In the 19th century, hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese labourers went to work on plantations, in mines and in road and railway construction projects around the world. In India,indentured labourers were hired under contracts which promised return travel to India after five years of work. Recruitment was done by agents engaged by employers. Many migrants agreed to take up work, hoping to escape poverty or oppression in their home villages. Agents gave them false information about final destinations, modes of travel or nature of the work and living and working conditions. Often the migrants were not even told that they would have to make a long sea voyage. Sometimes agents even forcibly abducted less willing migrants.On arrival at the plantations, labourers found conditions to be very different from what they were told. Living and working conditions were harsh, they had few legal rights. It was indeed a new system of slavery which was condemned by Indian nationalist leaders in 1900 as abusive and cruel. It was abolished in 1921.