Due to deteriorating socioeconomic conditions in India under British rule, more than 36,000 Indians came to Jamaica as unskilled labourers between 1845 and 1917, mostly from North India (Rajasthan, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh), with around two-thirds remaining on the island.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, smaller numbers of East Indians came to Jamaica not as labourers but as merchants conducting business alongside Chinese, Syrian, and Lebanese immigrants [REF].