it took some years for the shipments to resume. In the meantime, the British brought individuals of African origin starting from 1841 to work on the plantations – either from slave ships they intercepted or directly from Sierra Leone. The arrival date of these immigrants also needs researching. The planters also turned to China for indentured labourers and in 1853, the ship Glentanner arrived on January 12 with 305 Chinese labourers. Over the course of the Indentureship and “free labour experience, the Indians were by far the most numerous to arrive – with 329,000, followed by the West Indians with 40,000, Portuguese 15,000, Chinese 13,000 and free Africans 13,000.
One hopes the descendants of all these “arrivals” would also commemorate “Arrival Day”.
