When Britain decided to emancipate the slaves, they did so in a round about way. They wanted to assure the planters of labor, after emancipation, so they created an apprenticeship system, where slaves older than six years of age were "‘entitled to be registered as apprenticed labourers and to acquire thereby all rights and privileges of freedom.’ In return for food, clothing and lodging, but without wages, they were to work for their former owners three-fourths of the day…" This apprenticeship was a quasi-slavery system designed to keep the slaves on the plantation, but give them their "freedom". Over 7,000 East Indians immigrated to the West Indies before 1841. In 1850 Chinese immigration occurred, mainly in Guyana, but some went to both Jamaica and Trinidad. Indentured labor did not resolve the problems of the plantations and the local governments in the Caribbean during the nineteenth century, but it enabled the sugar plantations to weather the difficulties of the transition from slave labor.

The Slavery Abolition Act was passed by the British Parliament on 24th August 1833. The Act did not become law until 1st August 1834 when all slaves in the British colonies were to become emancipated, and slavery was to be abolished throughout the British possessions abroad. This date is remembered and celebrated as a Public Holiday called "Emancipation Day" in most of the ex-British colonies in the Caribbean. Freed 450,000 slaves in Haiti; 650,000 in British colonies; 180,000 in French Antilles; and 50,000 Dutch Caribbean slaves.