The abolition of slavery was the catalyst for the arrival of the first Indian indentured labourers into the sugar colonies of Mauritius (1834), Guyana (1838) and Trinidad (1845), followed some years later by South Africa (1860) and Fiji (1879).
The system of indenture was abolished in the British Empire between 1917 and 1920 but had moved roughly two million Indians around the pink parts of the globe, most of whom never returned to India, through both design and coercion.
Today, an Indian indentured-labour diaspora makes up the populations of many Commonwealth countries, including in Africa, Belize, Suriname, Guyana, the Caribbean and the Pacific and Indian oceans.