Apprenticeship system

Definition

A period of unfree labour required of formerly enslaved people in the British Caribbean after 1834. The National Archives records that the 1833 Act made apprentices of those over six, who worked without compensation as a transition to freedom, and that the system ended in 1838. It limited the freedom that emancipation promised and shows the gap between a legal date and real freedom. See also: emancipation, abolition, and the guide Abolition Movements and the End of the Trade.