Being a Slave

Critical, Connected Histories

Critical, Connected Histories is a series of works that explore unfamiliar social, cultural,
and political issues that connect people of Asia, the Middle-East, Africa, America and
Europe in the modern age. Building on trends in historiography that look at transna-
tional flows and networks and foreground themes of circulation and connection, the
series aims to break down artificial boundaries between regions that have long dom-
inated traditional area studies and the discipline of history. It aims to build new ways
of mapping these networks and journeys of people, ideas, and goods without omitting
dynamics of power and the resilience of the state. The works in this series seek to
sharpen the edges of such inquiries and challenge legal and imagined boundaries while
examining the durability of their structures of power. In addition, the series cautions
against the potential universalization of histories, and situates queries within different
vantage points.

Multi-disciplinary in their approach, the books in this series draw from sources in
multiple languages and media. They seek to expand our understanding and historical
knowledge of events, processes, and movements. In denaturalizing the practices of
historical writing, this series offers a forum for scholarship that is both theorised and
empirically rich, and one that in particular addresses the violence and inequality of the
modern ages as well as its promises.

Series Editors
Nira Wickramasinghe, Leiden University
Tsolin Nalbantian, Leiden University

Editorial Board
Fred Cooper, New York University
Engseng Ho, Duke University
Ilham Khuri-Makdissi, Northeastern University
Susan Pennybacker, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Bhavani Raman, Toronto University
Willem van Schendel, Amsterdam University
 BEING A SLAVE
Histories and Legacies of European Slavery
in the Indian Ocean

Edited by

Alicia Schrikker
and
Nira Wickramasinghe

Leiden University Press

Cover design: Andre Klijsen
Cover illustration: Detail of Slaapkamer met zoon Jantje en slavinnetje Bietja, by
Jan Brandes, 1784. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Lay-out: Crius Group

isbn 978 90 8728 344 5

e-isbn 978 94 0060 376 9 (e-pdf)
e-isbn 978 94 0060 377 6 (e-pub)
nur 680

© Alicia Schrikker and Nira Wickramasinghe / Leiden University Press, 2020

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both
the publisher and the editors of the book.

This book is distributed in North America by the University of Chicago Press

(www.press.uchicago.edu).
 Table of Contents

Contributors 7

List of Figures 13

Preface: Looking at Indian Ocean Multiple Forms of Slavery 15

Françoise Vergès

Introduction: Enslaved in the Indian Ocean, 1700–1850 17

Alicia Schrikker and Nira Wickramasinghe

Part I Mobility, Emotions, Identities

1. Slavery, Ethnicity, and Identity in the Indian Ocean Colonial

World: A Case Study of “Indian” Slaves on Mauritius 43
Marina Carter

2. Small-Scale Slave Trade Between Ceylon and the Cape of Good

Hope: From 1728 to 1737 61
Herman Tieken

3. Between Markets and Chains: An Exploration of the Experiences,

Mobility and Control of Enslaved Persons in Eighteenth-Century
South-West India 75
Alexander Geelen, Bram van den Hout, Merve Tosun
and Matthias van Rossum

4. Connected Lives: Experiences of Slavery in VOC Colombo 99

Kate Ekama

5. Boenga van Johor: “My forced journey from Batavia to the Cape
of Good Hope” 123
Lodewijk J. Wagenaar
6 beingbbbbeing

Part II Legacies, Memories, Absences

6. At Sea in the Archive: Slavery, Indenture and the Nineteenth-

Century Indian Ocean 149
Yvette Christiansë

7. Acts of Equality: Writing Autonomy, Empathy and Community

in an Indonesian Slave Narrative 183
Paul Bijl

8. Rituals of Rule: Infanticide and the Humanitarian Sentiment 205

Pamela Scully

9. “Hoera, dit skip seil uit oos”: The Sea as a Site of Memory
in the Folk Songs of the Enslaved Community and their
Descendants at the Cape 233
Anne Marieke van der Wal

10. The Materiality of Indian Ocean Slavery and Emancipation:

The Challenges of Presence and Absence 249
Sarah Longair

11. The Shadows of (Public) Recognition: Transatlantic Slavery and

Indian Ocean Slavery in Dutch Historiography and Public Culture 269
Guno Jones

Afterword 295
Robert Ross

Bibliography 301

Index 325
 Contributors

Paul Bijl teaches Comparative Literature at Utrecht University, the

Netherlands. He has worked on cultural memory, photography, Indonesia,
human rights, citizenship and post-colonial studies. His publications
include: Emerging Memory: Photographs of Colonial Atrocity in Dutch Cultural
Remembrance (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015) and he co-­
edited Appropriating Kartini – Colonial, National and Transnational Memories
of an Indonesian Icon (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2020).

Marina Carter is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh

and is currently working as a freelance public historian and heritage consult-
ant. She has published widely in the field of Indian Ocean diaspora studies,
including: Voices from Indenture: Experiences of Indian Migrants in the British
Empire (London: Leicester University Press, 1996) and she has co-authored
with Khal Torabully Coolitude: An Anthology of the Indian Labour Diaspora
(London: Anthem, 2002).

Yvette Christiansë is Professor of Africana Studies and English Literature

at Barnard College, New York. Her publications include Toni Morrison: An
Ethical Poetics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). She is the author
of the historical novel Unconfessed (Other Press, 2006; Kwela Books, 2007;
Querido, 2007), and of the poetry collections Castaway (Durham NC: Duke
University Press, 1999). She is currently writing a book on representations
of Liberated Africans or Recaptives between 1807 and 1886. Her research
has taken her to archives in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, in the USA and
within Africa.
8 beingbbbbeing

Kate Ekama is post-doctoral fellow in History at Stellenbosch University,

South Africa. Her research on slavery in the Indian Ocean focuses on
Colombo and the Cape, and spans the VOC and British periods. Her
publications include “Just Deserters: Runaway Slaves from the VOC Cape,
c. 1700-1800,” in Desertion in the Early Modern World: A Comparative History
(London: Bloomsbury, 2016) and “Precarious Freedom: Manumission in
Eighteenth-Century Colombo, Sri Lanka” (Journal of Social History, forthcom-
ing). Kate Ekama’s current research deals with the financial underpinnings
of slavery in the nineteenth-century Cape Colony.

Alexander Geelen is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social

History in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is part of the Netherlands
Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) project “Resilient Diversity”. In his
research project, called “Bordering up, regulating mobility through passes walls
and guards”, he researches how social background determined one’s mobility.
He has recently co-authored the following publications: “A Tale of Two Johannas:
Gatekeeping, Mobilities, and Marriages in Cochin and Amsterdam” (2019) Early
Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal; and Testimonies of Enslavement.
Sources on Slavery from the Indian Ocean (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

Bram van den Hout is Junior Researcher at the International Institute of

Social History in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His fields of interests are
slavery, piracy and violence in the Dutch East India Company and exploring
the intersection between video games and history. He co-authored with
Rossum, M. van, et al., Testimonies of Enslavement – Sources on Slavery from
the Indian Ocean World. (London: Bloomsbury, 2020) which presents trans-
lated transcripts of VOC court cases dealing with themes of enslavement and
“enslavebility”. And he has co-edited with C.E. Ariese, et al., Return to the
Interactive Past (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2020).

Guno Jones is Research Associate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

(Amsterdam Centre for Migration and Refugee Law). As a part of the research
project entitled “Regulating Mixed Intimacies in Europe”, he currently
conducts research on the regulation and construction of “Mixed Intimacies
in European Law”. His main research interests include citizenship, migra-
tion and the nation in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK; World War
II Heritage in the Netherlands and its former colonies; (the afterlives of )
colonialism and slavery in the Netherlands.
 contributors 9

Sarah Longair is a Senior Lecturer in the History of Empire at the University

of Lincoln, UK. Her research focuses upon the British Empire and the
Indian Ocean world through the study of visual and material culture. She has
published, among others, Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire
in the Zanzibar Museum, 1897-1964 (London & New York: Routledge, 2015)
and co-edited with John McLeer, Curating Empire Museums and the British
Imperial Experience (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012, 2016).

Robert Ross is emeritus professor in African History at Leiden University. His

research has generally concentrated on the history of the Cape Colony, though
with occasional excursions into the history of clothing and material culture.
His major publications include Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in
South Africa (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983); A Concise History of
South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Status and
Respectability at the Cape of Good Hope: A Tragedy of Manners (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999) and The Borders of Race in Colonial
South Africa: The Kat River Settlement, 1829-1856 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), and he is the chief editor of both volumes of the
Cambridge History of South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2010, 2011).

Matthias van Rossum is Senior Researcher in the field of Global Labour

History at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, the
Netherlands. He specializes in the history of coerced labour, diversity, con-
flict and social strategies in the early modern period. His main publications
include Werkers van de wereld. Globalisering, arbeid en interculturele ontmoetin-
gen tussen Aziatische en Europese zeelieden in dienst van de VOC, 1600-1800
(Hilversum: Verloren, 2014) and he has co-edited with Titas Chakraborty
and Marcus Rediker A Global History of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and
Capitalism 1600-1850 (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2019).

Alicia Schrikker is Senior Lecturer in colonial and global history at Leiden

University. She works on everyday colonialism in the Indian Ocean through-
out the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, through a focus on sites and
moments of exchange and interaction. She has co-edited with Jeroen Touwen
Promises and Predicaments. Trade and Entrepreneurship in Colonial and
independent Indonesia in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Singapore: Singapore
University Press, 2015). and with Carolien Stolte World History – a Genealogy.
10 beingbbbbeing

Private Conversations with World Historians, 1996-2016. (Leiden: Leiden

University Press, 2017). Her most recent publications deal with socio-legal
history, slavery, historic disaster and colonial mentality in the Indian Ocean.

Pamela Scully is Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies,

Professor of African Studies, and Vice Provost of Undergraduate Affairs at
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Her research interests focus on compar-
ative women’s and gender history. Her latest book is Writing Transnational
History, co-authored with Professor Fiona Paisley (London & New York:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). Other books include Sara Baartman and the
Hottentot Venus: A Ghost Story and a Biography, co-authored with Clifton
Crais (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009, 2010); Liberating
the Family? Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South
Africa, 1823-1853 (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1997).

Herman Tieken taught Sanskrit and Tamil at the Kern Institute of Leiden
University, the Netherlands. His main research interest is in the classical
literatures of these two languages. The eighteenth-century Ondaatje letters
were for him a foray into unknown territory. He has published widely on
Tamil literary culture. He recently published an edition and annotated trans-
lation of the Ondaatje letters: Between Colombo and the Cape. Letters in Tamil,
Dutch and Sinhala, Sent to Nicolaas Ondaatje from Ceylon, Exile at the Cape of
Good Hope (1728-1737). (Delhi: Manohar, 2015).

Merve Tosun is Junior Researcher at the International Institute of Social

History in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She studies the history of slavery,
corvée labour and strategies of local workers in territories under the Dutch
East India Company. She has co-authored the following upcoming publica-
tions: Testimonies of Enslavement: Sources on Slavery from the Indian Ocean
World (London: Bloomsbury, 2020) and “On The Run: Runaway Slaves and
their Social Networks in Eighteenth Century Cochin”, Special Issue (2020),
Journal of Social History.

Françoise Vergès is a decolonial feminist activist, a public educator, writer

and independent curator. She is the co-founder of the Decolonizing the
Arts association, Paris. Her Réunionnese background opened her to the
entanglements of the Indian Ocean world – south-south exchanges, slavery,
migrations, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, creolization and current
 contributors 11

flows and conflicts. She has held teaching positions in the UK, France
and the USA, been the president of the French national committee for the
memories and history of slavery, and directed the scientific programme for
a post-colonial museum in Réunion. Her many publications include: Abolir
l’esclavage. Une utopie coloniale, les ambiguïtés d’une politique humanitaire
(Paris: Albin Michel, 2001).

Lodewijk J. Wagenaar is affiliated guest at the University of Amsterdam, the

Netherlands. There he has lectured in the History Department since 1999
on a wide range of subjects related to the relation between Europe and Asia
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, focusing on the history of
Sri Lanka during the colonial occupation. In 1994 he published his micro-
historical study of eighteenth-century Galle: Galle, VOC Vestiging in Ceylon
(Amsterdam: Bataafsche Leeuw, 1994). His recent publications include
Cinnamon & Elephants: Sri Lanka and the Netherlands from 1600 (Rijksmuseum
country series Nijmegen: Van Tilt, 2016).

Anne Marieke van der Wal-Rémy is Assistant Professor of African History

and International Studies at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Her main
interests are the history of South Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Slave
Trade, and Memory and Subaltern Studies. She has worked on memory and
slavery studies, post-colonial critique and modernity/counter-modernity, and
has published on the commemorative folk songs of the Cape Coloured com-
munity including, “Slave Orchestras and Rainbow Balls, Colonial Culture
and Creolisation at the Cape of Good Hope, 1750-1850”, in Dieuwke Van der
Poel, Louis Peter Grijp and Wim van Anrooij (eds.), Identity, Intertextuality,
and Performance in Early Modern Song Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2016).

Nira Wickramasinghe is a historian and Chair/Professor of Modern South

Asian Studies at Leiden University, where she is also Academic Director of
Research at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS). Her most
recent books are Sri Lanka in the Modern Age. A History (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2015) and Metallic Modern. Everyday Machines in Colonial
Sri Lanka (Oxford: Berghahn Press, 2014). Her forthcoming book, Slave in a
Palanquin. Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka, will be published by
Columbia University Press in 2020.
 List of Figures

Figure 2.1. A letter dated 3 November 1730 from Ondaatje’s brother-in-

law, Christoffel Tomisz.
Source: Western Cape Archives and Record Service, Cape Town, SA. 62

Figure 2.2. The cover of a letter dated 12 January 1737.

Source: Western Cape Archives and Record Service, Cape Town, SA. 63

Figure 3.1. Map of Cochin.

Source: National Archives of the Netherlands, Catalogus Leupe. 85

Figure 4.1. Late eighteenth-century map of Colombo.

Source: National Archives, The Hague, Verzameling Buitenlandse
Kaarten Leupe, Archive number 4. VEL, Inventory number 953. 104

Figure 4.2. Detail of the eighteenth-century map of Colombo.

Source: National Archives, The Hague, Verzameling Buitenlandse
Kaarten Leupe, Archive number 4. VEL, Inventory number 953. 105

Figure 5.1. Silhouette portrait of Flora, enslaved maid of the Lutheran

minister Jan Brandes. Sketch Book of Jan Brandes.
Source: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 127

Figure 6.1. Two pages from HMS Columbine’s register of Liberated

Africans landed at Port Victoria on 7 October 1871.
Source: Seychelles National Archives. 162

Figure 6.2. Detail from HMS Columbine’s register.

Source: Seychelles National Archives. 164
14 beingbbbbeing

Figure 7.1. Portrait of Wange Hendrijk Richard van Bali. Etching by

Ernst Willem Bagelaar.
Source: Rijksumseum, object number RP-P-BI-245. 185

Figure 11.1. Cattle and Colonized for Sale.

Source: exhibited image of Sumatra Post, 1902 (photograph by author
on location). 270
 Pr eface

Looking at Indian Ocean

Multiple Forms of Slavery
Françoise Vergès

Our skin re-traumatises the sea

They mock us
For not being able to throw ourselves into something that was instrumen-
tal in trying to execute our extinction.
For you, the ocean is for surf boards, boats and tans
And all the cool stuff you do under there in your bathing suits and goggles
But we, we have come to be baptised here
We have come to stir the other world here
We have come to cleanse ourselves here
We have come to connect our living to the dead here
Our respect for water is what you have termed fear
The audacity to trade and murder us over water
Then mock us for being scared of it
The audacity to arrive by water and invade us
Koleka Putuma, “Water,” 20161

In this poem South African poetess Koleka Putuma beautifully captures the
strong emotions that black peoples attach to the sea. From the sea came the
slavers, the colonizers, the soldiers, the merchants and the missionaries, and
most did not have it in mind to engage in peaceful encounters. And though
the routes and roads of enslavement are not exclusively maritime, the sea
has been associated with exile and deportation in the hold of a ship, and the
ship with despair, with stench and with death. However, whereas Paul Gilroy
could speak of the Black Atlantic,2 the “broad geographical space spanning
mutliple locations of the Indian Ocean world” and the existence of varying
degrees of bondage “from eastern Africa to the Philippines” requires a strong
16 beingbbbbeing

multi-directional and multi-layered approach. Hence the astute and insight-

ful choice of the co-editors, Alicia Schrikker and Nira Wickramasinghe, for “a
variety of disciplinary approaches”.
Growing up on Réunion Island, once a French slave colony and now
an overseas department, I never heard of slavery at school. I learned about
slavery at home and while listening to maloya, the music, performance, oral
poetry and ritual to the ancestors created by the descendants of slaves from
Madagascar and Mozambique, enriched by sounds of the Indian indentured
workforce. In Mauritius, the “sister island”, which had also been a French
slave colony, the history of the slave trade and slavery was long ignored and
the very existence of Afro-Mauritians denied. In both former colonies, the
white elites downplayed the existence of bonded labour which built their
wealth and racism played its role in undermining the importance of slavery
in the making of Creole societies. Slavery is not yet an important topic in
schools and universities around the Indian Ocean. Movements for a reapro-
priation of that history came from the anti-colonial and anti-racist front in
the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, memorials have been built around the
Indian Ocean, and publications, exhibitions, documentaries, conferences,
novels, songs and poems have brought to light the history and memories of
enslavement. The archaeology of slavery in this region of the world, which
is in its infancy, will certainly reveal more and there are archives still to be
looked at. A lot remains to be uncovered. The vast Indian Ocean, which
carries the memories of enslaved and indentured workers, still has much to
say about the lives and afterlives of slaves.
This is why Being a Slave. Histories and Legacies of European Slavery in the
Indian Ocean is an important volume. The variety of its authors, topics and
approaches contributes to a rare intra-disciplinary conversation on enslave-
ment in the Indian Ocean.

Notes

1. Koleka Putuma, “Water” Pen South Africa, last modified 15 June 2016, https://
pensouthafrica.co.za/water-by-koleka-putuma.
2. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and the Black Consciousness (Cam-
bridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
 In t roduc t ion

Enslaved in the Indian Ocean, 1700–18501

Alicia Schrikker and Nira Wickramasinghe

Slaves were central to the East India Companies established by various

European powers throughout the Indian Ocean world.2 However, slavery
and colonies have been relegated to the margins in the national histories of
European states, even if memories of slavery have become a part of public
discourse in former slaving empires such as France and the Netherlands.
This edited volume brings into dialogue the histories of enslaved people and
the legacies of slavery that unfold in a broad geographical space spanning
mutliple locations of the Indian Ocean world. To paint such a wide spatial
and temporal canvas a variety of disciplinary approaches seem necessary
as well as productive. Historians, literary scholars and post-colonial schol-
ars can indeed ask different questions regarding the experience of being
enslaved and freed, and search for answers by following their own scholarly
protocols. They engage differently with source material while the language
and conceptual apparatus they use belongs to specific disciplinary traditions.
This variety in approaches to the lives of enslaved peoples and their reverber-
ations in the present are, we hope to show, a richness rather than a weakness.
Such intra-disciplinary conversations, still rare among slavery scholars of the
Indian Ocean, are commonplace in the broader field of colonial studies.
Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Françoise Vergès, Gloria Wekker,
Kristin Ross and many others have stressed the importance of reading colony
and empire within the same frame as a “transcultural global process”3 in
order to understand the making of post-colonial identities both in Europe
and the Global South.4 Indian Ocean slavery offers a fascinating terrain for
dissecting the connections between the past and the present and the past in
the present. While near comprehensive works have been produced that focus
on the volume and value of the slave trade in the Indian Ocean world, single
volumes that bring together the lives and experiences of slaves in different
locales of the Indian Ocean world are rare. Such works when they exist tend
to focus on a single location. Yet there is much to gain in looking at the
18 beingbbbbeing

slave experience in multiple local contexts as it emerged or was transformed

through its interaction with European trading companies.
This book has two connected threads. First it examines the lives of
enslaved adults and children in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
who were forcibly shipped by Europeans across the Indian Ocean—from
Makassar to Colombo, from Kochi to Cape Town. Second it answers the
question: what difference to their lives and futures did abolition bring? Most
of the chapters in this volume were first presented at the “Being a Slave:
Indian Ocean Slavery in Local Context” workshop organised in Leiden in
2017.5 The workshop and this volume were born of a recognition of the need
to inflect the direction of Indian Ocean slavery studies by drawing from the
rich Atlantic slavery literature using a variety of disciplinary approaches. The
workshop presented an opportunity for scholars interested in enslavement
to reflect on their own discipline, methods and modes of narrativizing, as
well as to consider the limits of their sources and the questions that could be
asked of those sources.
There was no attempt to offer a comprehensive view since for practical
reasons our scope was limited, but our purpose was to initiate new lines
of thought between fields that have often been hermetically closed to each
other. Our geographical coverage too was not complete. We would have liked
to engage, for instance, with a well established literature in French on the
slave experience in Réunion, Pondicherry, Chandernagore and other French
settlements in the Indian Ocean world. The pathbreaking work of Prosper
Eve on slave bodies on the island of Bourbon, now Réunion, awaits transla-
tion from the French.6 Instead the workshop benefited from the momentum
that the study of Indian Ocean slavery currently has in Dutch academia.
The volume therefore gravitates towards locations in the Indian Ocean that
have had a Dutch history, such as Ceylon, Cochin, Batavia, Cape Town and
Mauritius. In many of these places the history of colonialism is layered, hav-
ing been in Portuguese or Dutch hands prior to being claimed by the French
or the British, and this matters for the way in which cultures of slavery were
shaped. When thinking about the legacy of slavery we need to realize that
in places like Ceylon, Cape Town, Cochin and Mauritius slave-societies as
they developed in Dutch enclaves of the Indian Ocean had an afterlife under
British and French colonialism. Furthermore, the contributions by Wagenaar
and Tieken remind us that life trajectories of the enslaved encompassed
multiple locations across the Indian Ocean. Our focus on the lives of the
enslaved allows us to ask questions about the mobility, identity and emotions
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 19

Indian Ocean slaves experienced rather than place the Dutch, French and
British colonials at the centre. It is their archives that we are after, less so
their specific colonial histories.
The literature on the histories of the European Companies tends to do
the opposite. If enslaved persons appear at all in the literature, it is only
in passing, described as part of the context in which Europeans operated,
rather than as subjects of study themselves. This point is best illustrated by
the fascinating biography of Joan Gideon Loten, a high-ranking official in
the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the mid-eighteenth century. This
600-page biography sheds light on the everyday presence of the enslaved
in and around the Company. In it we encounter enslaved persons in many
capacities: in Makassar (South Sulawesi) we come across men and women
forced into slavery by Loten’s Dutch colleagues, who were actively involved in
violent slave raiding and trading in the region; in Colombo we encounter a
slave orchestra in the private household of Loten’s daughter; and in Utrecht
we meet Sittie, who was a young girl when she was given to Loten as a dip-
lomatic “gift” by the ruler of Bone. She accompanied him during his years
in office across the ocean, from Makassar to Batavia, and then to Colombo,
finally settling with his family in Utrecht, where she outlived him despite
suffering from the cold climate.7
This remarkable biography of Loten is based on an extremely rich set of
sources; the author, Lex Raat, takes us through the private and official life of
an individual in the eighteenth century, who became known for his natural
history collection and activities as Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Loten’s
biography would not be the most obvious source for scholars interested in
the history of enslaved people in the Indian Ocean world, as nothing in the
title suggests that it contains those histories. In this aspect, it is consistent
with histories of European trading companies and settlements in Asia as a
whole, where slaves do feature but are seldom the focus. The histories of
enslaved individuals are so inextricably bound up with the histories of those
companies that one often fails to see them, but once we begin to notice and
search for them we find them mentioned throughout literary and archival
sources—in cargo lists and business transactions; last wills, legal cases, and
government ordinances; governors’ reports; and private papers such as those
of Joan Gideon Loten.
20 beingbbbbeing

The historical setting of Indian Ocean slavery

When we talk about slaves in this contribution we refer in particular to

chattels, persons owned by a master who could be bought or sold like other
commodities and were often shipped across the ocean. We are fully aware
that this definition is limited, especially within the context of Indian Ocean
societies where the slaves came from, where slavery is generally understood
as being at one extreme end of a broad spectrum of bondage.
While it is impossible to do justice to the many specific regional studies
that have been carried out in the past, the work of historians such as Anthony
Reid, Gwyn Campbell and Indrani Chatterjee helps us understand in general
terms the place of slavery in Indian Ocean societies.8 First, it is important
to point out that from eastern Africa to the Philippines most people lived in
varying degrees of bondage. The concept of personal freedom as we envisage
it today was virtually absent and, instead, a person’s position in society was
determined by the social relationships and forms of bondage that were culti-
vated or imposed. Alessandro Stanziani has shown that until the end of the
nineteenth century free labour was globally more the exception than the rule
globally, and Western approaches to labour rights were much more repres-
sive than earlier believed.9 In South Asia, caste was one of the factors that
determined hierarchies of bondage and a person’s social position in society.
Caste relations carried intrinsic obligations, services and social protection.
In eastern Indonesia individuals belonging to so-called slave communities
lived mostly as free persons, according to early nineteenth-century observers.
The position of these slaves in society resembled that of corvée workers who
had to labour in the fields of the elites at certain intervals.10 Reid, Campbell
and Chatterjee make the point that slavery as a Western concept does not do
much to help us understand the hierarchies of unfreedom in Indian Ocean
societies, and they prefer to speak about “degrees of bondage”. They argue
that bonded individuals in principle remained part of the social environment
in which they were born, and that social customs prevented them from being
simply bought and sold at a market. In this respect, the authors maintain,
enslavement in European enclaves—what could be termed colonial slavery—
differed significantly from local forms of bondage.11
This is not to say that the European slave trade was a new phenomenon
unrelated to more direct and situational forms of slavery in the region. It is
likely that the consistent and high colonial demand reinforced certain slaving
practices in the region, changing the structure of slavery in the process. It is
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 21

generally understood that personal enslavement could be caused by crisis,

be it climatic, financial or violent. Traditionally, famine, debt and conflict
were the main precursors to enslavement. Parents would sell their children
in times of famine; individuals might offer themselves or, more often, their
wives and daughters as security for a debt; or captivity could be the result
of outright warfare.12 A crisis may have increased the vulnerability of non-
elite groups to enslavement, but it is probable that such crises were at times
deliberately orchestrated. Sanjay Subrahmanyam has masterfully analysed
how, in seventeenth-century Arakan (Myanmar), Portuguese and Dutch
traders benefited from and enhanced regional conflict and food crises, which
enabled them to gain slaves at low prices and profit from the rice trade.13 The
work of Jim Warren shows that outright slave raiding in Eastern Indonesia
and the Sulu Archipelago became a general feature of the political economy
of the Sultanate of Sulu during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In
the Indonesian archipelago, coastal societies became particularly vulnerable
to slave raiding and kidnapping when global markets for slaves in China
and in the Mascarene Islands expanded. In other areas such as Jaffna in Sri
Lanka, low-caste people were framed by the Dutch as slaves and then treated
as such, thereby directly influencing the local social structure to satisfy the
need for labour.14 Such processes of commodification of bonded persons
were brought about by European trade in other regions as well, for example,
through contracts with local rulers, as was the case in Bali and Timor.15
Indian Ocean slavery studies is a relatively young field. It has tradition-
ally been caught between regional labour studies and historical studies of
European trade and colonialism. The former tend to focus on particular
structures in the political economy of local societies that sustained forms
of bondage and slavery, while the latter tend to downplay the stakes of the
European commercial companies in slavery and the slave trade, and gen-
erally frame slavery in the Indian Ocean region as “mild”, echoing colonial
phrasing. More recently, historians have begun quantitatively studying the
place of the European slave trade within European trade, and in the process
have revealed a much larger than expected presence of enslaved people in the
urban space of European port cities. These new studies show how Europeans
created new political economies of slavery within their expanding enclaves in
the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, there is general consensus that the expan-
sion of capitalism and the growth of global markets led to the expansion
of slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In diverse regions of
the Indian Ocean, therefore, we find a plurality of cultures of slavery that
22 beingbbbbeing

overlapped, intersected and coincided, and were connected by expanding

shipping networks. Ulbe Bosma recently argued that “the lines between
debt and captive slavery and between customary and commodified slavery
were much more blurred than colonial civil servants – followed by scholarly
literature – have suggested”.16
Enslavement, in the sense of large-scale commodification of humans,
came about through the interaction of Europeans and Indian Ocean soci-
ety, and this book aims to look at that phenomenon from the perspective
of enslaved individuals. What did it mean for people to be caught in this
Indian Ocean web of slavery? It is not our aim to present a comprehensive
analysis of local–European interactions, or suggest that the experiences of
slavery reported in this book were universal. The stories in these chapters
move between Mauritius and Madagascar, Jakarta and Kochi, Colombo and
Cape Town, and explore the experience of being enslaved and life after slav-
ery in these diverse locations. Furthermore, the book includes accounts of
cultural memories of slavery, which reveal the commonalities in experiences
of slavery across the Indian Ocean, and its long-lasting effects.
After being bought or caught, enslaved individuals were transported
to slave markets in the various Indian Ocean port cities, from where they
were transhipped to new places that were alien to them in culture and
geography. By this process enslaved people from the Indian Ocean could
end up in the Middle East, the Americas, China or Europe, though most
remained within the Indian Ocean realm.17 Analyses of the trade circuits of
the different European companies by historians Richard Allen, Markus Vink,
Linda Mbeki and Matthias van Rossum show major shifts in the origins
and destinations of the enslaved over time. In the seventeenth century, for
example, South Asia was an important source of slaves for the Dutch as they
built up Batavia (now Jakarta), but in the eighteenth century these enslaved
people were partly replaced by those from the Indonesian archipelago. Some
slaves from the Indonesian archipelago were also taken to Colombo and the
Cape. The Dutch sanctioned slavery through legislation and registration, and
benefitted from the trade through customs. In all Dutch territories, slavery
provided cheap and secure labour in parallel to local forms of forced labour.
It is assumed that most of the slaves under the Dutch were traded privately
by VOC employees.
Richard Allen estimates that up to around 90,000 people were traded
by the VOC across the Indian Ocean between 1600 and 1800, Van Rossum
and Mbeki suggest that this number will be much higher when private trade
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 23

is taken into account.18 Furthermore, much less is known about the size of
the slave trade to and from Dutch territories in Indonesia in the nineteenth
century. Ulbe Bosma’s recent book gives an estimate of the numbers involved
in nineteenth-century slavery in Island Southeast Asia which include captive
and commercially traded slaves and debt slaves. They range, according to
him, between 701,500 and 970,500.19 In the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, the French accounted for the largest share of the slave trade, with the
Mascarene Islands as its epicentre. There, the eighteenth-century plantation
economy created a high demand for labour, which was satisfied by importing
slaves from Madagascar and India and, to a lesser extent, from the Swahili
Coast and Southeast Asia. Allen estimates that this trade resulted in the
transport of up to 380,000 people across the Indian Ocean.20
Records indicate that the British were tapping the same sources, but that
their volume of trade in enslaved humans was much smaller. The abolition
of the slave trade by Britain in 1807 and of slavery in 1833 led to the early
suppression of the trade among British traders in the Indian Ocean. The
Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 was an Act by the Parliament of the United
Kingdom abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire (with the
exceptions of “the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company”,
Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and Saint Helena). The exceptions were abolished in
1843 and 1844. Subsequently additional articles prohibited certain officers of
The Honourable East India Company from being involved in the purchase of
slaves, but they did not actually abolish slavery in India. It was the provisions
of the Indian Penal Code 1860 which effectively abolished slavery in India
by making the enslavement of human beings a criminal offence. But, as
Indrani Chatterjee has insightfully illustrated, those who were freed through
abolition became instant targets for recruitment as indentured labourers
or soldiers in order to satisfy the relentless labour demand throughout the
empire.21 The ambivalent and unfinished nature of abolition comes to light
in a number of the contributions featured in this multidisciplinary volume,
notably those by Yvette Christiansë and Pamela Scully. The collaboration of
historians, anthropologists and literary scholars is particularly productive in
shedding light on the long-lasting cultural legacies of slavery, abolition and
indenture in the region.
24 beingbbbbeing

Seeing slaves

While this book is attentive to the particular experiences of the enslaved

person caught in the web of Indian Ocean slavery, its authors are deeply
aware that the archive produced by the colonial state does not highlight the
perspectives of the enslaved. Seeing the slave in colonial documentation
entails forcing the archive to break silences,22 a process which has inher-
ent difficulties. How archives are constituted in territories under colonial
rule, the forms they take, and the foray into the “grids of intelligibility” that
produces the evidencial paradigms mentioned by Carlo Ginsburg have been
central to the discussion of the archive as “the supreme technology of the late
nineteenth century imperial state”.23 Sources do not exist just to be mined for
content. This approach warrants caution when exploring the textual material
available to reconstruct the lives of enslaved people in the Indian Ocean
world. The paucity of sources first needs to be underlined.
In contrast to the rich scholarship on the Atlantic slave trade, the Indian
Ocean world lacks slave narratives or freedom tales that have triggered
the imaginations of historians and directed them to a more personal and
intimate approach to the history of slavery. The genre of literature now
known as “slave narratives” or “freedom narratives”, which recounts the
lives of African slaves in North America and the Carribean—such as the
canonical writings of Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass
and Olaudah Equiano—is invaluable for bringing to life the story of capture,
enslavement, transportation, and finally emancipation from the perspective
of the enslaved.24 Many of these texts were inspired by the Calvinist genre of
captivity narrative, and were edited by prominent abolitionists for use in their
anti-slavery campaigns.25 These narratives were written in an autobiograph-
ical and sociological style for a primarily white and female readership, and
were constrained by the demands placed upon them by their main sponsor
and consumer, the abolitionist movement, which wanted texts written in a
style that sounded “truthful and believable”.26
By contrast, the texts wrenched from colonial archives—petitions,
testimonies of slaves and letters about them—do not suffer from this need
to show a visible sign of reason or a shared humanity. Instead, they come
to us mediated, incomplete and drawing on different types of conventions
and tropes. They were not produced in order to prove slaves’ humanity and
personhood, but they stage them at the centre of events where their own
claim for recognition comes to the fore. Though personal accounts such as
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 25

slave diaries, autobiographies, letters and stories are missing, there is an

alternative kind of narrative preserved in the form of judicial records. Legal
cases have become a mainstay of cultural history despite being mediated
and translated; as such, the historian often performs the role of a detective
in order to reconstruct events recorded partially or those subjected to the
vagaries of memory.27
Many of the authors of this volume were inspired by the work of schol-
ars who have focused on the enslaved or bonded individual as a lens to
understanding a social system. Our understanding of the individual lives
of subaltern people in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean world has been
considerably enriched by Meghan Vaughn’s portraits of enslaved individuals
in Mauritius, Marina Carter’s exploration of the experiences of indentured
workers, and, more recently, Clare Anderson’s life writing approach.28 The
ably researched works of Kerry Ward, Ronit Ricci and Michael Laffan have
recently traced the movement of Southeast Asian exiles and convicts between
Batavia, Java, the Cape Colony and Sri Lanka.29 The rich historiography on
slavery in the Cape of Good Hope has yielded fascinating stories of enslaved
people whose lives appeared in the VOC archives at moments of crisis or
conflict, when it was necessary for them to be recorded.30 As Nigel Worden
reminds us, “slaves survived in the paper archive by default rather than by
design”.31 Sue Peabody’s more recent master–slave narrative of Madeleine—
sold into slavery in the 1760s in Chandernagor—and her son Furcy in the
late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries meticulously explores what it
meant to be a slave, and then free, in the Mascarenes Islands. Furcy was
born a slave but became the head of a bourgeois household and a slave
owner himself.32 Exceptional stories such as his and that of Malik Ambar, the
Abyssinian slave who became the de facto ruler of the Ahmednagar Sultanate
in the Deccan, or that of Untung Suropati recounted in the Javanese epic
Babad Tanah Jawi are uncommon tales that should not eclipse the stories
of those who never won or whose lives ended tragically.33 The essays in this
book focus on the biographies of ordinary enslaved people rather than the
heroes, and show methodological affinities with the bottom-up approach of
microhistory.34
This volume is unique in its treatment of enslavement in the Indian
Ocean world insofar as it combines history, literary analysis and a post-colo-
nial articulation of ideas in order to reconstruct untold narratives of the past,
and better understand hauntings in the present. As Guno Jones’ contribution
to this volume shows, the story does not end with abolition. Rebecca Scott,
26 beingbbbbeing

Thomas Holt and Frederick Cooper urge historians to go “beyond slavery”

in order to observe continuities in labour regimes in post-slavery societies.35
Much can be learned from scholarly work on the Atlantic slave trade. Saidiya
Hartman’s revisionary history of the legacy of slavery in antebellum America
warns against making absolute distinctions between the categories of
“slavery” and “freedom”, and suggests that the liberal notions of free will,
rights,and responsibility are feeble instruments of social transformation.36
Insofar as it is not limited to a single approach, the book creates imaginative
narratives of the mobility, social interaction, violence and resistance that
shaped the lives of the enslaved. The multidisciplinary approach further
helps us to take a longer-term view of the process of enslavement—an
approach that considers other forms of unfreedom and seeks to understand
the cultural legacies of slavery and its hauntings in the present. This allows
us to consider the history of enslavement as erasure, absence and forgetting.37

Narrating through the archive: mobility, emotions, identities

The first part of this volume focuses on the eighteenth-century Dutch and
French Indian Ocean and uses different techniques to bring to life the
enslaved individuals whose stories are captured in the VOC and French
archives. A focus on experiences of individual slaves allows the authors to
raise questions about mobility, emotions and identification aspects that were
relevant to their lives and those of their children, rather than to those of their
masters. The first chapter by Marina Carter probes issues of ethnicity and
identity in the colonial Indian Ocean world, focusing in particular on Indian
slaves in Mauritius. The slave diaspora from the Indian subcontinent has
received much less attention than the diaspora of slaves of African origin,
another example of what Richard Allen calls the “tyranny of the Atlantic”.
The paucity of the archive, writes Carter, is compounded by its ambiguity.
Toponyms such as “of Malabar” or “of Bengal” often refer to the last port of
call, not the person’s origin, and the French term Indien referred to a person
from China or Southeast Asia as well. Being categorized in such generic ways
formed an essential aspect of slavery and led to a conflation of identities. The
contribution by Christiansë in the second part of the volume picks up on this
theme when she argues that being registered formed an essential experience
that those who were enslaved and indentured shared. Carter interrogates
the stereotype that, although few in number, slaves who were identified
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 27

as Indians constituted an “elite among the servile”. They crossed cultural,

ethnic, religious and racial boundaries, and brought local knowledge, sexual
labour and domestic expertise into their relationships with Europeans. Sue
Peabody’s story of Furcy epitomizes the trajectory of this group, when shed-
ding his slave ancestry as he merged into Creoleness.
Kerry Ward and Ronit Ricci draw our attention to the way in which the
Dutch labour and legal regime created new and enduring ties between
South and Southeast Asia, and Southern Africa. The enslaved people who
were shipped across the ocean found themselves in the company of exiles
and convicts. Sri Lanka and the Cape were major destinations for convicts,
while Batavia and Colombo served as the most important ports of depar-
ture. Herman Tieken’s contribution, which tells the story of the Ceylonese
Chettiyar Nicolaas Ondaatje at the Cape, demonstrates the entanglement
of the lives of exiled convicts and slaves. Tieken reconstructs Ondaatje’s
familiarity with slavery through an analysis of the letters he received from
family and friends in Galle, Colombo, which were retrieved from the Dutch
notarial archives in Cape Town. The letters themselves, mainly written in
Tamil, provide a unique perspective on the VOC world from its fringes, a
world permeated with slavery. Though technically a convict, he was allowed
to move freely, but this also meant that he had to earn his own keep. In this
he did not succeed in Cape Town and had soon to move on to the outlying
districts, making a living as a home teacher, a notoriously low-paid job. For
simple things such as clothes – and areca nuts – he remained dependent on
his family in Ceylon. Ondaatje’s exile was a constant topic of deliberation
within the family. From the very beginning Ondaatje tried to make some
money by selling an occasional slave, which he ordered from his contacts
in Ceylon. Apparently, his own sad existence as an exile did not prevent him
from making others suffer the same fate. This, he argues, could be explained
by the intimate presence of enslaved children in the Ondaatje family house-
hold, who are made visible in the letters through the discussion of the fate of
the two former slaves, Flora and Hannibal. Tieken’s contribution highlights
the variation in slave experiences and social contexts in which slaves and
slave-owners moved, and illustrates the necessity of understanding the very
diverse trajectories through slavery which Carter highlighted.
The contributions by the historians Alexander Geelen, Bram van den
Hout, Merve Tosun and Matthias van Rossum, Kate Ekama and Lodewijk
Wagenaar direct our focus to enslaved individuals themselves, as actors in the
Dutch Indian Ocean. At the core of each of these chapters is the interaction
28 beingbbbbeing

between enslaved people and the local criminal courts of the VOC, and the
subsequent production of legal files and registers through which fragments
of the lives of enslaved individuals are pieced together. Involvement in theft,
violence and escape is the main cause of these men and women appearing
in the records, but the records also inform us about the circumstances under
which these acts were committed, the accomplices involved, and the loca-
tions where plans were made. The culture of legality brought by the Dutch
resulted in a very active system of justice and policing in the various port
cities under Dutch rule.38 Minutes of the proceedings of the criminal courts
of Cape Town and Batavia were even sent to the Netherlands, and while they
were probably never read at the time, they now provide historians with inval-
uable information about the social and cultural history of the enslaved. Social
historians such as Eric Jones, Bondan Kanumoyoso, and Henk Niemeijer
have already shown how such sources can be employed to more broadly
reconstruct social life in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Batavia.39 In
the 1980s and 1990s, historians of the Cape such as Nigel Worden and
Robert Ross paved the way by using such records imaginatively to analyse
slave life and resistance at the Cape. The work of Geelen et al. and Ekama has
been inspired by this rich tradition of scholarship.
Since the court records that provide us with shards of evidence of slave
life come to us mediated through institutional conventions and the writings
of clerks and translators, to what extent can they be used to write historical
narratives from the perspective of the enslaved? Geelen et al., Ekama and
Wagenaar each recognize this problem, and deal with it in different ways. In
their chapter on mobility and work, Geelen et al. seek a solution in quantity
and comparison: by creating a database of all court cases involving slaves in
Cochin and Batavia, and by comparing work locations and types of activities
of the enslaved, they manage to draw a broader picture of the spatial mobility
of slaves and the actual work in which they were engaged in both towns.
In both places, trust, skills and control turn out to be defining factors in
shaping mobility, meaning that mobility and work were defined not so much
by location as by talent and social relations—conditions that presumably dif-
fered from person to person. Yet in all cases the enslaved remained subject to
strong mechanisms of social control exerted by the Company.
Social relations are central to Ekama’s contribution on slave life in
Colombo. Through a number of compelling examples, she shows that social
relations were forged across lines of freedom and unfreedom. Her masterful
analysis of the case of the copper bowl theft shows how the tavern and the
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 29

area around the church formed important meeting places for the underclass
of Colombo, including the enslaved. The case clearly shows that the social
relations forged by the enslaved crossed social and ethnic barriers when
opportunity arose—the enslaved Amber worked with the Javanese convict
Troena de Wangso, and Andries, a man labelled as Sinhalese. Ekama’s
method differs from that of Geelen et al. in that she combines an analysis of
the actors who feature in legal cases with an analysis of other records from
the town administration, such as wills, manumission deeds and colonial
ordinances. Read together, these records provide insight into the diversity
in social relations that were forged by, or forced onto, the enslaved, and
paint a rich picture of the intimate relations among the enslaved and beyond
enslavement.
The marriage in Colombo’s slave lodge (materiaalhuis) between Apollo
and Diana—both Malay-speaking and of Southeast Asian origin—suggests
that their shared language and background might have given them some
sense of security in their vulnerable situation. Most intimate relations will
have been of a less voluntary nature, and coercion and opportunity must have
played a role. Ekama discusses this last point by focusing on relationships
between slave women and European men: one that led to manumission and
marriage, and another that resulted, surprisingly, in the prosecution of a
soldier accused of rape. Being enslaved in Colombo did not mean that the
horizons of enslaved people were limited to that town, and often the slaves
had come from far away. Escapes from the town to the rural areas of the
island occurred. A Sufi amulet from Java helped Deidami endure the trauma
of slavery, until desperation led her to kill her mistress in Colombo. In other
cases slaves had the strength to imagine themselves, against the odds, as legal
persons with the right to prosecute others in the VOC’s Indian Ocean legal
web. Yet only a few enslaved individuals managed to use the legal system—
which had been responsible for defining them exclusively as slaves—to their
advantage. The story of Cruz, the central figure in Geelen et al., also reminds
us that even if enslaved people were unable to define their place of origin, it
was clear that they longed for such a place when overwhelmed with misery.
The contribution by Anne Marieke van der Wal in the second part of the
volume picks up on this theme as she discusses the ways in which slaves in
Cape Town passed this longing for a home across the ocean down through
many generations into the present, by means of particular songs.
While Ekama’s perceptive reading of the court records, wills and
manumission deeds provides insight into the world in which the enslaved
30 beingbbbbeing

acted, prayed and dreamed, Wagenaar takes his analysis one step further
by wondering whether it is possible to understand the emotions of slavery.
Inspired by the work of Clare Anderson, Sue Peabody, Saidiya Hartman and
Yvette Christiansë, Lodewijk Wagenaar seeks out the liminal areas between
historical research and literature. He traces the story of a woman in her
late twenties called Boenga van Johor, who was sold at the slave market in
Batavia and later sentenced to work in chains in the Cape after she had tried
to break her chains and escape from captivity. Wagenaar goes to great length
to reconstruct her forced journey from Batavia via Ceylon, where she is
shipwrecked, to the Cape, where she eventually disappears from the records.
He questions how historians can do justice to the life and experiences of
this woman. He argues that the legal files that inform us of her actions and
fate do little to help us understand how she would have felt, an issue that is
brought up by Ekama as well when she discusses the question of consent
in sexual relations. In the case of Boenga, Wagenaar argues, we rely on our
imagination to get a sense of her desperation, loneliness and determination;
but how far can historians stretch this? By raising these questions and letting
his “informed imagination”, as he calls it, play a role in his academic work
as a historian Wagenaar actively responds to our call for an interdisciplinary
approach to the history of the enslaved. Perhaps it is at the intersection of
history and literature that we can best grasp the experience of being enslaved.
It might be for this reason that slave descendants often find the histories of
their ancestors better and more carefully represented through novels, poetry
and songs than through historical reconstruction.

Legacies, memories, absences

What difference did freedom make? The first three chapters in this section
provide us with some insight into the transformations that came about
with abolition. Yvette Christiansë evokes the emergence of new relations of
production on the plantations. The forms of labour discipline that followed
the abolition of slavery, the indenture system in particular, aimed at creating
a sober and industrious free wage labour. There were however uncanny
family resemblances with slavery. Recent research projects have attempted
to show these continuities by situating indentured labour migration within
a broader narrative of labour mobility in the Indian Ocean region in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.40 Christiansë’s chapter follows this
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 31

path and is a masterful and poetic rendering of the end of slavery in the
nineteenth century in the Indian Ocean world. She elucidates the processes
that shaped the transformation of slavery into indenture “via the shadow
form of apprenticeship” in the vast space called the Indian Ocean world.
She interrogates the processes of dissimulation that present unfreedom as
liberation. Importantly, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act of 1807 led to
international and maritime patrolling of the seas by admiralty fleets, and the
establishing of vice admiralty courts in various ports which adjudicated on
the seized vessels.
There were ways, however, for slavers to circumvent these strictures—old
Indian Ocean trade routes became the means for slavers to avoid seizure off
the west coast of Africa. Those rescued from slavers—who were then referred
to as “liberated Africans”—were placed in apprenticeships in places with
which they had no connection. They were sent to locations such as Durban,
Mauritius, Seychelles, Aden and Bombay by authorities which assumed the
role of “guardian” over these individuals. But the number of people placed
in these apprenticeships after the abolition of slavery fell short of planters’
needs for labour, at which point South and Southeast Asian “coolies” came
to be considered an inexpensive solution. Christiansë examines the bureau-
cratic strategies used to support legislation and helps us to understand the
centrality of the register for controlling slaves, liberated Africans and inden-
tured labour and the continuities between these technologies of surveillance.
The next chapter by Pamela Scully (reprinted from her 1997 book
Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural
Western Cape, South Africa, 1823-1853)41 addresses the post-abolition world of
formerly enslaved people in Cape colony where gender relations assumed a
patriarchal structure promoted by the colonial state and former slave own-
ers, often with the acquiescence of the freed men. Freedom, she contends,
brought a new form of domination for freed women in male headed house-
holds. Later writings that mitigate her argument fail in their efforts to refute
it. Mason for instance, argues that the creation of a family structure that
had not been allowed under slavery and the ability to work in the household
constituted a major source of satisfaction for freed women.42
The abolition of slavery in 1838 in the Cape Colony led to the British
crown colony society becoming contested terrain for freed people, mis-
sionaries, former slave owners and the state. In the 1840s, thousands of
emancipated slaves moved to the missions in the Western Cape, which
they perceived as lands of opportunity. Scully examines in detail six cases of
32 beingbbbbeing

infanticide in rural missions. Through these cases she illustrates the rituals
of rule and power connected with a “humanitarian” colonial legal system,
in tension with the “morality” displayed by missionaries in mission stations
and courts. After 1838, freed women had to negotiate a world where race,
gender and sexuality were a battleground between the colonial state and the
missionaries. The death sentences of two of the six women convicted by
juries were commuted by the chief justice. Colonial officials used the cases to
illustrate “the immorality of the crime of infanticide, the wrongheadedness
of the missionaries, and the beneficence of British justice”.43 Scully’s text,
twenty years later, still remains path-breaking in pointing out the gendered
nature of the newly acquired freedom.
Freedom could bring to a freed man a new sense of worth and selfhood,
sentiments that one can imagine but that are seldom expressed in writing.
Paul Bijl’s chapter is based on a unique nineteenth-century document
written in Dutch by a formerly enslaved man called R.H. Wange van Balie
from Indonesia, who was taken from Indonesia to Delft in the Netherlands
and then emancipated. Bijl reads this unique memoir of a formerly enslaved
Indonesian man as an “act of equality” in which Van Balie considers himself
socially equal to his white Dutch readers, and capable of moral autonomy
and empathy. In many ways, the Netherlands stood out as a place where there
was hardly any interest in the plight of slaves, and only rarely was anti-slavery
rhetoric heard in the Dutch public sphere. A few well known personalities
such as Betje Wolff had expressed opposition to the slave trade and slavery
in the late eighteenth century, but these isolated voices failed to spawn an
abolitionist organization until the 1840s, when informal circles and liberal
clubs emerged in Utrecht and Amsterdam.44 On the whole, Dutch aboli-
tionism was small scale, cautious and late, as compared to the British and
American movements.45 W.R. van Hoëvell’s 1854 book, Slaves and Free Men
under Dutch Law, the most-read abolitionist publication in the Netherlands,
failed to claim political or social equality for slaves and continued to conceive
of black people as less “developed” than white people.46 Contrary to these
texts, Van Balie’s memoir reveals that emancipation meant for former slaves
a vindication of equality and moral autonomy.
The memory and legacy of slavery in today’s world are discussed in the
last three chapters of this volume, showing us that slavery’s past haunts the
present. Remembering slavery can be traumatic for those whose ancestors
were associated with it either as enslaved or as the enslavers. This trauma
can manifest itself in the refusal of states and individuals to remember—the
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 33

white innocence described by Wekker—or in forms of memorializing based

on compassion rather than responsibility. Expressing moral outrage or
compassion can be problematic insofar as its emphasis on suffering entails
a self-congratulatory “humanist” image of oneself.47 The chapters by Anne
Marieke van der Wal and Sarah Longair reflect on various modes of remem-
bering Indian Ocean slavery in Cape Town and Zanzibar, while Guno Jones’
chapter addresses the silence about and erasure of Indian Ocean slavery in
post-colonial Netherlands.
Anne Marieke van der Wal’s analysis of “sea shanties” from Cape Town
shows the central place that the Indian Ocean occupies in the cultural
memory of the Cape Coloured community, the descendants of Indian Ocean
slaves. She draws on the work of Baderoon and Hofmeyr on the “Brown
Indian Ocean”, in response to studies of the Black Atlantic.48 Van der Wal’s
cultural and historical reading of songs sung by members of this community
shows how they represent a longing for the East while at the same time
supporting, through their rhythms, the hard labour of enslaved and free
fishermen, and their families on the shore. The origin of these songs brings
us back on board VOC ships, where slaves familiarized themselves with
Dutch sailors’ songs and were forced to sing and dance on the deck at par-
ticular regulated moments during the day. In one such song young men are
encouraged to sign up as sailors so that they can return to “their fatherland”,
which in the case of enslaved individuals means the East. Van der Wal brings
together the work of Baderoon and Mustakeem by pointing out the duality of
the sea’s symbolic power as “being both a barrier and a memento of loss, as
well as a symbol of freedom”.49 Songs such as these are direct expressions of
cultural memory, even if written down at some point by Afrikaner folklorists,
and precisely because they are transmitted orally and remain very visible (or
audible) today they have a different relationship with the colonial archives.
The archival gaps that make it so difficult to locate and transmit the
historical everyday experience of slavery in the Indian Ocean are mirrored
by the gaps that one finds in museum collections in the region. In British
collections in places like Zanzibar, as much as in the large urban centres,
Sarah Longair shows how objects of punishment and confinement are the
most prominent artefacts of the Indian Ocean slave experience, paralleling
evidence in the legal archives. British collecting practice was particularly
skewed towards a particular type of object. Gaps in the material record have
only recently begun to be filled by new archaeological projects at sites of
enslavement. Longair’s chapter attempts to recreate the world of slavery from
34 beingbbbbeing

material remnants in British museums. While doing so, she reflects on the
logic governing the process of collecting in East Africa and the Indian Ocean
world. The yoke (gorée) brought back to Britain and displayed in the David
Livingston Centre tells us the predictable story of virtuous abolitionists, but
underlying it is an invisible story of enslaved African women who destroyed
similar objects of confinement. In some instances, the absent object speaks
as powerfully as the displayed object, something Françoise Vergès has inti-
mated in her concept of a museum without objects.50 In understanding what
being a slave felt like materialities can be revealing.
Modern states with past connections to the slave trade have ambivalent
approaches to slavery in the present. French national commemorations, it
has been argued, forget slavery while remembering its abolition.51 The history
of slavery is thus reduced to its abolition. Guno Jones examines the strange
absence of Asian—especially Indonesian—slavery in Dutch knowledge
production and public memory, in contrast to the state involvement in com-
memorating slavery and its abolition in the West Indies for at least the last
twenty years. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, in his classic Silencing the Past, shows
that silence is not an absence of words, but rather a “discursive silence” or
non-presence of slavery through the use of certain philosophical or emotional
registers of speech to describe it. In Mauritius and Sri Lanka, too, the Asian
slave has disappeared from popular consciousness, with “slave” today con-
noting only Africans. Nigel Worden points to a similar phenomenon in Cape
Town where there is a “neglect of the African and (to a lesser extent) South
Asian elements of Cape Town’s slave heritage”, and where the dominant per-
ception is one of a slave heritage that is Muslim and Southeast Asian.52 Guno
Jones inserts the invisibility of Asian slavery into a deeper reflection on the
Dutch inability to recognize the violence of its colonial past, and the Dutch
historiographical tradition of separating the history of the metropole from
the history of the colonies. The resurgence of discourse on Atlantic slavery
in the public sphere is, he argues, related to a vibrant identity politics among
members of the Caribbean Dutch communities. This has led to a movement
that connects the past and the present, pointing to cultural traces of slavery
and its afterlife in everyday Dutch culture. This dissonant voice has until now
eluded Asian slavery, creating a bifurcation in the public memory of slavery.
Jones points to the need to bring this “absent memory” back into view.
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 35

Conclusion

This volume is a patchwork of approaches to Indian Ocean slavery, but

each contribution in its own way brings the enslaved person to the fore as a
human being navigating larger structures and acting within the constraints
of her situation. It includes research from scholarly traditions that are rarely
in dialogue, including Sanskrit and Tamil literature, museum studies, his-
tory, cultural studies and post-colonial studies. Although each contribution
varies in its approach to source material and in writing style, the editors have
not attempted to mould them into a template. The result is a diverse set
of chapters that are in conversation—and sometimes in tension—with each
other, which represents creative new readings of the histories and legacies of
slavery and abolition in the Indian Ocean. The careful literary analysis of one
text by Paul Bijl might help historians to recognize scripted forms expressed
in the archive, while Yvette Christiansë’s poetic approach to the colonial reg-
ister as instrument of surveillance could stimulate a further cultural reading
of such bureaucratic heritage. The colonial archive, the traditional domain
of historians, may not answer all our questions about emotions, identity or
mobility, as Wagenaar shows, yet it proves to be surprisingly rich in detail at
the individual level, if you know your way through its veins.
Women and men like Boenga, Deidami, Amber and Cruz each com-
municate to us different aspects of life in enslavement. They react to their
situations dramatically through escape and rage, but they also move about
in taverns, markets and the church, where they meet others—enslaved and
free—and make plans or dream of a home across the sea. We may not always
know how they became slaves—were they kidnapped, sold by their fathers
or mothers, or born into slavery? But we do know that their experiences of
being enslaved have been transmitted over generations and shaped culture.
The book resists ideas of victimhood and does not aim to foster compassion,
a sentiment that, according to Balkenhol, has colonial roots. Instead it calls
for more scholarly reflexivity and appeals to public responsibility and polit-
ical engagement. This book is important not only for what it reveals of the
little-known history of enslavement in the Indian Ocean world, but because
the colonial past still informs and haunts how we feel and behave in the
multicultural realities of Britain, France and the Netherlands today.
36 beingbbbbeing

Notes

1. We thank the co-authors of this volume, the two peer reviewers, and series
editor Tsolin Nalbantian, for their valuable comments and suggestions on
an earlier version of this introduction. Harkirat Singh and Doreen van den
Boogaart were indispensible in assisting us with research and practical matters
during the workshop in Leiden in 2017, out of which this volume took shape.
Pouwel van Schooten has done a wonderful job in helping us to edit the volume
in its final stage.
2. For a useful discussion on what constitutes slavery see, inter alia, the classic
works of Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study.
Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2018; Suzanne Miers and Igor
Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Madison
WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977. For a comprehensive bibliography
see Joseph Calder Miller, Slavery: A Worldwide Bibliography, 1900–1982. White
Plains NY: Kraus International, 1985.
3. Stuart Hall, “When Was the ‘Post-Colonial’?: Thinking at the Limit,” in The
Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, edited by Iain Chambers
and Lidia Curti, 247. London: Routledge, 1996.
4. Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures
in a Bourgeois World. Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2009; Kris-
tin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French
Culture. Cambridge MA and London: MIT Press, 1998; Françoise Vergès, “Les
Troubles de la Memoire: Traite Negrière, Esclavage et Écriture de l’Histoire,”
Cahiers d’Études Africaines 45, no. 179/180 (2005): 1143-1178; Gloria Wekker,
White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham NC: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 2016.
5. For an impression of this workshop see Doreen van den Boogaart and Harkirat
Singh, “Being a Slave: Indian Ocean Slavery in Local Context,” The IIAS
newsletter 78 (2017): https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/being-slave-
indian-ocean-slavery-local-context
6. Prosper Eve, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon. Histoire d’une reconquête, Paris,
Presse de l’université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2013.
7. L. Raat, The Life of Governor Joan Gideon Loten (1710-1789): A Personal History of
a Dutch Virtuoso. Hilversum: Verloren, 2010.
8. Gwyn Campbell, The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. Lon-
don: Frank Cass, 2004; Anthony Reid and Jennifer Brewster, Slavery, Bondage,
and Dependency in Southeast Asia.
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 37

St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983; Indrani Chatterjee and Richard
Eaton (eds.), Slavery and South Asian History. Bloomington IN: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 2006.
9. Alessandro Stanziani, Bondage: Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to
the Early Twentieth Centuries. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014.
10. Take, for example, van Delden’s description of slavery in A.J. van Delden, “De
Sangir-Eilanden in 1825,” Indisch Magazijn 1(4-6): 356-383; 1 (7–9) 1-32 (1844).
11. That is not to say that the Europeans were the only traders in slaves. Within
these territories under European rule Chinese, Buginese, Gujarati and other
slave traffickers were accommodated.
12. These causes recur in much of the above-mentioned literature: Gwyn Campbell,
The Structure of Slavery; Reid and Brewster, Slavery, Bondage, and Dependency;
Chatterjee and Eaton (eds.), Slavery and South Asian History.
13. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Slaves and Tyrants: Dutch Tribulations in Seven-
teenth-Century Mrauk-U,” Journal of Early Modern History 1, no. 3 (1997): 201.
14. Nira Wickramasinghe and Alicia Schrikker, “The Ambivalence of Freedom:
Slaves in Jaffna (Sri Lanka) in the 17th–19th Centuries,” Journal of Asian Studies,
78, no 3, (2019): 497-519.
15. Hans Hägerdal, “The Slaves of Timor: Life and Death on the Fringes of Early
Colonial Society,” Itinerario 32, no. 2 (2010): 19-44; Helen Creese, Bali in the
Early Nineteenth Century: The Ethnographic Accounts of Pierre Dubois. Leiden:
Brill, 2016.
16. Ulbe Bosma, The Making of a Periphery. How Island Southeast Asia Became a
Mass Exporter of Labor, 55. New York: Columbia Unversity Press, 2018.
17. Tatiana Seijas, “The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish Manila: 1580–1640,”
Itinerario 32, no. 1 (2008): 19-38; Tatiana Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico:
From Chinos to Indians. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014; Dienke
Hondius, Nancy Jouwe, Jennifer Tosch, and Dineke Stam, Dutch New York
Histories: Connecting African, Native American and Slavery Heritage. Volendam:
LM Publishers, 2017.
18. Linda Mbeki and Matthias van Rossum, “Private Slave Trade in the Dutch
Indian Ocean World: A Study into the Networks and Backgrounds of the Slav-
ers and the Enslaved in South Asia and South Africa,” Slavery & Abolition 38,
no. 1 (2017): 95-116.
19. Ulbe Bosma, The Making of a Periphery, 55-58.
20. Allen, European Slave Trading; Linda Mbeki and Matthias van Rossum, “Private
Slave Trade in the Dutch Indian Ocean World: A Study into the Networks and
Backgrounds of the Slavers and the Enslaved in South Asia and South Africa,”
38 beingbbbbeing

Slavery & Abolition 38, no. 1 (2017): 95; Markus Vink, “‘The World’s Oldest
Trade’: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean,” Journal of World
History 14, no. 2 (2003): 131-177.
21. Indrani Chatterjee, “British Abolitionism from the Vantage of Pre-Colonial
South Asian Regimes,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. D. Eltis, S.
Engerman, S. Drescher, and D. Richardson (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2017), 441-465.
22. Marina Carter and Nira Wickramasinghe, “Forcing the Archive: Involuntary
Migrants ‘of Ceylon’ in the Indian Ocean World of the 18–19th Centuries,”
South Asian History and Culture 9, no. 2 (2018): 194-206.
23. Ann Laura Stoler, “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance,” Archival
Science 2, no. 1–2 (2002): 87-109.
24. Paul E. Lovejoy, “‘Freedom Narratives’ of Transatlantic Slavery,” Slavery & Aboli-
tion 32, no. 1 (March 2011): 91-107.
25. See, for instance, Vincent Carrera, Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made
Man. Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 2005.
26. Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters. Haunting and the Sociological Imagination.
(Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
27. For an example of legal records creatively used to recreate the lives of enslaved
women in India see Sylvia Vatuk, “Bharattee’s Death: Domestic Slave-Women
in Nineteenth-Century Madras,” in Slavery and South Asian History, edited by
Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton, 210-233. (Bloomington IN: University
Press, 2006.
28. Meghan Vaughn, Creating the Creole Island. Durham NC: Duke University
Press, 2005; Marina Carter, Voices from Indenture: Experiences of Indian
Migrants in the British Empire. London: Leicester University Press, 1996; Clare
Anderson, Subaltern Lives. Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World,
1790–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012; see also Anand A.
Yang, “Indian Convict Workers in Southeast Asia in the Late Eighteenth and
Early Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of World History 24, no. 2 (2003): 179-208.
29. Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Com-
pany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008; Ronit Ricci, Anand A.
Yang and Kieko Matteson (eds.), Exile in Colonial Asia: Kings, Convicts, Com-
memoration. Honolulu HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2016; Michael Laffan,
“From Javanese Court to African Grave: How Noriman Became Tuan Skapie,
1717–1806,” Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies 1 (2017): 38-59.
30. It is not possible to list here the vast body of scholarship on slavery in South
Africa. For a few seminal works see Robert Ross, Cape of Torments: Slavery and
 enslavedeeneenseenslaveenslaenslaved in 39

Resistance in South Africa. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983); Nigel
Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, African Studies Series 44, 1985; Robert C.H. Shell, Children of Bondage:
A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838. Hanover
and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994; Sirtjo Koolhof and Robert Ross,
“Upas, September and the Bugis at the Cape of Good Hope: The Context of a
Slave’s Letter,” Archipel 70 (2005): 281-308; Pamela Scully, Liberating the Family?
Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa,
1823–1853. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1997.
31. Nigel Worden, “Cape Slaves in the Paper Empire of the VOC,” Kronos 40, no. 1
(2014): 27.
32. Sue Peabody, Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France’s
Indian Ocean Colonies. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
33. Omar H. Ali, Malik Ambar. Power and Slavery Across the Indian Ocean. New
York, Oxford University Press, 2016.
34. See Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory. Two or three things that I know about it,”
Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (Autumn 1993): 10-35.
35. Frederick Cooper, Thomas C. Holt and Rebecca J. Scott, Beyond Slavery: Explo-
rations of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies. Chapel Hill
NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
36. Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nine-
teenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
37. This section draws from the forthcoming book, Nira Wickramasinghe, Slave in
a Palanquin. Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka. New York: Columbia
University Press, 2020.
38. Alicia Schrikker and Dries Lyna, “Threads of the Legal Web. Dutch Law and
Everyday Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Asia,” in The Uses of Justice in
Global Perspective 1600–1900, edited by Manon Van der Heijden, Griet Ver-
meesch and Jaco Zuijderduijn, 42-56. London: Routledge, 2019.
39. Eric Jones, Wives, Slaves, and Concubines: A History of the Female Underclass in
Dutch Asia. DeKalb IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010; Henk Nie-
meijer, Batavia: Een Koloniale Samenleving in de Zeventiende Eeuw. Amsterdam:
Balans, 2005; Bondan Kanumoyoso, “Beyond the City Wall: Society and Eco-
nomic Development in the Ommelanden of Batavia, 1684–1740” (PhD thesis,
Leiden University, 2011).
40. See, for instance, the University of Edinburgh AHRC Project, “Becoming ‘Coolies’:
Rethinking the Origins of the Indian Ocean Labour Diaspora, 1772–1920,” Arts and
Humanities Research Council. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, March 2015–
40 beingbbbbeing

August 2017; and “Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour. Linking the Past with
the Future” (presentation, Conference on Slavery, Indentured Labour, Migration,
Diaspora and Identity Formation, Paramaribo, Suriname, 19–23 June 2018).
41. Scully, Liberating the Family.
42. John Edwin Mason, Social Death and Resurrection. Slavery and Emancipation in
South Africa. Charlottesville VA and London: University of Virginia Press, 2003.
43. See Pamela Scully’ chapter in this volume
44. Maartje Janse, “‘Holland as a Little England’? British Anti-Slavery Missionaries
and Continental Abolitionist Movements in the Mid Nineteenth Century,”
Past and Present 229, no. 1 (November 2015): 123-160, 135.The standard text
on debates about Dutch abolitionism is Gert Oostindie (ed.), Fifty Years Later:
Antislavery, Capitalism and Modernity in the Dutch Orbit. Leiden: KITLV, 1995.
45. Janse, “‘Holland as a Little England’?”. Janse argues that there were more pro-
tests than generally assumed.
46. W.R. van Hoëvell, Slaven en Vrijen Onder de Nederlandsche Wet. Zaltbommel:
Joh. Noman en Zoon, 1855, cited in Paul Bijl, chapter seven in this volume.
47. Markus Balkenhol, “Silence and the Politics of Compassion. Commemorating
Slavery in the Netherlands,” Social Anthropology, 24, no. 3 (2016): 278.
48. Gabeba Baderoon, “The African Oceans—Tracing the Sea as Memory of Slavery
in South African Literature and Culture,” Research in African Literatures 40,
no. 4 (Winter 2009): 91, 93; Isabel Hofmeyr, “The Black Atlantic Meets the
Indian Ocean: Forging New Paradigms of Transnationalism for the Global
South—Literary and Cultural Perspectives,” Social Dynamics 33, no. 2 (2007):
13.
49. Gabeba Baderoon, “The African Oceans”; Sowande’ M. Mustakeem, Slavery at
Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage. Chicago IL: University of
Illinois Press, 2016.
50. Françoise Vergès, “A Museum without Objects,” in The Postcolonial Museum.
The Arts of Memory and the Pressures of History, 25-38, edited by Iain Chambers,
Alessandra De Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello and Mariangela Orabona, London:
Routhledge, 2014.
51. Charles Forsdick, “The Panthéon’s Empty Plinth: Commemorating Slavery in
Contemporary France,” Atlantic Studies 9, no. 3 (2012): 279-297.
52. Nigel Worden, “Indian Ocean Slaves in Cape Town, 1695–1807,” Journal of
Southern African Studies 42, no. 3 (2016): 405.
 Pa r t I

Mobility, Emotions, Identities

 1

Slavery, Ethnicity, and Identity in the

Indian Ocean Colonial World
A Case Study of “Indian” Slaves on Mauritius

Marina Carter

Slaves brought from India were among the first permanent inhabitants of
Mauritius – then known as the Isle of France – after the French took control
of the island in the early eighteenth century, but, a minority in servility for
the most part without indigenous names, they merged into creoleness and
are all but forgotten today, their descendants for the most part ignorant of
their Indian slave forebears. This can at least partly be attributed to the fact
that slaves originating from the Indian subcontinent were a marginal group
virtually everywhere they were transported.1 They have consequently received
much less attention than the numerically more important diaspora of slaves
of African origin, although works discussing the Dutch Indian Ocean slave
trade have identified three interlocking circuits: “Greater South Africa”,
South Asia and Southeast Asia.2 Direct slave importations from the French
settlements in India, notably Pondicherry, to Mauritius have been recorded
from the 1720s, but many arrived “silently”, individually, humans shipped
through unrecorded transactions or rarely uncovered deceptions. Some came
as spoils of war: captured lascars or sepoys sold on into slavery. Others were
victims of scarcity: when famine stalked the subcontinent it was quickly ech-
oed in the Isle of France civil status registers in pages littered with the death
records of un-named newly arrived Bengalis or Telugus. The paucity of the
slave archive is compounded by its ambiguity: in eighteenth-century French-
language records the term “indien” could serve to represent people arriving
from China and Southeast Asia as easily as those deriving from the sub-
continent of India. This chapter reflects on the difficulties of recovering the
history of slaves whose ethnicities are historically questionable and continue
to be questioned and whose lived experiences have yet to be fully retrieved
44 beingbbbbeing

from archival holdings so as definitively to puncture the facile stereotyping

of contemporary travel accounts.

Enslaved Indians in the Indian Ocean world

Reviewing the literature on slavery in the Indian Ocean Linda Mbeki and
Matthias van Rossum concluded that while a significant body of work has
excavated the lives of Asian slaves at the Cape, “for other regions, the scale
of such scholarship is more modest”.3 And even the South African histori-
ography remains flawed, as indicated by Loren Kruger’s lament about the
“almost wilful ignorance of the fact that the majority of the first-generation
slaves brought by the Dutch to the seventeenth-century Cape Colony were
from Bengal and Madras rather than from Malaya as is still commonly
supposed”.4 Yet, as Anthony Reid had pointed out decades earlier, Asia pro-
vides “important evidence of European colonists taking over and interacting
with an existing Asian system of slavery, rather than imposing their own
system in a vacuum as in the New World”. For example, he contends that
the “phenomenon of slaves buying and owning other slaves” appeared to
have been exported to the Cape from Southeast Asia and uses this and other
examples to show why Indian Ocean slavery offers important countervailing
narratives to the more commonly referenced Atlantic model.5 Chatterjee
and Eaton provide some clues to this conundrum when they highlight – in
reference to India – the complexity of slavery in the region, being “very much
a process” whereby “vast numbers of people” move “through various kinds of
slavery with a range of different outcomes”, the only common denominator
being “the slaves’” condition of total dependency on some powerful person
or institution. A further complication, they note, is that historical accounts
of slavery in South Asia “must be painstakingly reconstructed from records
that are typically fragmentary, opaque, and tainted by the politics of the day”.6
Nair’s study of slavery in only one region of India – Kerala – underscores
this complexity. Alongside what are described as “hereditary slave castes”
including Pariahs, Pulayas and Kuravas, Nair asserts that criminals and even
women “found to have engaged in inter-caste sexual activity” were liable to
be sold as slaves. In addition, a “third class” of slaves is enumerated: those
who sold themselves or their children “during times of intense scarcity”.7
Sinnapah Arasaratnam has noted that the South Asian slave trade was fuelled
by a combination of food crises and political instability.8
 slaveryslslavery, slslasslavery,sslsslasslaversslavesslavery,sslave 45

Unravelling the trajectories of slave exportation in the colonial Indian

Ocean world is equally challenging. Secondary sources detailing the activities
of East India trading companies in often bulky or multi-volume tomes can
be surprisingly meagre when the commodity in question is slaves.9 Auguste
Toussaint’s study of the voluminous correspondence of the French merchant
Jean Baptiste Pipon explains away the few allusions to slave trading on the
ground that this constituted but “a minor operation” in his multifarious
commercial ventures.10 Allen notes that evidence of the British East India
Company’s involvement in trading slaves is scarce after 1772, while Dutch
records indicate that Indian slaves are frequently a small element of “mixed
cargoes” shipped from one settlement to another.11 The difficulty of tracking
slave movements across Portuguese, Dutch, French and British colonial
empires, settlements and within the minutiae of bureaucratic recording
systems is compounded by the diversity of nations involved in the trade.
Pedro Machado details Indian, and especially Gujarati, merchant links with
Portuguese, French and Brazilian slavers from the mid-eighteenth century
onwards, while Mbeki and Rossum describe networks of Chinese and Bugis
slave-traders in Southeast Asia.12 The linguistic and geographical challenges
of tackling such diverse sources can well be imagined and go some way
towards explaining the problematic of reconstituting patterns and routes of
the trade in Indian slaves in the region.

The trade in Indians to Dutch and French Mauritius

VOC archives at the Cape indicate that the Dutch brought slaves and convicts
from India to their embryonic settlement on Mauritius, but we know little
about them other than their names and participation in occasional sangui-
nary events, such as the arson attack on the Dutch fort at Vieux Grand Port in
which Antoni of Malabar and Esperance from Bengal were key participants.13
Foreign, particularly British, ships visiting the island indicate that some pri-
vate slave trading also took place involving captives from “the East”. In 1701,
for example, Diodati, the Dutch Governor of Mauritius, complained of the
problems caused by the purchase of individuals who subsequently claimed
to be free, adding “it would help if the freemen were forbidden to buy slaves
from the English, who generally kidnap them in the East. Among them are
many who are really not slaves, and after being sold here are unwilling to work
in the forests, thus greatly inconveniencing the Company and freemen.”14 The
46 beingbbbbeing

difficulties of dealing with runaway “slaves” as well as unruly pirate visitors

and marauding rats led the Dutch to abandon Mauritius in 1710.
The French, already established on the neighbouring island of Bourbon
[present day Réunion], claimed the island for France soon afterwards, renam-
ing it the Isle of France, and settled there from 1721.15 The presence of Indian
slaves on Bourbon has been recorded from the late seventeenth century, and
the 1704 census there listed 45 Indians out of a total slave population num-
bering 311.16 Indians may well have been amongst the earliest arrivals from
Bourbon on the Isle of France, and direct slave importations from the French
settlements in India, notably Pondicherry [Puduchery, Andhra Pradesh] and
Chandernagore in Bengal have been recorded there from the 1720s. Between
1728 and 1735 it is estimated that 269 slaves were landed on the island
from India.17 However, these human cargoes were relatively insignificant
in relation to the lucrative commodities trade with India, which was itself
circumscribed by the vagaries of weather and war. Ships tended to stop at the
Isle of France on the return voyage from India between March and June when
cyclones were least likely.18 It was during the last quarter of the eighteenth
century, however, that the Indian slave trade to the Mascarenes attained its
zenith. French East India Company rule of the islands ended in 1767, and a
free trade in slaves followed. Richard Allen estimates that 15,000 to 18,000
Indian slaves arrived on Mauritius and Réunion between 1770 and 1810.19
Scarcity and hunger did much of the work of would-be slave exporters
from India to the French Mascarene islands. In 1785 the British represent-
ative in Dacca alerted his counterpart at Fort William [Kolkata] to the mass
transportation of starving children:

The long continued distress this district has laboured under from a
general scarcity of grain, and the failure of crops in consequence of the
late deluge, has reduced its inhabitants to the lowest pitch of misery and
distress; the poor and the lowest class of people, to secure to themselves
a subsistence, are reduced to a sale of their children, and many hundreds
have been purchased … and immediately dispatched for Calcutta and its
environs, they are, for the most part, landed in the foreign settlements,
from whence, I am given to understand, they are embarked in vessels to
different parts …20

Wider Anglo-French conflicts and the knowledge that their bitter rivals were
profiting from the sale of “British subjects” was a key factor in developing
 slaveryslslavery, slslasslavery,sslsslasslaversslavesslavery,sslave 47

indignation in India about this “infamous traffic”. The purchase of 130 chil-
dren by a Frenchman, Reiny, at the French enclave of Chandernagore and
their subsequent shipment to Mauritius was a catalyst for Lord Cornwallis’
denunciation of the practice of “purchasing and collecting native children
in a clandestine manner, and exporting them for sale to the French islands”
in a despatch to the Court of Directors dated 2 August 1789.21 The British
prohibition of the slave trade was echoed by the French in Chandernagore
but abolition on paper did not prevent shipments in practice.22 The tensions
which developed between these two nations over slave trafficking and the
subsequent correspondence that these incidents generated are a useful
source of evidence for historians.
In 1791, for example, the Stisam Low was stopped and searched en
route from Calcutta to Pondicherry, and twenty girls and eight boys were
disembarked. The boys were aged between 4 and 12 and originated from
Danah, Chinsurah, Chandernagore, Calcutta and Serampore. Several were
alleged to have been kidnapped directly from their homes. Fourteen-year-
old Mirham’s case was typical – she had been stolen from the house of her
parents by Moondhee Mahjee and sold to a Mr Sampson in Calcutta who
left her in Serampore from where she was then sold on to Petit Jaun of
Chandernagore who, finally, sold her to Monsieur Jourdan who shipped her,
with the intention of sending her to the Mascarenes. Petit Jaun was described
as “a well-known character in the line of obtaining and conveying away many
helpless children from this country”.23
In Andhra Pradesh, the kidnapping of two young men in their twenties,
who had gone to the French settlement of Yanam to deliver cloth and were
then instructed by one Rajah Gopaul to deliver some produce to the riverside
where he forced them into a boat, was prevented only when they were able to
pass a message to their relatives through local boatmen who arrived on board
with a delivery of ballast.24 Correspondence between the French commandant
at Yanam and local British officials indicates how prevarication was a useful
tool of the former – on receiving a report of 65 slaves being confined within
his jurisdiction he failed to act – whilst ostensibly awaiting orders from his
superior officer at Pondicherry – during which time the slaves were “dis-
persed”. In another case, the French commandant claimed that he had been
unable to prevent the departure of a slave trader for the Isle of France, but
pointed out that English vessels had also just left for the same destination,
also with a quantity of slaves! At the Dutch settlement of Jaggernautporam,
through which some of the ships transited, the local chief observed wryly
48 beingbbbbeing

that the English prohibition on slave trading would be more effective if they
provided “the natives all over the country with victuals, for the obtaining of
which a number of natives choose slavery rather than a certain death; and
indeed, I cannot see that their choice is much to be blamed”.25

Identity, ownership and status issues

Classifying the ethnic status of Indian slaves is particularly problematic in

the Dutch and French Indian Ocean colonial world. Dutch slave toponyms
like Esperance van Bengalen are “often more likely an indication of the place
of purchase or transhipment as opposed to geographic origins”, since the
source of slave journeys is frequently unknown and contact with Europeans
generally begins only when a specific city or port or settlement is reached.26
Similarly, instances have been recorded in the French Mauritian archives of
ethnic designations for slaves such as “indien” or “malais” being used inter-
changeably, while the toponym ‘malabar’ is equally problematic. Applied
frequently to slaves originating from the Coromandel coast and other parts
of South India, it was occasionally also used more widely, for slaves from
any part of the subcontinent.27 The records of slave traders are even more
vague. The correspondence of French merchant Jean Baptiste Pipon is a
case in point. A transaction involving three slaves describes them as hand-
some and aged between 12 and 18, and infers that they were purchased in
India, although this is not made explicit. In two other examples he advises
a prospective buyer of the arrival of nine slaves coming from Bengal and
acknowledges receipt of a female slave who arrived from Pondicherry in 1791
without furnishing any further details.28
French civil status records offer occasional glimpses of the Indian birth-
places of slaves, but most were given new names on arrival in Mauritius
and we therefore have few traces of their ethnic origins. Durba Ghosh has
noted how naming practices can be used to chart racial and gendered topog-
raphies, remarking how the process of renaming Indian women domestic
servants and concubines in white households “had the consequence of
detaching women from their own communities by erasing a crucial sign
of their origins” particularly in the South Asian context where surnames
often serve to locate people by region, religion and caste.29 In the Mauritian
context, non-Christian slave names occasionally survive because a significant
proportion of slave owners were co-religionists and from ethnically similar
 slaveryslslavery, slslasslavery,sslsslasslaversslavesslavery,sslave 49

groups. In 1775 Moutou, a free Malabar, reported the death of his 80-year-old
Malabar slave Rama, for example. Of course, the meaning of “malabar”, as
noted above, was itself problematic. In 1809 the death of Pierre Louis Maga,
a “malabar”, is recorded; however it is then specified that the 47- year-old
fisherman was born in Bengal.30
The introduction of slave registers in the early nineteenth century forced
many French owners to create “surnames” for slaves who had hitherto
possessed only a forename. Some of the new names, such as Jean Bengali,
Silvain Talinga and Nancy Patna, may allude to a known regional or ethnic
identity. Other given surnames point to a possible caste or religious identity
i.e. Hector Bramine, Adesh Musulman and Lafleur Lascar, but whether these
names are fanciful rhetorical flourishes of registrants or accurate identifiers
cannot, for the most part, be verified.31
Unlike new world slave systems, a significant proportion of slave owners
and purchasers in the French and Dutch Indian Ocean settlements were
non-European and frequently of similar ethnic status to their slaves.32 The
presence of a free coloured Indian middle class on the Isle of France certainly
served as an avenue of social mobility for some slaves, who were freed by their
owners for the purposes of marriage with a free co-religionist and who were
then in turn more likely be in a financial position to purchase family mem-
bers, thereby effectively freeing them from subordination to other owners.33
Runaway slaves had opportunities to find safe refuge amongst free communi-
ties of Indians in the port capital of entrepot settlements, while those who had
been kidnapped as slaves were sometimes able to obtain character witnesses
from amongst their free compatriots and thereby gain their liberty. In 1785
several Indians testified before the police in Port Louis calling for the libera-
tion of Odia Padam who had been kidnapped by Jean de Silvas, for instance.34
On the other hand, plenty of examples can be found to demonstrate that
owners were perfectly capable of wanton cruelty towards slaves presumed to
be of their own ethnic group. Sinetamy, a free Indian at the Isle of France,
was described as a “very hard character” in a local police report discussing
the suicide of one of his slaves, which they attributed to his harsh treatment,
without however having necessary proof to arrest him. On another occasion,
it was reported that his Indian slave Arnacelon was found badly wounded
with his arms bound.35 Slaves were a capital asset, and whereas ties of family
and conjugality could serve to mitigate and circumscribe conditions and
terms of slavery, a shared ethnic identity was no guarantor of good treatment
or empathy in transactions between owner and owned.
50 beingbbbbeing

That said, powerful stereotypes were engendered about the diverse ethnic
groups enslaved in the Dutch and French Indian Ocean settlements, and it is
likely that these tropes played a role in determining the employment and sta-
tus of some slaves. At the Cape “Bengali women had a reputation as skilled
needlewomen while Malays were reputed to be excellent craftsmen” while in
Mauritius the “docility” of Indian slaves and their “better qualifications” for
domestic service are frequently remarked on by contemporaries.36 French
naturalist and artist Jacques Milbert, who spent several years on the Isle of
France, most clearly expresses the tendency of white settlers and visitors to
hierarchize Indian Ocean slaves according to ethnocentric perceptions in his
descriptions of enslaved Indians as “the most attractive and well formed”
as well as cleaner, more faithful and more sober than slaves of other ethnic
groups. His depiction of the naked, breast-feeding Indian slave mistress of a
French planter as equal to a sculpture by Phydias is especially noteworthy in
this genre.37 Punishments, equally, were meted out according to ethnic type
in the opinion of one owner: “the Slaves are descended from different stocks,
and the mode of punishment adapted to act on one race, is not applicable to
all the castes […]. This sense of honor prevails, especially in those of Indian
origin: Degradation from the rank of commander is their punishment.”38

A gendered elite in servility?

How far did these tropes impact upon the lived experiences of slaves? Linda
Mbeki and Matthias van Rossum contend that stereotypes were important in
the trade and employment of slaves. They could be reflected, for instance, in
the price that slaves fetched, or in the type of labour that they were assigned
to do.” They acknowledge, however, that the extent to which stereotypical
preferences could be acted upon was determined by availability: “the effects
of these stereotypes would become less marked as the supply of Asian slaves
to the Cape dwindled towards the end of the VOC period.”39 Closer investiga-
tion of the occupational status of slaves of all ethnic groups does not however
bear out the favoured status of Indian slaves ascribed to them by contempo-
raries at the Isle of France such as Milbert. During the eighteenth century,
the island was a port and entrepot-based economy, and the high proportion of
slaves engaged as artisans, domestics, market-sellers and similar occupations
reflects this. Such slaves were not confined to the homes of their owners; on
the contrary many were required to undertake work which necessitated them
 slaveryslslavery, slslasslavery,sslsslasslaversslavesslavery,sslave 51

travelling to, and sometimes even residing in, other spaces. As discussed in
chapter 3 by Geelen et al. in this volume, “a range of formal and informal
social controls” nevertheless continued to dominate the lives of such slaves.
Towards the close of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth,
Mauritius, conquered by the British in 1810, evolved into a plantation society.
Accordingly, Indian slaves, alongside their African and Malagasy counter-
parts, were increasingly employed in agricultural occupations, particularly
in sugar cane labour. By 1817, the commonest employment of Indian and
African slaves alike was that of “pioche”, i.e. field hand. After the abolition
of the slave trade, the proportion of Indian slaves declined; by 1830 there
were only an estimated 3,500 Indian slaves in Mauritius out of a total slave
population of 68,000, and following abolition in 1834 the Indian ex slave
population vanished from popular consciousness in the wake of the much
larger immigration from the subcontinent of indentured labour.40
Reid’s study of slavery in Southeast Asia led him to the conclusion that
“opportunities for upward mobility and an easier life appear to have been
far greater for bonded women than men”.41 Female slaves were probably
imported and purchased for the express purpose of serving as concubines in
male-dominated early settler societies such as the Cape and Mauritius. Many
bore children from these relationships; some were freed by their owners
and inherited property from them. Kate Ekama’s chapter in this collection
discusses evidence from the Ceylon VOC archives of sexual relationships
between women slaves and their owners, and how, despite legal impedi-
ments to intimacy, this became a route to manumission and inheritance for
themselves and their children. She eloquently portrays the difficulties for the
historian of establishing the nature of such relationships, concluding that
“consent cannot be read in these stories with any kind of clarity.”
In a few cases, Indian women became the legal spouses of white
male settlers despite the fact that marriages between population groups
categorized as white, coloured or slave were proscribed for most of the
eighteenth century in Mauritius. In 1771 Pierre Dufour, an ex-soldier born
in Brittany, France, married Marie Christine, his former slave, described
as a “Bengaly negress”; during the Revolutionary years such marriages
became increasingly common as long-term relationships were formal-
ized when laws prohibiting intermarriage were relaxed. It is also evident
that the large free Indian community (skilled contract workers such as
masons and carpenters, and a few traders) provided a route to freedom
for some Indian women slaves, who were purchased and liberated for
52 beingbbbbeing

purposes of marriage. Marie, the Bengali slave of a European merchant,

was expressly given up by her owner and confided to Félicien Jérôme, a
free Indian from Karaikal, in order for her to contract marriage with the
latter. When Josephine Franchine of Madras married Jean Louis Basile of
Pondicherry, they formalized a relationship which had lasted more than
eleven years, during which time she was freed by him and bore him six
children. Certainly the presence of the large, initially predominantly male
and Indian “free coloured” community helps to explain the fact that Indian
female slaves in the Isle of France were more likely, statistically speaking,
to be manumitted than female slaves of African origin.42 Of 199 female
slaves emancipated between 1784 and 1803, 126 or 63 per cent according
to Tegally were Indians, while Allen has noted the wealth acquired by such
freed Indian women.43 Were Indian female slaves in Mauritius, in these
respects, therefore, an elite in servility?
It is in fact challenging to find unequivocal patterns demarcating
Indian slaves from other ethnic groups in terms of spouse selection.
Free African and Malagasy men also purchased, bore children with,
and occasionally liberated women slaves of all ethnic groups, including
Indians. For example, in 1778 Paul, a free Malagasy, married his Bengali
slave, Suzanne, and legitimized their two children. Albert, a Mozambican
employed as a postman, also married a Bengali slave. Marriages between
Indian or Malay male and African female slaves are similarly on record
albeit in smaller numbers. Intermarriages between slaves of every ethnic
group were in fact common, and although one might point to unions
between slaves of a similar ethnicity or religion as being indicative of
a certain element of “choice”, the rapidity of creolization renders such
characterizations increasingly specious. Thus, while we can identify
first-generation slaves Uzirmahmod and Koki, both from Calcutta, as a
Muslim married couple in the records, their son was named Hector and
married Sophie, a native of “Coringhee”. Given that the Lettres Patentes
of 1723 required slaves to be instructed in the Catholic religion and
baptized, the widespread adoption of Christian forenames makes it prac-
tically impossible to discover whether they or their island-born baptized
offspring continue to identify with the religious and cultural traditions of
forebears.44
Secondly, how we can define and describe relationships which begin
in the violence of slavery and are characterized by long periods of presum-
ably enforced concubinage is a difficult question. As E.G. Jordan argues,
 slaveryslslavery, slslasslavery,sslsslasslaversslavesslavery,sslave 53

women slaves were arguably disadvantaged due to the greater likeliness of

their being confined to the household in the role of domestic servants and
intimately abused. Physical mobility enabled slaves to create “zones of per-
sonal autonomy” and permitted interactions with others, and while slave
men’s work frequently took them into the streets, “the everyday experiences
of their female counterparts were far more circumscribed. Isolated within
their masters’ homes, slave women were subject to close supervision and
endless workdays, as well as physical and sexual abuse.” Using the case
study of Cape Town Jordan notes that the “domestic work assigned to most
slave women limited not only their physical mobility but their economic
opportunities as well”, pointing out that even women who were “rented
out” did not necessarily benefit from the arrangements. Washerwomen
were an exception, because they carried out their work almost as a “public
performance” and hence became “fixtures on the landscape”.45
Durba Ghosh tackles the problematic from a rather different perspective,
making the important point that “conjugal relationships offered some native
women room to maneuver strategically, fashioning selves that could be
both socially and politically advantageous given their circumstances on the
margins of colonial society”. Her research on women in household slavery in
India demonstrates effectively how “native men and women negotiated the
structures of colonial labor extraction in very different ways”.46 Of course,
the sexual dynamic in unequal power relationships between white men
and black enslaved women sometimes led to sanguinary acts of vengeance
and mutilation wrought on the latter and which were endlessly recycled
in salacious contemporary travel and anti-slavery accounts.47 Less well
publicized were the dangers inherent in lending Indian female slaves out
to young sailors and soldiers to act as temporary concubines – who could be
removed on the whim of the owner – when real passions were unleashed.
In 1798, a French sailor slit the throat of a Bengali slave, Rosalie, and then
committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth. The circumstances of
the case remain unelucidated in the archive but indicate a crime of passion
and despair.48 As Ghosh pertinently concludes in her study of sex and the
family in colonial India, “[n]ative women were often the silent, unnamed
other that enabled the elaboration of various types of hierarchies and social
anxieties … the agency and subjectivity of native women was overridden, but
only partially so”.49
54 beingbbbbeing

Conclusion

Whilst no historian of subaltern labour in the Mascarenes can be unaware

of the presence of an Asian slave minority, it is surprising to note how little
textual space and analysis has been allotted to this group in recent studies
of eighteenth-century Isle of France society and of Indian Ocean bonded
labour.50 The erosion of their identity and interrogation of their ethnicity
continue today when images of African slaves are superimposed over their
stories. Remarkably, even in the very rare cases where a slave of Indian
origin is the principal subject of study, the ethnic identity is appropriated
or suppressed and an African physiognomy is assumed. A case in point is
the recent publication of the Furcy affair by French journalist Mohammed
Aïssaoui.51 Furcy was born on Réunion island to an Indian slave woman –
subsequently freed by bequest – and a French father, according to his own
testimony. Furcy’s long struggle to be declared “free” led to his being exiled to
Mauritius from where he launched further bids for freedom. Eventually his
case was heard in France where it raised a series of questions about identity
and slavery and became a cause célèbre. The depiction of Furcy on the book’s
cover and reproduced in subsequent media coverage in Réunion prompts
further reflections on representations of slaves of diverse ethnic backgrounds
and how studies of Indian Ocean slavery might be used to counteract, or at
the very least to nuance, the currently dominant Atlantic model.
If, as Christiansë notes in this volume, the photographs of nineteenth-cen-
tury Indian and African migrants “suffer from a lack of narrative”, we may
argue that the pictorial representations of eighteenth-century Indian slaves
too has suffered from an oversimplified narrative, one which is unable or
unwilling to confront and unwrap the ethnic complexities of Indian Ocean
slavery. In the absence of a competent, wide-ranging historical study of the
Indian slave trade in the Indian Ocean, creative writers have fortunately
stepped up. As Paul White has noted, the representation of migrancy in
imaginative literature has become an effective tool for exploring the mul-
tiple worlds in which migrants lived and which required negotiation and
constant self-re-fashioning.52 Whereas historical studies of Indian Ocean
slavery choose to accord very little space to South Asian slaves, writers like
Amitav Ghosh, Rayda Jacob and Ishtiyaq Shukri offer revealing imagined
trajectories of Indian slaves across the colonial Indian Ocean world in their
novels.53 European travel accounts depicted Indian slaves as aesthetically
more pleasing, tractable and intelligent than “African” slaves – an elite among
 slaveryslslavery, slslasslavery,sslsslasslaversslavesslavery,sslave 55

the servile. The free coloured community, itself comprising many “Indians”,
was more likely to manumit and marry them, thereby securing the social
mobility and economic prosperity of a sizeable number. The slaves born in
India themselves rarely speak directly to us, but civil status records show
significant levels of intermarriage with slaves of every other ethnic group. In
fact, to paraphrase Ghosh, “there are no easy ways to understand their sub-
jectivity or to categorize their agency. [They] brought local knowledges, sexual
labor, domestic expertise and linguistic abilities into their relationships with
European traders, explorers and colonial officials. In less obvious ways, they
also crossed various boundaries – cultural, ethnic, religious, racial – when
they entered into these domestic arrangements.” Albeit on the margins of his-
torical narratives, Indian slaves “proved to be critical to the colonial enterprise
in the contact zone between Britons and the peoples they encountered.”54

Notes

1. Richard B. Allen, “Carrying away the Unfortunate: the Exportation of Slaves

from India during the late Eighteenth Century” in Le monde créole: Peuplement,
sociétés et condition humaine, XVIIe-XXe siècles, edited by J. Weber. Paris: Les
Indes Savantes, 2005; M. Carter, “Slavery and Unfree Labour in the Indian
Ocean,” History Compass, 4, no. 4 (2006), 800-813. For statistics comparing the
size of the Indian population vis-a-vis other slave ethnic groups see J-M. Filliot,
La traite des esclaves vers les Mascareignes au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: CHEAIM, 1974.
2. Markus Vink, “‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the
Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of World History 14, no. 2
(June 2003): 131-177.
3. Linda Mbeki and Matthias van Rossum, “Private Slave Trade in the Dutch
Indian Ocean World: A Study into the Networks and Backgrounds of the Slav-
ers and the Enslaved in South Asia and South Africa,” Slavery & Abolition, 38,
no. 1 (2017): 95-116.
4. Loren Kruger, “Black Atlantics, White Indians and Jews: Locations, Locutions
and Syncretic Identities in the Fiction of Achmat Dangor and Others,” South
Atlantic Quarterly 100, no. 1 (2001): 111-143.
5. Anthony Reid and Jennifer Brewster (eds.), Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in
Southeast Asia, 14-17. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1983.
6. Indrani Chatterjee and Richard M. Eaton (eds.), Slavery & South Asian History,
3-8. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.
56 beingbbbbeing

7. Adoor K.K.R. Nair, Slavery in Kerala, 24-25. Delhi: Mittal, 1986.

8. Sinappah Arasaratnam, “Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth
Century,” in Mariners, Merchants and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History, edited
by K.S. Mathew, 195-208. New Delhi: Manohar, 1995.
9. See, for example, Philipe Haudrère, La compagnie française des Indes aux XVIIIe
siècle. Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 1989, and Louis Dermigny, Cargaisons indi-
ennes, 2 vols. Paris: SEVPEN, 1959-60.
10. Auguste Toussaint, Le Mirage des Iles Le négoce français aux Mascareignes au
XVIIIe siècle, 94. Aix en Provence: Edisud, 1977.
11. Richard. B. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850, 35-36.
Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2014.
12. Pedro Machado, Ocean of Trade South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian
Ocean c. 1750-1850, 41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014; Mbeki
and Rossum, “Private Slave Trade,” 97-98.
13. Perry Moree, A Concise History of Dutch Mauritius, 1598-1710. London: Kegan
Paul, 1998.
14. Patrick Joseph Barnwell, “Extracts from Logs of Ships Visiting Mauritius 1697-
1707,” in La Revue Retrospective de l’Ile Maurice, 3, no. 3 (May 1952): 144.
15. The name Mauritius was given to the island by the Dutch, and after the British
conquest in 1810 this name was reverted to.
16. One of the earliest references to slavery on the Mascarenes relates the sale of
a 12-year-old boy from India in 1687: Hubert Gerbeau, “Des minorités mal
connues: esclaves indiens et malais des Mascareignes au XIXe siècle,” in Migra-
tions, minorités et échanges en Océan Indien, XIXe-XXe siècle, Aix-en-Provence:
IHPOM, 1979: 160-242.
17. Allen, “Carrying Away the Unfortunate,” 288.
18. Marina Carter, “Indian Slaves in Mauritius (1729-1834),” The Indian Historical
Review 15, no. 2 (1989): 233-247.
19. Richard B. Allen, “The Mascarene Slave Trade and Labour Migration in the
Indian Ocean during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Slavery and
Abolition 24, no. 2, (2003): 41.
20. IOLR Bengal Revenue Consultations, 50/60, 9 September 1785, Day to Cooper,
2 March 1785.
21. Lord Cornwallis to Court of Directors, 2 August 1789, Parliamentary Papers
1828 Slavery in India: Correspondence of Court of Directors and the Govern-
ments in India (125).
22. The formal abolition of the slave trade decreed by the French Governor of Chan-
dernagore was published in the Calcutta Gazette of 17 September 1789. The
 slaveryslslavery, slslasslavery,sslsslasslaversslavesslavery,sslave 57

Joint Commissioners appointed to inspect conditions in the province of Malabar

in 1792-3 after the fall of Tipu banned natives of Malabar from being exported
as slaves, but Governor John recognized that the proximity of the Dutch port
of Cochin and of French Mahé made preventing slaves being sold overseas
difficult. Nair, Adoor K.K.R. Nair, Slavery in Kerala, 49-50. Delhi: Mittal, 1986.
23. IOR/P/165/53 Bengal Foreign Consultations, 20 April and 17 June 1791.
24. IOR/P/253/6 Fort St George Military & Political Consultations, 2 March 1792.
25. Sadlier et al., Masulipatam to Chief at Jaggernautporam, 16 January1792, in
Parliamentary Papers 1828 Slavery in India: Correspondence of Court of Direc-
tors and the Governments in India (125).
26. Mbeki & Rossum, “Private Slave Trade,” 107-108.
27. The use of the term “malabar” to designate a person from the Indian sub-
continent may date from earlier Portuguese explorations of the Malabar and
Coromandel coasts and their failure to distinguish between the inhabitants of
these regions: see Jacques-Gérard Milbert, Voyage Pittoresque à l’Ile de France, au
Cap du Bonne Esperance et l’Ile de Teneriffe, 169. Paris: Nepveu, 1812, and Pierre
Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes orientales et à la Chine fait par ordre du Roi, depuis
1774 jusqu’en 1781, 2 vols., 1: 59-60. Paris: Private Publication,1782. Doojen-
raduth Napal, Les Indiens à l’Ile de France. Mauritius: Private Publication, 1965.
28. Toussaint, Le Mirage des Iles, 94.
29. Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire, 19,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
30. These entries are taken from the Isle of France civil status registers held at the
Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix en Provence, France.
31. The slave registers are held at the UK National Archives in Kew, Surrey and can
be found in the Treasury T71 series.
32. See Mbeki & Rossum, “Private Slave Trade,”105 for data on the Cape, and
Carter, “Indian Slaves” (1989) for slave ownership data in Mauritius.
33. See Carter, “Slavery and Unfree Labour.”
34. Sadasivam Reddi, “Aspects of Indian Culture in Ile de France between 1803
and 1810,” in History, Memory and Identity, edited by Vijayalakshmi Teelock and
Edward A. Alpers, 35. Mauritius: Nelson Mandela Centre, 2001.
35. The slave was sent for medical treatment and the cost was charged to Sinetamy.
These cases are described by M. Jumeer, “Les Affranchis et les Indiens Libres
à l’Ile de France au xviiième siècle 1721-1803,” 277-80. University of Poitiers
thesis, 1984.
36. Mbeki & Rossum, “Private Slave Trade,” 98; Charles Grant, The History of
Mauritius or the Isle of France, 470. London: Private Publication, 1801; Auguste
58 beingbbbbeing

Billiard, Voyage aux Colonies Orientales ou lettres écrites des Iles de France et de
Bourbon pendant les Années 1817-1820, 44. Paris: Ladvocat, 1822.
37. Milbert, Voyage Pittoresque, 170-172.
38. Charles Telfair, Some Account of the State of Slavery at Mauritius, since the British
Occupation in 1810, 160. Port-Louis: Vallet and Asselin, 1830.
39. Mbeki & Rossum, “Private Slave Trade,” 98.
40. See Carter, “Indian Slaves,” for a detailed examination of the occupations of
slaves of various ethnic groups.
41. Reid and Brewster, Slavery, Bondage, 25.
42. Around 6,000 free “malabars” were brought to Mauritius as skilled contract
workers in the course of the eighteenth century see Amédée Nagapen, “Les
Indiens à l’Ile de France: Acculturation ou Deculturation?,” in Historical and
Cultural Relations between France and India, XVIIth-XXth Centuries, 2 vols, 26.
Réunion: Université de la Réunion, 1987.
43. S. Tegally, “Social Mobility among Indians in Mauritius,” BA thesis, University
of Mauritius, 1996, 20; Richard B. Allen, “Lives of Neither Luxury nor Misery:
Indians and Free Colored Marginality on the Ile de France, 1728–1810,” Revue
française d’histoire d’outre-mer 78 (1991): 337-358.
44. Nagapen, “Les Indiens,” 25-49.
45. Elizabeth Grzymala, “It All Comes Out In the Wash Engendering Archaeolog-
ical Interpretations of Slavery,” in Women and Slavery Africa, the Indian Ocean
World, and the Medieval North Atlantic, edited by Gwyn Campbell et al., 335-58.
Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007.
46. Ghosh, Sex and the Family, 23-24.
47. In the case of Mauritius, the brutal mutilation and murder of a young woman
slave by Madame Nayl is a case in point. See Representation of the State of Gov-
ernment Slaves and Apprentices in the Mauritius; with observations. By A Resident,
who has never possessed either land or slaves in the Colony. London: James Ridgway,
1830.
48. Claude Wanquet, “Violences individuelles et violence institutionnalisée: le
régime servile d’Ille de France à la fin du XVIIIe siècle à la lumière des dossiers
de procédure Criminelle “ in Esclavage et Abolitions dans l’Océan Indien (1723-
1860). Systèmes esclavagistes et abolitions dans les colonies de l’Ocèan Indien, edited
by Edmond Maestri, 207. Réunion: L’Harmattan, 2000.
49. Ghosh, Sex and the Family, 251.
50. See, for example, Megan Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in
Eighteenth-Century Mauritius. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2005, and
Alessandro Stanziani, Sailors, Slaves, and Immigrants Bondage in the Indian
Ocean World, 1750-1914. New York: Palgrave, 2014.
 slaveryslslavery, slslasslavery,sslsslasslaversslavesslavery,sslave 59

51. Mohammed Aïssaoui, L’Affaire de l’Esclave Furcy. Paris: Gallimard, 2010.

52. Paul White, “Geography, Literature and Migration,” in Writing Across Worlds.
Literature and Migration, edited by Russell King, John Connell and Paul White,
6. New York: Routledge, 1995.
53. Gaurav Desai, “Asian African Literatures: Genealogies in the Making,” Research
in African Literatures 42, no. 3 (Fall 2011): V-XXI.
54. Ghosh, Sex and the Family, 256.
 2

Small-Scale Slave Trade Between Ceylon

and the Cape of Good Hope
From 1728 to 17371

Herman Tieken

This contribution is a reconstruction of the small-scale private trade in slaves

between Cape Town and Colombo conducted by a Ceylonese Chettiyar,2
Nicolaas Jurgen Ondaatje, who had been forced to live in Cape Town as a
convict. The chapter is based on a unique set of private letters written in
Tamil found in the notarial archives in Cape Town. It addresses the thin line
between convict life and slave life and focuses on why and how Ondaatje came
to trade in slaves, and the problems his family had with the transition from
local bondage to European slavery, or their reluctance to send slaves from
their household to a strange country they associated with exile. The Tamil
letters provide us with a Chettiyar perspective on the world of the enslaved
within the VOC realm and in that sense differs from the contributions by
Carter, Geelen, Ekama and Wagenaar in this volume, who work from records
produced by Dutch and French bureaucracies. But like those contributions it
deals with themes such as mobility, autonomy and intimacy that touched the
personal lives of those living in bondage, convicts and slaves alike.
Nicolaas Jurgen Ondaatje from Colombo, Ceylon, was simply in the
wrong place at the wrong time.3 Proficient in Dutch, Sinhala and Portuguese
besides his native tongue of Tamil, he had been engaged by the Dutch minis-
ter Joan Bernhard Noordbeek in Galle, Ceylon, as a “bookkeeper” who would
serve as interpreter and middleman. In 1727, when his employer was found
guilty of a crime that has remained unspecified and was as a result evicted
from office, Nicolaas shared his patron’s fate. He was exiled to the Cape of
Good Hope for a period of ten years. The crimes that Nicolaas and Noordbeek
were accused of have remained a mystery as the relevant court documents
have been lost, but it can be speculated that they had aroused the suspicion
62 beingbbbbeing

Figure 2.1. A letter dated 3 November 1730 from Nicolaas Ondaatje’s brother-in-law
Christoffel Tomisz. From Colombo.
Source: Western Cape Archives and Records Service, Cape Town, SA.

of the paranoid governor, Petrus Vuyst (1726–1729).4 In Noordbeek’s case the

implementation of the sentence was postponed and, in the end, the convic-
tion was quashed altogether. Nicolaas’s sentence, however, was carried out
immediately. He arrived at the Cape on 14 February 1728, which we can be
certain of as his name was entered into a ledger.5 Next to this entry the word
“overleden” (passed away) is found. From other papers related to Nicolaas we
know that he died quite unexpectedly between the end of July and the end of
August 1737, when his period of exile was about to end.
During the decade between Nicolaas’s arrival at the Cape in 1728 and his
death in 1737 he maintained contact with his home country through letters.
 smallssmallssmallssmallssmall-sssmall-ssmassmassmalssmssmalssmal 63

Figure 2.2. The cover letter dated 12 January 1737 from Ondaatje’s brother-in-law.
Source: Western Cape Archives and Records Service, Cape Town, SA.

His own letters are lost, but those he received from Ceylon—70 in all—have
survived. Disciplined bookkeeper that he was, Nicolaas kept the incoming
letters in a file which, after his death, passed to the Orphan Chamber in Cape
Town and is now part of the collection of the Western Cape Archives and
Records Service. Apart from a few in Dutch and one in Sinhala, the incoming
letters are in Tamil. These letters make a unique contribution to knowledge
about the experience of being an exile. They bring to life the voices of his
family and highlight their sense of loss and their difficulty in coping with
the banishment of a close family member to the other end of the world, and
reveal how they tried to grapple with these difficult circumstances. From
their words it is also possible, if only in part, to reconstruct the life of their
exiled son and brother. In contrast, in other sources from approximately the
same period and the same part of the world, accounts of exiles’ experiences
far from home have often been distorted by a third voice, a poet’s voice, as
well as literary conventions, which require a somewhat different approach.
Ronit Ricci and Sri Margana have done an excellent job reconstructing the
64 beingbbbbeing

lives, experiences and perceptions of Javanese royalty in exile, based on

babads or Javanese historical chronicles. Others, like Jean Taylor and Kerry
Ward, have used inventories made by the Orphan Chamber in Cape Town
of the possessions of individuals who died without making a will and the
petitions of exiles or their families submitted to the local governors.6 So far,
no source comparable to the Ondaatje letters has been found.
The letters addressed to Nicolaas, by members of the Ondaatje family and
by friends, rarely feature extensive outbursts of grief. Instead, they recount
news of marriages and births, illnesses and deaths, jobs and promotions.
Understandably, many pages are taken up by news and practical matters.
They also describe parcels sent to Nicolaas mainly containing clothes and
pieces of cloth, and in one case sliced areca nuts and a nut slicer—items
that a South Asian could not do without! The parcel also contained seeds,
particularly of citrus trees and coffee plants. The coffee seeds were accom-
panied by detailed instructions on the type of soil in which they should be
planted: “soil like we have in the area behind the fort here in Colombo”
(Letter 59). The writers also gratefully acknowledge the receipt of barrels of
salted cabbage and red wine that Nicolaas had sent, and describe how, in line
with his instructions, these delicacies had been distributed among his family
and friends. It is clear that these goods were meant to make life more com-
fortable rather than being objects of trade. In one parcel, however, Nicolaas’s
elder brother Willem had placed a small piece of paper between the clothes
which reads, “I have written down the prices of the goods in this box. I do not
ask you to pay me these amounts. I merely mention the prices so that you
know them in case you want to sell any of these items” (Letter 10). After the
cabbage and wine were distributed among family and friends, what was left
was sold and the profit was used to pay for the clothes sent to Nicolaas. The
letters often end with long lists of family members and acquaintances who
wished to be remembered to Nicolaas. These letters thus give an intimate
picture of an urban elite from Colombo and Galle, which functioned as a
close-knit network maintained through marriage and mutual support, and
whose main ambition was to be employed by the Dutch East India Company.
This chapter will read these letters for insights into enslavement in the Cape
of Good Hope and for the complex relations between slaves, convicts and
other forced migrants and exiles.
As we do not have the letters written by Nicolaas, for information about
his life at the Cape we must draw on passages from the letters he received,
in which the correspondents respond to issues raised by Nicolaas about his
 smallssmallssmallssmallssmall-sssmall-ssmassmassmalssmssmalssmal 65

own circumstances. There are also other papers available at the Cape which
provide more direct evidence, among them papers concerning the winding
up of Nicolaas’s estate from the Orphan Chamber. Furthermore, there are
personal papers which Nicolaas seems to have kept in the same file as the
letters, such as an IOU related to the purchase of a slave, an IOU for money
he borrowed less than a month before his death, and a memorie boek in which
he kept track of money borrowed and lent, and wrote down the names of the
pupils he taught.
Although technically a convict, Nicolaas was allowed to move about freely.7
He had the mobility but not the official status of a vrijswart—a freed slave or
“Free Black”.8 For example, he was never listed on the census as other vrij­
swarten were, nor did he appear on Governor de la Fontaine’s 1731 list of free
inhabitants, which included “vrijswarten, of ex-bandieten”. Nevertheless, he
was termed a vrijswart in all his probate documents (e.g., MOOC10/4.154).9
Nicolaas earned his keep, first as a medical doctor and a trader, and sub-
sequently (from 1733 onwards) as a home teacher in Drakenstein, teaching
Dutch to the children of the Fouché, Faurie, Haarhof, Radijn, Malherbe
and de Jager families. Nicholaas’s choice of profession as a teacher may
well have been inspired by Jan Smiesing, a teacher in the Slave Lodge in
Cape Town, whom he appears to have known. Nicolaas lent money to a man
named Jan Joosten, who was married to a first cousin of Smiesing, and he
was well acquainted with a certain Christiaan Wijnands, who was married
to another of Smiesing’s cousins.10 It is not unlikely that the Tamil medical
recipes found in Jan Smiesing’s notebook, now in the Cape Archives, came
from Nicolaas Ondaatje.11 We know that Nicolaas received from his family
in Ceylon two books containing medical recipes, along with roots and pills
to prepare medicines with, and elaborate advice on how to administer them
(Letters 2 and 10).
These same two books were found in the inventory drawn up by the
Orphan Chamber of Nicolaas’s estate after his death in August 1737. Nicolaas
had no direct heirs. While in the letters there is talk of a son—his brother
Philip tells him not to be so embarrassed about the fact that he had one—this
son was probably not officially acknowledged (Letter 43). Apart from these
two books, the estate consisted of only some pieces of clothing, some buttons
and earrings, and some boxes with odds and ends (rommeling). Given that
Nicolaas was a home teacher living with his employer, his estate did not
include any furniture or slaves; therefore, it is all the more curious to note
that during his ten years at the Cape Nicolaas seems to have owned slaves.
66 beingbbbbeing

As a Free Black or exile, he was permitted to own slaves. He bought his

first slave at the Cape itself. In later years, he asked his family to buy them
for him in Ceylon and send them to the Cape. In what follows I examine
passages from two letters concerning these transactions. They make inter-
esting reading—the first one because of the reservation expressed by the
correspondent about sending slaves to such a faraway, unknown country; the
second because it includes a report of a near-shipwreck in Colombo harbour.
In the correspondence there is one more passage about slaves being moved
from Ceylon to the Cape, but Nicolaas was not directly involved in this
instance. In a letter dated 1732, one of the correspondents asked Nicolaas to
find out what had happened to a slave woman who had been taken with him
by Governor Simonsz in 1708 when he sailed from Ceylon to Holland via
the Cape. She had been sold by Simonsz at the Cape to a Free Burgher and
was manumitted a year later. Nicolaas managed to trace her, and she became
an important contact for the correspondent in setting up a small-scale wine
trading business between the Cape and Ceylon.
As mentioned, Nicolaas bought his first slave at the Cape. Among his
papers is a document that records a payment of 6o rijksdaalders (Rds) for a
slave called Anthonij van Bengalen:

Bekenne Ik onderget: voor reek: van Dirk

Wesbergh soldaat in dienst der E.comp: thans bij mijn
oúders in leeningh, ontfangen te hebben úijt handen
van nicolaas o[n]datje van Colombo sitti12
een somma van sestigh rijxdrs
sprúijtende weegens koop en transport van seekere
jongen genaamt anthonij van bengalen
Door den voornoemde dirk wesbergh aan den voor
noemde nicolaas ondatje van Colombo deúgdelijk verkogt
in demneere derhalven bijdeesen genoemde Nicolaas
ondatje van Colombo voor namaninge onder verbant als
na regten

Kabo de goede hoop adij 4 Jùlij 1729

N. Brommer13

There were no ships from Ceylon or India to the Cape during this period,
but there were several ships from Batavia. It is therefore not clear whether
 smallssmallssmallssmallssmall-sssmall-ssmassmassmalssmssmalssmal 67

Anthonij van Bengalen (who, going by his toponym, probably came from
India) was a recent arrival—it is not unlikely that he had already been in the
Cape for several years before being bought by Nicolaas. It is also unclear
what happened to him. However, a year later, in 1730, Nicolaas asked his
family to buy him two male slaves. He asked for the slaves to be purchased in
Ceylon as he believed they were much cheaper there, as indicated in a letter
from late 1731 in which his elder brother Philip felt the need to warn him
that since he had left Ceylon the price of slaves had gone up considerably.
It also becomes clear that Philip was not very happy with Nicolaas’s request
(Letter 29):

Last year you asked us to buy two good slaves, male slaves, and send them
to you. If you haven’t changed your mind since then, you need not do any-
thing, dear brother. But you should know that while at that time (when
you were sent into exile) a slave cost ten reals, now you won’t get one for
less than thirty or forty reals, if at all. If that is no problem, there is no
need to write to us. However, while we do keep slaves in our homes here,
that does not mean that we have no hesitations sending them thither. I
want you to know that [if I do not commit myself ] it is because of that.14

Philip clearly did not understand how Nicolaas in his present situation could
even think of transporting slaves from their own familiar Ceylon to the Cape
at the other end of the world. On the other hand, the circumspect way in
which Philip raised his objections made it easy for Nicolaas to maintain his
request. However, we have no evidence that Nicolaas did persist, insisting
that his brother act against his conscience. In any case, in subsequent letters
Philip remained the same faithful and helpful brother. However, when in
1736 Nicolaas again needed slaves, he did not ask his brother but turned
to Domingos Dias, a teacher at a school attached to Wolvendaal Church in
Colombo, who, after learning that Nicolaas had become a teacher as well, had
begun a correspondence with him. Due to circumstances that he elaborately
describes in his letter, Domingos Dias failed to get the boy on board the ship
in time (Letter 65):

In your letter you asked me to look for a servant. I did find one. After I
had agreed to pay 37 reals for him I made an advance payment of one
pagoda. I asked Señor Lopes, the Foreigner, to speak to the captain of
a Mocha ship which was about to depart, who next agreed to take the
68 beingbbbbeing

boy on board. It was also agreed that the full sum would be paid to the
owner of the boy only after the boy had been taken on board, for in the
meantime he might run away and abscond. However, the night before
the day we were to bring the boy on board, the ship, called “De Boot”, was
thrown on the beach by a strong north-east wind. But because it was a
strong new ship, it did not break. For seven or eight days the employees
of the Company in Colombo, Chettiyars, Paravars [fishermen], Moormen
[moslims], Karaiyars [fishermen, maritime traders] and many others all
worked closely together and with a great effort and by the Lord’s mercy
succeeded in getting the ship afloat again. It was saved without any
damage. As the Mocha ship was moving into the direction of Galbokka,
making water and tugging at its anchors, moving this way and that, the
storm subsided into a gentle breeze. That was how it was saved. However,
its boot and schuitje had broken down on the rocks on the beach. Five
sailors, who had been in them, drowned. The whole of Colombo grieved
as one man. However, the very next day, after the wind had subsided and
before I had been able to bring the boy on board as agreed, the captain of
the Mocha ship had raised the sails and left.

It is unclear why De Boot was called a “Mocha ship” here, as there is no

evidence that it ever went to Mocha in Yemen. De Boot arrived in Ceylon on
11 November 1736, straight from Middelburg in the province of Zeeland in
Holland, which it had left on 3 January of that year. From Ceylon it sailed
for home via Batavia and the Cape. The ship reached the Cape in July 1738,
where it remained from 31 July to 12 August 1738. It is fortunate that the boy
was not on board, for he would have arrived in Cape Town almost a year after
Nicolaas’s death.
Why did Nicolaas need slaves? He may have been buying slaves for his
friends in the Slave Lodge (the large building where Company slaves were
housed), as Lodge slaves scheduled for manumission had to provide a slave
in exchange.15 (It is a mystery how these exchange slaves were obtained by
people who were themselves lodge slaves.) On the other hand, he may have
initially bought slaves for himself. During the first year, or years, of his exile,
Nicolaas lived in Cape Town where he rented a house for himself, much
to the dismay of his mother who told him not to waste his money on such
luxuries; in her opinion, a single room should do. Furthermore, his family
had given him some money to tide him over the initial part of his exile.
During his stay in Cape Town, Nicolaas mixed with Christian Free Blacks,
 smallssmallssmallssmallssmall-sssmall-ssmassmassmalssmssmalssmal 69

befriending Jan Joosten, as well as Christiaan Wijnands and Jan Smiesing.16

He was confident that he would be able to make a decent living in Cape
Town, one that would allow him to afford a slave, who may have been the
abovementioned Anthonij van Bengalen, bought in 1729. Gradually, how-
ever, his life as an exile may have grown more difficult. At the same time,
he would not have failed to notice the difference in slave prices between the
Cape and Ceylon, which remained considerable even after prices in Ceylon
had risen. Here was an opportunity for him to make some money—using
his status as Free Black, which allowed him to own slaves, he could import
them from Ceylon ostensibly for himself, but in actual practice sell them. It
is unclear, however, whether Nicolaas made any profits from this enterprise.
For one thing, it is not certain whether his brother Philip sent the two slaves
that Nicolaas had asked for. It is also highly unlikely that, when asked again,
he would have been prepared to send a second batch of slaves after the first
one in 1731. Furthermore, ships’ captains clearly had other priorities than to
fulfill a promise to transport a frightened young slave to the Cape.
The slave trade between South and Southeast Asia and the Cape was
well organized, albeit illegal. High-ranking naval officers and repatriating
officials transported individual slaves to the Cape and sold them in Cape
Town.17 In a postscript to his letter from 1732, the school teacher Domingos
Dias asked Nicolaas to find out what had happened to a pair of slaves who
had been taken to the Cape almost 25 years earlier by Governor Cornelis
Joannes Simonsz (1703–1707), where he was to review the state of the colony
on behalf of the Council of the Indies (Letter 33):18

When Governor Señor Simonsz was on his way to Holland he sold his
servant, named Hannibal, our godson, and his wife, a Bengali woman,
named Flora, to a Free Burgher at the Cape. Later, after the Free Burgher
had died, the Señor (i.e. Simonsz), on leaving for Holland, set them
free. Afterwards, Hannibal died. After that, that woman Flora married
someone else. If I remember well his name was Frans. Flora is a Bengali
and very short. Could you find out and let me know if she is still alive.
For, when Hannibal was still alive, he sent me a barrel of cabbage. I still
have the 10 reals with me which I made out of selling the cabbage. Having
found out where she lives I could send those ten reals to her. Or you could
give them directly to her. In that case, you give her the money and ask her
to sign a receipt. Send this letter with her signature to your mother here
and I will give the money in cash to your mother.
70 beingbbbbeing

Nicolaas did find Flora; however, her second husband was not called Frans but
Karel Jansz van Bombay. Contact between godfather and godchild was re-es-
tablished, and in all his subsequent letters Domingos Dias asked Nicolaas to
order one or two barrels of wine for him from Flora’s husband, Karel, and
mentioned how much money was to be paid out to her. Unfortunately, the
story, which almost sounds like a fairy tale, does not reveal the grounds on
which Simonsz had managed to accomplish the manumission of the two
slaves whom he had sold—the same Simonsz, moreover, in 1708 was the
first to restrict the ability of Capetonians to manumit their slaves. To prevent
slave-owners from leaving old slaves to the care of the Church’s poor fund,
they had to guarantee that the slaves would be able to take care of themselves
for the first ten years after attaining their freedom.
The 70 letters provide us with a fractured picture of the social complexity
of the settlement and the interactions that took place between “lower-ranking
Company employees, sailors, soldiers, servants, convicts and exiles”.19
As stated previously, in their letters the correspondents kept their grief
over Nicolaas’s absence to themselves, except for, not unexpectedly, his
mother Juliana Rodrigo. In her very first letter, which she dictated to her
son-in-law Christoffel Tomisz and signed with a cross, she expressed the
hope that her son would be present at her funeral and would throw a handful
of earth on her grave (Letter 4). In a letter sent in 1734, Philip writes, “Our
mother still loves you so much; she is dying to see you. Of all her sons she
is thinking only of you and cannot stop crying. Whatever we say to console
her, she does not hear it” (Letter 43). The others—the men—stick to general,
hackneyed phrases, saying that they miss him and look forward to the day he
will return.20 However, Nicolaas’s exile worried them greatly. To the very end
they continued making plans to shorten Nicolaas’s exile. In the initial letters,
they suggested that Nicolaas travel to the Netherlands and, if that were not
possible, to Batavia, to argue his case before the authorities there. However,
they had clearly overestimated Nicolaas’s prospects, though it cannot be
ruled out that in his first letters Nicolaas himself painted far too positive a
picture. After that, the family decided to approach the governor of Colombo
with the aim of appealing to him to reduce Nicolaas’s sentence and to permit
him to return well before the end of his term. At the end of 1733, however, the
appointment of the new governor, Diederik van Domburg, was postponed to
allow him to go to Batavia to clear his name of accusations of corruption. The
following year, the family learned that a similar request made by the family
of an exiled Muslim was refused as the governor had not had the power
 smallssmallssmallssmallssmall-sssmall-ssmassmassmalssmssmalssmal 71

to alter Council of Justice decisions since 1732. (It is notable that although
several members of the Ondaatje family were employed by the Company as
interpreters, translators and tax collectors, they were apparently unaware
of the change in the Company’s administrative rules.) After that, the family
stopped trying to shorten the period of Nicholaas’s exile. The family’s efforts
were instead directed towards ensuring that Nicolaas would be allowed to
return after he had finished his term, as permission to return needed to
come from both the governor of the Cape and the governor’s counterpart in
Colombo. The family had a copy made of the original verdict which was sent
to Nicolaas and which could be shown by him to the authorities at the Cape
to prove that he had indeed completed his term. They also wanted to send
Nicolaas through their networks a gold chain, with which he would be able
pay for his journey back home, but, unfortunately, the goldsmith was unable
to finish the chain in time.
Time and again the correspondents mention these plans. It is clear that
Nicolaas’s exile was a topic fervently discussed at every family meeting—meet-
ings which included his mother Juliana. Family members also requested
the help of acquaintances and their contacts in the administration of the
Company, such as Nicolaas’s brother Philip’s employer, Arnoud de Lopes,
head of the Accounts Office; Daniel van den Hengel, who had recently been
appointed fiscal (prosecutor) at the Cape; and Wetzelius, an influential min-
ister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Colombo where the Ondaatjes were
members. Though there is no evidence that Nicolaas’s exile had had a negative
influence on the family’s career prospects, it is clear that within the family it
was a constant source of worry and anxiety. As we do not have the letters writ-
ten by Nicolaas, we do not know to what extent he fed these worries. In any
case, his career at the Cape was not a success, and his move from Cape Town
to the outlying districts may have been a sort of exile within an exile. Letters
from him, however—whatever was in them—brought at least some measure
of comfort, as becomes clear from the family’s response when, in 1734, they
complain of not having received any news from their son and brother in the
Cape. As for Nicolaas, his family’s suggestion that he go to the Netherlands or
Batavia must have made it clear to him that they had no idea of his situation
and that he was more than ever left to his own devices. The reports of their
failure to approach the governor and to send Nicolaas the money he needed
for the return journey will only have deepened his feelings of desolation.
We have no direct accounts of what Nicolaas thought of his existence as
an exile. And the indirect evidence is ambiguous, allowing for different and
72 beingbbbbeing

sometimes opposite interpretations. Nicolaas’s attempts to procure slaves

from Ceylon may suggest that he believed that transportation from one part of
the world to another was not so painful an experience as to make him want to
spare others. The family was of the opinion that he should. However, it is also
possible, and much more likely, that he was so desperate for money that he
could not afford such sentiments. There is indeed some evidence that in the
last days of his life Nicolaas had lost complete control over his affairs. A month
before his death he borrowed the large sum of 22 Rds, an amount that is not
mentioned in the inventory of Nicolaas’s possessions that was drawn up by the
Orphan Chamber after his death. This suggests that it had been spent that very
month, probably on bribes paid as part of his efforts to see the governor. We do
not know if Nicolaas succeeded in handing the copy of his verdict over to the
governor nor, if he had indeed managed to do so, what the governor’s reaction
was. All we know is that he died suddenly. A month before his death, he had
still been in perfectly good health, as is made evident by the firm hand with
which he had signed the IOU for the 22 Rds.21 Was his death accidental, or
was it related to the denial of permission to leave? On this aspect the archive is
silent. The Ondaatje letters remain a fascinating source for understanding the
means by which the subaltern—both convicts and slaves—managed to stay in
contact with their homes while forging new ties and creating new networks
while in exile. Commodity trade and slave purchases are indeed practices that
historians would rarely associate with forced migrants.

Notes

1. Large parts of this chapter were drawn from my article, “Letters Dealing With
the Slave Trade From Ceylon. The Ondaatje Correspondence, 1728 to 1737,”
Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa 67, no. 3 (2013): 113-122.
The Ondaatje Letters were edited and translated by me in Between Colombo and
the Cape. Letters in Tamil, Dutch and Sinhala, Sent to Nicolaas Ondaatje from
Ceylon, Exile at the Cape of Good Hope (1728-1737), Dutch Sources on South Asia
c. 1600–1825. Delhi: Manohar, 2015.
2. The Chettiyars are a merchant caste originating in the coastal area of South
India, in present-day Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In the nineteenth century, many
of their members progressed from being simple salt dealers into international
traders and bankers. The Chettiars in eighteenth-century Colombo were mainly
servants of the Dutch East India Company.
 smallssmallssmallssmallssmall-sssmall-ssmassmassmalssmssmalssmal 73

3. The name is also spelled as “Ondatje”. Ondaatje is the Dutch version of Tamil
Ukantacci or Ontacci (pronounced “Ughandacci” and “Ondacci” respectively).
4. The direct cause of Noordbeek’s conviction seems to have been a letter from
the commander of Galle, Johannes Jenner, complaining that the minister had
postponed the celebration of Holy Communion for one week without his per-
mission. A month before, however, Jenner had written that Noordbeek did have
permission for the postponement (Generale Missiven van Gouverneur-Generaal en
Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, Deel 8, 1725–1729,
GS 193: 187). It is unlikely that Jenner made this U-turn without having assured
himself that Governor Vuyst would not prosecute him for perjury. It may well
have been Vuyst who had urged Jenner to write the second letter condemning
Noordbeek. After Noordbeek’s subsequent rehabilitation, Nicolaas’s family
expected Nicolaas also to soon be rehabilitated, which suggests that the cases
against Noordbeek and Nicolaas were closely related.
5. WCARS, Annotatie boeck der personen soo van Batavia en Ceijlon alhier aangeland
1722–57. A photograph of the relevant page from the Annotatie boeck can be
found in Herman Tieken, Between Colombo and the Cape, 4.
6. In the book edited by Ronit Ricci, Exile in Colonial Asia: Kings, Convicts, Commem-
oration. Honolulu HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2016, two examples of such
literary sources on the lives of exiles are dealt with. The exiles in question belong
to Javanese royalty and the sources are babads, or Javanese historical chronicles.
See Ronit Ricci’s own contribution, “From Java to Jaffna: Exile and Return in
Dutch Asia in the 18th Century” (94–116), and the chapter by Sri Margana,
“Caught between Empires: Babad Mangkudiningratan and the Exile of Sultan
Hamengkubuwana II of Yogyakarta, 1813–1826” (139–64). Other written sources
on exiles’ lives dealt with in the same publication are the inventories made by the
Orphan Chamber in Cape Town of the possessions of individuals who died with-
out making a will (see Jean Gelman Taylor’s chapter, “Belongings and Belonging:
Indonesian Histories in Inventories from the Cape of Good Hope” (165–92), and
the petitions of exiles or their families submitted to the local governors.
7. Most bandieten were confined to specific areas.
8. See, for instance, Wayne Dooling, Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in
South Africa. Athens OH: Ohio University Press, 2007.
9. Photographs and transcriptions of the relevant documents can be found in
Herman Tieken, Between Colombo and the Cape, 39–43.
10. See Robert Shell and Archie Dick, “Jan Smiesing, Slave Lodge Schoolmaster
and Healer, 1697–1734,” in Cape Town. Between East and West, edited by Nigel
Worden, 128-152. Johannesburg, Hilversum: Jacana, Verloren, 2012).
74 beingbbbbeing

11. Archie Dick, “The Notebook of Johannes Smiesing (1697–1734), Writing and
Reading Master in the Cape Slave Lodge,” Quarterly Bulletin of the National
Library of South Africa 64, no. 4 (2010): 159-174.
12. Sitti is chetti(yar), the name of the community or subcaste Nicolaas belonged to.
13. A summary: “I, undersigned, acknowledge to have received on behalf of Dirk
Wesbergh, soldier in the service of the Company but now as knecht living at my
parents(‘s farm), from Nicolaas Ondaatje from Colombo, Chettiyar, the sum of
sixty rijksdaalders for the sale and transport of a boy (slave) called Anthonij van
Bengalen.” N. Brommer is Nicolaas Brommert, son of Jan Brommert and Anna
van Schalkwijk, who had joined the Company in 1725 as an assistant and had
become a Free Burgher in 1730 (see Resolutions of the Council of Policy of Cape of
Good Hope, C. 100, 40–42, dated 27 August 1736, endnote 6).
14. With this I retract my translation of this elliptical sentence given in Between
Colombo and the Cape, 124.
15. See James Armstrong and Nigel Worden, “The Slaves, 1652–1834,” in The Shap-
ing of South African Society 1652–1840, edited by Richards Elphick and Herman
Gilliomee, 2nd edn, 109-183. Cape Town: Longman, 1989.
16. Another Christian Free Black acquaintance of Nicolaas’s was Jacobus Hen-
driksz, from whom he borrowed the sum of 5 Rds.
17. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa, 41-51. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985; Robert Shell, Children of Bondage: A Social History of the
Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838, 76. Johannesburg:Witwaters-
rand University Press, 1994.
18. Cornelis Joannes Simonsz was Governor of Ceylon from 11 May 1703 to
22 November 1707. Prior to this appointment, Simonsz was Independent Fiscal
at the Cape between 1690 and 1694. On his return to Europe in 1708, the Gov-
ernor-General and Council of the Indies instructed him to act as commissioner
to review “the situation at the Cape”. See Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced
Migration in the Dutch East India Company, 168, fn. 113. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2009.
19. Nigel Worden, “New Approaches to VOC History in South Africa,” South Afri-
can Historical Journal 59, no. 1 (2007): 10.
20. An interesting variant is found in a letter from Simon de Mel. He produced the
only literary embellishment in the entire corpus, when he compared Nicolaas’s
family to a “parched crop deprived of the sight of rain clouds” (Letter 70).
21. For a photograph and transcription of the IOU see Herman Tieken, Between
Colombo and the Cape, 36.
 3

Between Markets and Chains

An Exploration of the Experiences, Mobility and Control of
Enslaved Persons in Eighteenth-Century South-West India

Alexander Geelen, Bram van den Hout, Merve Tosun

and Matthias van Rossum

On a Sunday towards the end of 1746, three men’s lives intersected in a

schaggerije (tavern) at Pagodinho—they belonged to an enslaved man, a chris-
tian pandij and a christian mocqua.1 The enslaved man, Cruz, had been put
to work in the tavern some two months earlier by his master, the Christian
mocqua, Pedro Gomez. Records indicate that Pedro may have been the owner
of the tavern or was closely involved in running it, as there is mention of him
visiting the tavern “very early in the morning as usual”.2 According to Cruz’s
later declaration before the court, Pedro Gomez’s wife, Dominga, had forbid-
den Cruz from serving alcohol to her husband. And so Cruz had refused to
serve Pedro a drink when he demanded one that Sunday. Cruz stated that
Pedro then “threatened to sell him to one of the sailors” as soon as he got the
chance.3 Pedro confirmed this threat in his interrogation.4
The Christian pandij, Anthonij from Tutucorijn, aged twenty and resid-
ing at Pagodinho, noticed that Cruz was aggrieved when he walked into the
tavern. In his interrogation before the court, Cruz declared that Anthonij,
seeing him “being very sad, and crying bitterly … asked for the reasons of
his sadness”. After Cruz had “revealed that his senhor [master] wanted to sell
him to the scheepsvrienden [sailors]”, Anthonij suggested that Cruz come with
him and that he would help him reach his homeland. Cruz answered that
“he did not know where his homeland was himself”. He agreed to leave with
Anthonij, however, after Anthonij had reassured him that “he would know
where it was”.5
76 beingbbbbeing

Introduction: slavery, mobility and control

An enslaved man working in a tavern with the help of an apparent stranger

fled from his master because he was afraid of being sold off to sailors—
Cruz’s case is interesting as it challenges dominant perspectives on Asian
systems of slavery and bondage on a number of levels.6 Scholars have argued
that slavery in Asia was mostly a local phenomenon that manifested itself as
debt and urban slavery, motivated by factors such as status and “conspicuous
consumption”.7 In the case of South and Southeast Asia the focus has also
been on forms of bondage that tied enslaved people to the land or a landlord,
and in which they were like “bondsmen”, corvée workers or serfs. This was
accompanied by the idea that slavery in Asia was “milder”. It has, for exam-
ple, been argued that “Indian slavery was less bland than the virulent form
which it had assumed in the civilisations of the West and that the slaves
were less in number”.8 Such characterizations were extended to European
contexts, even leading to references to “the ‘cosy’ intimacy of pure household
slavery” in Batavia in the first half of the eighteenth century.9
In recent years, there has been increased interest in the history of slav-
ery in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago worlds.10 In the last
decade, attention has shifted to the role of long-distance connections, and
to slavery in Asia as a “dynamic part of a continuously adapting, globally
connected and increasingly capitalist economic system”.11 These changing
perspectives are supported by new evidence of the importance of the trade in
enslaved people.12 Rethinking slavery in Asia, scholars stress that land- and
debt-based bondage was not the only form of slavery. It has been established
that different regions in Southeast Asia were characterized by a “pattern of
having both milder and harsher forms of slavery”.13 Similarly, for the Indian
Ocean world, it is recognized that “forms of status obligation, bondage, and
temporary slavery (for debt, etc.) coexisted with forms of hereditary slavery
similar to that in North America”.14 This leads us to re-examine the charac-
teristics and everyday functioning of systems of slavery in the Indian Ocean
and Indonesian Archipelago worlds.15
Using historical evidence from court records, this chapter studies
the working and living conditions of the enslaved and the regulation and
control of their mobility. This chapter thus aims to contribute to this vol-
ume’s mission of seeing slaves in their everyday lives in order to improve
our understanding of what slavery meant, especially from the perspective
of enslaved individuals. The current chapter was inspired by our earlier
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 77

investigations into everyday life dynamics of the motley crews of slaves, con-
victs, sailors, soldiers and runaways under the Dutch East India Company,16
and our investigations into the dynamics of slavery, enslavement and escape
by examining cases of slave flight.17 Through this research, we aim to shed
light on the everyday characteristics of slavery as a status (as a relation of
belonging through bonds or property rights) and a labour relation (through
coerced forms of labour mobilization). In this chapter, we compare the VOC
settlement in Cochin on the Malabar Coast with that of the VOC metropole
of Batavia on the island of Java—parts of the VOC empire that were highly
connected, not least by the large (private) slave trade between the settlements.
The legal/institutional arrangements underpinning systems of social control
and slavery in both places were shaped by the Company in similar ways,
but they operated quite differently depending on the locality. It is, therefore,
interesting to compare different locations such as Batavia and Cochin with
regard to the everyday functioning of slave work and mobility.
For this study the chapter relies on the court records of the Raad van
Justitie (Court of Justice) regarding these Company settlements, as well as on
additional sources such as ordinances and reports. The court records avail-
able from this part of the VOC empire are crucial sources for two reasons.
First, the Courts of Justice instituted throughout the empire were the highest
forums of imperial and locally situated systems of social and political control,
tying together the many lines and structures of social order created by local
administrations, city guards and urban and rural policing forces. Second, the
court records produced by the Courts of Justice contain historical informa-
tion on many underlying processes and actors who would otherwise have left
no historical trace. Court records are rich historical sources for the study of
everyday-level dynamics. The records are unique in terms of the degree to
which they preserve the voices of historical subjects, ranging from soldiers to
slaves and from kaffers to female pedlars. In these court records, slaves appear
almost everywhere, often in the background, but just as often as witnesses,
accused or victims. And, perhaps equally important, enslaved people appear
with a voice, talking not only about the evidence which is at the core of the
case, but also providing details that paint a picture of everyday backgrounds
and situations. The individuals we encounter in the Dutch courtrooms are
continuously trying to formulate and describe not only the “exceptional”, but
in contrast also the “normal”. The abundance of court record material for
the Dutch East and West Indies empires and their richness thus provides
important opportunities for studying (albeit mediated) accounts of enslaved
78 beingbbbbeing

individuals.18 Our reading of this type of record resembles Ekama’s in this

volume. And although judicial sources of course tend to be fragmentary—as
court cases tend to focus on specific incidents and practices targeted by legal
and political authorities—and the transmission of specific historical informa-
tion is distorted by legal procedures and translation, these specific challenges
can largely be addressed by contextualizing the information through close
reading and comparative analysis.19
The availability of such sources for Dutch overseas settlements in Asia
(and the Atlantic) provides unexplored opportunities for historical research
on a range of important themes, forming the basis for several new research
projects on slavery and the regulation of diversity.20 The use of these sources,
however, is largely hindered by two problems: i) the difficult and time-con-
suming nature of access, and ii) the difficulty of assessing the value of
findings based on only one case or a small number of cases. Indexing court
cases opens up the possibility of studying these histories through what could
be called global subaltern (social) history, as it opens up access to everyday
micro-level interactions and social structures, and allows for analysing them
from below through the systematic comparison of information from such
historical sources that provides access to the everyday or micro level.21 The
indexes not only provide access, but they also allow researchers to assess
the relevance of particular court cases to their study by conducting targeted
searches on particular topics, persons or locations. This has led to a research
project dedicated to, amongst other things, indexing the criminal court records
of the Court of Justice of Cochin, resulting in the creation of a comprehensive
database. This effort is currently expanded for the wider Dutch empire in Asia
and the Atlantic, extending the court record indexing from Batavia to Elmina
and Paramaribo (including for material dealt with by Ekama and Wagenaar).22
Based on an index of these digitized, but otherwise un-inventoried,
records of the Court of Justice of Cochin, we were able to select multiple
relevant court cases in which slavery and mobility intersect. This index
includes 285 criminal court cases and provided some 30 cases involving
enslaved people from which we selected four examples that deal specifically
with slavery and (illegal) mobility for more detailed analysis in this chapter.
For Batavia we were able to draw upon criminal court cases recorded in
secondary literature. We have benefited most from Matthias van Rossum’s
Kleurrijke Tragiek in which criminal court cases were similarly selected from
an index of Batavian court records. This index contains data for 1,654 crim-
inal court cases, of which some 300 involve enslaved people. Court cases
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 79

from Eric Jones’ Wives, Slaves, and Concubines have also been included in our
analysis of the workplaces and mobility of enslaved people in the Batavian
context. Batavia can be considered an important comparative case, not only
because of its size and extensive history of slavery—with roughly one-third
of the population consisting of enslaved people—but also because Batavia, as
the headquarters of the VOC in Asia, strongly influenced the regulation of
slavery and social and labour relations elsewhere in the Company’s empire.23
The court records to a large degree reflect the interests, fears and prosecu-
tion policies of the Company, but for our purposes they also provide clear
and detailed background information on enslaved persons and their working
conditions and mobility.

Batavia

Batavia was the centre of the Dutch empire in Asia. It was characterized
by “pseudo-European” planning and construction, which drew from styles
prevalent in the Republic. The city’s social composition changed towards the
end of the seventeenth century, when bamboo houses were banned and brick
constructions were made mandatory. Mardijkers, for example, were pushed
to the suburbs outside the city walls because of the high rents being charged
for stone houses.24 Segregation in Batavia, however, was enforced not only
for such indirect pecuniary reasons. The VOC actively pursued segregation
by regulating the appearance of the city, as evidenced by the fact that in the
second half of the seventeenth century Javanese were banned from living
within the walled city—they were concentrated in ethnic quarters in the
environs (Ommelanden) of Batavia.25
Even though Batavia grew into a settlement with a large free European
population, enslaved people of various origins were brought to the city in
increasingly large numbers. Between 1688 and 1779, the number of enslaved
people in Batavia almost doubled from 26,000 to 40,000. These slaves were
traded by Europeans and Asians alike, in various settings. People would
gather at slave markets set up in and around Batavia to sell and/or buy slaves,
and the town hall also held auctions where the slaves of deceased Company
personnel were sold.26
In contrast to the prevailing image of Asian domestic slavery, the house
was certainly not the only, nor the dominant, backdrop to slavery in this
region. Slave labour was exploited by the Company, Company officials and
80 beingbbbbeing

European and Asian inhabitants alike in various ways and settings. Slaves
were deployed at the roadstead of Batavia where they loaded and unloaded
large VOC vessels; they were put to work in artisans’ workshops where they
assisted VOC craftsmen with carrying and loading goods; those working at
Batavia Castle were responsible for carrying water, equipment and weaponry.
These were only some of the duties imposed on slaves working for the VOC,
some of whom were rented out by private owners to the Company for fixed
periods of time. Most slaves were owned by Company officials and private
individuals, rather than by the Company itself. These individuals would
hire their slaves out for profit (often to the VOC) or employ them in settings
ranging from tailoring shops to brickworks. In these cases households and
workplaces often overlapped.27
Strict surveillance of the mobility of slaves was crucial to reducing the
chances of escape. Both in domestic and market situations, formal and
informal control mechanisms dominated the lives and work of slaves. Those
working in and around the house were disciplined using surveillance, small
rewards and severe punishments. These methods aimed simultaneously to
achieve order and ensure the safety of the slave owners who lived in close
proximity to the slaves they commanded. Fear seeped through slave–master
relationships—slaves feared arbitrary punishment, while masters were wary
of retribution from their slaves or their escape. The elaborate surveillance
system established by the VOC benefited slave owners to a certain extent.
The gates of the walled city were guarded by Company soldiers during the
day, and kaffers and city guards at night.28
The 1759 criminal case against Ontong van Palembang reveals that, after
staying out for too long one day, he was captured by Moorish guards at “the
Chinese campong” under suspicion of absconding. He explained that he had
received permission from his master’s housewife to leave the house to wash
himself, and that he had stayed out until dark. Two days later, Ontong was
delivered to his owner, Lieutenant Alting, to receive his punishment. In his
interrogation, Ontong declared that he dreaded this encounter with Alting,
and his fears were not unfounded as, on Alting’s order, he was severely
beaten by other slaves. Ontong tried to break free from their grip and suc-
ceeded in grabbing a kitchen knife, but he failed to take his own life. He was
still severely injured when he was brought to court to defend himself against
the serious charge of attempted suicide.29
The surveillance of guards at ports and gates was, by definition, limited
to the public sphere, so informal control was often more decisive in tracing
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 81

runaway slaves. Neighbours played a crucial role in informal social control, as

revealed by several court cases revolving round runaway slaves in the Batavian
Ommelanden, as mentioned in Eric Jones’ Wives, Slaves, and Concubines
(2010). One such case reveals how Christina, an enslaved woman, hid in the
house of her fiancé, a goldsmith named Brandt, for eighteen months. The
neighbours were the first to notice that something was different in the way
Brandt entered and left his house. At some point he had arranged for his
house to be joined to that of his brother, and he would always leave through
the front door of his brother’s house, which he would also conspicuously
make sure to lock properly. Acting on the neighbours’ suspicions, Christina’s
owner, Sara, went to some lengths to retrieve her slave, sending her niece to
find and bring Christina back. Furthermore, even attempts to abscond could
be foiled by neighbours and bystanders. Danie van Sumboewa, for example,
had to confess to having plans of escape when the discovery of the dead
body of her accomplice by a neighbourhood child led the investigators of the
case to her.30 The VOC encouraged this mechanism further by establishing
bounties for the capture of runaway Company slaves.31

VOC on the Malabar coast—a Pagodinho tavern

The South West Indian city of Cochin and its surrounding areas, situated
on the Malabar coast, provide an interesting comparative environment. The
physical presence of the VOC on the Malabar coast consisted of a series
of forts and posts, while the small city of Cochin (conquered in 1663) was
the main settlement. The region was characterized by a complex political
landscape in which multiple sovereigns ruled over stretches of land with
relatively well-defined borders that delineated the authority of the Company
and other rulers. The VOC had a number of treaties with local rulers which
included clauses that regulated the extradition of subjects prosecuted for
offences within the jurisdiction of the Company (often after a trial before the
Court of Justice). Geographically, the Malabar coast featured many waterways
(backwaters and rivers) connecting villages and cities. Trade and shipping
connected the region to the Indian Ocean world and parts of the VOC empire,
but links also stretched to the mountainous hinterland, the Sahyadris (or
Western Ghats). The Malabar region, therefore, was a site where different
social, political and economic systems interacted.
82 beingbbbbeing

The court records of the case featuring Cruz, the enslaved man work-
ing in a tavern in Pagodinho, shed light on how this environment affected
mobility and control under slavery in everyday circumstances. First of all,
Pedro seemed to own, or was at least closely involved in the running of, the
tavern Cruz worked at, as he went by “very early in the morning as usual”.
However, Cruz was responsible for the daily running of the tavern, including
closing the tavern and opening its doors for business again in the morning.
Pedro had been taken aback when he was greeted by the closed doors and
windows of the tavern when he arrived the next morning, because Cruz had
already left Pagodinho by then.32 Just before Pedro left the tavern on Sunday
evening, he had noticed Anthonij and Cruz talking, and proceeded to ask
Cruz “whether he still did not want to go home, upon which mentioned
jongen [Cruz] replied: who will keep you company here then …”.
The remainder of their conversation is unfortunately untraceable due to
material damage; however, this passage does reveal, first of all, that Cruz was
not constantly supervised. After Cruz declined Pedro’s offer Pedro left the
tavern alone, leaving Cruz behind with Anthonij. Pedro certainly did seem
concerned that Anthonij and Cruz had been talking for some time. Trying to
steer Cruz away from Anthonij, he suggested that it was late, and asked Cruz
whether he wanted to go home.33 We do not know whether Cruz lived with, or
in close proximity to, his masters Pedro and Dominga, but we do know that
Pedro did not check whether Cruz had left the tavern for his house the pre-
vious night. It was only when he reached the closed tavern the next morning
and was informed by some children from the neighbourhood that they had
seen Cruz and Anthonij talking near the water tank the previous night that
Pedro realized that Cruz had not just left the tavern—he had left town.34 Cruz
was eventually recognized by Pedro’s relatives near “the land of Travancore”,
and they urged him to return to his owner, which Cruz apparently did.35
Cruz’s relative mobility was, of course, not self-evident, and not without
any control. In fact, it was the threat his master had uttered that Sunday, that
he would sell him to some sailors, that had prompted Cruz to run away. Even
though Cruz had some degree of mobility as an enslaved man, the grasp his
master had on Cruz’s life and his ability to drastically change the direction it
might take was very real and threatening. At the same time the case reveals
Cruz’s fears of being sold and Pedro’s anxiety about the long conversation
between Cruz and Anthonij. The case also clearly demonstrates the roles of
neighbours and acquaintances in social control.
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 83

Households and military guards

Similar dynamics can be discerned from the 1713 case of Maria and her
European owner, the soldier Cornelisz Fredericksz. After a devastating house
fire, Fredericksz had threatened—in a similar fashion to Pedro—to sell her
“on board” a ship.36 The prospect of being transported far away from the
familiar domestic environment may have frightened the 19-year-old Maria,
and she talked to another slave in the household, a 25-year-old who was also
called Maria but went by the name Maij, who convinced Maria to run away
with her. The two girls met Joan, a 50-year-old chego man, who agreed to help
them escape. Maria stole a few items and “slave baubles”37 from Fredericksz’
house and the trio ran away, heading towards the Kingdom of Porca. What
followed was a week-long flight during which the trio hired several boats,
walked long distances and stayed at several houses. During their travels Maria
sold some of the goods she had stolen to finance their flight, and Joan was
bitten on the leg by a dog at one of the houses in which they spent a night.
Not far from their destination, near the settlement of Allepee, the three were
arrested by two christen lascorijns. Their flight had been reported by Cornelisz,
and because the runaways were expected to go to the nearby Kingdom of
Porca the pachter (farmer) of St. Andries, Elias Jansz,38 was informed, and he
had sent the soldiers to look for and intercept the runaways.
The story of the flight indicates that in the company of Joan the runaway
slave girls could move around relatively openly. Joan hired boats multiple
times, and the trio travelled by road during the day and slept in houses
at night, with Joan selling the stolen goods along the way. Although their
capture might have been a consequence of their travelling in the open, it is
interesting that there are no references to being questioned or stopped by the
people they encountered. The trio seem to have been able to pass quite unno-
ticed, apparently without raising much concern, nor was it considered out of
the ordinary. Informal social control, therefore, did not hinder their attempt
at escape, perhaps because no one knew them well enough to identify them
in the places where they travelled, or perhaps because the 50-year-old chego
was taken to be the owner of the two younger, enslaved women. Formal con-
trol mechanisms did, however, turn out to be effective, in that policing was
set in motion following the slaves’ escape—after a week at large, the three
were caught when recognized by soldiers who were actively looking for them.
84 beingbbbbeing
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 85

Figure 3.1. This map of Cochin shows

the location of the quite large forge
(L) and the bay gate through which
Filander and Vrijgezel escaped (T).
Source: National Archives of the
Netherlands, Catalogus Leupe.
86 beingbbbbeing

Market transgressions

An interesting example of some of the dynamics of mobility and control can

be found in a case dealing with interactions in a marketplace. Sometime
in early April 1681, a 14-year-old chego named Anthonij, slave of the toepas
Emmanuel Pereira, walked through the Cannarijn Bazaar just outside
the city of Cochin. He was sent there by his master to sell a number of
woronge.39 While there, he was approached and greeted by Pedro, who acted
as if the two were good friends even though Anthonij had never met him.
(Pedro, a Moor, had himself been a slave but had run away several years
before.) Pedro asked Anthonij if he wanted to go back to his homeland
(Calicoilan), but Anthonij replied that he did not. Pedro persisted, asking
him if he wanted to go to Calicot instead. Anthonij was more interested in
going there, and he told Pedro that though he was interested he could not
go with him just yet.
The two agreed that Pedro would bring his boat to the house of Anthonij’s
master the following Friday. The week progressed, but on Friday Pedro and
his boat were nowhere to be seen. Finally, on Sunday Pedro moored his ship
near Pereira’s house and Anthonij climbed aboard. Just as Pedro was about
to sail away, Anthonij jumped back ashore and told the Moor that he had for-
gotten some belongings in the house. He went into the house but, much to
Pedro’s surprise, instead of the boy himself returning, Pereira came running
out with weapons drawn, yelling “A thief! A thief!”.40 Two nearby toepas men
heard Pereira and rushed to help while Pedro tried to sail quickly away, but
the three jumped into a nearby boat and caught up with him. Pedro drew
his sword and shield but was quickly overwhelmed by his three pursuers. A
quick blow hit his shield, another hit him on the arm, and the last blow made
him throw his weapon overboard and surrender. This sudden and dramatic
turn of events was the result of a special plan that Pereira and Anthonij had
concocted. Pereira had told Anthonij sometime before that if anyone ever
tried to tempt him to run away, he should agree to go and immediately tell
Pereira, in order to capture that person as a slave thief, an offence prosecuted
and often severely punished by Company authorities.41
Anthonij had a relatively high degree of mobility, in terms of both move-
ment and agency. His owner trusted him to go to the bazaar by himself to
engage in economic transactions, possibly in the name of his master. When
Pereira planned to capture slave thieves or mediators who tried to help slaves
escape, Anthonij was trusted to help carry out such plans.
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 87

Private punishment and the Company

“Is this not all your fault?” These words were uttered by the slave Filander
as he plunged his knife into the side of his supervisor, the Christian Diogo
Anthonij.42 Filander had felt betrayed by Anthonij and, in his anger and des-
peration, decided to attack his supervisor in the smithy where he worked. The
events leading up to this 1752 stabbing had started three months earlier, in
Cochin. Filander explained in his confession to the secretary of the Court of
Justice that he and his fellow slave Vrijgezel had decided to run away together
from the smithy. The two slaves were forced to flee together because they
were tied together by an iron chain. How exactly their escape unfolded is not
entirely clear from Filander’s confession, except that they simply left through
the Baaijpoort (bay gate) at around 7 o’clock in the evening. They visited a
blacksmith in Paroe (modern day Parur), a town very close to Cranganore
(modern day Kodungallur), just north of Cochin. The Malabarian blacksmith
there was willing to help release the two slaves from their chains.43 From
Paroe the two slaves made their way to Tallicheriij (modern day Thalassery),
which lay about 200 kilometres to the north, outside VOC jurisdiction.
Filander and Vrijgezel’s taste of freedom was cut short when their super-
visor Anthonij set out to find them. Diogo Anthonij of Illawada had been
sent by the boss of the forge, Hans Casper Thiel, to find the two slaves and
bring them back. Anthonij, with seemingly little effort, found the men in
Tallicherij and tried to convince them to return with him to the forge, prom-
ising that they would not be punished. Filander agreed but warned Anthonij
that “… he’d better not lie, because if the confessant should be punished,
he would find Anthonij and seek revenge”.44 After three months, however,
Filander found out that he was to receive a beating for his escape. True to his
word, Filander sought revenge and lured Anthonij out of the forge by telling
him that “the boss is calling you”.45 Filander attacked Anthonij with a knife
which he had hidden in his hand. Anthonij fell into a ditch and managed to
escape without any serious injuries, after which Filander was arrested and
tried by the court. For the attack on his overseer Filander was sentenced to “…
be bound to a pole and beaten with a stick, after which he will be chained to
serve on the Company’s common works for three years without pay.”46
The court case describing the events above mainly focussed on Filander’s
stabbing of Anthonij, and most of the information, therefore, concerns that
situation. Filander was relatively young—21 years old—and a member of the
chego caste. The chegos were a lower caste and commonly worked as slaves in
88 beingbbbbeing

VOC-ruled Cochin. From the court records it is clear that Filander was owned
by Nicolaas Bowijn, a koopman (merchant) and fiscaal (fiscal, or public pros-
ecutor), and thus one of the top VOC officials in Cochin. Although Filander
was owned by this koopman, he worked in the Company forge, implying that
Nicolaas had either rented Filander out to the Company or, more likely, had
sent Filander to the smithy as a form of punishment.
Under what conditions were Filander and Vrijgezel slaves? How did
these conditions impact on their mobility? From the court case it becomes
clear that Filander and Vrijgezel were chained together, yet they were able to
simply walk through the Baaijpoort. This begs the question of how mobility
was regulated in the forge where they worked. Another court case provides
further insight into how the smitswinkel (forge) operated and how the mobil-
ity of slaves and kettinggangers (those chained together in a chain gang) was
regulated.
In 1750, the toepas Joseph Queljo of Chakengattij was tried before the
Court of Justice. He had been accused of carelessness and dereliction of duty.
At 11 o’clock on 19 July 1749, the gatekeeper of the smithy, Domingo, decided
to go home for lunch. Joseph Queljo was ordered to take Domingo’s place
until 1 o’clock in the afternoon. Unfortunately for him, Domingo returned
from his long lunch only at around 5 o’clock. After his shift was over, Joseph
took it upon himself to count the prisoners and slaves working in the forge.
“As usual he counted the slaves and reported to his supervisor Hans Casper
Thiel that they had found 63 of them. To which the supervisor answered that
there should have been 64.”47 Since the chainganger had been lost during
Queljo’s shift, he was sent to find the missing person but he was unable
to find him. During Queljo’s interrogation, he was asked several times if
he was sure that he had not let one of the chaingangers through the gate,
but he denied having done so. To the question why he had not counted the
chaingangers at the start of his shift, he answered: “… I did not think that on
exactly this day a chainganger would go missing.”48
The case against Queljo reveals much about the place and context in
which Filander and Vrijgezel were slaves. The forge in Cochin was a relatively
large undertaking, and three years before Filander and Vrijgezel’s court case
took place, there were at least 63 people employed there. It should be noted
that two categories of people were working in the smithy—kettinggangers
and “unchained slaves”. Kettinggangers were free people or slaves who were
convicted of a crime and had been sentenced to work in chains on the VOC’s
public works projects; the slaves who worked at the forge were leased from
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 89

their owners and were not chained. It was unusual for slaves to be chained
except at the moment of their capture or during transport.49 They therefore
worked in conditions that were to an extent the same as those of convicts,
whether as chained convicts themselves or as workers rented out by their
owners. This case can thus reveal as much about the control exerted over the
mobility of slaves as about the control of the mobility of convicts.
Filander and Vrijgezel were described in the court case as slaves, but
they were also chained together. This indicates that they belonged to the
kettingganger category. How did they end up in the forge? One obvious
answer is that the two slaves had been convicted of crimes, which routinely
happened. A slave could, for example, be chained for the crime of trying to
injure, defame or insult their owner, or even for walking the streets after sun-
down.50 Chaining slaves could also serve as a disciplinary method. Although,
formally, the owners of slaves were not allowed to chain or lock up their
slaves, they could transfer them to the Company, which was allowed to force
slaves to work in chains for its public works.51 The threat of being given to the
Company and forced to work for their gemeene werken (public works) could,
therefore, be used as a mechanism of control, similar to threats of reselling,
export or physical violence. It is likely that this happened to Filander. He was
owned by Nicolaas Bowijn, the public prosecutor of Cochin, who could easily
have transferred him as a final disciplinary measure, forcing him to work in
chains alongside convicts.
The mobility of the workers in the forge was highly restricted. It was
surrounded by walls, and those who came in and went out were checked at
the gates. Furthermore, the slaves and prisoners were all chained together,
obviously greatly hampering their mobility. Queljo’s mistake reveals that the
prisoners were supposed to be counted at the beginning and end of each
day to ensure that all workers were present. Yet, Queljo’s case also reveals
that workers were allowed to pass through these gates if they were given
permission. This could explain how Vrijgezel and Filander were able to leave
the smithy. They probably simply received permission. They may have got
as far as they did because it was believed that their chains would sufficiently
hamper their freedom of movement. Filander and Vrijgezel were, however,
able to get rid of their chains and travel a long way north to Tallicherij.
The control of mobility in the smithy, therefore, seems somewhat contra-
dictory at a glance—the mobility of the prisoners working there was heavily
impeded by chains, gates and walls, but under specific circumstances they
were able to simply walk through the gates. The Company or hired slaves
90 beingbbbbeing

working in the forge were not chained during their work or at night, but were
subject to some of the same measures of control. They had to pass through
the gates, and they were counted at the start and end of each day. It can be
concluded that the forge was a highly restrictive environment—Filander,
Vrijgezel and the escapee in Queljo’s case were exceptions to the rule. Only
because Filander and Vrijgezel were able to unchain themselves did they man-
age to get as far as they did (and even then, they were still apprehended). The
smithy at Cochin was meant to keep prisoners and slaves in. The fact that so
many were in chains while they worked meant that the work environment was
tough and that the Company was keen to restrict the workers’ mobility. Those
people who did escape this specific environment were further restricted by
other instruments of control—they were captured and tried by the Company.
The court cases above have shown that the control mechanisms used to
curtail the mobility of the kettinggangers in the forge were highly restrictive.
To what extent these mechanisms were specifically applied to the unchained
slaves working there is unfortunately unclear. The fact that the slaves were
not chained implies a higher level of mobility; yet, the case records also show
that they were always under threat of being chained, which served as a way
to discipline them and remind them of what could happen if they did not
obey their masters. Just as the chains were meant to impede Filander and
Vrijgezel’s mobility, the threat of chains was meant to impede the mobility
of the unchained slaves working not only in the forge, but in all of Cochin.

Conclusion

The material and social conditions in which slaves lived were shaped most
importantly by the relations between slave and master, and these, in turn,
were highly influenced by trust, skill, and control. Some of the slaves encoun-
tered in this study had responsibilities that entailed a degree of mobility, like
Maria, who felt compelled to escape as a response to the threat that she might
have to leave the household environment that was familiar to her. Comparing
the court cases reveals different approaches to exerting control over slaves,
and how similar acts could have very different meanings. Some slaves were
permitted to walk around, talk to and even trade with people in their masters’
absence. Anthonij sold goods to strangers and had been sent to the bazaar
unsupervized. In other environments the relative mobility of slaves seems
to have been connected to workplace situations and their socially controlled
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 91

surroundings (such as Cruz running a tavern and being able to move at

least between the tavern and his residence), or to (perceived) relations of
belonging, such as in instances where enslaved runaways travelled under the
(apparent) supervision of people who were, or appeared to be, free. This com-
parative study shows how, both in a busy metropole surrounded by intensive
agricultural production (Batavia) as well as in a smaller Company settlement
in the midst of a highly diverse and politically fragmented environment
(Cochin), the interaction of formal and informal systems of control strongly
influenced the dynamics of slavery.
Although the lives and work of the slaves who were part of European,
Eurasian and Asian households were characterized by specific degrees of
mobility, this mobility was not only relative and dependent upon the context
(type of work and level of trust), but it was also clearly delineated and ulti-
mately limited. Slaves needed permission from their masters to leave the
premises, and they were identifiable and watched in the environments in
which they normally operated. Away from this environment, informal control
may have dwindled, but formal control became more marked, especially in
the form of guards and military patrols. The interaction between the informal
and formal is important and should be further explored. The cases presented
here seem to indicate that in the absence of informal authorization (written
notes provided by the master stating the purpose and destination of slaves,
or bystanders who can testify to, or confirm, the legitimacy of the actions
or movements of slaves), the apparatus and actors of formal control seem
to have operated on the basis of distrust and suspicion, aiming to severely
limit the opportunities of enslaved and otherwise bonded people and their
mobility outside their informally controlled environments.
A crucial observation with regard to the functioning of informal control
and its sometimes “hard” (rather than “mild”) characteristics is the slave
masters’ recurring threat to their enslaved that they will send them away, and
particularly sell them to (sailors of ) ships, implying long-distance transport.
This threat of being sold (and especially of being sent far away) functioned as
a method of asserting dominance over enslaved women or men through fear.
Interactions and behaviours in what appeared sometimes to be a relatively
open and “softer” situation must, therefore, have been engrained with, and
influenced by, the always-looming limitations and threats of the underlying
relations of ownership, hierarchy and control. Recurrent physical punish-
ment and verbal threats were the reason for many of the incidents of everyday
resistance and more violent outbursts that we encounter in the court records.
92 beingbbbbeing

The cases remind us of the complexities of slavery relations. Easy

dichotomies of “benign”, “Asian”, “household” or “urban” versus “European”,
“Atlantic” or “plantation” slavery, in this respect, are as much as revealing. It
is time to move beyond such stereotypes in order to comprehend the dynam-
ics of different kinds of coercive relations in more refined ways. The use of
hitherto unexplored records of the Court of Justice of Cochin can provide
detailed and new perspectives on the dynamics of slavery. Although these
court cases give only fragmented and temporary insights into the world of
the enslaved, they contain an untapped wealth of information on a range of
different aspects of slavery, enslavement and its contestation.

Notes

1. NL–HaNa, Nederlandse bezittingen India: Digitale duplicaten Chennai, 1.11.06.11,

inv. no. 440, ff. 1–39. Case ID Database CR-440–6. The Mocquas, Pandijs and
Chegos were castes native to the Malabar coast.
2. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 440, f. 20; 37. Original: “dat nu omtrent 2 maanden
geleeden hij relatant door sijn senhor hier boven gem: [Pedro] in de schaggerije op
Pagodinho is geplaatst geworden, om den drank te verkoopen”; “en des anderen
daags smorgens heel vroeg na gewoonte na de schaggerije gegaan zijnde, heeft
den deposant de deuren en vensters gesloten, en daar niemand gevonden”.
3. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 440, f. 21. Unfortunately, we cannot read the complete
passage due to damage, but the context provides a clear understanding of what
Cruz’s statement should say: “[Pedro] gedreijgt heeft [hem aan de] schepelingen
te verkoopen […]”.
4. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 440, f. 37. Extracted from Pedro’s interrogation: “4: Of den
deposant daer over dien jongen niet gedreijgt heeft hem per eerste gelegentheid
aan de schepelingen te zullen verkoopen; antw: Ja.”
5. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 440, f. 20. Extracted from Cruz’s statement:
[…] den relatant zeer bedroefd zijnde, en bitter wenende is ondertusschen
den gev: in de schaggerije gekomen, hem relatant na d’oorsaak van zijn
droefheid vragende die den relatant aan den gev: g’openbaart hebbende
namentlijk dat zijn senhor hem aan de scheepsvrienden wilde verkoopen
heeft den gev: hem relatant gevraagt of hij met hem wilde mede gaan, en
dat hij hem na zijn land zoude brengen, op welke vraag den relatatant
hem gev: antwoordende, dat hij zelvs nieten wist waar zijn land was,
heeft den gev: tegens den relatant gesegt zulx wel te weeten […].
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 93

6. A. Reid and J. Brewster (eds.), Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast

Asia. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983; J.F. Warren, The Sulu
Zone: The Dynamics of External Trade, Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transforma-
tion of a Southeast Asian Maritime State. Singapore: Singapore University Press,
1981; G.J. Knaap, “Slavery and the Dutch in Southeast Asia,” in Fifty Years Later,
edited by G. Oostindie, 193-206. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1995.
7. G. Campbell, “Slavery in the Indian Ocean World,” in The Routledge History of
Slavery, edited by G. Heuman, and T. Burnard, 52-63, 61. New York: Routledge,
2011; P. Boomgaard, “Human Capital, Slavery and Low Rates of Economic and
Population Growth in Indonesia, 1600–1910,” Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of
Slave and Post-Slave Studies 24, no. 2 (2003): 83--96; Reid, Slavery, 7-14.
8. Adoor K.K. Ramachandran Nair, Slavery in Kerala, 5. Delhi: Mittal Publications,
1986.
9. As Jones states in relation to slavery in Batavia, “plantations radiated outward
from late eighteenth-century Batavia”. See: E. Jones, Wives, Slaves and Concu-
bines. A History of the Female Underclass in Dutch Asia, 144. Dekalb IL: Northern
Illinois University Press, 2010.
10. J.J. Ewald, “Crossers of the Sea: Slaves, Freedmen, and Other Migrants in the
Northwestern Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1914,” The American Historical Review 105,
no 1 (2000): 69-91; M. Vink, “‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery and
Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean,” Journal of World History 14, no. 2 (2003):
131-177; I. Chatterjee and R. Eaton (eds.), Slavery and South Asian History.
Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2006; A. Stanziani, Bondage: Labor
and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries. New
York: Berghahn Books, 2014; R.B. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian
Ocean, 1500–1850. Athens OH: Athens, Ohio University Press 2015; M. van
Rossum, Kleurrijke tragiek. De geschiedenis van slavernij in Azië onder de VOC.
Hilversum: Verloren, 2015.
11. M. Mann, Sahibs, Sklaven und Soldaten. Geschichte des Menschenhandels rund
um den Indischen Ozean Darmstad: WBG, 2012. Freely translated from: “dyna-
mischer Bestandteil eines sich permanent verändernden, in globalen Bezügen
vernetzenden und zunehmend kapitalistisch ausgerichteten Wirtschaftsystems”.
12. R.B. Allen, “Satisfying the Want for Labouring People: European Slave Trading
in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850,” Journal of World History 21, no. 1 (2010):
45-73; L. Mbeki and M. van Rossum, “Private Slave Trade in the Dutch Indian
Ocean World: A Study Into the Networks and Backgrounds of the Slavers and
the Enslaved in South Asia and South Africa,” Slavery & Abolition 38, no. 1
(2017): 95-116.
94 beingbbbbeing

13. H. Hägerdal, Lords of the Land, Lords of the Sea. Conflict and Adaptation in Early
Colonial Timor, 1600–1800 Leiden: KITLV Press, 2012.
14. Stanziani, Bondage.
15. For this point see Matthias van Rossum, “Connecting Global Slavery and Local
Bondage—Rethinking Slavery in Early Modern Asia,” Opening Lecture, “Slave
Trade in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago Worlds (16th to 19th
Century): New Research, Results and Comparisons” (International Institute of
Social History, Amsterdam, 9–10 November 2016); and Extended Paper for the
International Workshop, “Enslavement in the Indian Ocean World” (Linnaeus
University, Kalmar, 8–9 September 2017), submitted “Global Slavery, Local
Bondage? Rethinking Slaveries as (Im)Mobilizing Regimes from the Case of
the Dutch Indian Ocean and Indonesian Archipelago Worlds”, Journal of World
History (accepted, forthcoming 2020).
16. Marcus Rediker, Titas Chakraborty and Matthias van Rossum, A Global History
of Runaways: Workers, Mobility, and Capitalism 1600-1850. Berkeley CA: Univer-
sity of California Press, 2019); M. van Rossum and Jeannette Kamp, Desertion
in the Early Modern World: A Comparative History. London: Bloomsbury, 2016);
M. van Rossum, Werkers van de wereld. Globalisering, arbeid en interculturele
ontmoetingen tussen Aziatische en Europese zeelieden in dienst van de VOC,
1600–1800. Hilversum: Verloren, 2014.
17. Alexander Geelen, Bram van den Hout, Merve Tosun, Mike de Windt and Mat-
thias van Rossum, “On the Run: Runaway Slaves and Their Social Networks in
Eighteenth Century Cochin,” Journal of Social History (forthcoming 2020); Van
Rossum, Kleurrijke tragiek.
18. As explored in the Resilient Diversity project.
19. A. Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common
Sense. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009; C. Anderson, Subaltern
Lives. Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. For VOC sources see Van Rossum,
Werkers van de wereld, 16–19.
20. This research is related to the following projects: Matthias van Rossum,
Between Local Debts and Global Markets: Explaining Slavery in South and South-
east Asia, 1600–1800, International Institute of Social History, NWO Veni Grant,
2016–2019; and Cátia Antunes, Ulbe Bosma, Karwan Fatah-Black and Matthias
van Rossum, Resilient Diversity: The Governance of Racial and Religious Plurality
in the Dutch Empire, 1600–1800, Leiden University and International Institute
of Social History, NWO Vrije Competitie Grant, 2017–2022.
21. Van Rossum, Werkers van de wereld, 16-35.
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 95

22. The database created by Matthias van Rossum, Alexander Geelen, Bram van
den Hout and Merve Tosun, VOC Court Records Cochin, 1681–1792. Amsterdam:
International Institute of Social History, 2018, is part of van Rossum’s Between
Local Debts project, and will be made publicly available at its conclusion. Build-
ing on the indexing in Van Rossum, Werkers van de wereld for Batavia and the
Cochin database, in 2017 we expanded this work and started indexing the court
records created and located in other former VOC settlements, extending from
Batavia to Elmina and Paramaribo. This indexing mission is part of the Resilient
Diversity project by Antunes, Bosma, Fatah-Black and Van Rossum.
23. See the different contributions to the “Amok in Batavia. Over Amok in Neder-
lands-Indische rechtszaken” special issue, Acta Historica 3, no. 4 (2014). Also,
see Van Rossum, Kleurrijke Tragiek.
24. Remco Raben, Batavia and Colombo. The Ethnic and Spatial Order of Two Colo-
nial Cities 1600–1800 (PhD diss., Leiden University, 1996): 10–20.
25. Remco Raben, “Round About Batavia. Ethnicity and Authority in the
Ommelanden, 1650–1800,” in Jakarta-Batavia. Socio-Cultural Essays. Verhande-
lingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 187, edited by
Kees Grijns and Peter J.M. Nas, 95. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2000.
26. Van Rossum, Kleurrijke tragiek, 22, 27.
27. Ibid., 49–60.
28. Remco Raben, Batavia and Colombo, 213; D.F. Lach and E.J. van Kley, Asia in the
Making of Europe, Volume III: A Century of Advance, Book 3 Southeast Asia, 1316.
Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
29. Van Rossum, Kleurrijke tragiek, 67–68.
30. Jones, Wives, Slaves and Concubines, 104–25.
31. J.A. van der Chijs, Nederlandsch-Indisch Plakaatboek, VII, 5. Batavia: Landsdruk-
kerij, 1885–1900.
32. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 440, f. 20; 32. Original: “dat nu omtrent 2 maanden
geleeden hij relatant door sijn senhor hier boven gem: [Pedro] in de schaggerije
op Pagodinho is geplaatst geworden, om den drank te verkoopen”; “en des
anderen daags smorgens heel vroeg na gewoonte na de schaggerije gegaan
zijnde, heeft den deposant de deuren en vensters gesloten, en daar niemand
gevonden”.
33. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 440, ff. 31–32. Extracted from Pedro’s statement:
[…] dat nu omtrent 4 maanden geleeden den gev: in dezen bij hem
deposant op voorsch: Pagodinho in de schaggerije, alwaar des deposants
slave jongen mede was, gekomen is, en een soopje tager g’eischt heb-
bende, met gem: lijfeigen van den deposant is gaan zitten praten, ‘t gunt
96 beingbbbbeing

den deposant merkende, vroeg aan zijn slaav, vermits het reets laat was,
of hij nog niet na huis wilde gaan, waarop gem: jongen den deposant
antwoordende: wie zal u hier dan geselschap [houden] […] daarmede den
deposant uit de schaggerije des avonds om 9 uuren na zijn woom gegaan
is, latende den gev: en voorm: zijn jongen daar ter plaatse.
34. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 440, f. 32.
35. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 440, f. 33. Extracted from Pedro’s statement: “[…] depos-
erende wijders dat voortsch: zijn deposants jongen in’t lan van Trevancoor door
eenige bekenden van hem deposant ontwaart geworden zijnde, deselve gem:
slave jongen geraaden hebben weder na zijn senhor te gaan […]”.
36. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 77, Scan 18. Case ID CR-77–1. “…slavinne Maria (alias
Maij) hem confessant heft versogt haer te willen vervoeren, en elders near toe
te brengen, also men haer gedreijgt hadde aanboort te verkoopen…”.
37. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 77, Scan 2. Case ID CR-77–1. Original: “…te begeven naer
‘t land van den koning van Porca. Alvorens denselven, uijt zijne woninge, ber-
oovende van het volgende, naementlijk: 1: bijl, zonder steel. 3: copere beckens.
Paerthij grove tafel-piringen, en eenige slaven plunderagie.”
38. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 77, Scan 2. Case ID CR-77–1. Original: “… door de uit-
gesondene van gem: Elias Jansz: omtrent Allepee ontmoet en opgevat”.
39. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 66, Scan 75. Case ID CR-66–11. Original: “…door sijn
monsieur voormelt na de baser Cannarijn buijten dese stadt is gesonden met
eenige woronge, om deselve aldaer te verkopen.” Possibly market stals, derived
from barung or warong. See “VOC Glossarium”, http://resources.huygens.
knaw.nl.
40. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 66, Scan 67. Case ID CR-66–11. Original: “Een dief, een
dief!”
41. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 66, Scan 75. Case ID CR-66–11. Original: “Sijn monsieur
geseijt had wanneer hem ijmant wilde verleijden dat hij deertoe soude consen-
teren, en sulx bekent maecke om den dieff te vatte.”
42. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 538, f.169. Original: “Is dat niet allemaal jou schuld?”
43. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 538, f.172.
44. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 538, f.171. Original: “[…] Dat hij hem met gene leugens
voorkomen soude, want als hij confesst: straffe soude moeten ondergaen, wilde
hij sulx aan hem Anthonij de ene of andere tijd soeken te wreeken.”
45. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 538, f.169. Original: “Den baas roept jou.”
46. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 538 f. 179. Original: “[…] Aan een paal gebonden met
rottings geslagen sijnde voor den tijd van drie achter een volgende jaren in
 betweenbbetweenbbetbbetwee 97

de ktting gebonden te werden omme geduurende die tijd aan compagnies

gemeens werken voor de kost te arbeiden sonder loon.”
47. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 485 f. 185. Original: “Als wanneer naar gewoonte de
slaven en ketting gevangenen gestelt en 63: stux bevonden hebbende, hij sulx
aan voorsz: Hans Thiel gerapporteert heeft, waarop denselven te antw: gevende
dat er dat er 64: diende te zijn.”
48. NL–HaNa, 1.11.06.11, 485, f. 194. Original: “[…] ik heb niet gedagt dat juist op
dien dag een ketting ganger soude absent bevonden werden.”
49. NL–HaNa, 1.04.02, 9408 f. 24. This court case from 1744 concerning the slave
revolt on the ship Delfland reveals that, except in the case of punishment for a
crime, no person was meant to be chained.
50. J.A. van der Chijs, Nederlands Indisch Plakaatboek 1602–1811, VI, 282-289. Bata-
via: Landsdrukkerij, 1889.
51. Matthias van Rossum, “The Dutch East India Company in Asia, 1595–1811,”
in A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies, edited by Clare Anderson,
157-183. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.
 4

Connected Lives
Experiences of Slavery in VOC Colombo1

Kate Ekama

During the eighteenth century, Dutch Colombo—port town and urban

centre—supported a diverse population which included enslaved individuals
from regions around the Indian Ocean. Far from being isolated individ-
uals, the enslaved population of Colombo formed bonds of various kinds
with fellow enslaved and free people. Using wills, manumission deeds and
criminal court records, this chapter teases out the kinds of connections that
enslaved people fostered and highlights the importance of specific locations
of interaction. What emerges is a series of snapshots of the connected lives
of the unfree in eighteenth-century Colombo.
In this period of Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische
Compagnie, VOC) rule Colombo was both the gateway to the productive
cinnamon-producing hinterland and an important node in VOC networks.
Colombo was part of shipping routes, including local trade routes connect-
ing the ports further north and south on the island, and intra-Asian trade
networks, specifically enduring networks encompassing the Maldives,
Malabar Coast, Madurai District, Coromandel Coast and Bengal. The
Company insinuated itself into and reshaped slave trade routes in the Indian
Ocean too, as Markus Vink has argued.2 During the Company period, then,
Colombo had strong shipping connections in the Indian Ocean as well as
with the Netherlands, and shared port functions with Galle in the south-west
and Jaffna in the north.3
Colombo’s shipping patterns and trade position affected the composition
of the port’s population. Kumari Jayawardena characterizes Lanka before the
arrival of European colonists as a “hybrid island”, and ethnic mixing continued
after the arrival of the Portuguese, and later the Dutch.4 The town comprised
indigenous population groups, immigrant Asians, European settlers and
Company servants; enslaved people too constituted a sizeable share of the
100 beingbbbbeing

population.5 The diversity of the population of the port town led Raben to
conclude that in as early as the 1680s “Colombo had become—or rather, had
continued to be—the gathering place of foreigners and peoples who occupied
an exceptional position in the Sinhalese social (caste) order”.6 Many of these
people owned slaves who occupied the very lowest rung on the social ladder.
To this population was added sporadic influxes of soldiers. In the mid-1760s,
during the war with Kandy, “eastern” soldiers were shipped to Colombo from
Batavia.7 During the 1780s, the time of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, whole
regiments were hired from Europe to bolster Colombo’s deficient military.
Hundreds of men from the Luxemburg, Württemberg and de Meuron regi-
ments were stationed in Colombo, swelling its population.8 Raben comments
that “as port cities do, they [Batavia and Colombo] brought together separate
worlds in the confined space of the city”.9 Within this “confined space”,
enslaved men and women established social, sexual, commercial and criminal
connections with fellow enslaved individuals and the non-enslaved.
This chapter explores the stories of named individuals who appear in the
VOC records of the mid- to late eighteenth century. When one looks for them,
the enslaved can be seen in the colonial archive, as Alicia Schrikker and Nira
Wickramasinghe discuss in the introduction to this volume. Details of these
people’s lives and experiences as enslaved individuals in Colombo can be
gleaned from these admittedly challenging institutional sources.10 Company
records are full of references to slavery and enslaved individuals, a handful of
whose experiences of bondage and freedom in the town are brought to light
in the rest of this chapter. The themes interwoven through these stories are
the importance of place, mobility and the different types of connections that
the enslaved fostered with each other as well as with non-slaves. The agency
of the enslaved underscores these themes. From this reading of the VOC
records emerges a reconstruction of some elements of being a slave in the
Indian Ocean port town of Colombo.
This analysis builds on work that situates the enslaved firmly within the
context of the unfree among whom they lived and laboured, and in connec-
tion with an “underclass” of free and unfree individuals. Nigel Worden’s
research on sailors in another VOC port town, namely Cape Town, brings to
light the interactions between the seamen and enslaved people in locations
such as the town’s taverns. They were sites of multi-ethnic interactions, not
all of them legal.11 Kerry Ward’s influential book Networks of Empire focused
on forced migration, and covered the transportation of slaves, convicts
and exiles between Batavia and the Cape.12 Her work brings into a single
 connectedcconne 101

framework those people who experienced different forms of bondage—slav-

ery, convict transportation and exile. Matthias van Rossum’s work focuses
on the various types of workers that the VOC employed in Asia and, in
particular, on the numerous Asian workers who were employed by the VOC
as, among other things, sailors.13 In this rich vein of scholarship, the enslaved
population is studied in connection with the other men and women who
populated Cape Town, Batavia and other VOC ports and towns of the Indian
Ocean littoral. Eric Jones’ work focuses specifically on enslaved women,
mainly those who lived and laboured in Batavia, whose intimate connections
with men in the city, he argues, provided opportunities for social mobility;
through intimate ties some enslaved women achieved status and escaped
slavery.14 In contrast to the Cape and Batavia, little research has been done
on the history of slavery in VOC Ceylon (as the Company called the island of
Sri Lanka in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries). This chapter takes
up the task of bringing to light some aspects of what being a slave in VOC
Colombo was like in the eighteenth century.

Interaction in the town

In 1794, a criminal case involving numerous characters came before the

Council of Justice. The statements provided by the accused and by witnesses
were extremely detailed; they offer a window into understanding the connec-
tions between free and unfree people in the town, and provide insight into
where these interactions took place. What emerges is a network of multiple
and repeated interactions around sites of labour and petty commerce.
The accused in the case were three men of different legal status.15 Amber
was an enslaved man owned by the vice-mudliar of the Atapattu, Christoffel
de Saram.16 His accomplice, Troena de Wangso, was described in the court
papers as Javanese, originating from Damak. He had been found guilty of a
crime in Batavia and sentenced to transportation, arriving in Colombo as a
convict in 1784. He was sent to the materiaalhuis, which must have functioned
as a workhouse or prison, but he absconded from there in March 1793.17 The
third accused in the case was a free Sinhalese man named Andries who had
managed to escape.18 The social networks which brought together a slave, a
transported convict and a free Sinhalese man and provided them with the
opportunity to sell or pawn the goods they stole will be highlighted through
the story of the burglary and subsequent events.
102 beingbbbbeing

The very detailed statement which Troena de Wangso provided for the
court—the candour of which the fiscal (public prosecutor) attributed to his
hope of receiving a lighter sentence19—gives insight into the locations where
the three accused met and the places where they tried to sell the stolen goods.
Four sites of interaction are noteworthy for different reasons. The first is
the materiaalhuis where the enslaved man Amber and the convict Troena de
Wangso had been detained, and where they had become acquainted before
committing the crime together. The details of why Amber had been working
there were not revealed in the case.
The second important location in the case was Wolvendaal Church (see
map: the church is marked “d”). It was there that Amber and Troena de
Wangso reconnected and hatched the plot to rob Simon Gomes Nella Tambij,
the head of the silversmiths in the town. According to the court papers,
Troena de Wangso had been begging at the church when he and Amber
met. Why Amber was at the church is unclear, but his presence may be an
indicator of relative mobility for an enslaved man, or that he disregarded
the regulations and surveillance that were intended to limit his freedom of
movement.
The third location relevant to the case was a tavern where Amber and
Troena de Wangso recruited the third accused, the free Sinhalese man,
Andries.20 At taverns slaves could not only mingle with others, but they could
also drink, gamble and make contracts. In as early as the 1660s, the number
of taverns in Colombo was restricted by ordinance, in response to the expo-
nential growth in the number of public houses and the concomitant rise in
feuds and alcoholic excess. Theoretically, there could be only two taverns in
the fort and five in the town.21 Not only was the number of taverns limited,
but conduct within them was regulated via ordinances which attempted
to restrict slaves’ access to alcohol and limit social interaction in the city’s
bars.22 Despite the prohibition, Amber and Troena went to talk to Andries
in a bar, and the case records include the detail that they had seen him there
before, locating all three men in the tavern at the same time on at least two
occasions.23
Taverns in Colombo were not unique in their function as sites of inter-
action. Geelen et al.’s chapter in this volume highlights the importance of a
tavern in Cochin as the enslaved man Cruz’s place of work beyond the scru-
tiny of his owner, as well as the place at which he could interact with others.
Looking across the Indian Ocean, Nigel Worden’s work on the Cape Town
“underclass” brings taverns, and the interactions that took place there, into
 connectedcconne 103

sharper focus. In taverns “visiting crewmen encountered the whole range

of Cape Town’s diverse underclass”, which included those residing in the
town and the surrounding areas, as well as temporary visitors from the
VOC and from foreign ships in the harbour. Among those who would have
spent time in the taverns, Worden includes soldiers, Company artisans,
slaves, free blacks, Chinese traders, convicts, ex-convicts, burghers and free
settlers.24 It is quite likely that Colombo taverns played a similar role, as
meeting places for the free and unfree, and for Colombo’s residents and
visitors.
Finally, the case of theft against Amber, Troena de Wangso and Andries
brings to the fore sites of commerce and exchange. The case shows that
individuals interacted in the streets, in the market, and in homes where
food and drink, and—crucial to this case—stolen goods were sold. The
case unravelled when Aliaar, a young Muslim man (denoted as “Moor” in
the records), tried to fence a copper dish in the streets. The dish had been
stolen from Simon Gomes, whose neighbour recognized Aliaar’s goods
as stolen property.25 It turned out that Aliaar had acquired the bowl from
his brother, a soldier named Sinne Wapoe, who had purchased the dish
from Louisa Zose, a woman who sold rice from her home. Sinne Wapoe
claimed that when he was out selling tea one afternoon Louisa had shown
him the copper bowl and had asked him if he wanted to buy it, and that
they had concluded the transaction near Wolvendaal Church.26 Louisa,
however, recounted a conflicting story—she claimed that Sinne Wapoe had
bought the bowl from the thief himself, Troena de Wangso. In her state-
ment, Louisa confirmed that the three men, Troena de Wangso, Amber
and Andries, visited her home one night and, on that occasion, Troena had
had the copper basin with him. Louisa’s statement thus tied the three men
to each other and to the physical evidence. Moreover, while answering the
fiscal’s questions, she revealed connections between the men quite separate
from their collusion in the crime. Louisa sold cooked rice from her home
and, as a result of this business, she knew the convict and accused, Troena
de Wangso, who was one of her customers. Moreover, she was acquainted
with the slave Amber because he owed her money for past purchases.27
Troena de Wangso then confirmed that Sinne Wapoe had purchased the
copper bowl from him. Together, the three men had gone to Louisa’s
house on the way to Sinne Wapoe’s home in the Moorsche Straat (probably
located in the Muslim Quarter, the Moorsche Quartier, marked “p” on the
map), where Wapoe bought the dish from Troena de Wangso.28 In contrast
104 beingbbbbeing

Figure 4.1. Late eighteenth-century map of Colombo.

Source: National Archives, The Hague, Verzameling Buitenlandse Kaarten Leupe,
Archive number 4. VEL, Inventory number 953.

to Troena de Wangso’s detailed statement, the slave Amber claimed, or

feigned, ignorance of the crime. He denied everything, including his asso-
ciation with Troena and Andries.29
From the case records we catch a glimpse of the places where the three
men interacted and hatched their criminal plans—the materiaalhuis, the area
around Wolvendaal Church, and a tavern. After they robbed Simon Gomes,
they tried to fence the goods; in the process, they interacted with free people
such as the soldier Sinne Wapoe and the rice seller Louisa, with whom they
and Sinne Wapoe had had pre-existing commercial connections. More than
just indicating the extent to which free and unfree people interacted, this
reading of the court records shows the nature of those interactions and the
localities in which they took place. This case suggests that some slaves exer-
cised relative autonomy, at least to the extent of leaving the master’s house
and having the (relative) freedom to determine their own movements during
the day and at night.
A case of theft committed by an enslaved woman named Lizarde and
her accomplice, a free Sinhalese boy named Christiaan, reinforces the idea
that enslaved and free people mingled (relatively) freely in certain spaces in
 connectedcconne 105

Figure 4.2. Detailed map of Colombo. The register lists a as the Castle, d as
Wolvendaal Church, p as the Muslim Quarter (Moorsche Quartier, probably the
location of the Moorsche Straat), and r as the Company slaves’ quarter.
Source: National Archives, The Hague, Verzameling Buitenlandse Kaarten
Leupe, Archive number 4. VEL, Inventory number 953.

VOC port towns. It was alleged that over a period of months Lizarde and
Christiaan had stolen an astonishing number of things from the house left
in their care.30 While the list of goods provides a fascinating insight into the
varied contents of a late eighteenth-century household, more importantly the
case provides information on the extensive networks through which Lizarde
and Christiaan fenced the goods.
According to the various case documents, Lizarde and Christiaan pawned
or sold the stolen goods to a variety of people, including the barkeeper (schag-
ger/tapper) of De Prins, Jacob Berarda of Genoa; the flagman; a Javanese
woman, Paatma; a manumitted slave, Joana, who was born in Tranquebar;
106 beingbbbbeing

the concubine of the slave Lakij who belonged to a Mr van Hek; the under-sur-
geon’s widow, Engeltina Hopman; her sister, Debora; and the “Moor” Slema
Lebbe Sultan, kannekapul (scribe) of the materiaalhuis. The crime and the
initial criminal proceedings took place in Galle, but the proceedings were
later transferred to the Council of Justice of Colombo, highlighting on the
one hand the social networks established by Lizarde and Christiaan and, on
the other, that such networks among slaves and free people were not limited
to the larger settlement of Colombo.
The statements of the accused and witnesses provide incidental informa-
tion that reveals that slaves enjoyed relative freedom of movement around the
city and had the time and opportunity to establish friendships and acquaint-
ances, some of which turned criminal. While slaves could of course establish
connections easily with the slaves of the same household, the records also
show that there were a number of specific places where connections between
free and unfree people could be established. The cases show that enslaved
individuals mingled with free people in the streets, buying and selling var-
ious goods31 and visiting their neighbours.32 The market was another area
that gave slaves the opportunity to interact with other slaves and free people.
The market in Batavia features prominently in the narratives of runaway
slave women analysed by Eric Jones—plans were hatched there.33 Similarly,
slaves in the Cape were street vendors, hawking various goods including
food, and in doing so creating a mobile market.34 In theory, the Statutes of
Batavia limited the interaction of slaves by prohibiting gatherings of three or
more slaves, setting curfews and banning slaves from taverns.35 However, as
in the case of Troena de Wangso, Amber and Andries in Colombo, the streets
and taverns of Cape Town were sites of interaction between soldiers, sailors,
artisans, freed people and the enslaved.36 In Colombo, as in other VOC port
towns, the enslaved made use of the opportunities presented by some degree
of (geographic) mobility.

Intimate ties and intimate violence

It is unsurprising that enslaved individuals were connected to others, both

enslaved and free, through intimate ties. Yet these ties are not always very
clearly visible in the archive. Dutch colonial institutions’ records reveal little
detail about sexual relationships and kinship connections: there are often
gaps regarding enslaved people’s agency in general, and individuals’ choices
 connectedcconne 107

in particular. The records are veiled windows—they provide glimpses into

the complications of everyday life rather than neat patterns and trajectories.
In her thoughtful and nuanced introduction to Sex, Power and Slavery,
Elizabeth Elbourne writes:

Silences mark the history of sexuality, reflecting both lacunae in historical

records and the hush surrounding certain sexual practices in many times
and places. Silences can be read, but to do so often requires resort to
unconventional types of source material as well as recognition of the fact
that not all silences (such as the frequent silences of enslaved women)
can be filled with confidence.37

Elbourne also emphasizes the importance of not reducing the history of

slavery and sexuality to relations between master and slave or to a history of
rape. In line with this, and with due regard for the silences of the archive, I
consider a wide range of sexual relations including, where possible, between
enslaved people.38
Broadly speaking, we can identify two types of relationships, namely
those among enslaved people and those between enslaved and free people.
The criminal case discussed below mentions an instance of the former as
an incidental detail in a murder case. The latter, namely sexual relationships
between enslaved and free people, can be read back in a small number of
wills and manumission deeds which detail the relationships between heirs
and the deceased, and slave owners and the manumitted, respectively.
Ordinances issued against concubinage (cohabitation outside marriage)
provide the Company’s point of view on enslaved people’s relationships
and allow us to get to the crux of the Company’s concerns. Taken together,
these different types of institutional sources reveal the sexual and kinship
connections which constituted a significant part of the lived experience of
slavery in Colombo.
In late 1770 and early 1771, four enslaved individuals were mentioned in
the Dutch criminal records in connection with a murder—the victim, the
perpetrator and two witnesses to the crime. All four individuals were counted
among the nearly 400 Company-owned slaves in Colombo.39 It seems that
they lived at the VOC’s materiaalhuis in the city, which was the locus of the
violent events that unfolded. The accused was Apollo van Makassar, denoted
in the records as “an eastern slave boy” and a Malay speaker.40 The toponym
Makassar indicates that at some point in his life he was sold and transported
108 beingbbbbeing

from the slave markets in Makassar (on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi),
or possibly that he was Makassarese.41 Apollo’s victim was a fellow Company
slave, Moeijer Plema—possibly also a man of Southeast Asian origin, as he
too understood Malay. The court records state that Apollo spoke to Moeijer
Plema in Malay, while an enslaved woman named Diana witnessed this
exchange. Apollo referred to Diana as his vrouw (wife), according to the report
of Apollo’s interrogation, but the Dutch authorities used bijzit (concubine) to
categorize their relationship.42 The fourth enslaved person mentioned in the
court documents was a man named Christoffel Moettoe—a Company-owned
slave, the materiaalhuis scribe, and a Colombo-born Catholic, who was about
27 years old at the time of the crime.43 Interestingly, he provided a witness
statement to the court, which he solemnised with an oath and signed with
his own hand.44
The mandoor (overseer) of the Company-owned enslaved people living
in the materiaalhuis was a man from the Dutch city of Hoorn, Johannes
Wijnbergen. He was about 30 years old and declared himself a Catholic.45 In
the statement he gave to the court he indicated that he was on watch when he
heard Apollo van Makassar and Apollo’s bijzit Diana approach Moeijer Plema
and speak in Malay. Wijnbergen suspected a fight would brew between the
two men, and so he went to his room to fetch a rotting (cane). The next thing
he heard was Diana screaming that one of the two men, Apollo or Moeijer
Plema, was carrying a knife (krits/kris). Apollo stabbed Moeijer Plema multi-
ple times, inflicting wounds which proved fatal.46 According to the surgeon’s
report on his inspection of the body, Moeijer Plema died of the ten stab
wounds that Apollo inflicted.47
As in other murder cases, the motives for the attack did not interest the
VOC authorities.48 While we cannot be sure, it is possible that the relation-
ship between Apollo and Diana was the reason for the conflict between the
two men—perhaps the men fought over Apollo’s wife/concubine, Diana, as
it happened at the VOC Cape.49
The distinction between vrouw and bijzit is apparent in the VOC’s Cape
Town records too—women who were referred to by enslaved men as their
wives were labelled concubines by the Company. At the Cape, until 1823
enslaved people were not allowed to marry in a legal ceremony recognized by
the church and authorities.50 That enslaved people were precluded from mar-
riage recognized by their owners and the authorities did not of course stop
them from forming such relationships and, as Cape and Colombo records
attest, from referring to one another as husband and wife.
 connectedcconne 109

Such relationships are often only fleetingly visible in the Company

records. One family of enslaved people, spanning three generations, is
revealed in manumission deeds. An enslaved woman named Bintang was
manumitted in November 1794, along with her mother, Alida, and her
children, Kassim and Patra. A later manumission deed reveals the identity
of her husband, the father of her children—a man named Spadilje. The
family members had all been owned and manumitted by the same man,
Johan Gerard van Angelbeek.51 Familial ties were also recorded in wills.
Slave families made visible in official records include Bootje and Samia, a
couple manumitted by testament in 1784, and the enslaved man Orendatius,
his wife Maria, and their young daughter Susana who similarly entered the
Company records when they were promised manumission by testament of
Daniel Ternooij in 1782.52 Five individuals who formed one family, consisting
of Maart, his wife Aspatie and their three children—Ismael, Rebecca and
Christoffel—were promised manumission by testament.53 The slaves Floris,
Lisie, Bastiaan and Maria, “being husband, wife and two children”, were
named as beneficiaries in a will—the family stood to inherit property as well
as 300 rijksdaalders (Rds) from their owner.54 These families who began their
life after slavery with some property might have had some resilience against
the precariousness of manumitted status.55
Relative to the (in)visibility of enslaved family units in the colonial
archive, there are abundant references to slave mothers and their children.
This stems from slavery being a condition inherited through the maternal
line—the legal status of the mother as slave or free determined the status of
her child. As I discuss below, the VOC’s concerns about concubinage involv-
ing enslaved people revolved around the legal status of the children from
such relationships and, by extension, the Company’s labour force.
The VOC’s regulations regarding concubinage were framed as religious
concerns and explicitly regulated relationships between men and women of
different religions. The Company sorted the inhabitants of Colombo into
four religious categories—Christian, Roman Catholic, Muslim and Heathen.
Company regulations prohibited concubinage between individuals of dif-
ferent religions, and threatened corporal punishment and hard labour on
Company works for those who were caught.56 Prohibitions of concubinage of
an enslaved person raised religious concerns, but were probably subordinate
to considerations of, crudely put, asset accumulation and provision of labour.
The VOC followed the principle that “the fruit follows the womb”; that is, the
child inherits the legal status of the mother. The application of this principle
110 beingbbbbeing

meant that the child of an enslaved woman was also considered a slave, but
that the child of a free woman was free. In the case of a concubinage relation-
ship between an enslaved man and free woman, the child, like the mother,
would be free. The Company perceived this as a loss to private slave owners
as well as to itself. Thus, against the “fruit follows the womb” principle, a
1704 ordinance against concubinage (reissued in 1732) declared that the child
of a free woman and a Company slave man would in fact be enslaved. The
ordinances reveal not only the Company’s concerns, but also the choices that
enslaved people were making regarding intimate relationships.
The 1704 ordinance attempted to regulate sexual relationships between
enslaved and free people and establish the legal status of children from
such unions. It was a response to what the VOC considered to be changing
patterns in relationships involving Company-owned slave men. Enslaved
men owned by the VOC, and in particular those who were skilled, had
stopped following the “usual custom” of choosing a partner from among the
enslaved women owned by the Company. The relationship between Apollo
van Makassar and Diana is an example of the “usual custom”. But other men
made other choices; the Company noted that skilled slave men chose to form
relationships with free and freed women (manumitted slaves), with whom
they lived in “a sort of concubinage and fornication”. Children born of these
relationships were born free and inherited the free status of their mothers.
This was the crux of the matter for the Company. Thus, the VOC authorities
forbade Company-owned enslaved men from living “as man and wife or in
concubinage” with free women, and ordered that they choose their “wives
or concubines” from among the Company-owned enslaved women. The
Company’s desire to protect its own property, in the form of slaves, is clearly
demonstrated by the addition of a prohibition against Company slave men
forming relationships with privately owned slave women, as the children of
such unions would have been considered the property of the private slave
owner, not the Company.57
Having set out the regulations, the Company then detailed the punish-
ment for those caught contravening them. Free women—the ordinance
mentioned inlandse (inland, or Ceylonese) women in particular—caught in
concubinage with slave men would have their hair cut off and be made to
labour in chains for three years. The children born to these women of slave
men would be declared the property of the Company.58
The Company considered it necessary to reissue the ordinance in the
early 1730s. The context of the 1732 ordinance prohibiting concubinage
 connectedcconne 111

between enslaved and free people was the growth in the number of free
people who had taken up residence in the slave quarters (marked r on the
map) just outside the Rotterdammer Poort. Free and enslaved were living
together in that area, much to the Company’s chagrin. Thus, it ordered all
free people, manumitted slaves and privately-owned slaves to move out of
the slave quarters; if they refused they would be punished. Following the
order, the 1704 ordinance against concubinage was reissued.59 That reissue
indicates that the Company had not succeeded in its efforts to re-establish
the “usual custom” of Company slaves forming sexual relationships with one
another rather than with free and freed people in the city.
The Company’s concerns, as revealed in the ordinances prohibiting
concubinage, were specifically related to the accumulation of human prop-
erty—their future labourers in the form of the children of such unions. The
Company was not against concubinage per se, but forbade concubinage
relationships from which it could not profit.60 Moreover, these regulations,
as well as others concerning the marriages of free people, can be seen as
examples of the VOC’s attempts to extend its jurisdiction over people and
reinforce its sovereignty, and to maintain social control in order to extract
labour from free and unfree population groups.61
While I have used Company ordinances to shed light on concubinage
involving Company-owned enslaved men, other Company documents shed
light on the relationships between enslaved women and free men. Sexual
relationships between enslaved women and the men who owned them have
been recorded in wills and manumission deeds. These sources indicate that
relationships existed and that some existed for decades. But what the sources
often do not reveal is the trauma, duress and power dynamics associated with
at least some such relationships. Consent is not something we can decipher
in this type of historical document. For at least two enslaved women, the
relationships they had with their slave masters were of great consequence
to their legal status. The wills and manumission deeds in which they were
named indicate that concubinage between the enslaved woman and slave
master had been a route to manumission for these two women and their
children. In this regard, these two women’s lives echoed processes of mobil-
ity and opportunity in VOC port cities like Batavia and Cape Town, and on
another island, Mauritius.62
In 1782, Gerrardus Cornelis Kersse drew up his last will. In naming his
heirs and dividing up his possessions, he mentioned a number of slaves and
manumitted slaves, and in doing so revealed a family unit which comprised
112 beingbbbbeing

enslaved and free people, alike. The first important beneficiary named in his
will was Silvia Vilanders. Kersse left her the sum of 50 Rds, together with
three trunks. A far larger inheritance was left to Kersse’s “natural daughter”,
Susanna Cornelia Kersse, who, he states, was born to him of the former slave
Silvia. While it is not spelt out in the will, it is most likely that while Silvia
was working for Kersse as a slave they began some sort of sexual relation-
ship, and as a result Kersse decided to manumit her. It is possible that she
was already pregnant when manumitted, or she may have had the child at a
later stage during their liaison. As there is no tag relating to slavery attached
to young Susanna, her mother was probably free at the time of her birth.63
A manumission deed from August 1738 records the relationship between
Frans Gomes and the four slaves who formed his immediate family. He
manumitted the slave woman Rosetta who was his concubine, as well as
their three children, Louisa, Agida and Elisabeth. The children are described
as “procreated by the deponent”.64 Clearly, the relationship between Frans
and Rosetta was an enduring one, but the individuals involved appear in the
VOC records only briefly.
For Silvia and Rosetta, a sexual relationship with their master meant a
route to freedom and an inheritance for themselves and their children. What
remains undiscoverable is how these two women experienced that relation-
ship while still enslaved, and how the relationship between each woman and
her respective master changed after manumission. Consent cannot be read
in these stories with any kind of clarity.
Consent was the issue under scrutiny in a unique rape case which was
heard by the Council of Justice in the closing years of Company rule in
Colombo. An enslaved woman named Tamar accused a European soldier
of raping her.65 By doing so she asserted ownership of her own body in a
powerful way, challenging the core of chattel slavery according to which her
body was not her own. In a classic he said/she said the accused claimed that
intercourse had been consensual, and he told the court that he had left Tamar
some coins on the assumption that the enslaved woman was prostituting
herself.66 Tamar’s accusation led to legal proceedings which included calling
a witness, an enslaved man named Lindor, who lived a few houses away from
where Tamar lived with her master. That the fiscal pursued the case against
the soldier, Laborde, was more likely a function of the identity of the accused
than the Dutch authorities’ concern with justice for an enslaved woman.
Pierre Laborde was a soldier in the de Meuron regiment—one of three
regiments of European soldiers hired by the VOC to protect their position
 connectedcconne 113

on Lanka in the face of British hostilities. The soldiers were notorious,67 so

the VOC is likely to have seen the accusation as an opportunity to set an
example, tighten its grip on the regiment, and enforce Company authority
and order. If this was indeed the case, we can imagine that Laborde would
have been convicted, but we cannot know this as the outcome of the case
brought by Tamar against Laborde has been lost.68
Enslaved women who lived and laboured in VOC settlements and towns
across the Indian Ocean were subject to sexual abuse from slave masters,
slave masters’ sons and free men.69 Tamar’s story is unique in the Colombo
archive, not because abuse did not happen in the society of that time but,
tragically, because it was often not considered as such by the authorities.
Rape was one aspect of the range of abuses, the “intimate violence” which
enslaved women suffered at the hands of men, both slave and free.70
Despite the silences in the archive, various VOC sources shed faint light
on the sexual and kinship relations through which, by choice or coercion,
the enslaved in Colombo were connected to free and unfree people in the
town. These connections, as well as the social, criminal and commercial ties
explored in the first section, embedded the enslaved in the locality, as Alicia
Schrikker and I claim elsewhere.71 Zooming out from Colombo, the following
section briefly explores more abstract connections beyond the island itself.

Connections across the ocean

So far, this chapter has focused on connections contained within the space
of Colombo. But there are indications in the archive that these social,
commercial, sexual and familial ties were not the only ones that shaped the
experience of bondage on the island. An avenue for further research is to
understand the ways in which ideas of a world beyond the island shaped
experiences of bondage on it. Archival documents point to religious connec-
tions and Dutch institutional connections that contributed to two women’s
experiences of enslaved life on Lanka.
The enslaved woman Deidamie carried a talisman with her, the origin
of which can be traced to a Muslim priest in Batavia. Deidamie received the
talisman from a fellow Malay slave, who received it from a Malay soldier
from Java who lived in Colombo; the soldier received the talisman from a
priest in Batavia, by which the soldier presumably meant a religious leader
in the Muslim community there. Schrikker and I point out that following the
114 beingbbbbeing

talisman’s trajectory reveals the kinds of connections established by enslaved

individuals in Colombo, and we suggested that Deidamie may have carried
the talisman with her as a signifier of her sense of belonging to a community
of co-religionists beyond the island.72
The case of a woman named Helena, who was involved in a dispute over
her own status as slave or free, reveals similarly wide-ranging connections,
but of a different kind. Schrikker and I argue that Helena was aware of the
international scope of Dutch institutions, which came to light in her state-
ment of intent to pursue her case beyond Colombo, taking it to the Company
authorities in Batavia. Helena was aware of a Dutch legal institutional world
which tied Colombo and Ceylon more generally to the VOC’s Indian Ocean
world.73
These women’s connections beyond the island widen our view—from
close relationships among individuals in Colombo, we zoom out to expe-
riences or awareness of the networked nature of the VOC empire which,
as Kerry Ward has argued, was constituted by webs and circuits, including
important routes of forced migration along which enslaved people, convicts
and exiles were transported.74 Deidamie and Helena, it seems, were aware of
this wider connected world which they occupied. Further research will bear
out the suggestion that these are two examples among many of connected
lives across the oceans.

Conclusion

The Dutch East India Company records reveal, somewhat incidentally, that
slaves maintained wide-ranging connections in Colombo which involved
fellow enslaved as well as free people. Sometimes the records reveal long-last-
ing relationships, for instance, the sexual relationship between Rosetta and
her master which led to Rosetta’s and their children’s manumission; other
records offer fleeting glimpses of repeated interactions between enslaved
people and free citizens, such as among those buying rice from the free
woman Louisa Zose at her home, or Andries, Amber and Troena de Wangso
meeting in a tavern. The interactions that come to the fore in the records
are the social, sexual, commercial and criminal interactions between slaves
and free people in Colombo. For some, ideas or awareness of cross-oceanic
connections—religious or legal—add a non-local dimension to experiences
of bondage.
 connectedcconne 115

But what were the implications of living connected lives in the town? First,
sexual interactions between slaves and free people, and between people of
different ethnic backgrounds created a legacy of mixed ancestry.75 The agency
of enslaved people is very much part of this story, but it is also important to
take the silences in the archive seriously, particularly around the issue of con-
sent in sexual relationships between individuals in vastly different positions
of power. Second, the connected lives we see in the VOC records lead us
to the conclusion that at least some slaves in Colombo experienced relative
freedom, inasmuch as they were able to determine who they interacted with
and where, beyond the master’s household. Here, again, the agency of the
enslaved is foregrounded. The case of theft involving Andries, Amber and
Troena de Wangso allows us to locate various interactions between enslaved
and free people around the town. This contributes further nuance to the
spectrum of lived experiences that people within the legal category of slave
were exposed to. Yet, as a note of warning, scholars should remain wary
of conflating connections, interactions and solidarity, since cooperation in
crimes and the connected lives of the enslaved did not necessarily constitute
solidarity among an “underclass”. Andries, Amber and Troena de Wangso
were after all apprehended by enslaved men and then handed over to the
fiscal—an occurrence that was also common at the Cape. Finally, recovering
micro-level, individual stories of the enslaved in Colombo goes some way
in countering the silences of the past. Reading the archives for details of
the social, sexual, commercial and criminal interactions between enslaved
people and free people in Colombo greatly enriches our understanding of
enslaved people’s experience of bondage in this part of the Indian Ocean
world.

Notes

1. This chapter is based on research conducted in the Sri Lankan Department of

National Archives with the generous funding of Leiden University’s Encompass
programme. An earlier version was presented at the Leiden Slavery Studies
Association’s international conference in 2016, and at the National Archives of
the Netherlands’ Rethinking the Dutch East India Company? symposium in 2017.
Thanks go to the participants for their feedback. I am grateful to the editors of
this volume as well as to the peer reviewers for their constructive comments
and suggestions.
116 beingbbbbeing

2. Markus Vink, “‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the
Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of World History 14, no. 2
(2003): 131-177.
3. Remco Raben, “Batavia and Colombo: The Ethnic and Spatial Order of Two
Colonial Cities, 1600–1800” (PhD diss., Leiden University, 1996): 45–46.
4. Kumari Jayawardena, Erasure of the Euro-Asians: Recovering Early Radicalism and
Feminism in South Asia, 19. Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association, 2007.
5. Raben, “Batavia and Colombo,” 5. While the population composition of Batavia
and Colombo was similar, absolute numbers were very different—Colombo
had a much smaller population. Knaap’s analysis of census data shows that
the enslaved made up a considerable proportion of the Colombo population at
the close of the seventeenth century: Gerrit Knaap, “Europeans, Mestizos and
Slaves: The Population of Colombo at the End of the Seventeenth Century,”
Itinerario 5 no. 2 (1981): 84-101.
6. Raben, “Batavia and Colombo,” 103.
7. Ibid., 110.
8. Ibid. On the role of de Meuron himself in the closing decades of the eighteenth
century see Alicia Schrikker, Dutch and British Colonial Intervention in Sri Lanka
C. 1780-1815: Expansion and Reform, 131-141. Leiden and Boston MA: Brill, 2006.
9. Raben, “Batavia and Colombo,” 43. See Jayawardena, Erasure of the Euro-Asians,
32–33, for a description of the Swiss de Meuron regiment and its legacy in the
burgher population of Colombo.
10. On court cases as sources and the incidental detail of lived experience revealed
in those sources see Nigel Worden and Gerald Groenewald, “Introduction,” in
Trials of Slavery: Selected Documents Concerning Slaves from the Criminal Records
of the Council of Justice at the Cape of Good Hope, 1705–1794, edited by Nigel
Worden and Gerald Groenewald, xi-liv. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society,
2005. Worden and Groenwald discuss the presence of the enslaved in terms
of hearing rather than seeing them in the archive, noting that for the Cape
in particular court cases are where we hear the voices of the enslaved most
clearly, yet even then mediated through layers of power and translation. The
problems and potential of court cases as historical sources are also dealt with in
the chapter by Geelen et al. in this volume.
11. Nigel Worden, “Strangers Ashore: Sailor Identity and Social Conflict in Mid-
18th Century Cape Town,” Kronos 33 (2007): 72-83.
12. Kerry Ward, Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Com-
pany. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
 connectedcconne 117

13. Matthias van Rossum, Werkers van de Wereld. Globalisering, arbeid en intercul-
turele ontmoetingen tussen Aziatische en Europese zeelieden in dienst van de VOC,
1600-1800. Hilversum: Verloren, 2014.
14. Eric Jones, Wives, Slaves and Concubines: A History of the Female Underclass of
Dutch Asia. DeKalb IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010. See also Eric
Jones, “Fugitive Women: Slavery and Social Change in Early Moden Southeast
Asia,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 38, no. 2 (2007): 215-245.
15. All documents relating to the case were bound and are available at the Sri
Lankan Department of National Archives (SLNA), Archives of the Dutch Central
Government of Coastal Ceylon, 1640–1796, Lot 1/4740, criminal dossiers, ff.
1r–36v. The dossier consists of a statement by the complainant, Simon Gomes
Nella Tambij; seven witness reports; statements given by both of the accused;
a note regarding Troena’s convict past; and the fiscal’s eijsch (suggested pun-
ishment). Discussion of the case is based on the analysis in my unpublished
MA thesis: Kate Ekama, “Slavery in Dutch Colombo: A Social History” (Leiden
University, unpublished ResMA thesis, 2012).
16. SLNA 1/4740, f. 21r.
17. Ibid., ff. 18r, 26r. Damak most likely refers to Demak in central Java.
18. Ibid., f. 33r.
19. Ibid., f. 29v.
20. Ibid., f. 18v.
21. Raben, “Batavia and Colombo,” 33. The ordinance is included in Lodewijk Hovy,
Ceylonees Plakkaatboek: Plakkaten En Andere Wetten Uitgevaardigd Door Het
Nederlandse Bestuur Op Ceylon, 1638–1796., I, 145. 2 vols., Hilversum: Verloren,
1991 [Ordinance number 98].
22. Ibid., I: 191 [26]; II: 590–91 [417]; II: 591 note 20.
23. SLNA 1/4740, f. 18v
24. Worden, “Strangers Ashore,” 77.
25. This echoes the importance of neighbours in the apparatus of informal surveil-
lance which Geelen et al. highlight in their chapter.
26. SLNA 1/4740, f. 10r.
27. Ibid., ff. 6v, 13r, 14v.
28. Ibid., f. 12r.
29. Ibid., ff. 21r–v.
30. Lizarde’s owner, Albertus Hissink, had gone to Mature, and his wife had gone
to the village of Madampe to recover from an illness. Hissink left Lizarde and
Christiaan in charge while he and his wife were away. SLNA 1/4702, criminal
dossiers, ff. 31r–v, Articles 1 and 2.
118 beingbbbbeing

31. Street vending was allowed in Colombo, but market stalls were confined to
specific areas: Raben, “Batavia and Colombo,” 31.
32. For instance, Louisa Zose established various contacts through her business
of selling cooked rice; Sinne Wapoe surely did the same through selling tea.
Amber, Troena and Andries went to Louisa’s house to ask for fire and, in a
different case, the slave woman Tamar went to a neighbour’s house to ask for a
kettle of water. Moreover, the case against Lizarde records her interaction with
her master’s neighbour. See SLNA 1/4740, ff. 13r, 14v, 10r, 6v; SLNA 1/4613, CR
1791, ff. 169r, 170r–v; SLNA 1/4702, f. 11v.
33. Jones, “Fugitive Women,” 223.
34. Robert Ross, “The Occupations of Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Cape Town,”
Studies in the History of Cape Town 2 (1980): 10.
35. National Archives, The Hague, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC),
Archive number 1.04.02, Inventory number 638, Articles 52–56, 59, ff. 742–743.
36. Nigel Worden, “Public Brawling, Masculinity and Honour,” in Cape Town
between East and West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town, edited by Nigel
Worden, 207. Johannesburg, Hilversum: Jacana, Verloren, 2013.
37. Elizabeth Elbourne, “Introduction: Key Themes and Perspectives,” in Sex,
Power, and Slavery, edited by Gwyn Campbell and Elizabeth Elbourne, 8. Athens
OH: Ohio University Press, 2014.
38. Ibid., 1.
39. NL–HaNA, VOC, 1.04.02, inv. no. 3323, ff. 938v–939r (January 1771).
40. SLNA 1/4662 ff. 2r, 8r.
41. The difficulty of interpreting toponyms is also dealt with in Herman Tieken’s
contribution to this volume, as well as in Marina Carter’s. See also Linda Mbeki
and Matthias van Rossum, “Private Slave Trade in the Dutch Indian Ocean
World: A Study into the Networks and Backgrounds of the Slavers and Enslaved
in South Asia and South Africa,” Slavery & Abolition 38, no. 1 (2017): 107-108.
42. SLNA 1/4662 ff. 2v, 8r.
43. SLNA 1/4662 f. 8r. His function was as kannekapul.
44. Slave testimony was not always accepted in court, but in this particular case
it was testimony against a fellow slave that corroborated a European man’s
testimony, which is probably why it was accepted. That Christoffel was Catholic
probably convinced the authorities that he understood the gravity and signifi-
cance of the oath.
45. A Johannes Wijnbergen from Hoorn sailed to Asia in 1761 as a sailor, and left
Company service in 1794. He sailed on board the Lycochton, a ship built in
Enkhuizen. The ship completed a number of return journeys for the ­Enkhuizen
 connectedcconne 119

and Hoorn chambers of the VOC. Wijnbergen was on board when the ship
left Texel in December 1761 and, after stopping at the Cape, arrived in Batavia
in July 1762. NL–HaNA, VOC, 1.04.02, inv. no. 14472, f. 156; “De VOC site”,
accessed 4 April 2018, https://www.vocsite.nl/schepen/detail.html?id=10636.
46. SLNA 1/4662 f. 8r.
47. SLNA 1/4662 f. 4r.
48. This is true of a murder case in which the authorities were less interested in the
murder than the talisman carried by the enslaved woman who murdered her
son. The case is discussed in Alicia Schrikker and Kate Ekama, “Through the
Lens of Slavery: Dutch Sri Lanka in the Eighteenth Century,” in Sri Lanka at the
Crossroads of History, edited by Zoltán Biedermann and Alan Strathern, 183-184.
London: UCL Press, 2017.
49. See Worden and Groenewald (eds.), Trials of Slavery, 83–95 (Anthonij van Goa);
115–119 (Jephta van Batavia); 323–30 (Januarij van Boegies); 520–525 (Ceres
van Madagascar and April van Ceijlon). Two noteworthy differences between
the Colombo materiaalhuis case and the Cape cases are that the violence in
the Cape cases of suspected infidelity and/or jealously was directed by men at
their wives; and that the enslaved people involved were privately-owned and not
Company slaves.
50. Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South Africa, 57. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1985; Robert Shell, From Diaspora to Diorama: The Old Slave Lodge
in Cape Town, 250. Cape Town: NagsPro Multimedia, 2013.
51. SLNA 1/4146, 19 November 1794 [Johan Gerard van Angelbeek; Alida, Bintang,
Kassim and Patra]; SLNA 1/4146, 17 September 1795 [Johan Gerard van Angel-
beek; Spadilje].
52. SLNA 1/2665, 14 December 1784 [Jan Hendrik Borwater and Barbara Bregan-
tina Lebeck], f. 8v; SLNA 1/2665, 8 July 1782 [Daniel Ternooij], f. 15v.
53. SLNA 1/2663, 1762 [Godfried Leonhard de Coste], ff. 41r–42r.
54. SLNA 1/2663, 1776 [Johanna Petronella Schade], ff. 56r–57r.
55. Kate Ekama, “Precarious Freedom: Manumission in Eighteenth-Century
Colombo,” Journal of Social History (forthcoming). Some of the individuals
mentioned in this chapter are also discussed in the article where I show that
manumitted status was precarious in eighteenth-century Colombo. For some
manumitted slaves the change in legal status might have brought little change
in material circumstances. Deeds and civil suits show that manumission could
be revoked and debt could lead to re-enslavement.
56. Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, I: 278–79 [195]; I:389–93 [257]; II: 673–74 [457];
II: 769–72 [530].
120 beingbbbbeing

57. At the Cape, VOC authorities instituted a system of apprenticeship (inboek-

stelsel) in 1775 whereby children born of enslaved fathers and Khoi mothers
were bound to farm labour until they were 25 years old. See Richard Elphick,
“The Khoisan to C. 1770,” and Hermann Giliomee, “The Eastern Frontier,
1770–1812,” in The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840, edited by Rich-
ard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee, 29 and 318-319. Cape Town: Longman,
1989.
58. Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, I: 309–10 [206].
59. Ibid., 394–95 [259].
60. As a point of comparison see Shell’s analysis of the slave lodge at Cape Town.
Contemporary travellers commented on enslaved women reportedly flaunting
their European lovers in Shell, From Diaspora to Diorama, 257–59.
61. These ideas have been developed by Hamer for Batavia. See Deborah Hamer,
“Marriage and the Construction of Colonial Order: Jurisdiction, Gender and
Class in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Batavia,” Gender and History 29, no. 3
(2017): 622-640. Elisabeth Heijmans extends the scope across the Dutch
empire in an analysis of VOC and WIC ordinances in Elisabeth Heijmans,
“Legislating Diversity in the Dutch Early Modern Empire: Regulations on
Concubinage and Marriage as Consolidator of Authority” (paper presented
at Deutscher Historiketag, Münster, Germany, 26-28 September 2018). See
also Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in
Imperial Rule. Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2002.
62. See Jones’ research mentioned above on women in Batavia. Robert Shell dis-
cusses manumitting enslaved women at the Cape in order to marry them in
Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good
Hope, 1652-1838, 384-385. Hanover VA: University Press of New England, 1994.
Marina Carter’s chapter in this volume deals with similar themes for the island
of Mauritius.
63. SLNA 1/2663, Miscellaneous Last Wills, 12 April 1782 [Gerrardus Cornelis
Kersse], f. 11r. From the naming pattern in the will it is possible that Kersse
fathered another daughter with a free woman to whom he bequeathed 50 Rds.
64. SLNA 1/4145, Protocols of Deeds of Emancipation of Slaves, 6 August 1738 [Frans
Gomes; Rosetta, Louisa, Agida, and Elisabeth], ff. 5r–v.
65. SLNA 1/4613. The criminal roll of 1791 includes records for January 1792. In
his analysis of VOC criminal records from the Cape, Nigel Penn has found
that no European man was convicted of raping a Khoikhoi woman or enslaved
women, yet rape did occur: Nigel Penn, “Casper, Crebis and the Knegt: Rape,
Homicide and Violence in the Eighteenth-Century Rural Western Cape,” South
 connectedcconne 121

African Historical Journal 66, no. 4 (2014): 611-634. For the later period, Pamela
Scully has shown the ways in which rape cases were dealt with in the Cape
Colony following emancipation (1834/1838), arguing that they were crucial
to ways in which the colonial state was structuring ideas of gender, race and
identities: Pamela Scully, Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Eman-
cipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, 1823-1853, 153-175. Portsmouth
NH: Heinemann, 1997.
66. The blurred boundaries between assumed prostitution and alleged rape are
explored in Ghosh’s article through a number of illuminating court cases
from Calcutta. The victims were free Indian girls and women: Durba Ghosh.
“Household Crimes and Domestic Order: Keeping the Peace in Colonial Cal-
cutta, c.1770-1840,” Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 3 (2004): 599-623.
67. The de Meuron regiment had first been stationed at the Cape where the
soldiers—comprising Protestant recruits from Switzerland and numerous
French convicts from Parisian jails to make up the numbers—were reportedly
involved in duels, petty crimes and desertion. The regiment was transferred
to Ceylon in the 1780s. See Charles-Daniel de Meuron, “Global Plants,”
accessed 17 April 2018, https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.person.
bm000125731. On the role of the regiment and de Meuron himself in the
transition from Dutch to British rule see Schrikker, Dutch and British Colonial
Intervention, 131-141.
68. The criminal roll for 1792 has been lost.
69. Nigel Worden states this clearly for VOC Cape Town: Worden, Slavery in Dutch
South Africa, 57.
70. Ghosh uses this phrase to denote a range of domestic or household crimes
which included rape, infanticide and domestic abuse and applies it in her
analysis of court cases in colonial Calcutta: Ghosh, “Household Crimes,” 599.
71. Schrikker and Ekama, “Through the Lens of Slavery”.
72. Ibid., 183–84.
73. Ibid., 185–88.
74. Ward, Networks of Empire.
75. Jayawardena, Erasure of the Euro-Asians, 19-36.
 5

Boenga van Johor: “My forced journey

from Batavia to the Cape of Good Hope”
Lodewijk J. Wagenaar

Introduction

Novelists and playwrights are free to adapt stories from history according
to their wishes and the tastes of their audience, but historians do not enjoy
such freedoms. What liberty do they have to reconstruct the stories they
find? Can they add details from other historical sources or fill in the gaps
using informed imagination? How far can historians go? How can they fully
reconstruct realistic historical actors based on scarce biographical material
and rough sketches? These questions are particularly pressing for research-
ers who study subaltern groups, and especially challenging for those who
study the lives and conditions of enslaved persons or their experiences after
emancipation. We can trace many enslaved and emancipated individuals in
the archives and identify them up to a point, but because of a lack of auto-
biographical material, in most cases it is nearly impossible to meet them as
individuals with personal identities.
Historians trained in archival research are taught to stick to sources, but
subaltern groups are rarely represented in sources, and even if they are we
seldom hear their voices directly. The historical record remains flat and lacks
nuance, individual expression and emotion, making it difficult to empathize
with subaltern people. However, unearthing these voices from the archives is
surely possible, as illustrated in an inspiring and interesting study by Saidiya
Hartman who, in her book Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic
Slave Route, reconstructs the journey made by enslaved Africans from their
homelands in the Ghanaian interior to “slave castles” along the coast of
Ghana – the last stop before survivors were taken aboard ships to make the
Middle Passage to America.1 The book, in which she combines journalistic
and scholarly skills, traces the fate of her forefathers, but also documents her
124 beingbbbbeing

personal quest to understand her own identity. The notes appended to every
chapter demonstrate that the narrative is informed by deep and detailed
research. At the end of the narrative the reader better understands how the
enslaved became “strangers” to their home culture and is able to empathize
with them for the tragic fate they suffered, having been rudely severed from
their cultures, homes and families.
Scholars of Atlantic history make use of slave autobiographies, and these
allow readers to experience vicariously the lives and times of the authors;
however, we must realize that contemporary (and later) editors would have
polished, or even greatly adapted, parts of the texts. Such editorial processes
become clear in a study by Marijke Huisman in which she discusses the
reception of autobiographies written by enslaved American authors about
their lives before emancipation, beginning with the well-known example
of Olaudah Equiano (1789–1831).2 Huisman researches the role of autobio-
graphical witnesses in the genesis of knowledge about slavery and its past,
focusing on the reception and appreciation of their writings in the USA,
UK and the Netherlands. “Slave narratives” have become a much-discussed
genre, and there have been critical debates about the authenticity of some
of the texts. For example, scholars have queried whether Harriet Jacobs’
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, originally published in 1861 under the
pseudonym of Linda Brent, was indeed written by Harriet Jacobs.3 Studies
in the 1980s, however, have shown that the doubts cast on the narrative’s
authenticity were unjust and that the text was indeed written by Harriet
Jacobs.4 Soon afterwards, writes Huisman, her narrative was accepted as one
of the major works of the genre and was canonized in the 1987 edition of The
Classic Slave Narratives.5
Such a rich overview, however, is not available for the Indian Ocean world
and, even worse, it cannot be written for the lack of autobiographical texts that
tell “from within” the life stories of people enslaved in Asian countries. The
regrettable scarcity of such documents was confirmed by the contributors to
the “Being a Slave: Indian Ocean Slavery in Local Context” workshop, held
in Leiden in 2017. The lack of so-called ego documents is of course a general
phenomenon with respect to the underclasses.6 However, even among the
subalterns, the enslaved are even more underrepresented in the archives,
since their social status prevented them from expressing themselves in any
way other than orally, both before and after emancipation.
There are, therefore, only very few surviving ego documents relating
to members of the underclass from before the early twentieth century.
 boengabboebboeng 125

However, there are alternative sources that can inform us about the lives of
the subaltern—judicial examinations and sentencing documents. By reading
early-modern interrogations, we become invisible witnesses to another time
and place, listening to the charged personal exchanges that took place during
interrogations. Rudolf Dekker, writing about riots and revolts in Dutch cities,
was an early champion of the use of such sources.7 Lotte van de Pol, in her
study on prostitution in Amsterdam, also used criminal documents.8 Such
criminal records have been maintained in archives in the Netherlands, and
similar criminal papers have been preserved in the territories administered
by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The relevant documents are
thus scattered over three continents, in VOC archives in The Hague, Cape
Town, Colombo, Chennai and Jakarta. Robert Ross and Nigel Worden used
Cape criminal records to demonstrate the potential of these documents as
repositories of the social history of Cape Town in general, and slavery spe-
cifically.9 But much remains to be done. In the Sri Lanka National Archives,
for example, the criminal records and related documents of Colombo’s Raad
van Justitie (Court of Justice) comprise more than 150 files, some of which
are quite voluminous. In these records one finds a variety of incriminated
persons—across all social groups—who inhabited the coastal territories of
the VOC in occupied Sri Lanka. Among the many indicted and sentenced
individuals we also find enslaved, or formerly enslaved, persons. M.W.
Jurriaanse’s examples from the inventory include Apollo of Macassar; Itam,
slave of the captain J.C.E. van Berski; January, slave of Andries Willem
Dhieme; Deidamie, slave maid of the Burgher ensign-bearer (vaandrig)
Johannes Wilhelmus van Cuylenberg; and Lizarde, slave maid of Albertus
Hissink.10 Kate Ekama analyses these cases in an imaginative way in her
study of slavery in Colombo, as demonstrated in her contribution to this
volume.11 Together with the criminal records preserved in Jakarta, Chennai
and Cape Town, these documents are a goldmine of information that bring
us the voices of those who were tried and convicted. Especially in the inter-
rogations they seem almost to speak to us directly. Thanks to such records,
we are able to unearth the voices of individuals of the marginalized and
oppressed slave populations in the Dutch colonies. Care must be taken,
however, because even though some members of the judicial staff came from
the Dutch Republic (or from other countries in Europe), the records were
written by local clerks of Eurasian descent who worked in the service of the
VOC. Therefore, we should assume that they may have had an equally biased
outlook on the enslaved people brought to justice.
126 beingbbbbeing

Though the VOC archives are a rich source of information, the records
are far from complete, as is evident when one peruses the inventory of VOC
records in the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia in Jakarta.12 The criminal
sentences pronounced by the Court of Justice of Batavia, for instance, are
available only for the years 1778–1785. Information on criminal justice can be
also found under other headings, such as in files of procedural documents
(processtukken). There, for instance, are documents pertaining to the criminal
case against Fortuijn van Boegis, a Buginese person who was enslaved in, or
traded from, Sulawesi in the Indonesian archipelago. Fortunately, many more
records have been preserved from the lower court, the Schepenbank (College
of Aldermen or urban court of justice, run by the aldermen or schepenen).
The earliest criminal case lists from this archive date from 1621—deposited
in the archives only two years after the foundation of Batavia in 1619! The
criminal records run from inventory numbers 969 to 1092—files with
criminal sentences date from 1623 to 1812. While only a small proportion
of the criminal documents have been kept in Jakarta, an overwhelming pro-
portion of relevant documents can be found in the Dutch National Archives
in The Hague. These documents were sent to the Gentlemen Seventeen
(the central board of the VOC), and were received by the Amsterdam and
Zeeland chambers of the VOC which, by rotation, presided over this central
board. Due to the webbed organization of the VOC, we decided to investigate
multiple repositories of VOC records. This article, in fact, will show that it
can be very rewarding for historians to trace the paper trail of life-convicted
slaves across the Company’s repositories, which document its activities in
the Indian Ocean world.
Many convicted people were sentenced to be banished to Robben Island
at the Cape of Good Hope to perform forced public works labour (ad opus
publicum). The work traditionally consisted of the maintenance of roads,
canals, moats and bridges, of preparing construction sites and of building the
walls of fortresses. On Robben Island the forced labourers spent most of their
time breaking rocks and cutting stones. Among them were many enslaved
people, including Boenga van Johor, about whom the National Archives in
Jakarta have no detailed information, but whom I accidently discovered in the
National Archives of Sri Lanka, in Colombo. Though some records give some
background information about the sentenced individuals, the sources found
do not give a clue about an earlier social life of Boenga van Johor.13
 boengabboebboeng 127

Figure 5.1. Silhouette of Flora, enslaved maid of the Lutheran minister Jan Brandes,
Batavia (now Jakarta), 1780-1785. Sketch Book of Jan Brandes.
Source: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv.nr. NG-1985-7-3-13.
128 beingbbbbeing

Boenga van Johor14

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the authorities of the VOC

in Batavia (now Jakarta) sent hundreds of convicts to the Cape to do
forced labour and remain there after serving their sentences; they were
banished for 15, 25, 50 years, or even for the rest of their lives.15 One of
those convicts was the slave maid Boenga van Johor, sentenced in 1735 by
the Schepenbank of Batavia for having broken her chains. She was sent on
board the VOC ship Barbestein, which was due to sail to the Netherlands
via Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and the Cape. On 22 October 1735, however, the
East Indiaman16 was shipwrecked in the Bay of Galle, a maritime centre in
south-west Ceylon. All of the crew and convicts—Boenga was not the only
person on board with a banishment sentence—were saved. Later, Boenga
continued her forced journey aboard the Meerlust. Her spectacular story
traces the forced journey from Batavia to her final destination, Robben
Island.
The voyage was a terrifying experience, the shock of which may well
have caused lasting psychological trauma. From archival sources, however,
we can only reconstruct her voyage and the miseries she experienced, as we
have no ego documents detailing her presumed despair and agony. Though
her arrival at the Cape in 1736 was documented, and the documents were
filed by clerks of the Cape Court of Justice, she disappeared soon after-
wards—no subsequent documents mention her whereabouts or situation.17
I became curious about her fate and regretted that Boenga had not left
behind any autobiographical texts that could have given us a glimpse into
her experience of enslavement and a life without cultural identity and social
relations. Her journey after her sentence, and especially the accident in the
Bay of Galle, makes one realize how fully dependent she was on others,
perhaps being able to dream but lacking any rights or the chance of chang-
ing her situation. Contemplating her forced journey, her fellow convicts
on board the ship, and the particular circumstances of Robben Island, I
considered the options she had to alter her situation, if only in a very limited
way. She was, of course, a convict; nothing could change that. However,
in my imagination, I saw her asking for a favour—to be freed from daily
confrontations with the frightening sea surrounding her, especially after the
shipwreck she had experienced. Cape weather can be rough and the waves
in the Bay of Good Hope threatening. In my imagination, the following
document appeared:
 boengabboebboeng 129

Yang Mulia Tuan Jan de la Fontaine, Gubernur dan Kepala di Cabo da Boa
Esperança18
I, Boenga van Johor, submissively beg for the attention of the blessed ears
of Your Honourable, Gubernur and Chief of the Cape Colony, hoping
Your Honourable will listen to Your miserable servant though she does
not deserve such a merciful gesture.
I, Boenga van Johor cannot read or write the language of Your Honourable
Gubernur. In all my miseries, however, it seems that a lucky star in heaven
has witnessed my ill fate and sent me a co-convict, Imam Malintam from
Minangkabau. He can speak and write Malay, the language I learnt as a
child in Johor. He assured me that Your Honourable does understand my
native tongue; therefore, I begged Imam Malintam to entrust my humble
request to the paper in his learned handwriting, which he agreed to do.
I do understand, Your Honourable, that by releasing my chains I acted
against the rules of the Honourable Company and I accept my banish-
ment to the Cape. However, Your Honourable Tuan, I beg you, listen to
my sad story. For quite a long time after my sentence I was locked up in a
dark prison, first on Pulau Edam, then below deck on a great ship. I could
not see where I was, nor understand what was happening around me. I
only heard the creaking sound of the ship’s hull and of people shouting
and swearing, day and night. Then suddenly an enormous clash occurred,
and water poured in. Only after many hours, a few sailormen came down
and released me and my fellow convicts who shared one and the same
quod. We all were in shock and feared for our lives. Then after ages, we
were put in a tiny vessel and, over a stormy bay, rowed to shore. There
we were locked up again and kept under surveillance by black people we
could not understand at all. From some white men, however, we under-
stood that we had been shipwrecked off Galle on the Island of Ceylon,
halfway between the great city of Batavia and our final destination.
Your Honourable Tuan Gubernur, we were then transferred to a great
ship and again sat in the dark, chained up for many weeks or months. I
could not count the days because we never saw the sun. Now I am at a
place one calls Robben Island, and everywhere I look, I see breakers and
endless masses of water. Your Honourable, I cannot stand anymore to
see waves threatening to grasp me, to carry away my helpless body and
kill me.19
Therefore, Your Honourable Tuan Gubernur, please have mercy and
transfer your miserable servant to the mainland You call Kaap die Goeie
130 beingbbbbeing

Hoop. There, far from the swelling waves I swear I always will work hard,
without any complaints or resistance, if only, Your Honourable, I never
need see the frightful and horrible sea again in my life.
This request has been brought to paper by me, Malintam van
Minangkabau and signed on Robben Island on 10 April 1736, 28-Dhu
al-Qidah of the Islamic year 1148.20

This, however, is fiction—Boenga did not write anything. She is like the
convicts in Clare Anderson’s study “who did not write memoirs of their expe-
riences, but whose archival trace is substantial enough to maneuver them
into the heart of histories of colonialism in the Indian Ocean”.21 Anderson
suggests—and I agree—that men and women like Boenga, “because of
extraordinary circumstances, came to the attention of the colonial authorities,
and left more substantial traces in the archives than are usually discernible”.22
If I were telling Boenga’s story in the form of a novel, I would have
inserted such a request in order to provide a point of departure for her
further adventures after her transfer to the mainland. For a fictionalized
account I would have closely studied Unconfessed, a beautiful and convinc-
ing novel by Yvette Christiansë about Sila van den Kaap, “slave woman of
Jacobus Stephanus van der Wat of Plettenburg Bay in the Cape Province”.23
Christiansë reconstructs a life based on the historical trial of Sila, who is
charged with killing her own child. In the novel, trying to imagine what
desperation might have driven Sila to this, Christiansë succeeds in giving
voice to Sila’s emotions and constructing an identity for Sila and women like
her by evoking a life so rudely affected by the sad fate of slavery.
For the moment, however, I will stick to the material evidence at my dis-
posal and will reproduce the source material from the archives of the former
Dutch East India Company that are scattered across the Indian Ocean. In
that respect, my basic method does not differ greatly from the way Clare
Anderson retrieved facts from the archives she visited. Like Boenga van
Johor, Dullah, the first protagonist in Anderson’s study, left no ego docu-
ments; in Subaltern Lives, however, we learn in great detail about the fate of
this convict who was sentenced on 6 December 1816 by the British colonial
authorities to “imprisonment and transportation beyond sea for life”.
 boengabboebboeng 131

Records documenting convicts sent to the Cape

The “note books of convicts sent from Batavia (Jakarta) and Ceylon (Sri
Lanka) to the Cape (Cape Town)”, kept in the archives of the Western Cape,
refer to two East Indiamen that arrived in 1736, delivering a total of seven
convicts or “bandits”.24 One such ship was the Wickenburg, which had
departed from Galle on 16 January 1736 and arrived at the roadstead of the
Cape on 4 April the same year.25 On board were the crew, repatriating military
men and artisans, and three convicts.
The first convict listed in 1736 was Assena Manka, a Muslim slave sent to
the Cape to do public works labour on Robben Island for 50 years. His sentence
by the Court of Justice in Galle was approved by the governor and councils of
Ceylon on 12 February 1735. The second person listed was a certain Colombege
Adriaan, born in Colombo.26 He was sentenced to work in chains in public
works for fifteen years, and after the fulfilment of that part of his sentence he
was not allowed to leave the Cape, for he had been banished for the rest of his
life. The notebook states that he died in 1755, which means that he lived at the
Cape for some four years after having served his punishment of forced labour.
The third bandiet—another Sinhalese—was named Moedoegame Game
Bastiaan, sent to serve fifteen years in chains. The notebook mentions that he
was released on 4 October 1766, after more than 30 years!
The Wickenburg was accompanied by the Meerlust, a “flute” ship owned
by the Amsterdam Chamber of the VOC.27 Under the responsibility of the
skipper, Kornelis van der Hoeven, four convicts were delivered to the Cape.
The people first mentioned were Louis and October, two slaves owned by
Evert Lanius, an auctioneer (vendumeester) in Batavia.28 After those two, the
notebook mentions a certain Malintam from Batavia, a Muslim priest. The
last convict mentioned as being on board the Meerlust was a slave maid,
Boenga van Johor.
Boenga’s status and social situation were not at all exceptional. In 1739,
Batavia and Ommelanden (the districts immediately surrounding Batavia
proper) had a population of 86,531 people, among whom 24,322 were
enslaved (28.4 per cent of the total population) and another 6,286 people
(7.29 per cent) were “Mardijkers”—manumitted slaves and their descend-
ants.29 Compared with the number of Europeans and Eurasians (altogether
about 2,500 to 3,000 people), the number of slaves is astonishing. Most of
them worked as domestics; an unknown number, however, was leased out to
work elsewhere—some hired by private enterprises, others by the Company.
132 beingbbbbeing

A steady flow of convicts

The transfer of convicts to the Cape was part of a standard procedure fol-
lowed by Company authorities in Batavia and Ceylon. A look at the notebooks
kept in Cape Town (discussed above) reveals that the people sentenced to do
public works consisted mostly of European servants, free Chinese people,
other Asian people with free status and enslaved people. It may be useful to
provide a few examples from the notebook to illustrate the kinds of convicts
that were sent to the Cape before 1736, when the abovementioned seven
convicts arrived on board the Wickenburg and Meerlust.
For 1731 there is a list of sixteen Chinese convicts, all from Batavia. The
notebook mentions that ten of them were sent to do forced labour on farms,
and that five of them died at sea during the journey. Further, we read about
an Adriaan Samson, who was banished for life by the Council of Justice in
Galle. Then we find three other males—a “free Buginese from Batavia”, a
“free Balinese from Batavia”, and an emancipated slave from Batavia. In
1732, four convicts arrived. Two of them—Christina “alias Anna Maria” and
Pasquaal Barbeda—had been sentenced to twelve years. A third person (also
from Ceylon) had been banished for 50 years by the Council of Justice in
Jaffna. Convict number four was a European servant of the VOC named
Adolf Wessel, from Amsterdam.30 The last was sentenced by the Council of
Justice in Colombo to serve in chains in public works for three years. For
1733 the notebook lists a Jan Pietersz Bak from Lossum near Copenhagen,
sentenced by the Council of Justice in Colombo to serve in chains for six
years on Robben Island. In the same year, two slaves from Batavia had each
to serve two years in chains, and were sentenced to then stay there, banished
“for their whole life”. A Chinese person from Batavia shared this fate, as did
two free Javanese from Batavia.
In 1734, two European convicts arrived at the Cape. The first was
Christiaan Schoonheer from Amsterdam, sentenced by the Council of
Justice in Colombo to be banished for five years (the notebook states that
he was released—verlost).31 The second European was Jonas Jansz, also from
Amsterdam, banished for five years32 and also released. The third convict was
a Sinhalese named Tottegamme Nainde Appoe,33 sentenced by the Council of
Justice of Galle “to be whipped with the rope round his neck, to be marked
by the iron, and to be banished to Robben Island in chains for all his life”.
In 1735 nine convicts arrived, including one Chinese and one person
from the Maldives who was in the service of a certain Narichaen, a Muslim
 boengabboebboeng 133

nachoda (captain) residing in Ceylon.34 The remaining seven originated from

several ethnic communities in Ceylon. Remarkable among them was a slave
named Domingo—born at Kelaniya; heathen (read: Buddhist); and owned
by a high-ranking Sinhalese man named Wierakon Appoehamie.35 Domingo
was sentenced by the Council of Justice in Colombo to do public works for 50
years; the sentence was confirmed by the governor and councillors of Ceylon
on 13 July 1734.
These examples give a fair impression of the composition of convicts sent
from Batavia and Ceylon to the Cape, though the composition may differ
from the average for other years (as they are listed in the notebooks in the
Cape archives), where we see that an unusually large number of convicted
slaves sometimes arrived; and, indeed, in other years no slaves at all arrived.36
Typically, however, we see quite a mix of origins and social status, such as in
1736, the year Boenga van Johor arrived.

Boenga van Johor—From sentence in May to departure from

Batavia, 23 July 1735

On 19 May 1735, Boenga van Johor, a slave owned privately by a free Christen
vrouw (Christian woman) named Clarinda van Timor,37 was sentenced in
Batavia—the capital of the VOC trade empire in Asia—to be sent to the Cape
of Good Hope to serve ad opus publicum for five years over and above the
period that she was already serving from an earlier sentence. In the eyes of
the VOC, Boenga had seriously offended Company rules—with the help of
others, she had undone the chains that she wore after having been sentenced
for an earlier criminal offence. In the marginal notes of the resolutions of the
meeting of the Schepenbank, the remark made to Boenga by the bailiff of the
Batavian Ommelanden, drossaart (bailiff ) Justinus Vinck, makes it clear that
Boenga had, indeed, repeated her crime:

The plaintiff addressing the prisoner Boenga, [said] that only a short
time after she had been punished and chained in front of the Townhall
[Stadhuijs], she again had released herself from the chains but was
arrested; then on the order of the mandur or overseer [mandadoor] of the
Crafts Quarter of Batavia, she was whipped on her buttocks and chained
again, therefore she now has violated [the sentence] of being banished in
chains twice.38
134 beingbbbbeing

Like other convicted persons in the same trial, Boenga was then whipped
gestrengelijk (seriously) on her naked back. However, unlike the other slaves
and first offenders sentenced in this trial (Cate van Mandhaan, Ganty van
Boeton and Mina van Batavia), Boenga was marked by the iron—a standard
procedure in the Dutch Republic to make convicts who were sent to the
houses of correction (tuchthuizen) identifiable.
Since no ship was scheduled to leave soon, Boenga was sent to the island
of Edam (now Pulau Damar Besar, one of the so-called Thousand Islands),
some eighteen kilometres north of Batavia. The island was gifted by the
Batavian Government to Johannes Camphuys (1634–1695) when he left his
post as governor general in 1691. Edam was famous for its Japanese-style
country houses, beautiful gardens and menagerie. Jan de Marre (1696–1763),
who arrived as a skipper of the East Indiaman Heesburg in 1728,39 visited
the island of Edam during his stay in the East Indies and described it in
quite exalted terms. Boenga certainly did not obtain relief from her misery by
seeing “the beautiful Edam”, nor did she enjoy a “stroll under the green and
eye-catching shade”.40 Her only consolation may have been the company of
three other convicts—Louis and October, the abovementioned enslaved serv-
ants of the auctioneer Evert Lanius, and a Muslim priest named Malintam
from “Maningcabo” (Minangkabau, the highlands of West Sumatra).41 The
four convicts may have stayed in a slave lodge on the island, for the Batavian
ship repair wharf had three locations—Onrust, a neighbouring island named
Kuiper and Edam. Edam was not only the leisure island of the governor gen-
eral, but there were also warehouses and a sawmill powered by a Dutch-type
windmill similar to the two on the wharf island of Onrust. The Company
owned hundreds of slaves, and hired even more private slaves to work at the
three locations of the wharf, housing them in a huge slave lodge on Onrust.42
(The one on Edam was apparently quite modest.43) It is quite possible that
the four convicts were kept separate from the enslaved labourers, and that
they were housed in a temporary shed in one of the warehouses. Boenga
was kept chained; possibly this was a measure to prevent her from walking
off and committing suicide. This tragic form of resistance was by no means
exceptional, as we have seen from the example of Ontong in Geelen et al.’s
contribution to this volume. There we read that Ontong tried to break free
but failed to take his own life—consequently he was brought to court “to
defend himself against the hefty charge of attempted suicide”.44
With her fellow convicts, Boenga stayed on Edam for about eight weeks,
then the four were transferred to the Barbestein,45 which lay at anchor in the
 boengabboebboeng 135

roadstead of Batavia. On 21 July 1735 the authorities of the ship signed a

declaration stating that they were taking over the responsibility of taking the
convicts to the Cape. The document concerning Boenga reads:

The authorities of the ship Barbestein take over in good security from the
employees of the Honourable Aldermen of this city [Batavia] and transfer
under good surveillance via Ceylon to the Cape of Good Hope, the slave
maid Boenga van Johor, in order to serve there the time of her banishment
in chains, according the appointment by Their Honourables of 19 May last,
and accordingly by the resolution of Their Honourables [Governor-General
and Councillors of the East Indies] taken on the 27th of that month, the orig-
inal signed by [Adriaan] Valckenier and [Johannes] Thedens [Councillors].46

Together with the Ketel,47 Wickenburg and Meerlust, the Barbestein left the
roadstead of Batavia on 23 July 1735.48

The journey to Ceylon to the arrival in the Bay of Galle,

22 October 1735

It is not quite clear what route the ships took. From the Generale Missiven one
learns that the ships carried Japanese copper to be delivered in Tuticorin on
the south-east coast of India, and rice for Ceylon.49 Because of the stop at the
Madurai Coast the voyage took two months, a horrifying experience for the
four involuntary passengers.50 It is likely that they were kept below deck at all
times, in lockups specially made for the occasion. The food may have been
the ordinary fare prepared for the sailors and soldiers; on the leg between
Batavia and the Cape the diet will have contained rice and cadjang beans
(lentils)—acceptable fare, though there would have been no fruit. Their
situation must have been unbearable—not knowing where they were, how
things would go, or how, when and where their misery would end—until at
last the ship arrived in the roadstead of Colombo on 22 September. Even if
the convicts had been informed about their arrival in Ceylon they would not
have understood where they were. One can only speculate about this part of
the journey, but the fact that the ship anchored safely in the Colombo roads
may have given the captives some feeling of security.
After unloading and reloading, the four ships left Colombo and sailed
southwards to Galle, where goods were waiting for transhipment to the
136 beingbbbbeing

Netherlands. The Barbestein sighted the bay on 20 October 1735 but stayed out-
side, anchored at the so-called Outer Roadsted (Buyten-rede) because of strong
winds and waves. The next day, 21 October, the Barbestein lost one anchor
after the other. The pilots, Barend Joosten and Heere Jansz, decided to take
their chances and try to enter the Bay of Galle, in the hope that spare anchors
could be supplied. But that hope was misplaced, and without anchors the ship
fell prey to the waves. Three cannon shots were fired to warn the authorities
ashore that the vessel was on the brink of shipwreck. The master of equipment
(head of the Maritime Department), Carel Pieter Swensen, could not be of
any help, as heavy breakers made all rescue attempts hopeless. Around 8 a.m.
on 22 October 1735 the ship ran aground and started leaking. Sand filled the
inlets of the pumps and within an hour the lower deck was flooded.
It is not difficult to imagine that the people aboard the Barbestein feared
for their lives. Below deck, Boenga must have heard the initial panic of crew
members shouting and rushing hither and thither. Was she kept in chains
during the voyage from Batavia? And, if so, how long was it before orders
were given to release her and the other convicts, and move them from their
perilous situation to safety? For Boenga and her fellow convicts the sounds
of the ship running aground must have been sickening and frightening, for
they were locked up and unable to fully understand what was happening.
From the sources, however, we know that they were all released and safely
taken ashore. They may have been locked up again in the depot (materiaal-
huis) in Black Fort, where convicts and Company slaves were kept.

Ship lost, ship’s papers salvaged

The Dutch East India Company has become famous for its diligent record
keeping. Many files concerning the shipwreck of the Barbestein have been
kept and can be studied in the Sri Lanka National Archives. From the letters
to and from Colombo,51 many of which have detailed reports, we learn that
on the day after the disaster the commander and councillors of the Galle
Commandment set up tents on the shore close to the site of the shipwreck
near the watch-house (gravet) of Unawatuna.52 From there, Commandeur
(Commander) Jan Macaré (1686–1742) coordinated the rescue of goods
and people; also, there was a steady flow of letters to Colombo to inform
Governor Diederik van Domburg (1685–1736) of the fate of the Barbestein
and to obtain instructions. Among these files are copies of the salvaged ship’s
 boengabboebboeng 137

papers, including documents on the convicts sent from Batavia. Louis and
October, “both slaves from Ternate”, had been sentenced for having commit-
ted “violence and hooliganism” and for issuing threats and so on—neither
had confessed and both denied the accusations.53 The Malay “priest” (imam)
Malintam, from Minangkabau (spelled “Manin Cabo”), had been sentenced
for plotting murder, to which he had confessed.54 Boenga was sentenced for
breaking her chains and for violating her banishment.55
From several documents we learn exactly what happened to the goods
on the Barbestein—the sugar and saltpetre in the hold of the ship, under-
standably, were lost; however, much of the other cargo—such as the textiles
from India (which appear to confirm that the Barbestein had earlier sailed
to Tuticorin)—was successfully removed.56 The textiles were bleached, dried
and sorted, and the items that were not of export quality were allocated to
be sold in Galle.57 We also learn about the rescue of useful parts of the ship,
such as masts and yards. Some documents actually confirm the saving of
everyone on board, but there is no record of the distribution of crew, pas-
sengers and convicts on the returning ships—the Ketel, Wickenburg and
Meerlust.58 We know, however, that Boenga was transferred to the Cape with
the other convicts on board the Meerlust, for that has been documented in the
abovementioned notebook of convicts sent to the Cape.
Within a few days the Barbestein broke into three.59 The reports inserted
in the resolutions of the Council of Galle give a thorough account of the
investigations by the commander and council to find out what had happened
and what exactly had caused the loss of the ship. There we also find evidence
given by the skipper, mates and other ship’s officers, as well as the local VOC
pilots based in Galle.60 It is not known what happened to Boenga after she
was taken ashore. She may have joined the other convicts and slaves and
been forced to work in the depot or elsewhere in Galle, which she may have
preferred to her next forced journey by sea—the last leg of her voyage from
Ceylon to the Cape.

The Meerlust sails to the Cape

On 16 January 1736, the East Indiamen—Ketel, Meerlust and Wickenburg—left

Ceylon and sailed to the Cape.61 Dirk Prest, who had lost his ship, the Barbestein,
was appointed first mate of the Ketel—he was later chosen by the ships’ council
to replace skipper Adriaan Krielaard, who had died on the voyage.
138 beingbbbbeing

Little is known about the ships’ journey since no ships’ logs have been
kept. On 9 April 1736 the three ships arrived safely at the roadstead of
the Cape, where they stayed until their departure for the Netherlands on
27 April.62 In the meantime, the four convicts were registered and their
names inserted in the notebook of convicts. From that moment on their
names seem to disappear from Company files. A further search of the Cape
archives for more information about Boenga may be worthwhile, though
there is only a small chance of finding out more. The Company meticulously
recorded the names of the convicts sent back to Batavia or Ceylon. We find
in lists between 1750 and 1781 a certain Pasquale van Colombo, who was
sentenced on 25 May 1723 to 25 years of forced public works labour and, as
the lists show, was sent back in 1751.63 Oursson van Sambouwa (Sambawa)
was sentenced in Batavia in 1737 and sent back there on 10 October 1750, fol-
lowing the decision of the Cape Government. Baatjoe van Boegis (Sulawesi),
an enslaved domestic owned by Christoffel Schultz, Backmeester of the
Utrecht Gate of Batavia, was sent back in 1751. He was sentenced in 1740,
and sent back in 1750 aboard the East Indiaman Vrijburg, which had departed
from Zeeland on 18 May 1750, lay at anchor in the Cape roads between
19 September and 26 October, and arrived in Batavia on 3 January 1751.
There is no mention at all of Boenga van Johor. No message of transfer,
being sent back, or demise. She may have stayed at the Cape until the end
of her life. One thing is certain—she had arrived in a society which, like
Batavia, was fully dependent on slave labour, so the Company would not have
released her without reason. Boenga may have set her hopes on a better life
after serving her punishment; however, I did not find recorded any mention
of her after her arrival in 1736.

Discussion

Mentioned in Kerry Ward’s Networks of Empire as one of many forced labour-

ers shipped to Cape Town from South and Southeast Asia in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, Boenga comes to life in the sources connected with
the shipwreck of the Barbestein on 22–23 October 1735. This East Indiaman
transported four convicts, three slaves and one Muslim priest. The files kept
in the ship’s box (scheepsdoos) and the documents kept in the Cape archives
give ample evidence of judicial procedures, sentences and the execution of
the verdicts in Batavia. Combined with data retrieved from sources such as
 boengabboebboeng 139

the Generale Missiven and publications such as Dutch–Asiatic Shipping, it is

possible to reconstruct the fate of Boenga van Johor; however, first-hand tes-
timonies of people like her are extremely rare. With the help of the available
sources, historians can try to understand what she may have experienced,
and accordingly they can reconstruct for the public some aspects of the lives
of enslaved people. One is tempted to use fiction to work more freely with
historical facts, thereby escaping the historian’s traditional methods and
constraints, which require sticking to scarce facts as retrieved from sources.
One may question, however, whether writing a novel delivers a better
result than a historical study. Sue Peabody clearly discusses the implications
of telling the story of Furcy in three competing genres. Furcy was a slave born
around 1786 who fought for 26 years for official recognition of his freeborn
status. On 23 December 1843 he finally obtained the judgment of the French
judicial system that he had been born free (“Furcy est né en liberté”).64 Earlier,
the journalist and author Mohammed Aïssaoui had written the novel L’affaire
de l’esclave Furcy,65 but Peabody, though admitting that “the novel offers inter-
esting narrative possibilities”, chooses the genre of microhistory because “it
joins the elemental power of good storytelling (characters, plot, description)
with a postmodern commitment to revealing the architecture of historical
research and exposition”.66 In the attachment to the article, she tries to explain
the essential differences between microhistory, biography and fiction by tack-
ling three times, and in three different ways, a crucial episode in the life of
Furcy’s mother Madeleine that had sad implications for her son’s life.
Peabody’s experimental works are kept short, like the imagined document
I inserted at the beginning of this chapter, which can also be considered
experimental. In the case of my experiment, however, its main purpose is to
show what could have been learned had Boenga left us ego documents to tell
us about her miseries.

Notes

1. Sadiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
2. Marijke Huisman, Verhalen van Vrijheid. Autobiografieën van Slaven in Transna-
tionaal Perspectief, 1789–2013. Hilversum: Verloren, 2015.
3. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, edited by Nellie Y. McKay and
Frances Smith Foster. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002.
140 beingbbbbeing

This is a perfect edition, with contemporary responses and selections of Jacobs’

other writings, an introduction to her world, and a section with critical essays.
4. Huisman, Verhalen van Vrijheid, 160.
5. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (ed.), The Classic Slave Narratives. New York: New Amer-
ican Library, 1987.
6. The term ego document refers to sources which contain information on personal
lives and experiences written by authors themselves. The term was coined
around 1955 by the Dutch historian Jacques Presser. For a short article on ego
documents see the website of the “Center for the Study of Egodocuments and
History,” http://www.egodocument.net, accessed 20 March 2019.
7. Rudolf Dekker, Holland in Beroering: Oproeren in de 17de en 18de Eeuw. Amster-
dam: Ambo, 1982.
8. Lotte van de Pol, Het Amsterdams Hoerdom: Prostitutie in de Zeventiende en
Achttiende Eeuw. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1996; revised edition:.
Sociaal-Historische Studie Naar de Prostitutie Door Vrouwen in Amsterdam Tussen
ca. 1650–1750. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2003, published in English:
The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011, translated by Liz Waters.
9. Robert Ross, Cape of Torments. Slavery and Resistance in South Africa. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983. Nigel Worden and Gerald Groenewald, Trials
of Slavery. Selected Documents Concerning Slaves from the Criminal Records of
the Council of Justice at the Cape of Good Hope, 1705–1794, Van Riebeeck Society
Second Series 36. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2005.
10. M.W. Jurriaanse, Catalogue of the Archives of the Dutch Central Government of
Coastal Ceylon, 1640–1796 Colombo: Ceylon Government Press, 1943. This
inventory can be accessed through “Towards a New Age of Partnership”,
TANAP.net.
11. See also Kate Ekama, “Slavery in Colombo” (Master’s diss., Leiden University,
2012). For a discussion of these cases in a legal history context see A. Schrik-
ker and Kate Ekama, “Through the Lens of Slavery: Dutch Sri Lanka in the
Eighteenth Century,” in Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History, edited by Zoltán
Biedermann and Alan Strathern, 178-193. London: UCL Press, 2017.
12. G.L. Balk, F. van Dijk and D.J. Kortlang, The Archives of the Dutch East India
Company (VOC) and the Local Institutions in Batavia. Leiden and Boston MA:
Brill, 2007, with contributions by F.S. Gaastra, Hendrik E. Niemeijer and P.
Koenders. This inventory can be accessed through TANAP.net.
13. Seen from a social perspective, Boenga as a person appears rather nondescript,
so to speak. Extraordinary in this respect is the example given by Paul Bijl,
 boengabboebboeng 141

Wange van Balie (1798-1869), who in his autobiography spanning the years
1802-1810 gives evidence of a family world inhabited by his father, grandmother
and brothers. See Paul Bijl, “Acts of Equality: Writing Autonomy, Empathy, and
Community in an Indonesian Slave Narrative”, chapter 7 in this volume.
14. Boenga (bunga) in the Malay language means “flower”. European slave owners
usually gave their enslaved domestics a new name after acquisition in order to
avoid having a stranger in the household. Her owner, the free Christen vrouw
Clarinda van Timor, apparently had no objection to her originally given name,
since Malay as lingua franca was not strange or hostile to her.
15. From the very beginning of its presence at the Cape, the VOC used Robben
Island as a concentration camp. A famous example is Eva van Meerhof (?1643-
1674), the wife of the Danish surgeon Peter Havgard (in VOC documents called
Pieter van Meerhof ). As a child of twelve the Khoi girl Krotoa, renamed “Eva”,
entered the service of the Van Riebeeck family. In that capacity she also acted
as interpreter and hence as mediator between the Company and Khoi people.
In 1665 she followed her husband when he became overseer of Robben Island.
After his death Eva’s uncontrolled drinking habits got her into trouble, and
consequently she was sentenced to be sent to the island—then as a condemned
criminal. The story of “Krotoa-Eva” plays a major role in the history and histori-
ography of South Africa. See, for example: Trudie Bloem, Krotoa-Eva: The Woman
from Robben Island. Cape Town: Kuele Books, 1999; Dan Sleigh, Islands. London:
Secker & Warburg, 2004. (Translation from: Eilande. Kaapstad: Tafelberg, 2001).
16. An East Indiaman, a three-masted sailing vessel, of different tonnage and
design. The returning Barbestein was an East Indiaman of the first charter,
about 160 feet long and with a loading capacity of 1,100 tons. The flute ship
Meerlust belonged to the third charter—it measured 130 feet and could transport
a load of 600 tons.
17. See text below, and endnote 9.
18. “To the right honourable Jan de la Fontaine, Governor of the cape of Good
Hope”.
19. The main argument in this constructed request (“I cannot stand anymore to
see waves threatening to grasp me, to carry away my helpless body and kill me”)
differs sharply from the concept of the sea as a gate to freedom, as described
by Anne Marieke van der Wal. See her contribution to this volume, “‘Hoera, dit
skip seil uit oos’. The Sea as a Site of Memory in the Folk Songs of the Enslaved
Community and their Descendants at the Cape”.
20. Retrieved from the past by Lodewijk Wagenaar for the “Being a Slave” work-
shop at Leiden University, 29–30 May 2017.
142 beingbbbbeing

21. Clare Anderson, Subaltern Lives. Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean
World, 1790–1920, 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
22. Anderson, Subaltern Lives, 6.
23. Yvette Christiansë, Unconfessed. Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2007.
24. Western Cape Archives and Records Service, Inventory of the Archives of the
Court of Justice of the Cape Colony (CJ), 1652–1843; Documents Regarding
Convicts and Exiles 1722–1822; Note Books of Convicts (1722–1786), “Attestatie-
boek—Banditen. Lijste van zodanige banditen als er uijt India na herwaarts zijn
gesonden, als van Batavia [en Ceylon],” inv. no. 3186, 1722–1757.
25. The ship Wickenburg was built in Middelburg by the VOC Chamber Zeeland in
1722; it could carry 850 tons of freight and was taken out of service in Batavia in
1748 after having made eight journeys to the East Indies. After its departure from
the Cape on 27 April 1736, the ship arrived at the roadstead of Rammekens (Zee-
land) on 29 August 1736. Her skipper was Pieter Zwanendrecht. See J.R. Bruijn,
F.S. Gaastra and I. Schöffer, Dutch–Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries,
3 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. From here, the ship numbers given in
volumes II (outgoing) and III (homebound ships) are given as “DAS,” followed
by the number and the digit indicating the particular number of the outgoing or
homebound voyage. The arrival on 29 August 1736 was of DAS 6960.5.
26. His origin is given by the Sinhalese suffix “ge” after Colombe (Colombo).
27. The flute Meerlust was built in 1725 at the Company’s wharf in Amsterdam.
Weighing 600 tonnes, it made five journeys to the East Indies and was taken out
of service in 1744. DAS 6959.3 mentions that the ship stayed at the Cape from
4–27 April 1736 and arrived at the roadstead of Texel on 28 August 1736. On board
was a crew of 89 sailors (inclusive of the skipper and officers). Also on board were
three categories of VOC servants being repatriated—eleven soldiers, five artisans
and fourteen impotenten (sick or handicapped servants). The ship was loaded with
goods to the value of 155,904 guilders. The skipper was Kornelis van der Hoeve.
28. Evert Lanius was auctioneer in Batavia from 1712. See François Valentijn, Oud
en nieuw Oost-Indiën, vol. IV, pt. 1, 413. Dordrecht: Joannes van Braam; Amster-
dam: Gerard onder de Linden, 1726.
29. Remco Raben, “Batavia and Colombo. The Ethnic and Spatial Order of Two
Colonial Cities, 1600–1800” (PhD diss., Leiden University, 1996), 89–93.
30. The research guide, VOC Opvarenden, of the National Archives (The Hague)
mentions an Adolf Wessels from Amsterdam who entered the service of the
VOC in 1735. He was possibly repatriated from the Cape in 1738. See “VOC
Opvarenden,” Nationaal Archief, http://www.gahetna.nl/collectie/index/
nt00444, accessed 20 March 2010.
 boengabboebboeng 143

31. VOC Opvarenden mentions a Christiaan Schoonheer from Amsterdam who left
service in Asia in 1733. That was the year of his sentence—convicts were then
formally dismissed and their contracts terminated.
32. VOC Opvarenden mentions a Jonas Jansz who entered service in 1730. He left
the service in Asia on 29 May 1734—possibly the year of his sentence.
33. Nainde: a husbandman of low caste who performed menial tasks as compulsory
service, such as the transport of timber and cinnamon; the word “appoe” (Sin-
halese: appu) suggests that he occupied a high position within his group.
34. Nahada: possibly the clerk meant a nachoda, which is the word related to Chi-
nese skippers.
35. Wierakon Appoehamie: today, his name would be spelled “Wirakon”. “Appu-
hamy” is an honorific for sons of high-ranking native chiefs in the Company’s
territory of Ceylon.
36. See in particular the chapters, “Crime and Punishment in Batavia, circa 1730
to 1750” and “Forced Migration and Cape Colonial Society,” in Networks of
Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company by Kerry Ward, 85-125
and 239-282. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. On page 261,
Ward briefly mentions Boenga of Johor and her sentence of banishment for
five years, in addition to her previous sentence for having broken out of her
chains in Batavia—information retrieved from the Convicts Rolls, vol. 3188
(1728–1795), kept in the Cape Town Archive Repository (CA).
37. Slaves were named after their region of origin or after the port of embarcation
they left for transport after sale. Thus, Clarina came from Timor. Later on, she
was manumitted on the condition that she convert to Christianity. People like
her were categorized as “free Christian women”. Many emancipated slaves
possessed slaves in their own right.
38. Western Cape Archives and Records Service, CJ 2563, “Copies of Sentences of
Persons Banished from Batavia, Ceylon and Elsewhere, 1736–1742” (Vonnissen
der persoonen dewelke soo van Batavia als Ceylon herwaarts sijn gesonden. Beginnende
met den jaare 1736 en eijndigende met den jaare 1742), 110; sentence of 19 May 1735,
copied a week later, on 26 May, in Batavia. The Dutch text reads: “De heer eisser
voegende de gev[angene] daarbij, dat zij maar weijnig tijds nadat alhier voor ‘t
Stadhuijs was afgestraft en in de ketting geklonken daarna wederom opgevat is,
wanneer zij ter ordre van den mandadoor in ‘t Ambagtsquartier op haar billen
gegeselt en aldaar de novo in de ketting geklonken is, zulx zij nu twee malen
haar banissement in de ketting heeft gevioleerd.”
39. DAS 2735.3: the Heesburg, built in 1720 for the Amsterdam Chamber of the
VOC, left the roadstead of Texel for its third outward voyage on 10 May 1728,
144 beingbbbbeing

stayed at the Cape from 27 September until 23 October, and arrived in the Bay
of Batavia on 21 December 1728. DAS 6820.3: Jan de Marre left Batavia on
13 October 1731 as skipper of the same vessel (then sailing in charter for the
Zeeland Chamber) and arrived on 18 June 1732 in the roadstead of Rammekens.
40. Jan de Marre, Batavia. Begrepen In Zes Boeken, 231. Amsterdam: Adriaan Wor,
en de Erve G. onder de Linden, 1740: “Stelt u, ô schoon Edam! in heuchelyker
licht./ Wien lust het niet zich hier ‘t ontheffen van zyn kommer?/ Te wandlen
onder ‘t groen van ‘t oogverrukkend lommer? […]”. About Jan de Marre as
skipper, examiner of the seamanship of the Amsterdam Chamber of the VOC,
director of the Amsterdam City Theatre and author see Jaap R. Bruijn, Schippers
van de VOC in de Achttiende Eeuw, Aan de Wal en Op Zee, 94-97. Amsterdam: De
Bataafsche Leeuw, 2008.
41. Sri Lanka National Archives (SLNA), 1/5220, Letters from Colombo to Galle,
With Annexes, 29 July–30 December 1735, no. 149, Extract of the Resolutions
Taken by the Council of the Dutch East Indies, 27 May 1735: [in translation] “[…]
to send Louis and October, slaves of the auctioneer Evert Lanius; Malintam van
Maningcabo, Malay [speaking] priest, and also Boenga van Johor via Ceylon to
the Cape to serve their banishment in chains, and to station and keep them
temporarily on the island of Edam”.
42. In 1757, the number of Company slaves in the Artisans’ Quarter in Batavia and
on Onrust totalled 1,846; see Raben, “Batavia and Colombo”, 100. In 1735, the
numbers were perhaps a few hundred less. The number of slaves labouring on
Onrust would have included the ones working at Edam and Kuiper—the latter
were returned every night to the neighbouring island of Onrust.
43. Lodewijk J. Wagenaar, “Het Eiland Onrust Bij Batavia als Onderdeel van het
VOC-Scheepsbedrijf in de 17de en 18de Eeuw,” Antiek 25, no. 2 (1990): 65-80;
on slaves and convicts see especially pages 74–76.
44. Alexander Geelen, Bram van den Hout, Merve Tosun, Mike de Windt and
Matthias van Rossum, “Between Markets and Chains. An Exploration of the
Experiences, Mobility, and Control of Enslaved Persons in Eighteenth-Century
South-West India”, in this volume.
45. Barbestein: built in 1717 by the VOC Chamber Zeeland, 1,100 tonnes; the ship
made six outward journeys; at the end of the sixth voyage, the ship arrived in
the roadstead of Batavia on 10 April 1733 (DAS 2875.6).
46. SLNA 1/5220, no. 126:
De overheden van ‘t schip Barbestein, nemen van de bedientens van
Heren Schepenen dezer stede, in goede verzekering over en vervoeren
onder goeden toezicht over Ceilon naar Cabo de Goede Hoop, de slavinne
 boengabboebboeng 145

Boenga van Johor, ten einde aldaar volgens haar Eerw.r: appointements
de dato 19. maij jongstleden, en Harer Hoogedelens daarop genomene
resolutie op de 27. dies maants, den tijd van haar bannissement in de
ketting uit te dienen. Batavia, in ‘t Casteel, den 21. Julij, Ao. 1735 / [orig.
get.] Valckenier [en] Thedens [Achter stond] Ordonnantie van den 16.
Julij op de overheeden van ‘t schip Barbesteijn verleent.
47. Ketel: built by the Rotterdam Chamber in 1721, 810 tonnes. The ship made
seven outward voyages and was sold in 1748 to Spanish merchants in Manila.
See DAS 2503.1 and later voyages.
48. “Resources,” Boekhouder-generaal Batavia. Het goederenvervoer van de VOC in
de achttiende eeuw, http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/boekhoudergeneraalbat-
avia, accessed 20 March 2019, gives the departure date of the four ships as
23 July 1735. Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren
XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (GM), volume 9, edited by J. van
Goor, 663. The Hague: s.n, 1988, gives, wrongly, 23 June.
49. Generale Missiven 9, 663.
50. Generale Missiven 9, 735.
51. SLNA 1/5220, Letters from Colombo to Galle, With Annexes, 29 July–30 Decem-
ber 1735.
52. SLNA 1/5339, Letters from Galle to Colombo, 4 August–30 December 1735, Let-
ters dated 20–25 October 1735.
53. SLNA 1/5220, no. 150, Verdict of Wednesday 2 February 1735 by Pieter Boockesteijn,
Bailiff (Baljuw) of Batavia, Contra Louis and October, Slaves from Ternate.
54. SLNA 1/5220, no. 151, Verdict of Wednesday 20 April 1735 by Justinus Vinck, Bailiff
(Drossaart) of the Batavian Countryside (Bataviase Ommelanden), Contra Malim-
itam from Manin Cabo, Malay Priest.
55. SLNA 1/5220, no. 152, Verdict of Thursday 19 May 1735 by Justinus Vinck Contra
Eleven Persons, Among whom Boenga van Johor.
56. Tuticorin (now known as Thoothukudi) was the VOC centre on the Coast of
Madure where cloth from the hinterland was collected. It came under the
administration of the Government of Dutch Ceylon.
57. SLNA 1/5339, Letters from Galle to Colombo, 4 January–30 December 1735, Let-
ter of 25 October 1735 (sent at 6:30 p.m., when it was already dark!).
58. Generale Missiven 9, 768: the High Government in Batavia initially planned to
send the Iepenrode from Batavia to replace the Barbestein, but there were not
enough goods to make equipping a fourth ship profitable. DAS 6991.2: On
1 January 1737, the Iepenrode left Batavia, but was shipwrecked on 21 May 1737
at the Cape.
146 beingbbbbeing

59. Because the Barbestein was shipwrecked, it was never added to the list of ships
leaving Ceylon. Since Dutch–Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries does
not register the Batavia–Ceylon section for homebound ships leaving from
Ceylon (this is, of course, not relevant to the ships which plied directly between
the Netherlands and Ceylon), there is no DAS number for the Barbestein after
its arrival in the roads of Batavia on 10 April 1733. From the General Missiven
and the archives of the Bookkeeper General, however, we know that following
its arrival the ship made trips to Persia (via Cochin on the Malabar Coast, where
seven slaves were bought) and Cheribon. See Generale Missiven 9, 514, 627, 643,
and 663; “Resources,” Boekhouder-generaal Batavia. Het goederenvervoer van de
VOC in de achttiende eeuw, http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/boekhoudergen-
eraalbatavia, accessed 20 March 2019.The ship arrived on time in Batavia, to be
re-equipped for the homeward voyage via Ceylon. As we have already seen, the
Barbestein had left Batavia on 23 July 1735.
60. SLNA 1/5043 Ordinary Minutes of the Political Council of Galle, 1 February 1734–
10 March 1736 (not paginated), Meeting of 7 November 1735.
61. See DAS 6958.5 (Ketel), DAS 6959.3 (Meerlust), and DAS 6960.5 (Wickenburg).
62. The Ketel arrived it the Texel roads on 27 August 1736; the Meerlust followed the
next day; the Wickenburg anchored at Rammekens on 29 August 1736. Together
they had transported goods to the value of 572,007 guilders.
63. Western Cape Archives and Records Service, CJ 3190: “Lists of Exiles Sent Back
to India After the expiration of their Sentences, 1750–1781” (“Naamrollen van
sodaanige Bannelingen als derselver Bannissementen uijtgedient hebbende
weederom successievelijk naar India terug gesonden suijn etc. etc. Beginnende
met den 10 Octobr. 1750 en eijndigende met [1781].”).
64. Sue Peabody, “Microhistory, Biography, Fiction. The Politics of Narrating the
Lives of People Under Slavery,” Transatlantica 2, Association Française d’études
Américaines (2012): 1-19.
65. Mohammed Aïssaoui, L’affaire de l’esclave Furcy. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2010.
66. Peabody, Microhistory, 8.
 Pa r t II

Legacies, Memories, Absences

 6

At Sea in the Archive

Slavery, Indenture and the Nineteenth-Century Indian Ocean1

Yvette Christiansë

It is November 2009 in the auditorium of downtown Johannesburg’s Market

Theatre. A conch is being blown. The air is filled with the sound of water
surfing against the hull of a ship, but it is not coming from a ship. Rather,
this invocation of a ship cutting through the ocean comes from the friction
of a man’s hand brushing, in circles, across the taught surface of a ravanne, a
drum heard in the Indian Ocean’s archipelagos, in India and on the Eastern
shores of Africa. Men, dancers from La Réunion, Mauritius, Madagascar,
India, Sri Lanka and South Africa, move in the semi-darkness. They com-
prise the La Réunion-based Theatre Taliipot. They call out names taken from
archives around the Indian Ocean as placeholders for women, men, girls and
boys who were carried into slavery, apprenticeship and indenture. Although
the publicity for the performance referred to it as a ritual that invokes
“timeless heroes who opened up paths to freedom”, heroism’s triumphalism
elides the repeated horrors as well as the most humble acts of survival by the
generations of subjects and citizens in the nations of the Indian Ocean.
The lives and experiences of people caught up in the demand for unfree
labour reach across time and merge, just as the waters of the Indian Ocean
merge and link Mumbai with Mombasa; Mahé Island with Zanzibar, Pemba,
Northern Mozambique, Tanzania, Malawi, the Comoros, Muskat and Sur
Masirah, Madagascar, Sudan with Mumbai and Muskat, South Sulawesi with
South Africa, Mauritius; La Réunion with Uttar Pradesh; Mogadishu with
Muscat, Colombo with Chennai, Diego Garcia with Perth. Their coerced move-
ments link the Indian Ocean through disruption and displacement as much as
through continuity. These forms of unfreedom are at the heart of this ocean’s
modern emergence. They express the different but coerced itineraries of
Africans and Asians in a region that was radically transformed by trade—Arab,
European, Asian, American—and by colonial capitalism and abolitionism.
150 beingbbbbeing

That those captured into slavery or enticed into indenture are not fully
lost is politically important to acknowledge. Their heirs are the nations
around and within the Indian Ocean, as well as further afield and across
the world in the Caribbean, the Americas, Europe, Asia and the so-called
Middle East. Projects of national or regional historiography, of recuperation
and re-narration, and even reparation have particular salience for and within
these communities. But they depend on learning to listen to what remains in
and of those vanished persons and the systems that effected their disappear-
ance. While respectful of those recuperative efforts, my concern in this essay
is with readings of archives and the practice of interrogating the unfulfilled
and often betrayed promises that structured and signified the transformation
from slavery into apprenticeship, slavery into indenture, and indenture to
free labour: promises that were broken but which nonetheless and at the
same time provided a motive force for transformations in the forms and
organization of labour. For the enslaved and for slavers these promises
functioned differently. But, as in so many cases, this history has largely
been understood from the position of the dominant, which has survived in
print, as record, and finally as historical truth. Yet the “face” of this “truth”
is presented as coherent, orderly and organized. My concern is to look again
and to see how the strategies for creating this impression were, themselves,
confronted by the predicaments of those displaced into coerced labour.
In all of its zones—the northwest, the southwest, the northeast—the
Indian Ocean is awash with the evidentiary trace of the people who faced
the horizons of those often broken, always deferred, promises. Any critical
or recuperative historiographical effort to follow the traces of the so-called
marginal cannot escape the fact that such traces are themselves scattered and
that this scattering is revealing of the failures of colonial and slaving intent
as well as the violent responses to mask or redress these failures. It is for this
reason that I speak of the archipelagic nature not only of the Indian Ocean
but of the archives themselves: archipelagos of archives.
These archives are housed in physical and centralized depots in and
around the Indian Ocean, and in those imperial and mercantile centres of
Europe, the Americas, in Gulf States, the Middle East and Asia. Through
descendants these formal archives are linked to the informal, in private
homes and (non-archival) institutions, in albums and ribboned boxes, in
family belongings and salt-aired storage rooms, in songs, stories, musi-
cal instruments, in gestures and remembered gestures. Other material
 ataat aataat aat sea 151

reminders exist, of course. Sarah Longair’s chapter in this volume points to

a (fetish-like) potency that still accrues to the accoutrements of slavery such
as a set of slave stocks found in Zanzibar around the time of Independence,
whose destruction the government approved on the grounds that they could
reanimate and racialize historical grievances.
The archival dispersal of which I write is not reducible to the question
of informality or non-institutional knowledge systems. As indicated above,
dispersal also occurs within the formal structures of official archives. Within
assigned categories and the mastering logic of catalogues, I want to argue,
rest the effects and the traces of dispersal and anxieties about dissolution.
This dispersal and dissolution take place on two distinct but related planes.
Dispersal simultaneously entails the way in which names and acts are differ-
ently signified, distributed and sometimes concealed by incommensurable
categories and the effacement of the specificities of the individuals whose
traces, sometimes as fulsome testimonies, sometimes as vague and partial
marks, can be discerned in the documentary record. The dispersal of these
traces accompanies and, in some ways, subtends the dissimulation of the
continuities of unfreedom within the legal and institutional transformations
that ostensibly marked the end of slavery and the emergence of indenture as
its free alternative.
My concern therefore is to reread the residues of these doubled processes
within the archival records that were generated inside slavery and the system
of indentured labour that was created to replace it in the Indian Ocean. My
focus is upon the British colonial archive.2 Can we descry how those histor-
ical compulsions that surfed into the horizons of promise conjured before
the enslaved and indentured, reached through the long nineteenth century—
long because the processes of emancipation and indenture did not cease at
the century’s end but continued the unfolding of unfreedom well into the
twentieth century and even the present day. Returning to formal archives
to reconsider the histories of transformation effects a return to the histories
of dissimulation that haunt the interstices of the social orders which have
ostensibly been purged of the violent institutions of slavery and indenture.
It generates a two-fold set of concerns, embedded within a single question:
what happens to the promise of freedom when it cannot be separated from
processes of dissimulation that relentlessly present unfreedom as liberation?
And how can the compulsions of dissimulation be undone?
152 beingbbbbeing

Acts and forces

Although there had been decrees and other measures abolishing or limit-
ing slavery in its various institutional forms around the world and across
centuries, two decisions between March and December 1807 gave nine-
teenth-century abolitionists special cause for hope. These decisions were the
United States of America’s Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves and the
British Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.3 The territorial scope of the British
Act alone was vast, given the geographical expanse of British imperialism.
The British aspired to a nearly universal prohibition, grounded in a reformed
humanism and spurred by economic rationales that looked more and more
to the economic opportunities of laissez faire market relations and the relative
profitability for capital of waged labour. Celebration was tempered by a fun-
damental reality however. While the American and British Acts banned the
importation of slaves, domestic slavery remained legal and, although both
Acts anticipated an extension of abolition and a future of freedom for the
once enslaved, the massive economic enterprise of slave trading, specifically
“in” Africans, would not and did not go easily. Neither the institutions nor
the consciousness that depended on slavery could be transformed without
broader, structural and ideological changes. And for this reason, the gap
between the abolition of the trade and of slavery itself was often conceived—
by people of differing ideological commitments—as a problem of time, or
as a promise to be resolved; a horizon to be reached. This was itself dissim-
ulated in the notion that the formerly enslaved needed to be prepared for
their freedom through a period of apprenticeship, and that those dependent
on slavery would need to be persuaded through compensation for labour
lost. This period of “preparation” was, in effect, a period of persuasion that
racialized vagrancy laws to keep many of those emancipated in situ with for-
mer “owners”. This is what Françoise Vergès might include in her argument
about French abolition to describe such a period as un moment ambigu.4
To enforce the intent of its Abolition Act, the British government under-
took a tripled approach of international and maritime policing, as well as
bureaucratic surveillance and enforcement. The US and Britain, as well as
other European powers, also relied upon the efforts and effects of missioni-
zation in the argument for gradual change. Linked with exploration activities
within Africa, missionaries and missionization facilitated treaty negotiations
with African Chiefs, aimed at disrupting the trade at “the source”. On the
“demand” side, treaties were negotiated with trading nations in Europe and
 ataat aataat aat sea 153

the Americas or, as a Select Committee of the House of Lords referred to

them, “various civilized States”, a phrase that sounds the alarm about any
presumption that Britain’s diplomacy was symmetrical. The category of
“civilized State” specifically precluded parity between African chieftainships
and European states or their agents.
Nevertheless, the British government charged its Admiralty with
intercepting vessels in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the
Mediterranean, while working with treaty signatories in the waters off the
Americas and Caribbean islands.5 America maintained a small squadron of
prevention ships in the Caribbean between 1819 and 1861. In adherence to
the 1817 Anglo-Portuguese Convention for the Prevention of the Slave Trade,
the Brazilian colonial government policed that coast between the ports of
Campos and Santos from 1819 to 1822, during which time around 14,000
Africans were rescued from slavers and manumitted.6
A network of maritime courts was established or enhanced in all
ports where treaty courses operated on the West and East African coasts,
in the Arabian Gulf, in the West Indies, off South America, and in the
South Atlantic. Between 1819 and 1871, in accordance with their treaties,
Commissioners representing the Netherlands, Spain, France, Portugal and
Britain sat in judgment on seized vessels.
Britain’s Indian Ocean fleet operated into the last decade of the nine-
teenth century, rescuing Africans from the holds of vessels.7 The trade also
remained tenacious in North-East Africa until the British-Egyptian 1880
Convention for the Suppression of the Slave Trade Act, when that traffic into
and through Turkey, from North Africa, East Africa and the Caucasus was
finally hampered. The Admiralty Fleet also stationed itself at Malta to patrol
the Mediterranean and liberate captives moved out of North Africa.
It was not until the mid-1840s that there was any real indication of the
impact of the British and American Acts, and this was only along West Africa
and the North Atlantic. Success was once again tempered. The trade had
pushed south, past Angola and into the Bight of Benin.8 The significant
increase was in the Indian Ocean, especially in the Mozambican Channel and
along today’s Tanzanian and Kenyan coasts, where ships from the Americas,
the Gulf States and Britain purchased slaves who had been forced-marched
from the African interior. Indeed, this abduction from Africa’s interior had
constituted a key rationale for missionizing abolitionists, who argued that
their own entry into the continental interior could intervene in and interrupt
such trade.9
154 beingbbbbeing

To give an indication of the scope of this increase, Charles Hotham, the

Commander of the HMS Penelope, reported to the Secretary of the British
Admiralty in August 1848 that some 10,000 Mozambican slaves had been
landed at Havana between May and June 1846. He cited this as evidence that
traders had found a way to avoid seizure off the West Coast by expanding to
the Indian Ocean, making use of, and expanding, older European, American
and Omani trade routes and infrastructures.10
Those rescued were most commonly called Liberated Africans, Captured
Negroes, Recaptives, Returnees or Emancipados. Few were returned to their
birthplaces or homes. The reality for the majority of those liberated in the
Atlantic and Indian Oceans was “apprenticeship” in places from which they
would never return, and which were often the same places into which they
would have been sold. Thus, for example, Africans liberated from in the
Middle Passage were taken to plantations and public works in the West Indies
or to the vineyards at the Cape of Good Hope once they had recovered from
the debilitations of the slaving voyage. Closer to the West African coast, they
were taken to Sierra Leone. Liberated in the Indian Ocean, they were delivered
to putatively safe havens in Cape Town, Durban, Mauritius, the Seychelles,
Freretown, Aden and Mumbai. Others were drawn into mission projects,
such as those in Sierra Leone or in areas around Zanzibar, in Aiden and out-
side Mumbai where villages of converts were supposed to counter slavery and
Islam, as well as to establish friendly trading partners and intermediaries to
facilitate local relations.11 Some were apprenticed to the British or Portuguese
navies for service in the navy, colonial armies or police forces. Not slaves,
but not entirely free, and in fact obligated to work as apprentices, Liberated
Africans were inserted into contexts that had not changed. With increasing
labour crises due the growing pressure of anti-slaving laws and policies,
planters and others reliant upon slave labour wrote of crops unharvested and
of profits declining. In this excitable air, the “apprenticed” African labour
attracted immediate attention, and that led to appeals for access to them.
Although the means, knowledge and will to restore people to the places
from which they had been abducted were limited, the authorities of liber-
ationist institutions often justified the “transfer” of Africans to unfamiliar
ground on the basis of their supposed vulnerability to recapture “at home”.
In 1875, for example, a British Consul-General at Zanzibar (and formerly of
the Seychelles), Major W.F. Prideaux, cautioned against the establishment of
Liberated African settlements on the East Coast of Africa, particularly around
Zanzibar. Even if settled within the protection that the Sultan had guaranteed
 ataat aataat aat sea 155

through the 1873 Slave Trade Suppression Treaty, Prideaux argued, they
would still be at risk of being raided and kidnapped into slavery again.12
Neither should they be returned to their homes or any place on the East
African mainland, considerations that he described as “highly inexpedient”.13
Apprenticeship in so-called safe places that promised Liberated Africans
“indisputable welfare” in the Indian Ocean was clearly what men like
Prideaux had to believe in—given his investment in the salvationist enter-
prise revealed in the high moral tone of his report. His evidence came in the
form of an anecdote. It was not first hand, but told by the Anglican Bishop
of Mauritius, Bishop Vincent Ryan, who narrated the response of children
liberated to Mauritius when it was suggested that they be sent home to teach
their people trades that they had learned on the island. According to Ryan,
the children refused any further instruction: “Why should we learn and
labour, when the only reward of our industry will be that we should be sent
to our people, who will either kill us or sell us again into slavery”. Questions
about redaction and the collective voice of the “we” and “our” aside, Prideaux
used this anecdote to energize his superiors’ moral sensibilities and convince
them of his position. He went so far as to say:

the only way to harmonize the liberated slave, is to remove him far away
from the contaminating influences of his past life. Sentimental consid-
erations should not be allowed to stand in the way for, in the districts
which supply the slaves, a man’s nearest relations are generally his
worst enemies and the sale of a son by his father is an incident of daily
occurrence.14

Such generalizations share the rhetorical pitch of the reported speech of the
children on Bishop Ryan’s Anglican mission. Questionable, they nonetheless
show more than the expected outcome of a belief in one nation’s moral
obligation of “guardianship” over others in arenas in which that nation’s
actions exacerbated conflict and risk. There is a recognition of the internal
hierarchies and social conflicts in the communities from which slaves
were drawn—whether these preceded the trade and were mobilized by it or
whether they were the result of the interventions of slavery into the social
fabric of the African communities being ravaged by its intrusion. And there
is a concern, however superior or imperial, for the destiny of the liberated.
The gap between the ideal and lived consequences of liberation, as it
was conceived by Prideaux, is summed up in his warning that, even though
156 beingbbbbeing

Britain had appointed itself the “guardian of the liberated African”, it “should
provide for his [sic] actual indisputable welfare, and not use him as an instru-
ment for any ulterior purpose, however philanthropic it may be”.15 Freedom
was to be given for freedom’s sake and as a means to enter the epistemic
and moral order of Enlightenment practice. No doubt Prideaux’s criticism
pointed to the propagandist work that missionaries encouraged—specifically
the missionaries who had already been setting up villages on the East Coast of
Africa. But it was also congruent with, or at least did nothing to undermine,
the fact that Liberated African men could be automatically signed on to serve
in the British colonial military and police as free to work in the interest of
freeing then policing others.
Prideaux’s ambivalent concerns about the fate of the Liberated Africans
were not new. Reports about the abuse of the British apprenticeship system
surfaced in the colonies within a few years of the 1807 legislation, and again
around the time of Abolition, as well as in the 1870s. Citing one early case
involving 117 enslaved East Africans on board the Portuguese Constantia,
which ran aground north of Cape Town in 1808, Christopher Saunders points
out that in the Cape Colony indenture simply meant unpaid labour, slavery
by another name, without any commitment to what an apprenticeship would
entail.16 In 1838, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Glenelg, warned
that apprenticeship of Liberated Africans in the British West Indies could
become a simplistic replacement of slave labour.17 Thirty-eight years later,
Rear Admiral Cumming informed a Royal Commission that landing Liberated
Africans into apprenticeship at the Seychelles was “equal to banishing them
entirely” for a “miserable pittance” in conditions “worse than slavery”.18
Amid the allegations about the nature of apprenticeships, accusations also
arose about profiteering from liberation itself. In January 1873, Seychelles
Governor Gordon was compelled to respond to newspaper reports of an
accusation by Henry Morton Stanley that British Naval officers were hiring
out Liberated Africans to planters in the Seychelles.19 He claimed that for
every Liberated African landed at the Seychelles and sent into indenture the
English government received between five and ten Maria Teresa Thalers
or something like 22 to 220 pounds sterling. Governor Gordon denied the
accusations.20 Rather, he claimed, Liberated Africans “entered” into a contract
with “an employer before a stipendiary magistrate, not for the benefit of the
Government, but for their own, at a regular rate of wages, from which no
deduction is made, or allowed to be made, to meet any claim on the part of the
Government.” Immediate entry into indenture was, for Gordon, a necessary
 ataat aataat aat sea 157

deflection of “great suffering and mortality among the Africans” and a way
of ensuring that their presence would not become “a curse to the rest of the
community”. Nevertheless, he had to admit that it was “true that a fixed fee
is paid to the Government by the employer on allotment to him of a liberated
African, just as an indenture fee is paid in many colonies on the engagement
of coolie labourers; but the amount of this fee … is fixed under regulations”.
Whether Prideaux’s idealistic perception of British guardianship and
the sentiment shared with Bishop Ryan’s generically fabular account of the
liberated children, or Stanley’s accusations and Governor Gordon’s hedging
defence of the treatment of Liberated Africans on the Seychelles, each cannot
extract himself from an overall sense of “clamour” and excitability surrounding
Africans. This excited rhetoric reached across the Atlantic, into the Caribbean
and off South America, and throughout the Indian Ocean and up into the Gulf
Arabian Sea; indeed, into every place in which they had been taken as slaves.

Contract with freedom—a horizon of solutions

Governor Gordon’s rebuttal of Stanley’s accusations rested upon the idea

of the contract. The weight given to the contract attributed to the Liberated
Africans a rationally self-interested, economically calculating subjectivity—
precisely that kind of capitalist subjectivity that the British government
claimed it wanted to cultivate through apprenticeship. Apprenticeship was
essentially a medium to force the liberated to become what they were destined
to be, the contract a revelation to them of this unknown destiny. Moreover,
this strange, assigned identity freed the planters from their culpability in
contracting labour on terms that the indentured did not understand or could
not refuse. And, of course, that raw, base reality of the demand for labour
remained. “Apprenticed” African labour, supposedly “freely” given, was in
this sense doubly appealing to local planters and other would-be masters and
mistresses. An initial antipathy to the abolition of slavery was thus converted
into eagerness for apprentices. Yet ambivalence remained. The colonial
government’s intrusion into local affairs generated considerable resentment.
And the expanding economy of empire was not to be sustained by the mere
conversion of the previous populations of unfree into freed labour, and the
diminution of the plundered populations strained its growing scope.
Petitions were sent to Governors, Governors sent the petitions to the
Colonial Office in Britain. Yet even when granted apprentices, the need for
158 beingbbbbeing

labour could not be satiated. In the space in which developing views about
“free” labour and local desires did battle, African labour became too prob-
lematic—it allowed the metropole to increase its scrutiny of local affairs and
was costly to traffic. And thus, into the horizon of an ostensible (African)
freedom South and Southeast Asians were inserted through the regime of
indenture—as “Coolies”. Indentured Indian labour appeared from the per-
spective of British colonial authorities, and their liberal allies, to be an “ideal”
alternative because agreements entered into were framed as voluntary and
thus appropriate to free market logics.
This was not mere coincidence with the abolition of African slavery.
Abolition became the impetus for stepping up a practice of sourcing labour
from India and China, amongst other places that were believed to be sources
of inexpensive labour.21 There had been a long tradition of moving labour
from the colonies of the Dutch East Indies to other sites where the Dutch
East India Company held sway. The system of indenture allowed Britain to
do so similarly. Sourcing labour from India was instigated as early as 1816
when the East India Company’s Governor General of Bengal made provision
to supply convict labour to Mauritius and its dependencies, thereby supple-
menting slave labour on government works as well as on plantations.22 At a
glance, convict labour, like slave labour, appears to lack the presumption of
freely entered contract; the distinction is nevertheless unstable. To accept it
is also to accept the liberal fetish of decision-making, the idea of a self-inter-
ested and calculating subject, and of course it presumes the equal knowledge
and capacities of the parties to enter the bargain, as it were.
Not that all officials were swayed by the presumption of the freely
entered contract, not for Liberated Africans and not for Indentured Indians
or Indentured Immigrants, as Indians were referred to on Mauritius. The
continuity between the fate of Liberated Africans and that of the Indentured
Indians emerged during interrogations of naval officers and colonial officials
by an 1876 Commission of Inquiry into Britain’s obligations to those liber-
ated and to treaty nations.23 When a former judge of the Seychelles, Francis
Fleming, was examined about the contract system in the Seychelles the
Commissioners were already suspicious of the notion of the freely entered
contract as it applied to Liberated Africans and, by extension, to Indentured
Indians in Mauritius.
Fleming could not see the connection, no matter how the Commissioners
framed the queries about the possibilities of refusal. Despite his use of terms
such as “brought” and “allotted” when referring to apprentices, he insisted
 ataat aataat aat sea 159

that they were free from coercion. His account of how Liberated Africans
were entered into a five-year contract upon landing at the Seychelles was
a tableau of mutuality in which “[t]he Master and the liberated African
both went before the District Judge and the contract was explained to both
parties, and then they entered into it”.24 Pressed on whether “the” Liberated
African was asked if he [sic] wanted to enter into this arrangement, Fleming
replied flatly that “he was asked”. Pressed further whether this representative
Liberated African always answered in the affirmative, Fleming had to admit
that he did not know if anyone ever said they “wished to enter into” a con-
tract. He “did not know of any instance of” refusal. The possibility of refusal
seemed incomprehensible.
At that point of the examination, Commissioner Campbell asked if
Fleming knew whether Indentured Indians taken to Mauritius had any option,
to which Fleming implied that the question whether there was an option
was moot since it was not an issue by the time the indentured worker was
landed at Mauritius. And, finally, when the Commissioner asked bluntly if he
considered a Liberated African to have any greater option than an Indentured
Indian, Fleming simply could not say. Refusal or an attempt to break a con-
tract had never arisen for him: “I never knew an African to say ‘I will not
enter into the contract.’ If that question had arisen I do not know what would
have become of him because there is no provision for a liberated African if
he does not choose to work”.25 Yet the police records in the Seychelles and
Mauritius clearly answer this question. The “idle” or dissolute were deemed
to have broken the law, as vagrants, and they were sent to prison to labour in
government works before being returned to their masters/employers.
The movement of indentured Indians or the girmitya, those who went
“under agreement”, might be considered shackled by the terms established
at slavery’s end, where the claim of free entry into contract marked the point
of supposed difference from slavery. Indians left their homes for contracts in
cane fields in the Caribbean, the Americas, Mauritius, Natal in South Africa,
and for railways in East Africa. The contract gave the appearance that the
indentured were not subject to the strictures of slavery. The documented fact
that the indentured were deemed criminal if they chose to terminate their
contract before its term signals otherwise.
Indian objection to indenture attempted to counter the massive volume
of propagandistic material that suggested there were no real complaints
from those who travelled to, say, Mauritius. This was despite the fact that
a considerable body of evidence suggested a death rate worthy of concern,
160 beingbbbbeing

and conditions of work that would often have failed to pass the standards
demanded (if often violated) in the metropole. Instead, different commis-
sions and reports merely asked returnees how much they felt they had
earned and if they had maintained family roots in India.26 Nonetheless an
1841 report (J.P. Grant’s “Minute on Coolies”) recorded the troubling regular-
ity of the same utterance of many who were examined upon their return to
India: “I have no complaints”.27 This apparent lack of complaint bolstered an
outlook that had already been adopted by the imperial Government of India
in 1836, when a report commissioned at that time advised that there was no
reason to imagine any complaints about ill treatment in Mauritius. Critical to
this reassurance was the insistence that “emigrants go voluntarily, and with a
knowledge of the conditions to which they subscribe”.28 Complaints, if made,
were already nullified by the voluntary status of the work. Freedom was in
this sense a mechanism for transferring responsibility to the contracting,
labouring subject. The indentured worker had made a “choice”.
One might say that this freedom of the contracting, self-indebting
labourer was simultaneously an indemnification of the employer. Indeed,
this view prevailed among colonial authorities in spite of local, Indian public
conversation during the first six years following the British abolition of slav-
ery and Mauritian recruitment of Indian labour. Public debate culminated
in the 1840 Calcutta Commission of Enquiry Report—which had perhaps
prompted Grant to follow up with his “Minute on Coolies”. Long before
Francis Fleming was confounded by the prospect of similarity between
African apprenticeship in the Seychelles and Indian indenture in Mauritius,
the 1840 report raised a clear alarm that the misery of indentured workers,
transported “under the name of free labourers will approach” that of “those
inflicted on the negro in the middle passage of the slave trade.” The history
of slavery for which indenture was an answer and substitute was thus made
into a point of origin that could function as a persistent measure, a moral
ground zero and constantly repeating possibility enshrined in the prediction
of that verb “will”. However, it is timely to note here Marina Carter’s caution
about a simplistic reading of indenture as a new form of slavery. Addressing
the historical perceptions and fears, my argument is that these official docu-
ments and public discussions suggest anxieties that one would become the
other, Further, I am arguing that it is instructive to understand the excitable
sphere in which slavery, apprenticeship and indenture obfuscated the frac-
ture between emancipation/freedom and what W.E.B. Du Bois called after
Karl Marx the “emancipation of labor”.29
 ataat aataat aat sea 161

The continuity always already implied in that verb and the struggle
against its predictions prolonged the acutely reverberating anxieties and
perplexity surrounding the mass movements of people through the Indian
Ocean under the names of liberated, apprenticed and indentured labour.
For what is clear is that freedom of labour is not merely a matter of how a
contract is agreed to but what the conditions of the possibility of entering
such agreement might be—this, even before the conditions of labour present
themselves. The one might become the revelation of the other. The responses
of Seychelles Governor Gordon (to Stanley’s accusations) and Fleming (to the
Royal Commission) reveal how this notion of choice attributed to Liberated
Africans or Indentured Indians was transformed into a convenient rhetoric.
It would not be an overstatement to stress that it is at this level that the conti-
nuities between African slavery, Liberated African apprenticeship and Indian
indenture in the Indian Ocean show themselves. And it is at this level that
the dissimulations of those presumptions and axioms that spoke through
Fleming, or that rendered him so myopic, have to be most scrupulously
analysed in the record, for they reveal precisely the longevity of what scholars
have rightly called the “forces and compulsions of history”.

Acts and compulsions

The deferral of a more complete emancipation expressed tensions between

those opposing sides of the liberal impulse of Abolition and missionization,
with their often-compromised relationship with emerging laissez faire
economics, on one hand, and the determined local plantation economies
which were sometimes bolstered by the loyalties of local colonial officials
on the other. Separated spatially and temporally from the metropole, and
dependent upon, as well as socially immersed in, the small communities
of colonial officialdom, local officials understood the utility and expediency
of meeting local demands by insisting upon using their local knowledge to
interpret the law. They could have recourse to both hypocrisy and necessity,
and their rhetoric often combined the two. Their opponents, who claimed
moral supremacy, could also be accused of having little understanding of
local social and economic realities, or even of their recent profiting from
slavery. Regardless of the rhetorical strategies deployed in the struggle, the
bodies, hearts and minds of enslaved Africans became the terrain on which
these opposing sides did battle.
162 beingbbbbeing

Figure 6.1. Two pages from HMS Columbine’s register of Liberated Africans landed at
Port Victoria on 7 October 1871.
Source: Seychelles National Archives.
ataat aataat aat sea 163
164 beingbbbbeing

Figure 6.2. Detail from HMS Columbine’s register.

Source: Seychelles National Archives.

How did this moment of transformation enter the archival record? And
what can we learn from this archive about the ways in which slavery and
its abolition in the Indian Ocean influenced and haunted the systems of
indenture that would later merge the coastal worlds of the Indian Ocean in
new ways? Such questions ask for re-readings of the material practices and
discourses produced in the effort to enforce this end that was not one.
Something of the larger task of an analysis of slavery and its end has to
be addressed here. This analysis has typically entailed chronological demar-
cations, metrics, scale and calculations of economic consequences, as well as
 ataat aataat aat sea 165

the discernment of economic motive and ideological rationale. The archives

upon which this analysis has rested have been read with reference to specific
conceptual categories, and these categories are themselves embedded in the
archives as structuring principles: law and juridical transformation; trade
and international relations; labour and wages; land and title; social status and
sovereignty; slave and apprentice. On the basis of that doubled relationship
between the terms of analysis and the structure of “the” archive, scholars
have questioned these records for what they reveal about the ideological con-
tests waged between missionaries, economic liberals, apologists for empire
166 beingbbbbeing

and others. On a bureaucratic level, the forms of documents themselves

require re-reading to better understand how they function, and to materialize
and communicate something of their structural logic.
As has been suggested in this chapter thus far, the high-minded discourse
about the shift from the regime of slavery to the regime of apprenticeship
and indenture was compromised by those practiced demands for labour that
traversed both. And, as has been further indicated, the confrontation of de
jure ideal with de facto reality generated perceptual and epistemic, as well
as moral anxieties among colonial authorities and abolitionists, as well as
slavers. With the notable exceptions of testimonies encouraged and collected
by missionaries, and in instances where they were called to give evidence,
the Liberated Africans’ reactions to being captured, liberated and passed
into apprenticeship constitute a minute fraction of the voluminous records
produced by parliamentary debates, commissions of inquiry, surveys and
reports. The genre of slave narrative did not apply to them in a strict sense,
as they were not slaves. They were subjects of the Royal Crown but subjected
to the Crown’s approval of apprenticeship, and they were not entirely free.
Outside familial memories and forms of cultural performance such as songs
or dance, much of the subjectively perceived actuality surrounding individual
Liberated Africans comes from these records, however. Depositions taken
for Royal Commissions of Inquiry were constrained by the parameters of
inquiry, which concerned themselves with the facts of what happened, where,
and when, and with the effectiveness of the law. What the newly liberated
“felt” or “thought” about their experiences was not of concern for the form of
inquiry that was the official record of event and process. The archival record
does not bother itself with the interpretation or signification of that vague
concept, freedom, as it might have been perceived by the formerly enslaved.
But it does reveal an enormous concern on the part of the colonial author-
ities about their capacity of oversight and control. Here, too, the restraint
of a single essay that reads the record for what it reveals forecloses on an
engagement with first person narratives that do exist, even in the form of
court testimonies or brief answers to brief questions by naval commanders.
A sense of “not knowing” permeates documents that attempt to assert
the metropole’s aspirations. A lack of certainty was not only an unexpected
effect of asking whether African apprentices or indentured Indians entered
their contracts freely or had the option of declining. “Not knowing” was
exacerbated in and around all British colonies that had maritime dealings in
all contexts where slavery continued. “Not knowing” produced a plethora of
 ataat aataat aat sea 167

documents whose sheer volume and noise attests to the bureaucratic anxiety
of governing the potentially ungovernable. An argument can be made that
every admiralty seizure of a slave vessel, every mission-supported testimonial
and every prosecution of people found slave trading in contravention of the
law testified to the persistence of the trade, and the trade to the demands
for labour, and the demands for labour to the commodities to which the
world had grown accustomed, whether in Europe, the Americas, the Middle
East, the Gulf States or Asia. Every contravention of an anti-slaving treaty
challenged the authority of each signatory.
As new techniques of governmentality were developed, there also prolifer-
ated discourses and practices of interpretation governed by what we can only
call a practical hermeneutics of suspicion: for example, how to distinguish
from a distance a vessel engaged in ordinary trade and one carrying human
cargo? And, simultaneously, how to pass for a vessel engaged in ordinary
trade and not one carrying human cargo? The traders’ adjustments to British,
Anglo-American, Anglo-Brazilian and other policing actions provoked this
hermeneutics and demanded its refinement, as disguise, obfuscation and
jurisdictional challenges became part of the traders’ practices. For every
technique of decipherment there emerged a new technique of encryption or
occulting. As a result, suspicion inserted itself into all institutions of British
colonial and maritime law, into missionary activity, into economics and
trade, and into relations between colonies and their metropolitan governance
with profound consequences for international relations and national identity
formation. This time of jockeying and instability also had consequences for
what the end of slavery betokened about the changing nature of political,
economic and epistemological power for the imperial centre—not only in
Britain but among competing imperial powers. For the Liberated Africans
and Indentured Indians on (what were for Europe’s eyes) distant Indian
Ocean islands de jure argument and de facto action were simply that—argu-
ment about them.
Debate also raged around measures of keeping track of the African
apprentices and indentured Indians. For the former, the need was to ensure
that local planters would not spirit them away to trade, and for the latter the
need was to ensure that they were not cheated out of their wages through,
for instance, impersonation or what we might now call “identity theft”. But
in truth, what had been generated by anti-slavery and indenture was a new
round of mass movements of peoples across the Indian Ocean, from Asia
and Southeast Asia into the Caribbean and to the Americas. Chinese joined
168 beingbbbbeing

Indians, Sri-Lankans, as well as Africans and others sought by colonial inter-

ests. This mass had to be tracked, controlled.
Of all the bureaucratic attempts to support legislation, one device claimed,
or performed a claim to, certitude. This was the form of the register, which
shared histories of accounting and categorizing, histories of cargo manifests
that provided salient details about goods or passengers. For passengers
and cargo alike, the primary concern was the same: quantities (numbers of
classes of things, volume, weight) at embarkation and disembarkation. For
passengers, of course, these numbers had different entailments, for they
implied needs as well, and thus additional provisions, additional cargo.
Three types of Register were created to keep account of slavery’s tran-
sition into contracted labour: the Register of Liberated Africans, the Slave
Register and the Register of Indian Immigrants. The Register of Liberated
Africans was created in 1808. By 1823 it existed simultaneously with slave
registers legislated in all British colonies. Both forms of register were created
in situ and sent to the Colonial Office’s Registry of Colonial Slaves.30 Slave
Registers were updated triennially. Registers of Liberated Africans and the
later Registers of Indian Immigrants (Indentured Indians) were created as
groups embarked (Indentured Indians) or were landed (Liberated Africans).
The details of these Registers were updated when any change in an individu-
al’s circumstances could be noted.
The purpose of both African registers was threefold—to enable identifi-
cation of slaves trafficked illicitly, to keep track of those enslaved before 1807,
and to perform the transcendence of the Colonial Office’s and hence the
Law’s, oversight, i.e., across distance and time. That the Slave Register shared
the structure of the Register of Liberated Africans reveals something of the
asynchrony of the transition and alerts us to the fact that the history was
not that of linear progression, but perhaps also one of “catch up” in which
legislators had still to accommodate the fact that slavery, as an institution,
continued and, as such, still needed to find its objects—slaves.

The future anterior of liberation

It is possible to imagine the column titles of the Register of Liberated

Africans as performing a kind of bureaucratic visual grammar and social syn-
tax that nominates, categorizes, identifies and disposes of people according
to left-right reading practices. While such columns were not unique to the
 ataat aataat aat sea 169

Seychelles register, there is in their progression a phantom rhetoric whose

force guides their progress and consequence.
Its column headings reveal that grammar: Number, Sex, Name, Father’s
or Mother’s Name, Age, Stature (sometimes Height), Marks (sometimes
Distinguishing Marks), Date of Landing (or Port), Date of Registration and,
finally, the heading “How Disposed Of”. In that progression which is moving
not only in the familiar (European) direction of left to right reading, but also
in the sense of moving “forward”, the final “say” is given to the planters.
Their names, and not the slaves’ names, appear in that last column as the
ones who were “pre-disposed” to receive fresh, supposedly legal labour,
the cost of which was to be supplemented by the apprenticeship system’s
compensations.
Given Prideaux’s recourse to a Kantian categorical imperative, the title
of that last column, “How Disposed Of ”, is a harrowing mark and index
of instrumentalization. There is no escaping the implication that there is
an agent of a transitive verb, the one who did the disposing, but this figure
cannot be seen. The object to which something is being done, the category
of person called “Liberated African”, is also completely effaced. Power simul-
taneously conceals itself as agent and enacts its agency, while the agency of
the disempowered is doubly negated. In the left to right reading, the name of
the Liberated African subject is absorbed into disposal and into the sublime
opaque face of mastery behind a master’s or mistress’s name. In the very
syntax and grammar of the register of liberation there is the demonstrable
persistence of slavery’s logic, which comes back as a ghostly but potent force.
It came back because it was being hidden—not absent, but hidden and there-
fore persistently immanent to the economy of liberation itself.
In the left to right reading conventions, the Liberated Africans have
already been given western names, and in the register’s logic the children
precede their mothers or fathers, even as their mothers or fathers fade into
the past by still another identifying practice, that of noting the marks on
each body or, in Hortense Spillers’ distinction, in the flesh. For the Liberated
Africans, who are not supposed to be slaves, the word “slave” might have
been removed, but the column of distinguishing marks keeps them con-
signed within the same “ruling episteme” that Spillers identifies as having
the power to name and assign value: the “original metaphors of captivity and
mutilation”.31
But the continuities evidenced in the transformation of the Slave Register
could also be found elsewhere. For example, entwined within the promised
170 beingbbbbeing

solution of indentured Indian labour was a system of middlemen, the

Kangani/recruiter system that resembles and might be called a reappearance
of the same functionary of slavery. The Kangani system arose as another set
of middlemen, often using the same practices and plying the same routes
as had their predecessors. What Fleming took as moot, the contractual
agreement that preceded an indentured Indian’s landing at Port Louis in
Mauritius, was not always what it might have appeared to be at that landing.
Take, for example, the following testimony:

I was told I could get ten rupees a month wages, food and clothing…I
asked how far Meritch was; they said five days’ journey, and that if I
pleased I could remain in service there or return; they thus deceived me
and got me on board.32

Or a note in Grant’s 1840 “Minute of the Coolie Question”:

See a story of a woman dragged by three Coolies going to Mauritius, and

so carried off…not allowed to return though she vehemently prayed to
do so, “as having been illegally cudpurled,” because she was shipped as
a Coolie.33

And:

A case of endeavouring to kidnap a woman who was dragged and shut up

in a box. Capt. Birch’s Evidence.34

Kidnappings and raids occurred alongside, or through the lure of, promises
of wealth and freedom from the restrictions of caste. Many were compelled
with no other option than to take on indenture to settle family debt. Their
contract was their bond, and this was something like a second bondage—that
to senior kinspeople, elders or other creditors and that to the new employers.
The practices that drew upon Indian labour were shaped by the same
ideological perspectives that remained inclined to hierarchy, to profit,
and to simply transferring attitudes from one kind of labour to another.
Stereotyping of Africans as in need of restraint or incapable of self-disci-
pline was supplemented by stereotyping of “coolies” as limp and without
aspiration—even in official discourse.35 Indeed, the misappropriated word
“Coolie” itself continued the pejorative and exclusionary terminology of
 ataat aataat aat sea 171

plantations.36 African slaves might have been replaced by Indian grim-

itaya, but plantation consciousness remained intact. Whether “Nigger”
or “Coolie”, the crops required attention, and functional continuity at the
level of labour performed was accompanied by a continuity in the organ-
ization of daily life in many regards for those performing it, as has been
well documented.37 A register renamed, one pejorative term substituted by
another.38

New forms of return and registration

Keeping track of Liberated Africans and Indentured Indian workers by rely-

ing on names, and in the case of Liberated Africans those distinguishing
marks, proved inadequate in spite of strict rules about maintaining the
register. Even with descriptions and newly assigned, non-”native” names,
the Seychelles government sometimes “lost” individuals. In 1877, for exam-
ple, the Chief Civil Commissioner, C.S. Salmon, could not account for 305
Liberated Africans: 181 men, six boys, 117 women and one girl.39 He listed
them as “residence unknown”. In 1878, 233 out of 2,095 were once also
listed as “residence unknown”. Some “might” have been taken to Mauritius
or “other islands in its jurisdiction”.40 In the same two-year period, Acting
Inspector of Africans, H. Leipsic, also noted discrepancies between the regis-
ter and the reported numbers of deceased Liberated Africans—only 280 out
of 407 deceased had been struck off the register. J.P. Grant’s terse complaint
of 1841 registers the same concerns about disappearances in Mauritius: “out
of 356 Coolies” noted in a ship’s register “only 25 or 30 answered by the name
by which they were shipped.” His complaints echoed earlier reports about
the underlying inadequacies of Mauritian registers.
As official records whose brief was to keep track of the Liberated
Africans and Indian Immigrants during their periods of apprenticeship in
the Seychelles and indenture in Mauritius, these registers were effectively
useless.41 The more that authorities like Leipsic tried to keep track of what
actually happened to Liberated Africans or Indian Immigrants, the more the
instruments of verification revealed their inadequacies. In the Seychelles,
people were disappearing, perhaps sold away again, and the inadequacy of
“information” called “distinguishing marks” only indicted the register as a
failed instrument of surveillance and identification in a context of relative
and ironic mobility—the apprenticed were supposedly moving voluntarily.
172 beingbbbbeing

Saving face

By 1862, the struggle to keep track of apprentices and indentured workers

produced new measures with new instruments. In Mauritius (as in other
Mascarene islands under its jurisdiction), Ordinance No. 16 of 1862 installed
a “pass” system. Indentured Indians had to carry a “ticket” of identification.
Unlike the register, the ticket was to serve both the colonial record keepers
and the bearer—and it was mobile. By contrast, the Liberated Africans reg-
ister remained bound to an official’s office. It was still consulted to prove
identity, for official purposes and not as an instrument of self-identification.
One symbolic difference was that the Mauritian identity ticket supposedly
extended the “seeing eye” of the law, which reached to wherever the bearer
presented herself or himself, while the register underscored a fundamentally
unwieldy bureaucracy. And once again, what was evident in one reflected
and even redoubled upon the other. The register’s unreliability was repeated
in the ticket’s vulnerability to being stolen or lost. And, as with the vagueness
of descriptions, the ticket shared the futility of reliance upon an “officially
recorded” name. Although indentured workers were encouraged to use sav-
ings banks, there was no way to prove that the man or woman presenting the
ticket to withdraw monies was or was not the one named.
A newer technology seemed to offer a solution. Over 50 years after the
banning of the slave trade and some two generations into the epoch of puta-
tively free labour, photography arrived and offered itself as a supplement and
source of stability.42
In 1864, the Acting Protector of Immigrants in Mauritius, H.N.D. Beyts,
wrote to the Colonial Secretary to suggest that the addition of a “portrait” to
the ticket/identity document would check “false personations, desertions and
other offences, of which immigrants render themselves guilty by producing
and using tickets which are not their own.”43 At last, the “truth” value of the
photograph offered some certainty. Was not the copy of the face in the photo-
graph proof of the face before it?44
In the Seychelles, the register did not give way to the mobile pass or ticket
system. Instead, what might be called the earliest passport-sized photographs
appeared in a new column in the Liberated African register after 1867. Once
again, what happened with the register has something to say about the rela-
tionship between intent and actual consequence, certainly in the case of the
Liberated Africans. On the surface, this new device would seem to suggest
that a limit had been reached in the continuity of official record. But the
 ataat aataat aat sea 173

overall system of which the register was a constitutive part remained intact.
The older apparatus had merely absorbed the new technology of surveillance,
while giving the renewed format the appearance of precision and perfected
knowledge. This technological development was introduced into governmen-
tal structure where it can be said to have provided the medium in which the
continuity of unfreedom between slavery in indenture was secured for the
purposes of imperial governmentality.
These passport-sized images of the Seychelles register literally put a face
to the number, the assigned name and the distinguishing marks. In this,
the images appear to have been added to bring the weight of ‘truth values’,
derived from the claim to indexicality that had accrued to photography by the
1870s. Yet the indexicality of these photographs does not partake of the affir-
mation of an “I” or a “here”. The dynamic exchange between the announcing
“presence” of an “I” and “thou” that might be assumed in the photograph is
really deflected into the designating “you”, “her”, and “him” of the register’s
record as it creates a category of person who, then, becomes a “they” and
“them”. Just where the “I” of the photograph is, or just how the face in that
photograph understood its image, remains uncertain.
We can read these images against their grain. We can, for example, see in
the photographs of the Seychelles registers something of what Roland Barthes
calls photography’s certifying function. Each photograph, Barthes argues, is
a certificate of “presence”.45 For Barthes, this presence is also produced to
secure memory that is, nevertheless “fabricated according to positive formu-
las”.46 Yet, rather than securing memory, it “actually blocks memory” and
becomes “counter memory”, underscoring the loss of our ability to “conceive
duration, affectively or symbolically”.47 In the context of slavery’s transforma-
tion into apprenticed labour, the photographs of the register anchor figures
in a moment that is simultaneously one of liberation and re-captivity. Hence,
the photograph serves both slavery and anti-slavery projects. Framed as they
are by the logic of the register the photographs did not circulate. Nor could
they function as supplements to memory—either for the one photographed
or for the one who would otherwise seek to recall them as subjects whose
history had given them an image (a distilled significance—as mother, father,
brother, sister or member of a social group). Between those narrow margins
of the register’s new column, they have been “given to be seen” by and as
the immanent presence of power—even when that power was as ineffectual
as officials like C.S. Salomon were. Not so much indexes as symbols, then,
these photographs are like screen images for imperial governmentality. And
174 beingbbbbeing

once again, the one in the image vanishes—is secreted in the moment of
being shown, is abducted in the moment of being liberated.
Such vanishing also has its material reality and second order of indexical-
ity in the Seychelles registers where some photographs have fallen off, been
removed, or damaged. Thus, to take just one example, the HMS Columbine
register of January 1872 contains the damaged photograph of Anesiphon,
who was assigned the number 363, and whose mother’s name is given as
Yahwah Tika. The marks on his photograph could be scratch marks, or they
might have been produced when, at some late moment, the pages of the
ledger were pressed together so tightly—like those pallets on which slaves
were made to lie in the holds of ships—that when opened there was a tearing
and something of the “proof of life” that the photograph claims to show
was torn away on the back of another “Liberated African”. These are not the
distinguishing marks that the register intended to note. Yet they are pre-
cisely the kind of marks that distinguish, symbolically, slavery’s violence and
the subsequent violated promise of liberation. Like all the other Liberated
Africans noted in the pages of the Columbine register, Anesiphon’s appear-
ance leads, in that left to right movement of the trained reading eye, directly
to his “disposal” into apprenticed labour. In effect, he leaves his photograph
behind—it remains in the domain of the register— while he moves on, like
the other members of his group, literally vanishing out of the right-minded
margin of the register’s attempt to secure evidence of his existence.
At the same time that all of these photographs authenticate the claims
made in the register, they reveal and confirm that the Register of Liberation is
submitted to the same (continuing) reality of slavery’s records, its flawed and
vulnerable but nonetheless dissimulating effectivity. They end in the final tally
of ownership or its euphemism, apprenticeship. I remarked earlier upon the
grammar of the column, the sum, the record in the form of the register. Like
all grammar, it is a set of regulations, awaiting its content. The Columbine’s
photographs are, in the end, the register of a persistent demand for “free”
labour—not in the sense that labour is free to sell itself, but in the sense that
plantation economies would not have to pay for it, or at least far less than
would those whose freedom was being promised by the liberationist cause.
In a milieu that was already predisposed to deception, a photograph
might be inserted as one small attempt at a final, irrefutable sign of truth
and presence. But the history to which photography was linked, as a tech-
nology that was long established by 1860, was one in which the need for
captions, for narrative, could never be assuaged, even though the narratives
 ataat aataat aat sea 175

called for photographs to authenticate them. The photographs in the register

suffer from a lack of narrative. The faces stare forward—we cannot say “at
us”—always liminal, between the columns of details for which they are
supplement. But though liminal, they do not move. This is the irony of their
passport size, for the register is a document of arrival, of terminus, and not
a travel document in the sense that a passport, which stands for proof of
nationality and citizenship, accords a bearer the protections of international
law, as well as recognition. These photographs are meant to compel recog-
nition, but recognition remains the prerogative of power, and the subjects
of these photographs remain outside the circuit of self-representation, just
as the photographs remained outside the circuits of social exchange before
and beyond the market. The Liberated Africans, after all, did not have the
experience of affirming their existence in the act of looking at themselves
via the photograph. Neither was the photograph-bearing pass of indentured
labour a real “passport”. Its apparent mobility and freedom to move was itself
inscribed within and captured by the history of slavery out of which it had
grown and for which it promised an alternative. The task for future histori-
ography of this space might be the elaboration of the narrative summoned by
the photograph and waiting to be told as more than a caption.

Notes

1. Originally delivered at “Being a Slave: Indian Ocean Slavery in Local Context,”

29-30 May 2017, Leiden University. Portions of this chapter relating to photo-
graphs in the Seychelles Liberated Africans Register were also delivered at the
Symposium of the British Slave Trade at the John Hope Franklin Center at
Duke University in September 2007, and circulated at the Working Group on
Slavery and Freedom at New York University in March 2010.
2. This focus is expedient for the sake of what is possible to achieve in a sin-
gle essay. It therefore can only allude to, or make passing reference to, the
anti-slaving movements in other contexts, which have to include those within
Arab-speaking countries.
3. Arguments have been made that the British and American abolitionist water-
sheds originated in the American and French revolutions. In the British case,
abolitionists were galvanized by the personal accounts of freed black people
who had fought on the side of the British fleeing to Britain (London) and Can-
ada (Nova Scotia). It is also important to note here the earlier and later bans
176 beingbbbbeing

against the trade, including Denmark’s 1792 ban of trading “new” Africans into
its West Indian Colonies. And, while Cuba ignored Spain’s abolition of slavery
in 1811, that decision contributed to the international anti-slaving momentum.
Sweden banned the trade in 1813, the Netherlands in 1814, and Portugal in 1819.
Although France banned the trade in 1817, this legislation came into effect only
in 1826.
4. Françoise Vergès. “Postface de Françoise Vergès” in Nègre je suis, nègre je
resterai. Entretiens avec Françoise Vergès, by Aimé Césaire and Françoise Vergès,
71-136, 103. Paris: Albin Michel, 2005. In the absence of a vigorous, real debate
about the status of French territories, Vergès argues, France remains unable
to transform economic and social inequality and, thus, redress the effects of
colonial racism. This is the ambiguity of French abolition which has produced
a national myth: le mythe national.
5. The British action began with two vessels in 1808, operating as the West Africa
Squadron which became known as the Africa Squadron, the Anti-Slavery Squad-
ron or Preventive Squadron. Between 1819 and 1869 six vessels flew under this
flag. See Jeff Pardue, “Africa Squadron,” in The Historical Encyclopedia of World
Slavery, edited by Junius P. Rodriguez, 20. Santa Barbara CA; ABC-CLIO, 1997.
6. For example, the Dous de Marco intercepted the Continente, owned by José
Francisco Dutra, on 6 June 1835 near Sao Paulo. The exact number of slaves on
board is uncertain (between 36 and 66). They had originally been on another
slaver, the Aventura, but it is not clear whether they were transferred from it
or had been rescued from it only to be captured again. The Continente and the
Aventura, another slaver, were taken to Rio de Janeiro for trial. The Liberated
Africans were emancipated. See AHI 1835. In Cuba, the Mixed Commission
court operated out of Havana as the Havana Slave Trade Commission, which
liberated some 35,000 Africans between 1824 and 1865. The first ship to be
seized and tried in that court was the Maria da Glória, commanded by Jaoa Jose
Fonseca and Jose Cotarro. It was seized on 16 June 1824 by the Spanish navy
brig, Marte, commanded by Jose Apodaca. While the ship was released because
it sailed under a Portuguese flag and, as such, was not bound by any treaty, the
Spanish government manumitted the Africans but as apprentices.
7. Although the anti-slaving fleet per se was no longer operating in the first dec-
ades of the twentieth century, records show that naval vessels were still actively
liberating captives.
8. The Bight was known on pre-1820 maps as the “Slave Coast”. The Bight of
Benin ceased being a major trading area after Britain took Lagos: David Eltis
and David Richardson, “West Africa and the Transatlantic Trade: New Evidence
 ataat aataat aat sea 177

of Long-Run Trends,” in Routes to Slavery: Directions, Ethnicity, and Mortality in

the Transatlantic Slave Trade, edited by David Eltis and David Richardson, 16.
London: Frank Cass & Company Ltd., 1997.
9. George Lydiard Sullivan (sometimes spelled Sulivan) wrote of his first voyage
into the Indian Ocean as a midshipman of the Castor in 1849 that traders were
operating on behalf of American slavers as well; George Lydiard Sulivan, Dhow
Chasing in Zanzibar Waters and on the Eastern Coast of Africa, Narrative of Five
Years’ Experience in the Suppression of the Slave Trade. London: Sampson Low,
Marston, Low, & Searle, 1873.
10. Charles Hothman. “Letter from Charles Hotham to the Secretary of the Admi-
ralty. August 17. 1848,” in First Report From the Select Committee on the Slave
Trade Together With the Minutes of Evidence and Appendix, 143. London: The
House of Commons, 1849.
11. Those settled in Mumbai were known as the Bombay Africans and it was from
their midst that Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, Henry Morton Stanley
and David Livingstone all sought guides and translators for their explorations
at the suggestion of the President of the Royal Geographical Society and British
Governor to India, Henry Bartle Frere. In the late nineteenth century, some of
these “Bombay Africans” did return to the east coast of Africa to areas around
Mombasa where the Christian Mission Society had established its Mombasa
mission in 1844, which it renamed Frere Town in 1875. Church Missionary
Gleaner, Vol XII.I, March1885, 34.
12. The Church Mission Society had already committed to a settlement of freed
slaves near Mombasa, under the leadership of Reverend Price. The 1873 Treaty,
signed by Sultan Bargash bin Said, Nasir bin Said bin Abdallah and John Kirk
(British Political Agent), closed public slave markets in the Sultan’s dominions
and banned the export and traffic of slaves. No Indian or British subject was
allowed to trade in slaves. For Prideaux see “Captain Prideaux to the Earl of
Derby, 2 January 1875,” in Correspondence with British Representatives and Agents
Abroad, and Reports from Naval Officers relating to Slave Trade, by House of
Commons (1876) Vol. LXX, 327.
13. Prideaux, “Captain Prideaux to the Earl of Derby, 2 January 1875”, 291.
14. Ibid., 292.
15. Ibid., 291.
16. Christopher Saunders, “Liberated Africans and Labour at the Cape of Good
Hope in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” The International Journal
of African Historical Studies 18, no. 2 (1985): 223-239. See especially 228 with
reference to the slave Vileelagani/Nancy.
178 beingbbbbeing

17. Lord Glenelg, “Circular Despatch from Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the
West India Colonies, 15 May 1838,” House of Commons, Liberated Africans: Cor-
respondence Respecting the Treatment of Liberated Africans, Vol. XXXIV, 1840: 3.
18. “Circular Despatch from Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India Colo-
nies, 15 May 1838” in Liberated Africans: Correspondence Respecting the Treatment
of Liberated Africans, by House of Commons, Vol. XXXIV, 1840.
19. “Mr. Stanley in Liverpool.” London Daily News, Friday 8 November 1872: 3.
20. House of Lords. Mauritius. Correspondence respecting the Condition of Liberated
Africans at the Seychelles. Vol. XXIX. [1]: 426.
21. Richard Allen, Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Labourers in Colonial Mauritius,
16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Allen’s research shows
that China, Singapore, Ethiopia and Madagascar were considered as sources of
“inexpensive agricultural labor” for Mauritius, along with India. Although my
attention is on what archives reveal about the relationship between liberated
African apprenticeship and Indian indenture in the Indian Ocean, I do not
want to imply any dismissal of the fact of these interconnected, related mass
movements since they did not exist in isolation—the study of their interrela-
tions still remains a field open to the necessary research and scholarship that
it deserves, a call that Richard Allen has made repeatedly. Indeed, a study of
Chinese indenture in Cuba, for example, shifts the notion that only European
colonial governance busied itself with commissions and inquiries into the
movement and fate of indentured workers. The Chinese government had sent
its own commissioners into Cuba in 1874, and into Peru. See Chinese Emigra-
tion. The Cuba Commission. Report of the Commission Sent by China to Ascertain
the Condition of Chinese Coolies in Cuba. Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs
Press, 1897. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002005464905;view
=1up;seq=7.
22. House of Commons, Papers Relating to East India Affairs, viz. Regulations Passed
by Governments of Bengal, Fort St. George, and Bombay, in the year 1816, Vol. XIII,
1819.
23. House of Lords. Royal Commission on Fugitive Slaves. Report of the Commission-
ers, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix, with General Index of Minutes of Evidence
and Appendix. 1876. Vol. XXXV [i], 1876. See Fleming’s examination: 103-105.
24. House of Commons, Royal Commission on Fugitive Slaves, 388.
25. Ibid. 388.
26. Secretary to Indian Law Commission to H. Prinsep, Secretary to the Govern-
ment of India. IOLR Bengal Public Proceedings. 16 September 1836. The
Colonial Secretary to the Secretary of the Government of India, IOLR Indian
 ataat aataat aat sea 179

Public Proceedings, Range 186, Vol. 99. 9 August 1841. Calcutta Commission
of Enquiry Report. 1840. See 58. Report of the Committee on Indian Labourers,
Bombay. IOL. A Bombay Public Proceedings. Range 347, Vol. 71. 20 Septem-
ber 1839.
27. J.P. Grant, “Minute on the Abuses Alleged to Exist in the Export of Coolies,” in
Hill coolies. Copies of papers respecting the exportation of hill coolies, received from
the government of India; in continuation of those presented to the House of Commons
on the 11th day of February last, by House of Commons Vol. XVI.483, 1841.
28. Emphasis added.
29. See Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834-1874.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995. See also Marina Carter, Unshackling
Slaves: Liberation and Adaptation of Ex-Apprentices. London: Pink Pigeon Press,
2001, for an account of the African slave population on Mauritius post eman-
cipation in April 1839. See W E B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America:
1860-1880, 16. New York: The Free Press, 1998. Carter locates Indian indenture
in Mauritius within the larger scale of recruitments of Indian labour across the
British Empire. See Voices from Indenture: Experiences of Indian Migrants in the
British Empire. London: Leicester University Press, 1996.
30. Slave registers, as opposed to Registers of Liberated Africans, were established
in Trinidad in 1813 and adopted throughout British colonies by the 1820s (the
exceptions being the Cayman Islands and Honduras). See, for example, the
Registry Act of 2 October 1818 for Guiana. A centralized Office for the Registry
of Colonial Slaves was established in London in 1819 to which copies of all
registers kept in colonies were sent. See African Institution, A Review of the
Colonial Slave Registration Acts, in a Report of a Committee of the Board of the
African Institution made on the 22nd of February 1820. London: Ellerton and
Henderson, 1820.
31. Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,”
in Black, White and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, by Hort-
ense Spillers, 208. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
32. “Djoram (Juhoorun) Aya, vide Captain Finniss’ Memoramdum dated 1 st
August 1838”, in Report of the Committee Appointed by the Supreme Government of
India, to enquire into the Abuses Alleged to Exist in Exporting from Bengal Coolies
and Indian Labourers, of Various Classes, to Other Countries; Together with An
Appendix, Containing the Oral and Written Evidence Taken by the Committee and
Official Documents Laid Before Them, by House of Commons, Exhibit No. 10.
Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1839.
33. Grant, “Minute on Coolies”, 6.
180 beingbbbbeing

34. Ibid., 6.
35. George A. Grierson, Report on Colonial Emigration from the Bengal Presidency, 6.
Calcutta: Government of Bengal, 1883.
36. Arthur and Juanita Niehoff, East Indians in the West Indies, 64-65. Milwaukee
WI: Olsen Publishing Co., 1960.
37. In a parallel structure to the notion of servitude, which is not so much a con-
dition of being as a relation of subservience, Mauritian poet Kahl Torabully
has re-signified “Coolie” as a condition no longer subordinate. Reframed as a
historical condition and experience, Torabully’s coinage, “Coolitude”, is expan-
sive and inclusive of shared histories of exile, labour and diasporic formations,
as well as transcultural political genealogies. For a collaboration between
Torabully’s poesis and Marina Carter, historian of the Indian Ocean, see Marina
Carter and Khal Torabully, Coolitude: An Anthology of the Indian Labor Diaspora.
London: Anthem Press, 2002.
38. Repurposing also applied to seized slave vessels, a fact fictionalized in Amitov
Ghosh’s fictional trilogy about Indian Ocean indenture. Repurposing becomes
an ironic continuity in these histories of displacement. On the other hand, the
encounters between displaced peoples produced enabling cultural hybridities
that were invoked by the Ravanne musicians and dancers referred to at the
beginning of this chapter. Through gestures, the recitation of names without
inserting them into genealogies, their performance speaks the losses and
discontinuities that are born of the continuities between slavery and indenture.
See Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy: Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), and Flood
of Fire (2015).
39. C.S. Salmon, “Seychelles Liberated African Report 1878,” in Blue Book Con-
taining Reports on British Colonial Possessions for 1877, 1878, and 1879. 278; The
Acting Inspector of Liberated Africans, H. Leipsic, also added his report to this
document.
40. Salmon, “Seychelles Liberated African Report”, 279.
41. Ibid., 282.
42. By the time the US required Chinese residents to carry identification certifi-
cates that included their photographs (1892) and by the time that the British
Aliens Order (1920) required that all who entered the country carry a passport
with a photograph, this practice had been fully established in the Indian Ocean.
43. House of Lords. Report of the Royal Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the
Treatment of Immigrants in Mauritius. Vol. XLVI. [1]: 218. The idea reportedly
came from Auguste Chasteaneuf, who was Clerk at the Audit Office at the time.
 ataat aataat aat sea 181

44. If Henry Morgan Stanley had been in Mauritius at the time, he might have
levelled accusations about profiteering similar to those he had levelled at Sey-
chelles officials regarding Liberated Africans. At two shillings, the cost of each
photograph was borne by the indentured worker and the profits went to the
photographer. By 1888 the total cost to indentured workers was £20,000. By
the late 1860s one photographer, Alexander Lecorgne, was one of the wealthiest
men in Mauritius.
45. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 87. New York: Hill
& Wang, 1981.
46. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 93. Emphasis added.
47. Ibid, 91.
 7

Acts of Equality
Writing Autonomy, Empathy and Community in
an Indonesian Slave Narrative

Paul Bijl

Introduction

Sometime in the nineteenth century, a formerly enslaved man from the

Indonesian archipelago, Richard Heindrik Wange van Balie (1798–1869),
wrote a memoir of his life as a slave in the Indian Ocean region.1 The mem-
oir begins with his birth, covers his early youth with his family on their small
farm on the island of Magarij, his enslavement and that of his brothers when
he was four or five years old, and his life as the domestic and field slave of
different masters across the Indonesian archipelago up to 1810, when he was
taken to the Netherlands by his last, Dutch owner and finally emancipated.2
Living for the rest of his life in the city of Delft, Van Balie learned how to
read and write Dutch, married, had seven children, and worked in a variety
of occupations, including as a servant, a gardener and a porter.3 Fifty-nine
handwritten pages of this unpublished document, currently in the posses-
sion of Van Balie’s descendant, Ron Siteur, come from a twentieth-century
copy of the original text—a handwritten notebook, now lost. As no other
slave narratives from Indonesia are known, this is, in many ways, a unique
document, the analysis of which is a direct response to the question phrased
by the editors of the current volume in their introduction: “What did it mean
for people to be caught in this Indian Ocean web of slavery?”
In this chapter, I will read the writing of this memoir as well as specific
elements of its contents as what I term “acts of equality”: those acts through
which subjects, no matter who they are, constitute themselves as equal to
all other subjects. I will discuss how Van Balie establishes himself as equal
to his white Dutch readers in three respects: as an individual human being
he is morally autonomous; in terms of interpersonal relationality he writes
184 beingbbbbeing

himself as capable of establishing an emotional bond, such as a friendship,

through mutual empathy; and with regard to nationality he writes of his
origin community as different from yet equal to the Netherlands. His acts of
equality include seemingly modest deeds like reading the newspaper, feeling
the love his father felt for him, and describing the work done on the farm of
his family of origin. These acts have great implications for the moral auton-
omy, empathy and community of not just Van Balie himself, but also of other
black and (formerly) enslaved people. Van Balie’s acts of equality did not
emerge out of nowhere; rather, his narrative can be seen as an appropriation
of particular Enlightenment, Christian and nationalist discourses circulating
in Europe at the time, which offered him the opportunity to write his equality
against the many discourses of (racial) hierarchy he encountered and some-
times reproduced. Through an analysis of this memoir along these lines,
this chapter makes two scholarly points: the first argues for a broadening of
current thinking about equality in slave narratives and abolitionism, while
the second proposes a correction to the rather bleak image of enslaved and
black people in the nineteenth-century Dutch colonial archive.
At the same time, this chapter is a confirmation of some of the historical
insights provided in the chapters in the first part of this volume, in particular
Geelen et al.’s assertion that “for the Indian Ocean World, it is recognized
that ‘forms of status obligation, bondage, and temporary slavery (for debt,
etc.) coexisted with forms of hereditary slavery similar to that in North
America’”—Van Balie, namely, becomes a slave due to his late mother’s
debts, making his a liminal case in between debt and hereditary slavery.
Lodewijk Wagenaar’s remark that in an Indian Oceans context “it is nearly
impossible to meet [enslaved and emancipated subjects] as individuals with
personal identities” is both relativized and confirmed in this chapter, as on
the one hand we have here a striking amount of autobiographical material,
while on the other hand the writing of a self proves always to be subject to
the genres and discourses that are available, pointing to the mediated nature
of any encounter. Moreover, even when ego documents of formerly enslaved
people are uncovered by historians, as in the case of Wange van Balie by
Reggie Baay in his 2015 book on the history of slavery in the Dutch East
Indies, Dutch public and literary attention is hardly grabbed, reflecting the
general lack of interest in the Netherlands in texts written by Indonesians
about the Dutch colonial past.4
 actsaacaacts of 185

Figure 7.1. Portrait of Wange Hendrijk Richard van Bali. Etching by Ernst Willem
Bagelaar.
Source: Rijksmuseum, object number RP-P-BI-245.
186 beingbbbbeing

Acts of equality

I develop the notion of an “act of equality” based on “acts of citizenship”,

coined by Engin Isin and Greg Nielsen in the field of citizenship studies, and
on philosopher Jacques Rancière’s concept of equality.5 Whereas these theories
are primarily concerned with equality in a political sense, Van Balie’s acts can
be more aptly described as establishing social equality. Nevertheless, I argue
that these theories can inform the conceptualization of acts of political as well
as social equality. Isin and Nielsen developed the concept of acts of citizenship
to supplement studies on formal citizenship (membership of a nation-state)
and substantive citizenship (actual ability to claim rights), and to shift the
focus “from subjects as such to acts (or deeds) that produce such subjects”.6
Acts of citizenship, they hold, rupture social-historical patterns and “break
with repetitions of the same and so anticipate rejoinders from imaginary but
not fictional adversaries”.7 Van Balie may have encountered some of these very
real adversaries in the daily newspaper he read, in which slaves and black peo-
ple were regularly accused of being lazy and uncivilized (among other things);
here I will read his memoir, in part, as a response to them. His acts of equality
can be interpreted as interruptions of the many acts of inequality he faced.
In Rancière’s work equality is the principle of politics, but it is not meant
in the sense, as Todd May explains, of a “passive equality” that involves the
distribution of rights and ensuring representation by institutions, but it
refers to an “active equality”.8 In Rancière’s work, active equality or simply
“politics” is an interruption of “the police”: “the organization of powers,
the distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this
distribution”.9 Rancière writes:

Spectacular or otherwise, political activity [politics] is always a mode of

expression that undoes the perceptible divisions of the police order by
implementing a basically heterogenous assumption, that of a part of
those who have no part, an assumption that, at the end of the day, itself
demonstrates the sheer contingency of the order, the equality of any
speaking being with any other speaking being.10

Van Balie introduces this “heterogeneous assumption”—the assumption

of equality—in various ways; for instance, by writing an ego document and
addressing his reader as a friend. What the theories of Isin and Nielsen
and Rancière have in common is the conceptualization of equality not as
 actsaacaacts of 187

a position that is (eventually) facilitated by institutions or discourses prop-

agated through one’s newspaper, but as a mode of subjectivization which
can be constituted through acts. Subjects are not the origins of speech, but
speech constitutes subjects.11
As I have already indicated, while both these theories were developed pri-
marily for the political world of rights, citizenship and democratic equality,
in his memoir Van Balie never explicitly claims rights or citizenship. The
memoir does describe moments characteristic of conditions experienced by
other slaves and some antagonism towards owners—Van Balie’s brothers,
for instance, made a plan to flee across the mountains to an uncle to escape
enslavement, but never executed it—and can therefore be said to have traces
of collective subjectivization that have the potential to be translated into polit-
ical claims. Nowhere in this memoir, however, do these moments turn into
acts of political equality in terms of actual claims to rights or citizenship. The
equality that Van Balie forges emerges through his writing of his individual
as well as natural family’s moral autonomy, capacity to empathize, and ability
to be part of a community equal to any other community, including that of
the Dutch nation. It therefore lies in a realm different from the political: it
can more accurately be characterized as social equality.
Nevertheless, the acts of social equality that Van Balie performs do have
a strong connection to Isin and Nielsen’s and Rancière’s acts of equality in
the political realm when seen in the light of Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human
Rights. In this historical study, Hunt theorizes the relationship between social
history and human rights at end of the eighteenth century, in particular the
connection between being seen as an equal human being and claiming
human rights. She connects social and political equality by showing that
equality as a function of one’s humanity is a basis for equal rights. According
to Hunt, “[t]o have human rights, people had to be perceived as separate indi-
viduals who were capable of exercising independent moral judgment” and as
“able to empathize with others”.12 In other words: to be deemed “ready” for
rights one had to be seen as human, and being human means performing
certain acts indicative of one’s humanity and social equality. In this chapter,
in addition to the individual and interpersonal levels of equality theorized
by Hunt through moral autonomy and empathy respectively, I add a third
level: the (national) community, which became increasingly important over
the course of the nineteenth century.
When seen through the lens of Hunt’s work, Van Balie’s acts of social
equality can be read as those humanizing acts which laid the groundwork
188 beingbbbbeing

for political equality. His writing of an autonomous, empathetic self, born in

a national community which was in many ways equal to Dutch society, and
his conceptualization of himself as a man with a history and personal devel-
opment who participated in Dutch national (print) culture through reading,
writing and practising Christianity, put him on an equal social plane with
the readers of his text. Hunt writes, “[i]n the eighteenth century (and indeed,
right up to the present), all ‘people’ were not imagined as equally capable
of moral autonomy …. [C]hildren, slaves, servants, the propertyless, and
women lacked the required independence of status to be fully autonomous”,
and were therefore not seen as fully human.13 Throughout the nineteenth
century, these groups raised their voices, protesting their social and political
situations through the abolitionist, labour, feminist and child labour move-
ments. Van Balie’s memoir can be read as participating in these movements.
Social equality does not automatically translate into political equality, but
with Hunt’s work in mind we become aware of their historical connections.

Equality and abolitionism

Approaching this memoir through the lens of acts of equality allows for a
twofold scholarly positioning: firstly, a broadening of the idea of equality
in slave narratives and abolitionism; and, secondly, an act of repair in the
historiography of abolitionism in the Dutch empire, about which the current
consensus is—for good reason—too little, too late.
Although many publications focusing on abolitionism and slave nar-
ratives in the US mention equality, only a small number elaborate on this
concept. In these studies, equality—in the sense of equal rights and citi-
zenship—is conceptualized as the ultimate goal within certain abolitionist
movements; it would be established within the framework of what Isin and
Nielsen call “formal” and “substantive citizenship”, and forms an example
of “passive equality”. In both James McPherson’s The Struggle for Equality:
Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction and Paul
Goodmans’s Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality,
equality is seen as ultimately distributed by institutions. In other words, it
is passive, not active.14 Similarly, the approach of Celeste Condit and John
Lucaites, who analyse what they call the “rhetoric of equality” in American
public discourse, particularly in relation to African-American history, does
not provide the conceptual framework to see equality as a social or political
 actsaacaacts of 189

starting point, dependent not on institutions or public discourse, but on acts

of subjectivisation by those whom Rancière describes as “those who have
no part”.15 Through the concept of acts of equality, this chapter will show
that when placed in the historical context of nineteenth-century Europe Van
Balie’s appropriation of certain Enlightenment, Christian and nationalist
discourses in the description of his life before, during and after slavery can
be read as him positioning himself and his community of origin as human
beings, equal to his white Dutch readers.
The second scholarly point concerns the current image of abolitionism
in the Dutch empire, and the possibility that an analysis of Van Balie’s
text can offer a correction by focusing on the acts—in this case of writing
equality—of the (formerly) enslaved. This chapter contributes to a larger
body of scholarship that focuses on the presence and resistance of colonized
and enslaved subjects in the Dutch imperial world—for instance, by looking
at slave uprisings in Suriname and the work of black intellectuals in the
Netherlands.16 Van Balie’s text, in particular, can broaden our perspective on
nineteenth-century thought about slavery in the Dutch world.
Historians agree that, unlike Britain and the US, the Netherlands did not
have an anti-slavery movement to speak of: Dutch abolition was late (1862)
and Dutch abolitionism lacked mass appeal as it remained elitist and never
became a mass movement.17 The only Dutch abolitionist publication that
became somewhat of a bestseller, W.R. van Hoëvell’s 1854 text Slaves and
Free Men under Dutch Law, argued for neither political nor social equality as
it described black people as less “developed” than whites, yet somehow more
so than Malays who, like Van Balie, came from the Indonesian archipelago.18
Racialization also played a key role in government argument against aboli-
tion. As the Dutch colonial secretary J.J. Rochussen put it in the early 1860s:
“If the emancipated mass of negroes in Dutch Guiana [currently Suriname]
is left to its own strength, or rather its own weakness, what else can one
expect for the future than a decimation of its numbers by misery, leprosy
and venereal diseases?”19 Finally, Marijke Huisman has shown that although
Dutch publishers brought out translations of the slave narratives of Olaudah
Equiano, Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown, “slave autobiogra-
phies were not recognized as significant contributions to the discussion on
slavery and emancipation”.20
With Van Balie’s text we have a powerful and, as we will see, self-iden-
tified black indictment of slavery based on the assumption of equality,
written in Dutch in the Netherlands. Unpublished, perhaps even unread,
190 beingbbbbeing

this unique document nevertheless offers the opportunity for a correction to

the historical image of Dutch thinking about slavery. It makes visible what
has remained unseen in the Dutch world—protests against the experiences
and effects of enslavement—and therefore forms a welcome intervention in
a field that, until now, has mostly had access to white Dutch texts on slavery,
which portrayed (formerly) enslaved people as either barbaric or pathetic,
and never equal.
In what follows I will first elaborate upon discourses of equality and ine-
quality in Europe at the time Van Balie lived there, using his own newspaper
as an important source. I will then interpret his memoir as an act of equality
to make visible how he appropriated and interrupted these discourses by
focusing on three elements: the writing of the memoir itself and his father’s
role in it, acts that show Van Balie and his family’s moral autonomy; his
addressing of the reader as a friend, establishing Van Balie’s capacity to
empathize; and, finally, his attempt to demonstrate the similarities between
Magarij and the Netherlands, indicating the equality of national cultures.
Together, these acts of equality actively assume Van Balie’s and his family’s
equality with the European society he was embedded in and add a critical
voice to thought about slavery in the nineteenth-century Dutch empire.

Thinking racial (in)equality in nineteenth-century Europe

In The Invention of Humanity, Siep Stuurman maps the world-historical

polyphony of discourses on common humanity and equality from ancient
times to the present day.21 In Van Balie’s memoir we find appropriations
of three discourses that could be used to facilitate thinking equality:
Enlightenment, Christian and nationalist. Enlightenment discourses on
equality, which Stuurman calls “modern equality”, are the most prominent
sources for this memoir, made evident by how Van Balie writes of himself as a
morally autonomous and empathetic subject. Christian equality can be found
in his remark “we are all Adam’s offspring, all have to appear before Christ”.22
As Catherine Hall writes, the idea that all of humankind are Adam’s children
conveys a basic principle of evangelical liberal humanitarianism, of which
slavery is a gross violation.23 Finally, nationalist equality can be traced in Van
Balie’s description of Magarij as different from but equal to the Netherlands, a
positioning that can be connected to Johan Gottfried von Herder’s (1744–1803)
both relativist and universalist thoughts on national culture and humanity.
 actsaacaacts of 191

However, all three discourses mentioned above also have the potential to
engender inequality. Stuurman writes that drawing from the same European
Enlightenment ideas, nineteenth-century Europe saw the widespread circu-
lation of modern inequality, trickling down from eighteenth-century Europe
in four variants, two of which are of special interest here: racial classification
on the one hand and, on the other, and often overlapping with the former,
the perceived authority of the enlightened few over the not (yet) enlightened
many.24 Racial classification came in several variants: while some in the
nineteenth century did not essentialize race and saw all people as possessing
a capacity for development, others viewed race as “coloured” rankings within
a rigid hierarchy. In these latter systems, white was the “default setting of
humanity”, while people of colour represented various degrees of degenera-
tion.25 We can recognize two temporalities here: a static model in which black
people are considered irreparably lesser than white people, and a progressive
model in which white people are thought to have “already” attained the
modernity, civilization or Christian faith that black people can work towards.
Van Balie engages with the first, static temporality by countering it—he
shows that black people love their children, just as whites do theirs, and
therefore have the capacity to empathize—and with the second, progressive
one by showing that he is just as advanced as his white readers, for instance,
in terms of adopting the Christian faith.
In her study on Dutch perspectives on the world in 1800—around when
Van Balie arrived in the Netherlands—Angelie Sens writes that slaves were
thought of either as victims, or as heathens who were uncivilized and inclined
to behave in a beastly way.26 Around the time Van Balie wrote his memoir in
the mid-nineteenth century this view had not changed fundamentally, as we
have already seen in the remarks by Van Hoëvell and Rochussen discussed
above. Between 1830 and 1870, the Rotterdam Newspaper (Rotterdamsche
Courant), which Van Balie mentions reading, had over 1,300 articles in which
the word “slaves” appeared, mostly in the context of Dutch and American
debates about slavery. In 1856, for instance, an anonymous writer claimed
that liberating slaves was an act of love and a deed worthy of the Lord, but
also that “a normal slave is not a civilized European”: “they’re not all Uncle
Toms”. This respondent argued that with respect to slaves Europeans first
needed to revive “the human being in the human being”, or else emancipa-
tion would only lead to laziness or lawlessness. Slaves should first be turned
into Christians, and one way to achieve this was to take black children away
from their parents at birth in order to offer them a Christian education.27 In
192 beingbbbbeing

other articles from the same newspaper, (formerly) enslaved people are called
lazy, idle, barbaric, immoral, inclined to vagrancy, and not prone to domes-
ticity, family life and obligations (in general, it seems).28 Both temporalities
mentioned above return in these articles, with some authors describing black
people as stuck on a developmental time scale and others arguing for their
education and conversion.
Most of these articles addressed African slavery in the US, the Caribbean
and Suriname, as already in the eighteenth-century transatlantic slavery
gained most attention at the expense of Indian Ocean slavery.29 Most cru-
cially, however, Van Balie himself self-identified as black (zwart): he talks
about the community in which he was born and about his Indonesian owners
as black, whereas he calls Dutch whites “white”, either using the Dutch word
blank or the Malay word orangpoetie, meaning “white man”. He also does
not try to distance himself from other slaves, except when he says that he
only knows about people from the “southeast”, not those from “east”, “west”
or “southwest”, “because I have never been there”.30 I will therefore read
Van Balie’s slave narrative as belonging to the same semantic field as these
newspaper articles and interpret his thoughts on slavery as a reflection on its
diverse set of practices as a whole. What the categories used to characterize
slaves in the Rotterdam Newspaper essentially establish is a hierarchy, and
by disrupting these categories Van Balie effectively subverts this inequality.
It is against the background of these articles in his own newspaper that I
will read Van Balie’s writing of himself as an empathetic, loving and loved,
knowledgeable, conscientious and hard-working person, friend of the reader,
child of Adam—before, during and after his enslavement—as acts which,
against the opinions of his adversaries, produce him as equal to them.

Writing moral autonomy

Using the genre of the memoir, Van Balie shows how he developed from an
innocent and in many ways pre-conscious child caught up in the system of
slavery to a knowing and conscious adult—just like his father had been. In
writing on the equality of black people, Van Balie makes clear that not only is
he an adult himself, but also that those who raised him possessed what Hunt
has identified as the two related but distinct qualities of moral autonomy:
the ability to reason and the independence to decide for oneself.31 Crucial in
the writing of his own moral autonomy is the fact that in the memoir, like in
 actsaacaacts of 193

any retrospective narrative with a first-person narrator, a “double I” is pro-

duced—in this case a narrator-I called Van Balie and a character-I called Naî,
which was the name by which his family of origin called him. It was through
the contrast between these two Is that Van Balie could draw attention to his
personal development and growth—not, however, from a barbaric black to a
civilised black, but from a child of responsible and loving black people to a
morally autonomous adult.
The full title of his work is The Memory of the Courses of Life of Naî from
the Village of Leeot on The Island of Magarij Near Bima, Near the Island of Java,
Now, Wange Heindrik Richard van Balie. Extensive research has been done on
ego documents from the nineteenth-century Netherlands, and an inventory
of such documents from between 1814 and 1914 shows that both “memory”
(Herinnering) and “course of life” (Levensloop) were widespread concepts used
by the authors of this genre, making it likely that Van Balie somehow had
access to at least one of these documents.32 However, what immediately sets
Van Balie’s title apart from all these others, next to the meticulous indication
of his place of birth—which obviously needed more explanation than the
average Dutch town—is that his life is divided into two phases: one as Naî
and one (“now”) as W.H.R. van Balie. This double I opens up in the text
two different narrative worlds, each with its own characters, places, props
and temporalities. The world of young Naî, which is discussed elaborately, is
populated by his father, grandmother and brothers and, as he is taken away
into slavery by his owners, their servants and other slaves. It is the world
of colonial Indonesia with islands, boats, monkeys and farms, and it lies
in the past. The narrator-I lives in the present-day Netherlands—then the
nineteenth century—surrounded by Dutch people and a wholly different set
of props, including newspapers, Bible passages and carriages. Though this
world is less often referenced, it is nevertheless continually present, if only
because the narrator lives in it and his perspective is shaped by it.
It is through the filtering perspective of narrator-I that the reader accesses
the thoughts and feelings of the character-I Naî, which creates a sense of inti-
macy during the many heart-breaking moments that Van Balie’s young self
experiences as he is separated from his family and seeks someone to offer
him “sweet words of comfort”.33 The text also creates an intimacy between
the narrator and the adults in young Naî’s life, in particular his father, as the
adult narrator Van Balie and the character of the father share the kind of life
experience that the young Naî still lacks; both adults observe him in his child-
ish ways. Throughout the first part of the text, when Naî is still living with
194 beingbbbbeing

his family, it feels as if he has two fathers: his biological father, whose gaze
is always mild, and a much more critical older self, the narrator, who often
castigates him. It is in the constrasting reactions of these two men to the
same situation that their moral autonomy becomes apparent—for instance,
when Naî burns the house down after playing with fire, or when he fails to
foresee the man-made disaster of enslavement that is about to strike his fam-
ily. The two men have radically different responses—while the narrator calls
Naî “naughty” and “naïve”, his father always responds with compassion and
unconditional love. Van Balie offers a touching illustration of this difference
in his interpretation of his father’s response after it had become clear that the
three sons would soon be taken away from the family. In Van Balie’s words,
Naî still went out to play with his friends as if nothing would change, “but
my father knew and that is why he let me have my way, he probably thought:
during the brief moment that remains, let pleasure do its work, it won’t be
long”.34 The memoir thus creates a group of adults around the young Naî
that reflects on his behaviour and well-being. Of this group, the father and
grandmother are loving without exception, while the narrator-I often lectures
the young Naî, perhaps indicating that Van Balie blamed himself for his
enslavement and the separation from his family. What all these black adults
share is moral autonomy: they are able independently to observe and reflect
on a situation and then decide for themselves its moral meaning. The fact
that their personal autonomy was severely limited by the system of slavery
does not alter this. When Naî, after arriving in the Netherlands, chose his
Dutch names, one of them was that of his father: Wange.
Van Balie’s acquisition of moral autonomy and his capacity independently
to distinguish good from evil also come to the fore clearly with respect to the
practice of slavery. Unlike the young Naî before his enslavement—whom he
describes as living “like a fish in the water”, a Dutch expression for a feeling
of wholeness with one’s surroundings—the older narrator sees “dark clouds”
looming over the family, symbolizing the men who would take him and his
brothers away, never to return.35 He repeatedly emphasizes the devastating
effect of his enslavement; for instance, he recalls the last time he passed his
family’s village without being allowed to enter it as “the saddest of all days of
my youth”.36 Reflecting on the different ways in which his owners treated the
child slave Naî, Van Balie writes, “What makes one human being different
from another? The first master kept me as her own child, and here [in a later
master’s house] they did not even speak to me, though I had food and drink
enough, I did not lack bacon and meat, but I lacked help and comforting
 actsaacaacts of 195

words to comfort my bitterly saddened heart”.37 In this passage, Van Balie not
only passes a moral verdict on the treatment slaves received from different
owners, but also offers his inner child what he seems to have lacked most:
recognition and validation of his feelings—in short, empathy.

Writing empathy

According to Hunt, in her writing about the late eighteenth century, “[t]o be
autonomous, a person [had] to be legitimately separate and protected in his
or her separation; but to have rights go along with that bodily separation a
person’s selfhood [had to] be appreciated in some more emotional fashion”.
This emotional fashion was empathy or, in Hunt’s words, “the recognition
that others feel and think as we do”.38 In Van Balie’s memoir empathy is a
core theme, and while some of his owners are indifferent to young Naî’s
sadness, his family of origin, certain other owners, and, if he is not behaving
like a critical parent, even the narrator-I often try to understand and mirror
his feelings of sorrow and fear. Here, I will focus on another empathetic
relation found throughout the text, namely, the one between the narrator and
the narratee, who is addressed as “reader”, “friend”, and sometimes, in one
word, as “friendreader”.
Van Balie addresses his reader(s) around twenty times as “friend” or
“friends”. In almost every instance he invokes the friendship of his readers
when he returns to the central trauma of this text: the separation from his
father, grandmother and brothers. The word “friend” is never far away from
words such as “grimness”, “melancholic”, “sad” and “sorrowful”, as in this
typical instance: “yes my friend, I will stop telling you about this grimness,
because my heart is becoming small and became melancholic [weemoedig],
yes my friends and reader, who of you would not become sad in your hearts
to read about such a household and hear that their children were taken away
before their eyes”.39 How did Van Balie’s text’s conception of friendship
fit into and depart from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concepts and
practices of this type of relationship? Crucial for him, I argue, was equality,
which was forged through the production of intimacy and the sharing of
inner experiences.40
In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and France, philosophers
devised strict criteria for what qualified as friendship, as for most of them
friendship could exist only with equality.41 A majority of philosophers,
196 beingbbbbeing

following Aristotle, held that “true” friendships were based on virtue and
mutual respect and concern, whereas “lesser” friendships were based on
need and self-interest, or else merely the pleasure of company. In everyday
usage, difference in rank did not disqualify a relationship from being con-
sidered a friendship, leading to the nineteenth-century usage of the word
to characterize a broader range of relations than philosophy and literature
reflected, including those between family members, people who formed ties
through business or socializing, and even patrons and clients. According
to the philosophers, the patron-client relationship in particular “involved
benevolence and protection but not the equality that mutual friendship
implied”.42 One example of a patron-client friendship is in the work of
Ukawsaw Gronniosaw (1705–1775), published in 1772 and considered the
first slave narrative in English. Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797), whose slave
narrative was published in 1789, also writes about a white American he met
and befriended, although here the inequality was also apparent.43
Van Balie’s usage of the word “friend” does not imply the kind of hierar-
chies found in the writings of Gronniosaw and Equiano. When writing about
people with whom he has a vertical relationship, in particular his various
owners, he employs a different vocabulary, referring to them as “masters” and
himself as a slave. This hierarchical relationship between owner and slave
is replaced by one of horizontal empathy in those moments when Van Balie
addresses his reader as friend. He asks them to imagine his situation, for
instance when his family had just heard that the three children would be taken
away into slavery: “Well my reader, what do you think of this family, is this not
a sad situation for us my friend and reader, where have joy and cheerful days
gone?”.44 Conversely, he imagines how his readers will feel—for instance,
when he supposes they will be sad in their hearts to read his memoir.
Historians of friendship have analysed not only conditions for friendship,
but also processes of exclusion: which people are deemed capable of enter-
taining an equal relationship? Several philosophers of that time claimed that
true friendship was not possible among the “common people”; they believed
that the difficult conditions in their lives had hardened their hearts and pre-
vented disinterestedness. True friendship, in the eyes of Adam Smith and
David Hume, also distinguished savages from (civilized) Europeans. In the
words of Hume, “Asiatic manners are as destructive to friendship as to love”.45
This tendency to exclude people of colour from notions of friendship became
stronger in the course of the nineteenth century. With respect to the eight-
eenth century, Garrioch could still discuss the Enlightenment-inspired ideal of
 actsaacaacts of 197

being “a friend to all humanity”.46 Nineteenth-century nationalism, however,

with its ideals of cultural, linguistic and racial unity, made it more difficult for
friendships to cross differences.47 Literature in the nineteenth century warned
readers of the limits of friendship, in particular with respect to religion and
race, for instance in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847).48 In the context of
empire in the nineteenth century, various models of friendship were circu-
lating, many also characterized by distance and hierarchy, such as the idea of
befriending colonial subjects to “uplift” them, as in various civilizing projects
like the Dutch “ethical policy”, which can be traced to the publication of the
1860 novel Max Havelaar by Multatuli, well within Van Balie’s lifetime.
Through the production of intimacy and the sharing of inner experi-
ences, Van Balie summons what Hunt calls “the notion of a community
based on autonomous, empathetic individuals who could relate beyond their
immediate families, religious affiliations, or even nations to greater universal
values”.49 It has become apparent that sentimentality was part of Van Balie’s
interpellations, as was the case with many of his contemporaries. Garrioch
traces the rise of the perceived importance of sentiment in friendship in the
Romantic period, particularly in novels such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s La
Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) and Germaine de Staël’s Corinne (1807), but also in
various forms of “intimate writing” such as letters, journals and autobiog-
raphies which often contained an “intensely emotional language to describe
friendship”.50 The nineteenth-century US saw the emergence of a “culture
of affective individualism, becoming mutually introspective, self-disclosive,
affectionate and emotionally expressive”.51 The sentimentality surrounding
friendship from the mid-eighteenth century onwards can be read as a claim
to social equality: “a man of feeling did not necessarily have distinguished
ancestors but he was worthy of consideration nevertheless”.52
Drawing on these ideas, Van Balie makes a powerful argument that he and
other black people also have feelings of empathy, especially in terms of friend-
ship, love and other forms of intimacy. At several points in his text he recounts
the good times he enjoyed with his playmates, and even describes one of their
games elaborately. In another passage, he argues against the apparently wide-
spread idea in the Netherlands at the time that “in the East” parents sold their
own children.53 The most fundamental act of equality in terms of empathy,
however, was his addressing of the reader as a friend, precisely because most
potential readers were likely to be found across racialized boundaries. In a kind
of Althusserian counter-interpellation, by choosing to address the narratee in
this way Van Balie positions himself as equal to his white reader.
198 beingbbbbeing

Writing community

After exploring how Van Balie established himself as a morally autonomous

human being with the capacity to form empathetic bonds and, having moved
from individual to interpersonal relations, in this last section I discuss how
he wrote of himself as part of larger (imagined) communities. Operating in
two narrative worlds—colonial Indonesia and the Netherlands—Van Balie
writes of himself as part of both. The way he positions himself as part of
nineteenth-century Netherlands comes closest to what we can call, in Isin and
Nielsen’s terms, an act of citizenship, for he actively participates in national
print and religious culture. Building on the work of Benedict Anderson, we
can see Van Balie’s various actions—reading a Dutch newspaper, producing
an ego document, and quoting various Bible passages—as acts that allowed
him not only to imagine, but also to assert himself as part of the nation of
the Netherlands.54 Here, however, I will focus on his description of his home
community of Magarij in relation to the Netherlands.
In the previous paragraph I discussed nationalism as an exclusionary and
hierarchizing discourse that poses an obstacle to the cultivation of empathy
and friendship across racial boundaries. Nationalist discourses could have
affected Van Balie’s social equality in two ways—one, the supposedly less
civilized nature of an Asian community like the one on the island of Magarij;
and, two, his exclusion from the imagined community of the Netherlands
because of racialization and differentiation in terms of culture and language.
However, when analysing how Van Balie writes about his community of ori-
gin, we find hardly any indications that he saw Magarij as the lesser of the two
countries. On the contrary, he conceived of his home and new community as
different in cultural expression but equal with respect to their participation
in humanity. It is therefore fruitful to view Van Balie’s perspective on the
relationship between his old and new communities in the light of German
philosopher J.G. Herder’s writing on national cultures and humanity. He is
considered “one of the first modern writers to recognize the need to protect
cultural diversity and to foster the plurality of cultures”.55
According to Sonia Sikka, “in his accounts of language, climate, and
religion, of the variability of human happiness, the nature of reason and the
unfolding of history, Herder charts a complex course navigating between the
poles of particularism and universalism”.56 Engaging throughout with the
problem of cultural relativism, Herder’s thinking “examines how universal
expressions of human life are always restricted by the cultural context in
 actsaacaacts of 199

which they are produced; but it also pursues the universal quality at the heart
of culturally determined forms of expression”.57 According to Herder, nations
were separated “not only by woods and mountains, seas and deserts, rivers and
climates, but more particularly by languages, inclinations, and characters”,58
but phrases like these did not preclude him from thinking about the nature of
“humanity” as a universalist notion.59 Even as he establishes himself and his
family as equals in terms of their humanity, Van Balie also elaborately describes
the specific forms of cultural expression that can be found in Magarij, and
especially how it contrasts with practices in the Netherlands; therefore, he also
can be analysed as balancing universalism and relativism, just like Herder.
Van Balie elaborates on many aspects of life on the island of Magarij. He
discusses, among other things, the division of labour between the different
family members, the composition of the family’s livestock—two pigs, some
chickens and roosters, and two dogs for protection against monkeys and
other wild animals—the kind of produce their farm yields, the cooperative
system they had developed with their neighbours to farm land, trade with
seafarers, the production of clothing, housing construction and the beauty of
the local landscape. Early in the memoir, Van Balie describes daily life in his
home community, and how he and his brothers helped their father work on
the family farm: “[e]arly in the morning we went to the field to do our daily
work and at night we came home with rest and peace to find grandmother
having done her household tasks, orderly and clean, and our diner ready, and
that is how we lived from one day to another”.60 His father, he writes, was
poor, and their lives were simple, but all in all the picture he paints is idyllic
and his descriptions are often infused with nostalgia.
That Van Balie sees his home community as different from yet equal to the
Netherlands becomes apparent in how he compares the two communities.
Placing the two narrative worlds he engages in side by side, he distinguishes
between how things are done “in this country” (the Netherlands) and how
things are done “according to our way” (that is, the way of the community
in Magarij). For example, about the produce they harvest from the fields he
writes, “Our foods from the field consisted of rice, millet, Turkish grain and
potatoes, not like the ones in this country, but larger and elongated, this type
of potatoes we call petatas”.61 A recurring theme in Van Balie’s comparisons
concerns objects or skills present in the Netherlands, but not in Magarij. Yet,
he is always quick to point out that these should not be seen as lacking, but
as things that are unnecessary, certainly to the people of Magarij. Manuring
“like here in Holland” is not needed, he holds, because there is plenty of
200 beingbbbbeing

land, and that despite the fact that in Magarij there is no knowledge of
breeding there is always plenty of fresh bacon and meat available.62 If Van
Balie sometimes touts the qualities of one community over another, it is in
subtle ways: when speaking of Magarij; he says people may not wear “fine or
fashionable costumes like in this country”, but are also not “proud”.63
Both Van Balie’s emphases, in this last example, on modesty as opposed to
pride, as well as his general attention to the rural aspects of his home commu-
nity, were significant aspects of European and specifically Dutch nationalism.
As Gert-Jan Johannes has shown, nineteenth-century Dutch nationalism,
seeking to distinguish itself from the bigger nations it was surrounded by,
in particular France and Britain, focused on the country’s smallness.64 In the
context of imperialism, Dutch authors embraced what was seen as the Dutch
small scale and imagined their community as one that did not participate
in the international power games of big nations, a conception that survived
into the twenty-first century. More generally, this praise of modesty led to a
glorification of mediocrity: what made the Netherlands great was precisely its
averageness. Van Balie seems to suggest Magarij sometimes outdid the Dutch
in terms of its Dutchness. With respect to rural living, the Netherlands, influ-
enced by nineteenth-century nationalism, subscribed to a national identity
that idolized the countryside as “the true, timeless soul of the nation”.65 In a
tendency which would culminate in the second half of the nineteenth century
with, among other things, the opening of a museum focused on rural life and
architecture (Openluchtmuseum), Dutch rural culture became an increasing
part of the national consciousness from the beginning of the century onwards,
with a particular focus on traditional costumes worn by farmers and fisher-
men who were supposed to embody the “original” Dutch population and were
expected to wear “indigenous” clothing, deemed “uncorrupted by international
fashion”.66 If indeed the heart of a nation could be found in the modesty of
its rural inhabitants, there was no community with more heart than Magarij,
Van Balie seems to suggest. His writing of Magarij and the Netherlands as
different yet equal is an act of equality for his community of origin as a whole.

Conclusion

Through the analysis of a slave narrative, written in Dutch in the Netherlands

by a man born in late eighteenth-century Indonesia, this chapter has sought
to change thinking about equality in slave narratives in general and Dutch
 actsaacaacts of 201

abolitionism in particular. By writing of himself as a morally autonomous

and empathetic subject, born in a community at least equal to the imagined
community of the Dutch nation, Wange van Balie did not wait for the
acknowledgement of his status as an equal and a human being, but instead
assumed his and his community of origin’s place as an equal part of human-
ity, despite important elements in public discourse—Dutch abolitionism
as well as anti-abolitionism and his newspaper—telling him otherwise.
I introduced the concept of an act of equality to make visible how, in his
case, the acts preceded the subject, who did not wait for institutions or public
discourse to grant him social equality but constituted it himself. By writing
of himself and his black Indonesian family, he interrupted discourses of
racial hierarchy and inequality and deftly appropriated the politics of equality
circulating through particular constellations of Enlightenment, Christian
and nationalist thought. His narrative shows that equality can be read to be
actively assumed in slave narratives, and that it is possible to think about
(former) slaves and black people in the Dutch empire not as either backward
or pathetic, but as equal.

Notes

1. Wange van Balie, “De Herinnering van Levens Loopen van Naî op het Dorp leeot
op het Eiland Magarij na bij Bima, bij Eiland Java Nu Wange Heindrik Richard
van Balie” (unpublished manuscript), private collection of Ron Siteur. Several
of the themes in this chapter were already explored in Sarie Hertgers, “‘O!
mijn vriendleezer het is droef gedag der dagen dat ik nooit zal vergeten’: Over
vriendschap, herinnering en moraliteit in het egodocument van Wange Heindrik
Richard van Balie, voormalig slaaf uit Nederlands-Indië” (master’s thesis, Univer-
sity of Amsterdam, 2017). Hertgers also made a transcription of the manuscript.
2. Van Balie writes about his island of birth as “Magarij”, which is currently the
name of the western part of the island of Flores, part of the Republic of Indone-
sia. In Indonesian this regency is called Manggarai.
3. Ron Siteur, “Beschrijving van de levensgeschiedenis van Wange van Bali,” last
modified September 2009, http://www.wangevanbali.nl/.
4. Reggie Baay, Daar werd wat gruwelijks verricht: Slavernij in Nederlands-Indië, 153-
60. Amsterdam: Athenaeum, 2015.
5. Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen, “Introduction: Acts of Citizenship,” in Acts
of Citizenship, edited by Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen, 1-12. London: Zed
202 beingbbbbeing

Books, 2008; Jacques Rancière, Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy, trans.

Julie Rose, Minneapolis MI: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
6. Isin and Nielsen, “Introduction,” 2.
7. Ibid., 2.
8. Todd May, The Political Thought of Jacques Rancière: Creating Equality. Edin-
burgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
9. Rancière, Dis-agreement, 28.
10. Ibid., 30.
11. Jacques Rancière, The Method of Equality: Interviews with Laurent Jeanpierre and
Dork Zabunyan, trans. Julie Rose. Cambridge: Polity, 2006.
12. Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History, 27. New York: Norton, 2007.
13. Hunt, Inventing, 28.
14. James McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the
Civil War and Reconstruction. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964;
Paul Goodman, Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality.
Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1998.
15. Rancière, Dis-agreement, 30; Celeste Condit and John Lucaites (eds.), Crafting
Equality: America’s Anglo-African Word. Chicago IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1993.
16. These intellectuals included the Ashanti Prince Aquasie Boachi and the Java-
nese clerk Sastrå-tåmå who were both in Delft in the 1840s when Van Balie
was living in that city. On Boachi see Allison Blakely, Blacks in the Dutch World:
The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern Society, 257. Bloomington IN: Indi-
ana University Press, 2000. On Sastrå-tåmå see Cees van Dijk, “1600–1898:
Gezanten, slaven, een schilder en enkele scholieren,” in In het land van de
overheerser: Indonesiërs in Nederland 1600-1950, edited by Harry A. Poeze, 15.
Dordrecht: Floris, 1986.
17. Maarten Kuitenbrouwer, “The Dutch Case of Anti-Slavery: Late Abolitions and
Elitist Abolitionism,” in Fifty Years Later: Antislavery, Capitalism and Modernity
in the Dutch Orbit, edited by Gert Oostindie. Pittsburgh PA: University of Pitts-
burgh Press, 1995.
18. W.R. van Hoëvell, Slaven en vrijen onder de Nederlandsche wet Zaltbommel:
Noman, 1855.
19. Quoted in Kuitenbrouwer, “Dutch Case of Anti-Slavery,” 76.
20. Marijke Huisman, Verhalen van vrijheid: autobiografieën van slaven in transnatio-
naal perspectief, 1789–2013, 188. Hilversum: Verloren, 2015.
21. Siep Stuurman, The Invention of Humanity. Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press, 2017.
 actsaacaacts of 203

22. Van Balie, “De Herinnering,” 50.

23. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagina-
tion, 1830–1867. Cambridge: Polity, 2002.
24. The other two forms of modern inequality identified by Stuurman are political
economy (“a new science that justified social inequality in terms of utility and
productivity”) and biological and psychological theories of sexual difference.
See Stuurman, Inventing, 24.
25. Ibid., 344.
26. Angelie Sens, ‘Mensaap, heiden, slaaf’: Nederlandse visies op de wereld rond 1800,
112. The Hague: Sdu, 2001.
27. “Emancipatie der slaven,” Rotterdamsche Courant, 4 July 1856, https://www.
delpher.nl/.
28. Rotterdamsche Courant, 23 November 1855, 2, https://www.delpher.nl/; Rotter-
damsche Courant, 18 September 1856, 2, https://www.delpher.nl/; Rotterdamsche
Courant, 6 August 1857, 1, https://www.delpher.nl/; Rotterdamsche Courant,
7 April 1864, 2, https://www.delpher.nl/.
29. Sens, “Mensaap,” 98.
30. Van Balie, “De Herinnering,” 10.
31. Hunt, Inventing, 28.
32. See for instance Emanuel Francis’s (1798-1880) Herinneringen uit den levensloop
van een “Indisch2 ambtenaar van 1815 tot 1851, medegedeeld in brieven. Batavia:
H.M. van Dorp, 1859. The inventory mentioned is Arianne Baggerman et al.,
“Egodocumenten 1814-1914 (repertorium),” Onderzoeksinstituut egodocu-
menten en geschiedenis, accessed 29 March 2018, http://www.egodocument.
net/repertorium.html.
33. Van Balie, “De Herinnering,” 25.
34. Ibid., 15.
35. Ibid., 9, 1.
36. Ibid., 42.
37. Ibid., 40.
38. Hunt, Inventing, 29.
39. Van Balie, “De Herinnering,” 10.
40. Stacey Oliker, “The Modernization of Friendship: Individualism, Intimacy and
Gender in the 19th Century,” in Placing Friendship in Context, edited by Rebecca
G. Adams and Graham Allan, 18-42, 20. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998.
41. David Garrioch, “From Christian Friendship to Secular Sentimentality: Enlight-
enment Re-revaluations,” in Friendship: A History, edited by Barbara Caine,
204 beingbbbbeing

165-214. London: Routledge, 2009. All information in this paragraph is derived

from this chapter.
42. Garrioch, “From Christian,” 186.
43. Ibid., 188.
44. Van Balie, “De Herinnering,” 14.
45. Garrioch, “From Christian,” 200.
46. Ibid., 167.
47. Marc Brodie and Barbara Caine, “Class, Sex, and Friendship: The Long Nine-
teenth Century,” in Friendship: A History, edited by Barbara Caine, 223-278,
224-25. London: Routledge, 2009.
48. Brodie and Caine, “Class, Sex,” 237.
49. Hunt, Inventing, 32.
50. Garrioch, “From Christian,” 199.
51. Oliker, “The Modernization,” 24.
52. Garrioch, “From Christian,” 199.
53. Van Balie, “De Herinnering,” 10.
54. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
55. John K. Noyes, Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism, 4. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2015.
56. Sonia Sikka, Herder of Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism,
3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
57. Noyes, Herder, 8.
58. Quoted in Noyes, Herder, 212.
59. Sikka, Herder, 5.
60. Van Balie, “De Herinnering,” 9.
61. Ibid., 2.
62. Ibid., 3, 38.
63. Ibid., 4.
64. Gert-Jan Johannes, De lof der aalbessen: over (Noord-)Nederlandse literatuurtheo-
rie, literatuur en de consequenties van kleinschaligheid 1770–1830. The Hague: Sdu,
1997.
65. Arno Neele, De ontdekking van het Zeeuwse platteland: Culturele verhoudingen
tussen stad en platteland in Zeeland 1750–1850, 153. Utrecht: Waanders, 2011.
66. Neele, Ontdekking, 153.
 8

Rituals of Rule
Infanticide and the Humanitarian Sentiment

Pamela Scully

Editors’ note:
This chapter is a reprint of Chapter 7 of Pamela Scully’s book, Liberating the
Family. Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South
Africa 1823-1853 (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann,1997). More than twenty years
later, it remains a seminal piece that addresses the lives of women, newly freed
from slavery through a foray into the nature of the legal discourse on marriage,
death, family that was elaborated by colonial authorities to claim sovereignty
over the body of women in Cape colony. Her study precedes the scholarly turn
to the Indian Ocean of the recent decades and the growing importance of
post-colonial approaches to slavery and slave memory encapsulated in the works
of inter alia Paul Gilroy and Saidiya Hartman and other scholars of Atlantic
slavery.i Scully’s work builds on and draws from a rich body of literature on Cape
slavery, especially the pioneering historical works of Ross and Worden, and
gestures towards the more recent literary approaches to enslavement in Cape
colony epitomized in the work of Meg Samuelson and Jessica Murray who see in
literature a way of filling the gaps of the archive.ii Pamela Scully’s work speaks to
approaches to Cape slavery that have foregrounded the making of memory and
continuities of enslavement, colonialism, apartheid and post-apartheid.iii

In the decade immediately following the final abolition of Cape slavery

in 1838, a cluster of ostensible infanticide cases occurred in three rural
districts. In the 1840s, six women with connections to mission stations in
Caledon, Swellendam, and the Cape districts were charged with the crime
of infanticide or concealment of birth. These infanticides were not remark-
able; between 1843 and 1870 at least thirty-seven such cases are recorded in
the criminal records of the Western Cape.1 This cluster of cases involving
206 beingbbbbeing

mission stations is, however, unusual: for the following two decades only two
infanticides by women connected with mission stations were found in the
records of the Cape Supreme Court.2
As distant onlookers of these events we are left with many questions.
Was there anything particularly significant about the 1840s that might have
caused women connected to mission stations to kill their newborn infants?
Why did the colonial state pay such close attention to these events? And why
did the judge in two cases seem to be at odds with the sentence passed and
appeal on the women’s behalf for clemency from the English justice system?3
These cases in rural areas of the Western Cape warrant the attention of his-
tory if only because they underscore the profound repercussions of engaging
in a social act which lay at the intersection of important social processes
unfolding in the Western Cape in the mid-nineteenth century.
Infanticide implicated various colonial actors in contestations over defini-
tions of freedom, motherhood, sexuality, and authority; it lay at one juncture
of competing moral and legal economies of power.4 The trials of Elizabeth
August, Franscina Louw, Lea, Anna Sebastian, Wilhelmina Alexanders, and
Dorothea Gideon were in part ritual procedures through which the British
colonial state sought to demonstrate legitimacy against, and hegemony over,
competing colonial actors when the balance of power between freed people,
missionaries, former slaveholders, and the state was clearly contested and
equivocal. The cases of Franscina Louw and Elizabeth August in particular
became the basis for discussions between various branches of colonial
society regarding the nature of justice, punishment, and the production of a
respectable colonial working class.
In 1838 the missions and the Colonial Office had been in general agree-
ment as to the need to propagate marriage and family among people newly
freed from slavery. But from the 1840s it became clear that colonial officials
and missionaries had rather different ideas both as to how to promote
respectability and also how to accommodate freed people in colonial society.
The cases of infanticides on the missions in the 1840s exposed a wider set
of anxieties over labor, the place of the missions, and the nature of colonial
rule.
The killing of infants in the rural Western Cape surely happened before
the 1840s, yet the records are mostly silent on this action.5 The apparent
increase of crimes such as infanticide and prostitution reflects in part the
penetration of British legal discourse into new terrains of social life in the
empire. In the course of the nineteenth century, marriages, deaths, family
 ritualsrrirritu 207

relationships, and sexual activities all came under the legal spotlight in both
the metropole and the colonies.6 Thus, even as the private sphere became
conceived of as a domain separate from a place called “the public sphere,”
relations there became ever more analyzed, codified, and intervened upon.
Thomas Laqueur has argued that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century witnessed the elaboration of a humanitarian sentiment which sought
to “declare epistemological sovereignty over the bodies and minds of others”
by locating and describing suffering and offering a “model for precise social
action”. Narratives focused on the diseased, wounded, or dead body−such as
the autopsy and infanticide−were the locus for this union between “facts,
compassion, and action”.7 The emphasis on searching out, and then pardon-
ing, perpetrators of infanticide enabled the dual and ambiguous project of
humanitarianism to be elaborated in practice−blame in order to pardon, mark
the person in order to demonstrate how much they need our help.8 Scientific
and medical discourse was central to the reclamation of the diseased or fallen
body. “The new consciousness of infanticide was not unconnected with the
enhanced self-image of the medical profession”.9 Infanticides and autopsies
become a stage on which the medical profession demonstrated knowledge
in detailed examinations of the body, in order to reach moral conclusions as
to the guilt or innocence of the defendant: knowledge of the individual body
legitimated intervention and power over the individual soul.
If a broader humanitarian discourse was developing in the nineteenth
century, it was clearly contested and far from hegemonic, particularly in the
colonial setting. This cluster of ideologies dominated British imperial life in
the nineteenth century and had particular resonance at the Cape in the 1840s
as various colonial actors sought to control the terms of postemancipation
society. At the Cape, tensions between Dutch-speaking farmers, local district
officials, mission stations, and the British colonial state recast the dynamics
of the humanitarian struggle. The 1840s were particularly important in
framing the terms of British rule and intervention. Former slaveholders still
smarted from the loss of their slaves and had not yet fully come to appreciate
how much the British shared their belief in deference and hierarchy. For
slaves too, the 1840s were a period in which they demonstrated some inde-
pendence from both missionaries’ and colonial officials’ understandings of
the meanings of freedom and respectability.
In order to hear the multiple meanings of the infanticide cases, we have to
bear witness to the tensions and cracks in the various actors’ conceptions of
law and power and to women’s accounts of their actions. We need to locate the
208 beingbbbbeing

“discovery of infanticides” on the rural missions within the broader transfor-

mations occurring in the rural Western Cape in the postemancipation period.

Missions and morality

In 1838 many freed people had looked to the missions as places which could
provide them with a plot of land to call their own. Missions also promised
some freedom from farm labor, a future for their children who would be
educated in the ways of the colonizers’ world, and inclusion in a commu-
nity of the saved. Missionaries stipulated that access to these opportunities
depended upon acceptance of the moral discipline of the mission. For many
freed women and men this offer, and the kinds of social behavior upon
which it was contingent, seemed a worthwhile bargain. The influence of the
mission spread beyond its boundaries in part because of the constant flow of
men to and fro from work on the farms. The boundaries of mission and farm
life were very permeable: indeed, some people who considered themselves
members of a mission station often lived nearly as many days on a farm as
did people who resided permanently on a farm. The mission community
was as important as a symbolic space, as a frame of mind, as it was a physical
location of community and independence.
The religious teachings of the missions provided one language through
which former slaves could evaluate their lives. Community help and com-
munity censure underpinned much of the activities of individuals on the
stations. The missionaries encouraged people to follow religion through
kind words; they also cowed and intimidated members of the community
by threats of expulsion. Missionaries took more seriously than their peers in
government the need to ensure that people on their stations lived according
to strict rules of sexual propriety and monogamy. These rules became even
more important after emancipation as farmers began to complain about
the stations, often framing their complaints through an attack on the lax
standards of the missions.10 The Moravians blended Pietist, Lutheran, and
Calvinist beliefs, stressing both the spiritual inner life and the dignity of
work. They policed social interaction between members of the community to
prevent what they perceived as immoral and inappropriate behavior.
Both the London Missionary Society and the Moravians had strict moral
requirements for inhabitants of their stations. Apart from murder, the
greatest sins were extramarital sex and illegitimacy, and mission regulations
 ritualsrrirritu 209

were designed to prevent such moral lapses. At the LMS stations “matters of
sexual morality and drunkenness were the most common reasons for exclu-
sion” from church membership.11 Section 29 of the Rules and Regulations
of Genadendal explicitly stated that anyone who “cohabits in an irregular
manner, or is guilty of adultery cannot remain a member of the institution,
and deviations from the rules of virtue and chastity are subject to church
discipline […]”.12 Indeed, in 1842 a missionary at Groenekloof stated that
“there is a regulation of our Institution with respect to unmarried women
having illegitimate children. If we find they are in such a state […] we then
desire them to leave this place.”13 Sexuality was policed by making people
return to their “dwelling, and none is allowed to walk about the establish-
ment” after church each night. Parents had to ensure that their children
only stayed overnight in other people’s houses with their permission and
all “intercourse between the sexes” had to be “according to the rules of
morality”.14
In the early years after the ending of slavery the missionaries rejoiced
that “[we] have no reason to complain of the conduct of the former slaves,
who have lived among us only one year and a half. They go out to their work,
and return quietly, and behave themselves very peaceably and orderly; they
frequent the Church diligently, & shew great devotion.”15 A Wesleyan mis-
sionary reported in 1842: “During the past year considerable improvement
in the religious advancement of our members has taken place; many of them
now appear to better understand their duty to God and each other, and they
often weep and lament that so many years of their lives have passed away in
sin, and in ignorance of God and his salvation […]”.16
However, by the early 1840s missionaries across the Cape and the West
Indies lamented that the people under their charge were falling into sinful
ways.17 In the Western Cape, the Moravian missionaries were most vocal
about the moral degeneration at their stations. Teutsch of Genadendal
despondently noted in 1843 that there were “too many nominal members
of our flock, who are in a state of lukewarmness or indifference to spiritual
things”. His colleague Kolbing wrote: “During the last months, we have had
to complain … of many deviations from the way of holiness, many instances
of individuals yielding to temptation, and fulfilling the appetites and lusts
of the flesh […]”.18 In 1842 H. Helm of Zuurbraak rejoiced that a religious
revival was taking place at the station but in 1843 while he said the revival
continued he also remarked that the year had “been a time of trial […] a few
cases occurred in which not only were involved some of the new converts,
210 beingbbbbeing

but also such as had been members of the church for some years, which
caused us much grief”. By the next year Helm now lamented that the

revival of our young people have [sic] not realized the hopes which I did
entertain of them 3 years ago. The making of the road and bridges in this
colony, in which they are employed, has been the occasion to bring them
in contact with labourers of bad habits, and some of the young people …
became worldly minded and were enticed to commence drinking again […]19

The Wesleyan reports are much more opaque. Missionaries only made
references as to how much their congregants still needed to learn or to the
fact that at Raithby station near Stellenbosch, for example, there had been
“a marked improvement in their general conduct”. Possibly the fact that the
Wesleyans preached to the community at large rather than on a relatively
self-contained station made them less hopeful of bringing about an immedi-
ate revolution in social and moral habits.20
The growing concern about morality on the missions in the early 1840s
arose partly because of missionaries’ ambivalence about the movement of
thousands of emancipated slaves onto their stations. Missionaries worried
that the freed people would bring sinful ways to the stations which had previ-
ously ministered mainly to the indigenous Khoisan. After 1838 missionaries
explicitly targeted sexual and gender relations as areas needing reform and
intervention. In 1840 missionaries at Groenekloof mission signaled a new
emphasis on the importance of legal marriage by deleting the clause from
the 1827 regulations which allowed people who had cohabited before they
arrived on the mission to be treated as married people.21 In addition, the
expulsion of women from the station for extramarital sex only started in the
1840s at Zuurbraak mission station.22 This is one reason for the proliferation
of ostensible infanticide cases in the 1840s involving women with connec-
tions to mission stations.
In the 1840s, the battle for virtue on the Moravian and LMS missions
in the Western Cape took place particularly through the regulation of
women’s sexuality.23 Single women in particular were seen as posing special
challenges to the morality of the community. Missionaries attempted to
control women’s sexuality because through pregnancy their bodies testified
to supposed immoral behavior on the part of the entire mission community.
One missionary stated that if a single woman “had brought forth a child at
Zuurbraak I would have called upon her and questioned her in the presence
 ritualsrrirritu 211

of the overseers and told her she had forfeited the Institution that is that she
must quit”.24
The stress on women’s morality also owed much to the notion, common
in Europe in the nineteenth century, that women were the repository of moral
virtues and able to control their sexual desire, if it was acknowledged at all, far
better than men. This concern with women’s morality arose partly because
women played such an important role on the missions. Women formed the
backbone of the religious community at the missions, attending church
and school more regularly, and more likely to have been baptized than the
men who were so frequently off the station.25 Women at the missions bore
the responsibility of maintaining the virtue of both themselves and men. It
is therefore not surprising that missionaries primarily blamed women for
perceived lapses in morality among the mission community as a whole.
Former slaveholders also focused on black women’s sexuality. As we have
seen, gender was always implicated in the complex struggles over labor.
White farmers identified the missions as the root of their difficulties in
finding cheap labor and especially female domestic servants. These farmers
argued that missions encouraged women not to engage in waged work,
promoted education which took children and women out of the labor market
(at least in theory), and provided families with a haven from farm labor. They
framed their complaints about the new gendering of labor relations through
a specific attack on freed women’s sexuality and their supposedly immoral
habits. White farmers argued that the missions encouraged debauchery
and licentiousness.26 In 1845, for example, T. B. Bayley, a farmer in Caledon
district, blamed the lack of labor in the district on the support given to fam-
ilies by the missions in the form of houses and gardens. Bayley stated that
Moravian missions were “directly injurious to the Farmer & indirectly to the
Labourer” and he illustrated this by pointing to the supposed immorality
of the “Hottentots” from Genadendal. Bayley specifically targeted women’s
supposed sexual habits, notably including all women in his description of
the “Hottentots” from the station including ex-slave women who had come
to Genadendal after emancipation: “Again whenever I have employed some
particular women, they have always been attended by certain men. not
[sic] husbands […] I believe conjugality and female chastity are of no great
consequence […] and this is the result of so much idleness, & so little super-
intendence […]”.27
Settlers’ sexualization of freed women was framed in part by the
ubiquitous belief in Cape settler society that Khoi and slave women were
212 beingbbbbeing

predisposed to immorality. Such a representation assumed greater impor-

tance in the postemancipation period. The ending of slavery allowed freed
women to redefine sexual relations by rejecting the passivity often forced
upon them in sexual relations under slavery. Freed women exercised choice
both through patterns of sexuality and reproduction, and by refusing to
be mothers. Those choices, to the extent that women were in a position to
choose, were circumscribed by law which rendered them dependent on men,
by the economy which made it difficult to secure personal autonomy with
economic independence, and by pervasive male notions that women should
be sexually available.

Narratives of infanticide

On 18 May 1840, James Barnes, the resident magistrate of Caledon district,

made a preparatory examination of a case of possible infanticide perpetrated
by a woman named Lea. Lea never speaks in the records of this case; we only
hear the testimony of Adonis, a freed man, and Michael Daniel Otto, the field
cornet of Diep River. Otto told the magistrate that Lea had come to his house
some ten days before on her way from Genadendal. His wife had asked Lea
if she had a husband as Lea looked pregnant but Lea denied carrying a child.
Adonis stated that the previous morning he had followed a fellow laborer into
a neighbor’s garden. On seeing something under a fig tree they had gone to
examine it and found the body of a baby. Adonis said that “stones and part of
a brick were laying near the child”. No other records of the case were found.28
Two years later two women connected to mission stations were convicted
of infanticide. These cases became the center of a discussion about mis-
sions and morality between the governor, judges, and the attorney general.
Franscina Louw of Zuurbraak was convicted of the murder of her baby on
26 April 1842. Franscina Louw, who like Lea also worked on a farm, admitted
to burying her baby but said that the child had been born dead. Apparently she
was not given the opportunity to defend herself in the magistrate’s court. The
court heard the testimony of Anna Christina Laurens, Franscina’s employer.
Anna Laurens testified that Franscina had said “she was sickly, and that her
courses had remained away in consequence of her having got wet by rain”.
However on 26 April Franscina went to the river for water and then told Mrs.
Laurens that “her courses which had remained away so long had appeared”.
Franscina said she had washed her body because it was “troublesome” but
 ritualsrrirritu 213

her employer thought that she was pregnant. Do not “deny it any longer,”
Mrs. Laurens said, “you must bring forth a child. You had better tell me now
so that I may send for my mother”.29
Anna Laurens’s mother examined Franscina and saw that her breasts
were full of milk. Finally Franscina told Mrs. Laurens that she would confess
as her breasts were so

full of milk she was obliged to milk them out. She complained also that
there was something in her private parts; and at last she told me she had
had a child and been delivered of it on the Tuesday Morning when she
had gone to the river for water. I asked her what she had done with it. She
moved her hand to shew how she had dug a hole, and she said she had
put it in the hole. She said the child had been born dead and that its head
was swollen. I asked why she had not told me of it and she said she was
afraid I would be frightened.30

Franscina’s mother also testified. Delie Louw said that she had known that
her daughter was pregnant before Franscina went to the farm and that she
had scolded her about it. Apparently her daughter had been terrified of being
expelled from Zuurbraak, which she “knew would be the case if she got a
child without being married”.31
The case of Elizabeth August arose out of similar circumstances. On
June 14 1842, Elizabeth came to the missionary at Groenekloof, and accord-
ing to him said that he must forgive her: “She came in clasping her hands
together and saying you must forgive me! it [sic] was not yet a child−it was
not yet a child−it was only a bladder and if you will not believe me I will go
and shew you […]”. The next morning the missionary saw Elizabeth at her
parents’ house. Elizabeth August said she had had a child on the Sunday
afternoon and had twisted its neck and then rolled it up in a sheepskin and
put it under her bed till 7 p.m. when everyone was at service. She had then
buried it near the river.32
In 1848, Wilhelmina Alexanders, also a member of a Moravian station,
but this time of Elim in Caledon, was brought to trial for concealing the birth
of a child. She had been a widow for about four years when the incident
occurred. Two children found the body of a baby girl wrapped up in a pet-
ticoat and covered with the skin of a merino sheep buried in the ground
about two hundred yards from Wilhelmina’s home. The missionary asked
Elizabeth Smals, a midwife at Elim, to go and investigate the different houses
214 beingbbbbeing

of the station to see who had had a child. On coming to Mrs. Alexanders’
house, Mrs. Smals examined her.

I could smell the smell women have when they are in childbed, I then
examined her breasts both of which were full of milk, and when rubbing
it the milk ran out of it in my hands, I asked the prisoner “Wilhelmina
what have you done” on which she voluntarily confessed that on the
Saturday night before she was delivered of a child the one which was
found, in a fowl house … I know the prisoner a long time she lives in
a state of widowship […] I never heard before that she was in a state of
pregnancy […] It appeared that the child was born alive … the prisoner
denied it, and said that after the birth she tried to put her fingers in the
mouth.

The doctor who was called to examine the body said that he found the child’s
lungs in “perfect state, filling the whole of the inside of the thorax and […]
filled with air, as proof that the child must not only have breathed, but also
cried”. In the preliminary exam Wilhelmina Alexanders herself said:

I admit to having been delivered of a female child […] I wrapped it up in

an old petticoat, and concealed it there to shew to our Superintendent
Elizabeth, but on Sunday […] I got weak, and it was found before I could
put my intention into action.33

The following year, Anna Sebastian, who lived at Genadendal, was tried at
Swellendam on 12 May on the charge of concealment of birth. According to
the special verdict which the jury delivered, “she proceeded to the bushes
near the bridge, where she was delivered of the child, without being aware
that she was about to be delivered of the child […] she left the child […] at the
spot where it was born, and […] she afterwards gave no information to any
person that she had been so delivered […]”. The jury stated that it could not
say if the facts added up to a charge of concealing the birth of the child. In a
letter dated 22 May 1849 the attorney general ordered her to be released and
a verdict of not guilty entered on the record.34
The final mission-related infanticide for which I have records in the
1840s concerns Dorothea Gideon. In 1848 she had been at Elim for some
nine to ten years. This suggests that she probably had been a slave, and had
participated in the great movement to the missions of the late 1830s. In 1849
 ritualsrrirritu 215

she was charged with the crime of concealment of birth, the court not being
able to determine if her child was born dead or alive. Dorothea was married
and a formal member of Elim mission station. She worked, however, at the
farm Eland’s Kloof in the service of the Moolman family. Apparently the
Elim community was alive with gossip that Dorothea had had a baby while at
Eland’s Kloof. On her return from the farm, therefore, Dorothea was brought
before the four missionaries and questioned. She confessed to having buried
her baby alive. A missionary reflected that Dorothea and her husband often
went to work together and he could not understand what had made her kill
her child. Perhaps, he said, it might have been

the trouble of rearing the child […] it struck us that she might perhaps
have had connection with another person or the trouble of rearing the
child which induced her to commit the crime on a former occasion about
six years ago there was a report at Elim that this person had a miscarriage
she admitted to me that it was so, but that the child not being full grown
or alive she buried it […]35

Dorothea said only, “My husband is the cause of all this it is true that I was
delivered of a child and after it died, I buried it”.36

Interpreting infanticide

What do we do with these tales of desperation? All the women were con-
nected in some way to mission stations. And it was precisely their ties to
missions, and their status as women who could be reclaimed into respectable
working-class society, which generated the interest of the state.37 Lea had
come from Genadendal to join her father on the farm where he worked.
Franscina lived on Zuurbraak and worked on the Laurens’s farm. Elizabeth
August lived on Groenekloof; Wilhelmina and Dorothea lived on Elim.
We hear little from these women as to their reasons for hiding their
pregnancies, concealing the birth of their babies, and/or killing their
children. The court narratives are constructed using answers by doctors,
lawyers, members of the mission communities, and farmers and their
wives to questions posed by the magistrate. We enter the events through the
interpretations of onlookers, and through a linear narrative constructed by
colonial officials operating within a historically specific ideology regarding
216 beingbbbbeing

the relationship between law, medical discourse, and state power. How do
we avoid replicating the structures of power illuminated so eloquently in
the records? And to what extent do we participate in colonial discourse in
labeling the events “infanticide”?
The “facts” of the cases suggest that the women had hidden their preg-
nancies, and then in one way or another either actively killed their children or
left them to die of exposure. The court narratives give no hint that the women
abandoned their babies in the hope that they would be rescued by members
of the community.38 It seems indeed that we are dealing with infanticide−or
at least the European definition thereof. Infanticide was conceptualized as
a crime in which a mother killed her infant of under one year.39 But did the
women in the cases share this criminal definition of infanticide?
As members of the rural poor they participated in a complex and heter-
ogeneous cultural life with origins in slave culture, Khoi and San societies,
and the societies of East and Central Africa. As such they possibly brought to
the killing of infants a different cultural perspective than that of the British or
the Dutch. Many pre-capitalist African societies had a variety of codes regard-
ing infanticide.40 Isaac Schapera argues that San and Khoi societies of the
Northern Cape also practiced infanticide as a means of child spacing – killing
a baby born while another was still at the breast by burying it alive or leaving
it to be eaten by wild animals. Schapera states that the Khoisan communities
of the southern Cape did not follow this practice, but the similarity in the
practices of the six women involved in the 1840s cases to those he describes
suggests possible cultural continuities.41
Dorothea Gideon “dug a hole in the ground and buried it [the baby]
alive”.42 It is not clear if Wilhelmina Alexanders intended to kill her child, but
she left it in the cold overnight. Franscina Louw claimed that her child had
been born dead−she buried the infant in a hole near the river.43 We should
be wary of overstating such a possibility, however, since the rural context of
these infanticides meant that burial or exposure might have been the only
means of committing the crime in any event.
If the form of infanticide in the mid-nineteenth century retained some
similarity to earlier practices, the meaning of and the reasons for the practice
were not necessarily the same. Schapera, writing in 1935, used sources from
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as evidence for his comments on
contemporary Khoisan societies. He provides an a historic ethnography
which portrays a society supposedly living in the 1930s as it might have in
the eighteenth century−and suggests that the eighteenth-century picture is
 ritualsrrirritu 217

pristine in its “authenticity” and lack of contact with European influence. But
Khoisan societies of the eighteenth century had already been in long contact
with European settlement: infanticide as birth-spacing might well have been
a culturally specific response to colonial disruption of previous birth-spacing
practices.44 In giving weight to a culturalist interpretation we have to accord
that infanticide as we encounter it in these cases is embedded in a colonial
context of material and ideological domination.
It is striking that all six women hid the fact that they were pregnant−
which suggests that they had always intended to somehow get rid of the
babies at birth.45 Wilhelmina Alexanders was a widow of four years when she
gave birth. She kept her pregnancy secret from the community. Four women
were apparently so frightened of the consequences of having illegitimate
children that they hid their pregnancies and buried their children. In all the
cases, fear of being abandoned by the community and of being banished
from the station seems to have governed their actions. This fear was a real
one. Lehman, a missionary at Groenekloof Moravian mission stated that

We have poeple [sic] who have been there a long time, who tell it to the
younger ones−when new people come to the institution we tell them, if
you do not behave like a Christian x [sic] according to the Word of God−
you will be turned out. I am as certain that it is as well-known that young
women will be turned out if they have bastard children−as they know it is
wrong to have bastard children.46

The women were brought before the missionary of their station where they
confessed to the sin of killing their child, but this did not necessarily absolve
them of having contravened the laws of the community.47 Moravians, in
particular, put much emphasis on confession as a means of cleansing the
soul, but it did not always translate into redemption. The community was a
source of strength and love, but also of intervention. The need to belong to
the mission community seems to be one reason why these women concealed
the births and deaths of their illegitimate children, but those very commu-
nities were also the instruments of their undoing. In the trial of Dorothea
Gideon, for example, August Lemerts of the station stated that there was “a
talk at Elim that the Prisoner Dorothea […] has been delivered of a Child”.
Female neighbors turned in Wilhelmina Alexanders to the Superintendent
of Elim.48 As the backbone of the religious life at the stations, women were,
perhaps, particularly protective of moral and religious standards. Jealousy
218 beingbbbbeing

over the sexual lives of women who chose not to follow the strict injunctions
against premarital and extramarital sex might also have fueled women’s com-
plaints against their peers. Fellow women often turned in the perpetrators of
infanticide. Lea was turned in by Keyter’s wife, while both Wilhelmina and
Dorothea were exposed by women.
Dorothea Gideon, the only married woman of the six, situated her case
within a very specific context of blame. She stated “my husband is the cause
of all this.” Was she blaming her husband for having made her pregnant? Was
she condemning him for making her work and therefore making it difficult
for her to rear a child? Was she indeed blaming him for making her kill her
child? On the missions, a sexual division of labor in which women worked in
the gardens at the missions and men worked either in artisanal crafts or on the
farms might have created resentment among those women who had to work
on the farms. Did the fact that at least three of the five women were employed
outside the home factor into their actions? Did they compare their situation
unfavorably to other women who were able to reside on the missions?
Lea, Franscina Louw, and Dorothea Gideon were farm workers. It is
possible that one reason for their actions arose from their status as women
workers whose employment could be terminated by her employer if they
became pregnant.49 However, in their subsequent investigations into these
cases, neither the missionaries nor the state considered that the women
might have been forced to kill their children precisely because of their incor-
poration into the wage labor economy as subordinates to men.50 The moral
codes of the stations regarding illegitimacy and the permanent casting out of
perceived miscreants become the causal factor in the narrative of infanticide.
Without knowing the exact histories of Lea, Franscina Louw, Wilhelmina
Alexanders, Anna Sebastian, Elizabeth August, and Dorothea Gideon, it is
difficult to write of their longings and feelings, of their cultural perceptions
of the world around them. In the court narratives the women and the wit-
nesses make much of the dishonor and humiliation which accompanied
illegitimacy on the mission stations. We must be wary of attributing such
feelings to the women whom we meet third hand, and in a very structured
judicial context. Yet people were caught up in the regulatory world of the
mission regardless of whether its moral precepts helped them in daily life.
Infanticide was imbricated in colonial definitions of right and wrong, and
official scripts of justice and power. As such we must place these cases into
other contexts at the Cape and in the international moral economies in the
decade after slavery.
 ritualsrrirritu 219

Moral reclamation and the humanitarian sentiment

Infanticide at the Cape became, for a moment, a site of the elaboration of

a new conception of power by officials in the emerging colonial state. The
Cape infanticide narratives can be interpreted as forming part of a wider
cluster of discrete and overlapping discourses regarding upliftment of the
“worthy” poor, the inculcation of morality, and the institution of new forms
of rule based on a capillary conception of power emanating from the sover-
eignty of the state.51
The British and Cape impulses behind infanticide/concealment of birth
prosecutions rested on slightly different foundations. The colonial Ordinance
of 1845, which allowed for criminal prosecution for concealment of birth,
prefigured its British counterpart by sixteen years.52 The ordinance allowed
juries to award an alternative sentence if infanticide could not be proven.
Rose argues that this alternate sentence was part of a move in the British
justice system towards leniency regarding conviction of women for cases of
infanticide.53 At the Cape this ruling was more ambivalent. The ordinance
widened and deepened state power with more coercive intentions, at least
with regard to the prosecution of black women.54 Indeed the governor stated
as much in May 1845. He said the ordinance had been submitted to the
Legislative Council, it “having appeared to the Attorney-General, that the
criminal law of this Colony was defective in not constituting the concealment
of the birth of a child a crime, inasmuch as facilities were hereby afforded for
the commission of infanticide without detection”.55
The colonial state focused on infanticide precisely because it was in many
ways an act which was situated at the heart of different cultural understandings
of morality and autonomy. In killing her child, a woman declared sovereign
power over both her body and the body of her child. Possibly through infanti-
cides these women also refused “maternity” and the “maternal instinct.” They
thus rejected the constructions of motherhood promoted, for example, in
the amelioration legislation and on the mission stations.56 These infanticide
proceedings became symbolic trials serving as platforms from which colonial
officials described what behavior was not acceptable, legitimated state legis-
lation on the sphere defined as “private,” and sought to inculcate practices
and values conducive to the reproduction of a self-reproducing rural elite and
stable working class needing minimal state intervention.
In the humanitarian discourse we witness the rise of “the expert” who
comes to know more about the individual than the person herself. Under
220 beingbbbbeing

Roman Dutch law the doctor’s decision was central to the determination of
guilt. The decision as to whether a child was born dead or alive rested on
medical testimony as to whether the lungs floated when thrown in water. If
they did, the child was deemed to have been born alive.57 Ordinance No. 10
of 1845 gave the medical expert a larger stage on which to jostle for authority
with the legal profession. Physical exams involved issues of power and state
intervention in a very private sphere. The court narratives are constructed in
such a way that the doctor’s testimony is cited last: as the reader we turn to
him for resolution of the case. In the case of Elizabeth August, Dr. William
Daly’s testimony contradicts her claim to having strangled the child: “[T]he
baby might have been smothered either by the placenta itself or by being
under the bedclothes or by the actual process of childbirth.” Daly stated that
he might have missed the damage to the child’s neck if the clerk of the court
had not told him of Elizabeth August’s confession.58
Attending to the struggle between new conceptions of power allows us to
account for what at first appears to be an anomaly in these cases when com-
pared to others in England in the same period. Lionel Rose states that there
was enormous public sympathy for mothers who were believed to have killed
their babies and that juries were generally loath to return “a criminally culpable
verdict against a female witness”.59 At the Cape juries were more ambivalent
than their British peers and this period generally passed a verdict of guilty.
Until the late nineteenth century juries in the rural areas came only from
the white community. The Cape law “relating to juries contained no colour
bar […] but in practice juries tended to be dominated by whites”. Only qual-
ified voters, of whom the vast majority were white, and always male, were
allowed to sit on juries. In Cape Town juries were mixed, although still dom-
inated by whites, but in the rural areas it was only after 1874 that juries were
made up of both white and “coloured” men.60 Possibly the unsympathetic
verdicts rendered by many rural juries in infanticide cases stemmed from
an ill-disguised resentment against former slaves and dependent laborers
who now in freedom were seen to be confirming a long-held belief that they
were immoral and untrustworthy. Racism no doubt played a part since white
juries probably found it easy to convict an African woman. That many of
these women seem to have had sexual relations out of marriage might also
have contributed to the juries’ willingness to convict the women of infanti-
cide. Juries used the weight of the law to sentence members of their former
slave class to death. Lea was sentenced to death and was hanged after a trial
in the Circuit Court at Swellendam.61 Both Franscina Louw and Elizabeth
 ritualsrrirritu 221

August were also condemned to death, but the chief justice asked that their
sentences be commuted. It was through a revocation of the verdicts on these
latter two cases that the colonial state challenged missionary notions of
authority and sought to establish the hegemony of the colonial state over the
missions.

Rituals of rule

The humanitarian discourse of the colonial state was multifocused and

practiced with discrete effects on different colonial actors. Colonial officials
sought to reclaim rural women into the respectable working-class commu-
nity through pardoning their sins and laying a foundation for action. They
also targeted the missionaries who had caused the pain. Naming the women
as deviant established the moral superiority of the British colonial state vis-
à-vis both those women who had killed their children, and the missionaries,
who it was argued had caused the women to take that action. In summing
up the trial of Elizabeth August, the attorney general praised the Moravians
for helping “their disciples learn to combine active performance of the duties
of this life with the most fervent aspirations after another and a better”.
However, he also argued that the crucial problem on the mission stations was
that the rule regarding women’s morality was imposed by the missionaries
instead of coming from the community itself.

If that rule were the natural growth of moral and religious feeling
amongst the coloured class itself […] it would in all probability, be
attended with comparatively few dangers […] it will be strongly fortified
by sentiment and principle against the original temptation, and even if
she chance to fall, her mind and moral feeling are too well disciplined to
allow her to incur the sin of murder rather than the shame of exposure
[…] But […] does it not come to pass that females of infirm principles and
half formed notions of right and wrong, confound all the boundaries of
criminality, and, in their darkened imaginations, are found to fear the
frown of the missionary and expulsion from the institution more than the
guilt of murdering their offspring?62

This targeting of the missionaries played into wider tensions between state
and missions over control of the laboring population. This tension became
222 beingbbbbeing

increasingly evident in the 1850s with the constitution of commissions

investigating landholding on the missions and addressing the white farmers’
concerns about their inability to secure cheap sources of labor.63
The attack by members of the Cape government on infanticide on the
mission stations invoked and legitimated Victorian gender standards.
Women were blamed for killing their children, but not held responsible for
their actions.64 The implicit assumption was that “infanticide was male-in-
stigated, and women left to their own devices, would never kill their children
[…]”.65 Laying blame on the missionaries removed agency from the women
and again resolved the issue within the parameters acceptable to the colonial
state by legitimating state intervention into the lives of the rural poor.
Once the infanticides on the mission stations came to their attention the
attorney general and other high-ranking colonial officials were appalled at
the rigidity of mission station regulations towards lapsed members of the
community. The judicial documents in the infanticide cases of Franscina
Louw and Elizabeth August present a particularly vivid example of how
colonial officials characterized the difference between civil society and the
mission stations. The governor stated with regard to Franscina Louw:

I agree with the judge that the crime of which she is convicted is to be
attributed to their dread of the consequences of being expelled from the
Missionary Institution of Zuurbraak, and therefore taking into consid-
eration the favourable circumstances mentioned in the Judge’s letter,
together with his opinion that it would not be prejudicial to the ends of
justice that the sentence of death should be suspended until her case
shall have been submitted to the Gracious consideration of Her Majesty
the Queen, I have granted her a Reprieve […].66

Three months later the chief justice of the colony sent a similar letter to the
governor regarding the case of Elizabeth August and asking for clemency. He
hoped that the observations of the presiding judges in the two cases

will produce a relaxation in a rule which was made for the encourage-
ment of morality, but which from its undue severity leads unfortunate
females to the commission of the most unnatural Crimes […] however
it would be a delicate task for the Govt to interfere further with those
institutions than has been done on these two occasions, leaving it to time
and experience to shew that rigorous discipline will not supply the place of
 ritualsrrirritu 223

morality, and that Missionaries to effect their object must appeal to other and
higher sources for checks to the evil which they wish to eradicate by public
expulsion and excommunication [my emphasis].67

In the interpretation of these cases by high government officials the mission-

aries’ conception of power did not allow for reclamation of women who had
fallen from grace through contravention of sexual and family norms. The
chief justice argued that discipline could not prevail over habit. He implied,
instead, that the cultural transformation of freed people would be more
successfully accomplished in the realm of civil society where the state would
help inculcate habits and values which would be shared by all.
But were the moral projects of the British colonial state and the Moravian
missionaries so very different? For most of their residence in the Cape since
1792 the Moravians had enjoyed good relations with the government, espe-
cially in comparison to the stormy relations between the London Missionary
Society and colonial officials and farmers. As we have seen, the Moravian
community was rooted in respect for authority, hierarchy, and the word of
God as interpreted by the missionaries. This had served the stations well in
the immediate post emancipation period. In addition, both the Moravians
and the London Missionary Society subscribed to many of the sentiments
outlined by Chief Justice Wylde and William Porter. One of the main aims
of Philip’s reforms on LMS stations in the 1820s was precisely to lead by
example, to instill morality through the inculcation of habit.68
Indeed the colonial authorities caricatured missionary authority and
judicial practice. Procedures existed to allow the reentry to the mission
community of people who had been expelled. Reverend Helm of Zuurbraak
stated that if she “had shown any signs which led me to think that she really
repented of her conduct I would have told her she could remain”.69 By the
mid-nineteenth century the numbers of expulsions at Genadendal had
increased, but expulsion had also become more difficult to enforce. This was
partly in response to community pressure: relatives simply kept the person at
the station. This speaks too to tensions within the community itself as to the
means of inculcating morality. Significantly, in 1857, the Cape government
added a section to the Rules and Regulations of Genadendal which made
expulsion subject to the consent of the magistrate.70 The government wrote
into law the desire for firmer civic control over missionary life for which the
attorney general, the governor, and the chief justice had implicitly appealed
in their analysis of the mission infanticide trials of the 1840s.
224 beingbbbbeing

Conclusion

The extensive prosecution and scrutiny of cases of infanticide relating to

mission stations in the 1840s can be regarded as examples of competing
theaters of colonial hegemonic practice. The Moravians and the LMS shared
to some extent the Dutch farmers’ conception of power as being located
in theatrical demonstrations of power over the body of the individual.
Missionaries and state alike exploited the occasion of infanticide to invoke
rituals of rule. Colonial officials, I have argued, used these cases as practices
to illustrate simultaneously both the immorality of the crime of infanticide,
the wrongheadedness of the missionaries, and the beneficence of British jus-
tice. Similarly the missionaries exploited the occasion of infanticide to invoke
rituals of religious observance – such as confession, which at once bound the
mission station together through religious practice and targeted as “other”
the woman who had stepped outside the boundaries of convention.71
The difference between the colonial state and the missionaries revolved
around the proper arena of demonstrating power and the ultimate means
whereby to fashion a colonial community. For the missionaries, and the mis-
sion community, the sphere of articulation remained the mission station and
the mission court. For the colonial state, theaters of rule were to be located
in the public space of the colonial legal system. The 1840s produced a con-
vergence of factors which helped privilege the articulation of some colonial
tensions within a discourse on infanticide. The “discovery” of infanticides on
mission stations in the 1840s is a product and a reflection of a moment of
acute struggle between different colonial actors to define the contours of colo-
nial rule. The cases of infanticide also uncover the ways in which ideas of race,
gender, and sexuality helped to define both the worlds which freed women had
to negotiate after 1838 and the laws which were put into place in the new era of
freedom. In the early 1850s, the confluence of race, sexuality, and the elabora-
tion of colonial identities were very clearly exposed in discussions about rape,
and particularly through those cases which involved the rape of freed women.

Notes

i. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double-Consciousness. Harvard

MA: Harvard University Press, 1995; Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection.
Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997;
 ritualsrrirritu 225

ii. See, for instance, R.J. Ross, Cape of Torments. Slavery and Resistance in South
Africa. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963; Nigel Worden, Slavery
in Dutch South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. For
recent literary approaches see Meg Samuelson, “Rendering the Cape-as-Port:
Sea-Mountain, Cape of Storms/Good Hope, Adamastor and Local-World Lit-
erary Formations,” Journal of South African Studies 42, no. 3 (2016): 523-537;
Jessica Murray “Gender and Violence in Cape Slave Narratives and Post-Narra-
tives,” South African Historical Journal 62, no. 3 (2010): 444-462.
iii. Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee, Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in
South Africa. Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1998.
1. This is a tentative figure based on a survey of the criminal records of the
Cape Supreme Court from 1843 to 1870, and also on local criminal records
for Stellenbosch, Caledon, Swellendam, Paarl and Worcester. Edna Bradlow
states that there are many cases of infanticide in the Cape criminal records:
Bradlow, “Women at the Cape in the Mid—Nineteenth Century.” South African
Historical Journal 19 (1987)” 51-75. 73. Fifteen cases of concealing the birth of a
child were brought before the Supreme Court between 1860 and 1879: Patricia
van der Spuy, “The Involvement of Women in Violent Crime as Processed by
the Institutions of Justice in Cape Town, 1860-1879” (B.A. Hons. diss., His-
tory Department, University of Cape Town, 1989), Table 3, 47. Andrew Bank
documents fifteen cases between 1890 and 1900: Andrew Bank, “Crime in
Cape Town, 1890 to 1900” (BA. Hons. diss., History Department, University
of Cape Town, 1988), Table 4.1, 82. Ordinance No. 10 of 1845 allowed the state
to prosecute women for concealment of birth if there was not clear evidence of
infanticide. This cast the net of identification much wider than had been the
case under the infanticide legislation. See CA, CCP 6/3/1/6.
2. CA, CSC, 1/1/1/14, Case of Betje Blankenberg, 15 January 1850. She was found
guilty of concealment of birth, the jury being unable to tell if the child was born
dead or alive. She received a “recommendation to mercy” owing to the good
account of her character given by J. Stegmann, a missionary from the station.
Also CA, CSC, 1/1/1/19, 2 February 1863, Margaretha Roubyn of Pniel, who
received twelve months’ hard labour for concealing the birth of her child. She
did not receive a recommendation to mercy.
3. Particularly in the light of judicial attitudes to the rape of black women see
Chapter 8, “Rape, Race, and Sexual Politics of Colonial Identities,” in Liberating
the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape,
South Africa, 1823-1853, edited by Pamela Scully, 153-175. Portsmouth NH:
Heinemann, 1997.
226 beingbbbbeing

4. See Nancy Scheper-Hughes, “Culture, Society, and Maternal Thinking: Mater-

nal Detachment and Infant Survival in a Brazilian Shantytown,” Ethnos 13, no. 4
(1985): 291-317, 292, for a discussion of the cultural construction of maternal
feeling. Also Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two
Lives. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
5. An analysis of the records of the Cape Supreme Court from its inception in
1828 and of local criminal records from 1828 to 1838 revealed only three cases
of infanticide, including one in Cape Town. I am grateful to Helen Bradford for
sharing her data with me. See Van der Spuy, “Collection,” Paper 4, 152-198, for
an analysis of all infanticide in the amelioration period.
6. See Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex, and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and
Policies and Their Critics, 1793-1905. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980; Michel
Foucault, History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books,
1990; Judith Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the
State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980; and Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Pol-
itics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800. London: Longman, 1981.
7. Thomas Laqueur, “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative,” in The
New Cultural History, edited by Lynn Hunt, 178, 179, 188. Ithaca NY: Cornell
University Press, 1989.
8. See Douglas Hay et al., Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Cen-
tury England. New York: Pantheon Books, 1975, for discussion of the use of
pardon as a means of exercising power. For application in the South African
context see Pamela Scully, “Criminality and Conflict in Rural Stellenbosch,
South Africa, 1870-1900,” Journal of African History 3, no. 2 (1989): 289-300.
Of course this narrative is very much a part of the humanitarian discourse of
abolitionist ideology.
9. Lionel Rose, Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain, 1800-1939, 41.
London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1986.
10. See below.
11. Jane Sayles, Mission Stations and the Coloured Communities of the Eastern Cape,
1800-1852, 39. Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1975.
12. ASL, CGH, Select Committee, Granting lands in Freehold to Hottentots, S.C. 11,
1854, 38.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 42. The Periodical Accounts of the Moravian Church provide the best
archival sources for internal mission politics. The correspondence of the Lon-
don Missionary Society does not provide quite the same degree of detail about
issues relating to family and gender.
 ritualsrrirritu 227

15. HA, “Diary of Genadendal, 1840,” PA, XVI, CLXXIII (December 1841), 30.
16. SOAS, “Notes by Rev. Joseph Jackson after a visit to KhamiesBerg Station in Lit-
tle Namaqualand after a visit to Cape Town; Extract from Stellenbosch District
Report,” in Report of the Wesleyan-Methodist Missionary Society for the Year Ending
April 1842, 79. London: Wesleyan Missionary Society, 1842.
17. William A. Green, British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great
Experiment, 1830-1865, Ch.11, 341. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. For an excel-
lent discussion of missionary discourse in Jamaica see Sean Buffington, “After
the Rio: Social Relations and Ideologies in Metcalfe Parish, Jamaica, 1866-1871”
(paper presented to the Conference on Postemancipation Societies and Race,
University of Michigan, April 1993).
18. HA, Letter from Teutsch, PA, XVI CLXXXI (December 1843), 462; Letter from
Kolbing, PA, XVI, CLXXXIl (March 1844), 518.
19. CA, LMS ZL 1/3/15, Box 18, Folder 5, Jacket A, Report for 1842 by H. Helm,
2 August 1842; ZL 1/3/16, Box 19, Folder 3, Jacket C, Report for 1843 by H.
Helm, 1 November 1843; ZL 1/3/17, Box 21, Folder 4, Jacket B, Report for 1844
by H. Helm, 1 November 1844.
20. SOAS, Report of the Wesleyan-Methodist Missionary Society for the year ending
April 1846, 62. London: Wesleyan Missionary Society, 1846; Report of Wes-
leyan-Methodist Society for the year ending April 1853, 43. London; Wesleyan
Missionary Society, 1853.
21. Elizabeth Helen Ludlow, “Missions and Emancipation in the South Western
Cape: A Case Study of Groenekloof (Mamre), 1838-1852,” 82 (M.A. diss., Uni-
versity of Cape Town, 1992). Raum suggests, however, that the Moravians were
fairly accommodating to customs as long as they did not conflict with Christian
ideas. People were permitted to live together without legal marriage as long
as they adhered to the general moral principles of the station. I have relied
heavily on Raum for my understanding of the Moravians and Genadendal
history: Johannes Raum, “The Development of the Coloured Community at
Genadendal Under the Influence of the Missionaries of the Unitas Fratum,
1792-1892” (M. A. diss., University of Cape Town, 1952). See also Isaac Balie,
Die Geskiedenis van Genadendal 1738-1988. Cape Town: Perskor, 1988.
22. CA, GH 28/19, No. 3, Statement by CP, Trial of Franscina Louw, 23 July 1842.
23. Raum, “Development,” 31.
24. CA, GH 28/19, No. 3, Enclosure No. 3, Deposition of H. C. J. Helm, 23 July 1842.
25. H.A, Letter from Genth, Elim, PA, XVI, CLXXV (June 1842), 134; Letter from
Kolbing, Genadendal, PA, XVIII, CC (September 1848), 389. Raum, “Devel-
opment,” 42, argues that women were “more susceptible to the teachings of
228 beingbbbbeing

the missionaries than the men. One reason for this was, as the missionaries
realized themselves, that the men left the settlement in order to work.”
26. This discourse was pervasive in the mid-nineteenth century. See Clifton C.
Crais, “The Vacant Land: The Mythology of British Expansion in the Eastern
Cape, South Africa,” Journal of Social History 25, no. 2 (Winter 1991): 255-274.
See also ASL, CGH, Master and Servant, JP, Zwartkop’s River, question 11, 70.
He argued that women rarely stayed in employment for longer than three
months “In ten years, I have had but one adult female servant who was not a
drunkard, or vicious character of a worse description.” D. Buchanan, JP, SWM,
complained that “the institution swarms with idle women and naked children.”
Master and Servant, Question 11, 82.
27. Bayley argued that “a more dissipated, immoral, and dishonest race of people
than the Hottentots of Genadendal cannot be found in any civilized quarter of
the globe.” CA, CO 4024, No. 26, T.B. Bayley to SG, 24 February 1845.
28. CA, 1/CAL 1/1/1, 18 May 1840. The case is brief and sparse. The RM wrote in
the margins that the case was sent to the CP in Cape Town. For conclusion
of the case see CA, CO 503, No. 39, Justice Menzies to Governor Napier,
5 April 1841.
29. CA, GH 28/19, No. 1, Enclosure No. 1 for Despatch 150, 1842. Records of
Proceedings in the Case of Franscina Louw, Statement of Anna Laurens,
28 July 1842.
30. Ibid.
31. CA, GH 28/19, No. 3, Enclosure No. 3, Deposition of H.C.J. Helm, 23 July 1842,
enclosing letter and memorandums, Deposition of Delie Louw, n.d.
32. CA, GH, 28/20, No. 1, Enclosures to Despatch No. 209; Proceedings of the
Trial of Elizabeth August, testimony by Joseph Lehman, 20 October 1842.
33. CA, 1/CAL 1/1/1, Preliminary examination into the case of Wilhelmina Alexan-
ders for concealing the birth of child, 16 February 1848.
34. No preliminary examination could be found for her trial. We know of her case
only through the printed indictment which is lodged in the Circuit Court Swel-
lendam on 22 May 1849.
35. CA, 1/CAL 1/1/2, Documents in the Circuit Court trial of Dorothea Gideon
for Concealing the Birth of her Child on 1 May 1849 at Eland’s Kloof, 4 Octo-
ber 1849. Preliminary Examination conducted by RM, statement by August
Lemerts, n.d.
36. Ibid, Statement of Dorothea, n.d.
37. The working-class background of these women is consistent with every other
infanticide case I have found in the Supreme Court Criminal Records.
 ritualsrrirritu 229

38. Compare John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children
in Western Europe from Late Antiquity tot Renaissance. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1988.
39. Johannes van der Linden, Institutes of Holland, or Manual of Law, Practice, and
Mercantile Law, for the Use of Judges, Lawyers, Merchants, and All Who Wish to
Have a General View of the Law, 5th edn., section 12. Cape Town: J.C. Juta and Co,
1906; Rose, Massacre of the Innocents.
40. In Zulu society, for example, one twin was often left out to die so as to enable
the mother to give all her milk to only one baby and thus strengthen its chances
of survival. See Marianne Brindley, “Old Women in Zulu Culture: The Old
Woman and Childbirth,” South African Journal of Ethnology 8, no. 3 (1985):
98-108. I am grateful to Keletso Atkins and members of the South African
seminar at the University of Michigan for highlighting this concern. Nancy
Scheper-Hughes argues that maternal bonding is culturally and historically
specific and that in communities where infant mortality is high, parents dis-
tance themselves from their children in order to see if the infants will survive:
Scheper-Hughes, “Culture, Scarcity, and Maternal Thinking.”
41. Isaac Schapera, The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa, 116. Reprint, London:
Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1960.
42. CA, 1/CAL 1/ 1/ 2, Testimony of Johannes Albertus Moolman, missionary,
4 October 1849.
43. 1/CA, GH 28/19 No.1. Testimonv of Anna Christina Laurens, 21 July 1841. I
cannot tell if Franscina Louw killed her baby or not although she had concealed
her pregnancy. The jury found her guilty of infanticide.
44. See Nancy Rose Hunt, “‘Le Bébé en Brousse’: European Women, African
Birth-Spacing, and Colonial Intervention in the Belgian Congo,” International
Journal of African Historical Studies 21, no. 3 (1988): 401-432, for a similar
argument.
45. Abortion might have been attempted, but we have no way of knowing. Helen
Bradford is currently working on a history of abortion in South Africa.
46. CA, GH, 28/20, No.1, Enclosures to Despatch No. 209; Proceedings of the Trial
of Elizabeth August, testimony by Joseph Lehman, 20 October 1842.
47. See Vicente Rafael, “Confession, Conversion, and Reciprocity in Early Taga-
log Colonial Society,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, no. 2
(April 1987): 320-339.
48. CA, 1/CAL 1/1/2, 4 October 1849; CA 1/CAL 1/1/1, 16 February 1849.
49. Employers did terminate women’s employment on these grounds. For example
in 1867 Mary Ann Chappel, aged sixteen, who was apprenticed to J. G. Faure
230 beingbbbbeing

of Stellenbosch, became pregnant as the result of a relationship with another

labourer on the farm and Faure fired her in terms of the Masters and Servants
Act of 1856. The attorney general adjudicated that this dismissal was legal.
However, Mary Ann having been originally apprenticed when she was under
ten years of age, the indenture itself was illegal. CA, 1 / STB, 10/160, Henry
Baas to RM, 11 February 1867; AG to Acting CP, STB, 15 February 1867.
50. For more analysis of the context of labour in these cases of infanticide see
Pamela Scully, “Narratives of Infanticide in the Aftermath of Slave Emancipa-
tion in the Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, South Africa,” Canadian Journal
of African Studies 30, no. 1 (1996) (Special Issue on Wicked Women and the
Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa, edited by Dorothy Hodgson and Sheryl
McCurdy): 88-105.
51. See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1977, for a discussion of how the industrializing state (not his
terms) reconfigured relations of power based on the sovereignty of the state
and the displacement of sovereignty located in the individual. On discourses
of upliftment see Elaine Hadley, “Natives in a Strange Land: The Philanthropic
Discourse of Juvenile Emigration in Mid­Nineteenth-Century England,” Victo-
rian Studies 33, no. 3 (1990): 411-437.
52. For a similar observation see Sandra Burman and Margaret Naude, “Bearing a
Bastard: The Social Consequences of illegitimacy in Cape Town, 1896-1939,”
Journal of Southern African Studies 17, no. 3 (September 1991): 373-413, 387. Rose,
Massacre of the Innocents, 71, gives information on the metropolitan chronology.
53. Rose, Massacre of the Innocents, 70.
54. From a brief perusal of verdicts it appears that the perceived race of the victim
played a large part in the type of verdict delivered. White women were more
likely to be found to have extenuating circumstances for infanticide, although
juries appear to have become more lenient in general in the course of the
nineteenth century.
55. CA, GH 23/15, No. 86, Governor to SSC, 14 May 1845.
56. I am grateful to Philippina Levine for alerting me to this point.
57. Van der Linden, Institutes, 218.
58. See CA, GH 28/20, No. 1, Case of Elizabeth August. Testimony of Dr. William
Daly, 20 October 1842. Also CA 1/CAL 1/1/1, Case of Wilhelmina Alexanders.
Testimony of Abraham Albertyn, doctor, 16 February 1848. Laqueur cites a
case of infanticide in which the medical testimony contradicts the woman’s
confession of having killed her child: Laqueur, “Humanitarian Narrative,” 188.
59. Rose, Massacre of the Innocents, 43.
 ritualsrrirritu 231

60. Albie Sachs, Justice in South Africa, 60, 59-70. Berkeley CA: University of
California Press, 1973.
61. CA, CO 503, No. 39, Justice Menzies to Governor Napier, 5 April 1841.
Wilhelmina Alexanders received twelve months’ hard labour in 1848 for con-
cealment of birth. CA, CO 575, High Sheriff to SG, 3 March 1848. I have the
circuit court trial records, but no verdict for Dorothea Gideon’s case. CA, 1/CAL
1/1/2, Circuit Court trial of Dorothea Gideon for Concealing the Birth of her
Child, 4 October 1849.
62. William Porter, The Porter Speeches. Speeches Delivered by The Hon. William
Porter, During the Years 1839-1845 Inclusive, 132-136. Cape Town: Trustees Estate
and Saul Solomon and Co., 1886.
63. For example, see GB, Parliament, House, Minute by SG on Representative
Institution for the Cape, dated 14 January 1851, in “Further Papers Relative
to the Establishment of a Representative Assembly,” Parliamentary Papers
1851 (1362), p. 165; SAL, CGH, Parliament, “Debate on Missionary Lands,
3 August 1854,” The Advertiser and Mail’s Parliamentary Debates in the First
Session of the First Parliament of the Cape of Good Hope, Appointed to meet 30th
June 1854, State Library Reprints, 33, 1 (Pretoria: State Library, 1968); ASL,
CGH, Select Committee, Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee of
the House of Assembly on Granting Lands in Freehold to Hottentots, S.C. 13 (Cape
Town: Saul Salomon and Co., 1856).
64. See Ruth Harris, “Melodrama, Hysteria, and Feminine Crimes of Passion in
the Fin de Siècle,” History Workshop 25, no. 1 (1988): 31-63, for a discussion of
how women manipulated this perception to their advantage in murder trials.
65. Rose, Massacre of the Innocents, 26, with reference to England and the leniency
of infanticide convictions.
66. CA, GH 23/14, Vol. 1, No. 152, Governor to SSC, enclosing the report of the
proceedings on the case of Francina [sic] Louw, 10 August 1842.
67. CA, GH 23/14 No. 209, Chief Justice Governor, 31 October 1842.
68. Richard Lovett, A History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895, 2 vols.
London: Oxford University Press, 1899.
69. CA, GH 28/19, No.3, Trial of Franscina Louw, 23 July 1842.
70. Raum, “Development,” 56-59.
71. At Groenekloof, “the expulsion of young women is public. I first intimate it
privately to the party and afterwards publish it from the Pulpit, the name of
the cause of her expulsion.” CA, GH 28/20, No. 1, Trial of Elizabeth August,
Testimony of Joseph Lehman, 20 October 1842.
 9

“Hoera, dit skip seil uit oos”

The Sea as a Site of Memory in the Folk Songs of the Enslaved
Community and their Descendants at the Cape

Anne Marieke van der Wal

Hoor ek die see sing, sing? Hoor ek die meeue sing?

Nee! Nee! Ek hoor die vryheid, ja die vryheid sing!
Adam Small1

In the poem Vryheid (Freedom), cited above, the Cape Coloured2 poet Adam
Small sketches a scene in which a Coloured couple, perched on a cliff at the
edge of the Cape peninsula, stare out over the sea longing for the freedom
the ocean represents. When they turn back inland towards their home on the
Cape Flats, they move towards a world of repression and subjugation. The
poem’s narrator exclaims in despair, “Do I hear the sea sing, sing? Do I hear
the seagulls sing? No! No! I hear freedom, yes freedom sing!”3 While this
poem describes the oppression experienced by the Coloured population in
twentieth-century apartheid South Africa, Small has in his work often made
a link between the struggle against apartheid and the struggles of his fore-
fathers during slavery.4 The image of the sea as a space of freedom—but at
the same time a freedom which cannot be reached—exemplifies the way the
sea features in the memories of the descendants of the enslaved as a space of
longing and desire. This is at least evident in the Atlantic world, where the
sea is often imagined as a site of loss, dispersal and longing, but also as one
of contact and exchange.5 This awareness of the ocean as a “hybrid cultural
space” can be attributed to, amongst other writings, Paul Gilroy’s influential
work, The Black Atlantic, in which he has argued for a focus on the Atlantic
Ocean as a zone of contact in which a counterculture of modernity emerged.6
Unfortunately, Gilroy leaves the experiences of enslaved people in the East
largely untouched in his work, whereas, as Isabel Hofmeyr has argued, “the
234 beingbbbbeing

Indian Ocean is the site par excellence of ‘alternative modernity’”.7 Hofmeyr

argues that because of the complex nature of slavery in the Indian Ocean
world, studying the “Brown Indian Ocean” enables scholars to explore in
more depth the “meaning of slavery and freedom”, as well as the relationship
between slave systems and “modernity”.8
South African poet and literary scholar, Gabeba Baderoon, has argued
that the sea features prominently in the memory and cosmology of the Cape
Coloured community, not only as a site of transference (the middle passage)
and of desire and longing, but also as a place of belonging, living next to the
sea and living off the sea.9 However, she claims that this presence can no
longer be found in the “folk memory”10 of the Cape Coloured community,
but is mainly found in more recently produced artistic creations and per-
formances,11 such as, for instance, Adam Small’s work cited above. In this
chapter, I will argue that the memory of slavery and an “Indian Ocean con-
sciousness” has not been erased from the folk memory of the Cape Coloured
community, and that it continues to exist in this community’s folk song
repertoire. This chapter draws on my dissertational work, Singing of Slavery,
Performing the Past, in which I bring to light the existence and persistence
of a cultural memory of the South African slave past in the folk songs of
the Cape Coloured community. I specifically focus on songs that contain
references to the sea and ask how the Indian Ocean works in the memory
culture of the enslaved community at the Cape and its descendants.
On examining the folk song repertoire of the Cape Coloureds, which are
part of the broader Kaapse Klopse (Cape [music] clubs) music tradition—that
originated during slavery and continued after emancipation as a commemora-
tive tradition12—it becomes apparent that the image of the sea is omnipresent.
Many of the songs can be considered sea shanties, fishermen’s songs, seafaring
songs or songs that otherwise refer to the Indian Ocean. The repertoire of folk
songs includes lyrics and descriptions of musical performances from before
Emancipation in 1834, which were recorded in travel accounts and memoires,
as well as in song books published by folklorists in the early twentieth century;
it also includes songs published and performed post-Emancipation. All the
songs cited in this chapter have been attributed to the enslaved community
and/or their descendants by those who recorded and published them. Whereas
some songs were thus recorded and published decades after the abolition of
slavery, they are nevertheless revealing evidence of the slave past. The nature
of songs as oral performances allows them to change easily over time so as to
comment on the changing socio-political context, yet older song texts and/or
 “hoera , dit skip seil uit oos” 235

melodies remained a source of inspiration for newer compositions. What is

more, the social position and economic opportunities in society did de jure
change with the Emancipation, but several scholars have shown that de facto
these opportunities were limited and racial discrimination continued.13 Certain
occupations and social positions were unattainable for the former enslaved,
and many found themselves doing the same work for sometimes the same
masters as before emancipation.14 In this situation, it is not hard to imagine
how songs which had emerged in times of slavery continued to function,
more or less in the same form, as social commentary in the post-emancipation
context as well. As Vivian Bickford-Smith has similarly argued:

Kinship and occupational ties, as well as cultural forms, helped forge

community identities in [post-emancipation Cape Town] …. Cultural
forms, such as stories about the past and emancipation day celebrations,
served to remind members of their shared heritage of oppression and
bondage. So did continued white domination of power and resources,
and the continued perceivable correlation between darker pigmentation
and deprivation.15

What makes songs a particularly useful source of analysis for investigating

a possible “Indian Ocean consciousness” is that “music unseats language
and textuality as pre-eminent expressions of human consciousness”.16 Folk
songs, as opposed to literature or art, represent a more collective expression
of a community’s ideas and communal consciousness. When we accept
these songs, the old and the more recently recorded, as echoes of a more
distant past, tracing the image of the Indian Ocean in these song lyrics of
the enslaved and their descendants could potentially shed light on the expe-
riences of the enslaved in this part of the world, and on what it meant to be a
slave in the Indian Ocean world.

Sea shanties of the Cape

Historical accounts of settlers and travellers at the Cape in the eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries stand testament to the intimate connec-
tion between the enslaved community and the sea, as a source of life and
exchange but also as a site of diasporic memory. Arriving at the Cape after
a long voyage from Europe, for instance, travellers describe how they were
236 beingbbbbeing

first greeted by enslaved people coming out in smaller vessels to greet the
incoming fleet. “We were hardly come to anchor before a crowd of black
slaves and Chinese came in their small boats to sell and barter for clothes
and other goods”,17 wrote the Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg upon
his arrival in Table Bay in 1772. Similarly, British captain Robert Percival
wrote how “immediately on a ship coming to anchor, she is surrounded by
boats, laden with fish, vegetables, and fruit, which the slaves of the Dutch
colonists come to sell for their masters”.18
We tend to see the enslaved as workers on the land, labouring in sugar-
cane or cotton fields; yet, at the Cape, labouring at sea was equally important
among the tasks assigned to the enslaved. Fishing at the Cape, for instance,
had predominantly been the task of enslaved people as well as freedmen from
the East.19 Moreover, fish was an important part of the slave’s food rations
at the Cape, as it was plentiful and cheap.20 Several slave songs collected
by early twentieth-century folklorists testify to this; for example, the songs
Hoedjies baai, Nieuw Seemandslied and Waarna toe nou. “Free-black fishing
families [aided by enslaved workers hired out as fishermen] formed one of
the first identifiable occupational labouring communities in Cape Town,
which dominated the foreshore area up into the early twentieth century”.21
Increasing the profitability of a business through mutual dependency is
clearly expressed in the following song:

Hoeral, hoeral, die wind waai oos, Hoorah, hoorah,22 the wind blows East
Sou staat wij uit naar see So we go out to sea
Die wind die waai sou diep al see The wind blows so deep at sea
Vertrouw malkander op see Trust each other at sea
Die wind die waai sou diep al see The wind blows so deep at sea
Vertrouw malkander op see. Trust each other at sea.

Maar onse geld wordt suur verdien, Our money comes at a hard price
Ja somstijds met plesier; Yes, sometimes with pleasure
Hier staat wij als broeders al en dit rond, Here we stand as brothers in a circle
Vertrouw malkander op see.23 Trust each other at sea.

Such “sea shanties” or “work songs” were most likely sung during work on
the beach or on board fishing boats. Some songs provided relief from the
monotonous and strenuous work of the enslaved, for example: “More gaat
Tannie na die Baai, na die Baai, na die Baai, na die Baai. Die meide trek die
 “hoera , dit skip seil uit oos” 237

lijn op sy. Ma-ga boe-ra bam die hart klop aan” (“Tomorrow Auntie goes to the
bay, to the bay, to the bay, to the bay. The girls pull the [fishing] lines in. Ma-ga
boe-ra bam the heart is beating”).24 As is evident from the lyrics, such short
songs describe work processes (hauling nets and lines onto the beach) and
seem to offer a beat to coordinate a working rhythm. Pooling of resources was
essential to (freed) slave fishermen, who lacked capital but had close kinship
networks in town. While men fished, women and children scaled, gutted and
dried fish along the shoreline and sold the product in town. Both songs clearly
testify to this. Perhaps the most vivid and eloquent portrayal of this Cape fish-
ing community, consisting of enslaved and free blacks, can be found in the
song Visterman vannie Kaap (“Fisherman of the Cape”).25 Although collected
and published after the abolition of slavery, this song illustrates that this sense
of belonging to the Cape and the sea existed long before Emancipation.

Ek is ‘n Vister van die Kaap, I am a fisherman of the Cape

Die Bo-Kaap is my woning. The Bo-Kaap is my home.
My naam is Achmat Samsodien, My name is Achmat Samsodien
Die oop see is my koning. The open sea is my king.
Hy gee vir my die kabeljou He gives me codfish
Harder, geelbek, stompneus, kreef, Grey mullet, geelbek, stompneus, lobster.
En dan is daar die lekker snoek: And then there is the tasty pike:
Wie wil dan sonder smoorvis leef? Who wants to live without braised fish?
Maar hoe sal ons met stormweer But how will we in stormy weather
Weet waar die hawe lê? Know where the harbour lies?
Roei, roei maar oor die golwe, Row, row over the waves,
Viljeé se rots sal sê. Viljeé his rock will tell
Drieankerbaai se vetkers Three Anker Bay’s light house
Sal geel brand in die mis will burn yellow in the mist
Om ons te wys waar Roggebaai To show us the way where Rogge Bay’s
Se strand wag vir die vis. beach is waiting for the fish.
En wat dan as my bokkie And what if my darling
Nie daar wag op die strand? Is not waiting at the beach?
Daar’s baie visse in die see, There is plenty of fish in the sea
En baie bokkies op die land. And many darlings on the land.

Work songs or sea shanties often developed spontaneously within the

enslaved community, but were sometimes also demanded and imposed
by the slavers to ensure endurance and prevent melancholy amongst
238 beingbbbbeing

the enslaved. Numerous accounts of slavers, sailors and enslaved people

in the Americas have testified that “on the way to the new world, African
captives were encouraged or forced to dance and were sometimes ‘whipped
into cheerfulness’”.26 In the Indian Ocean context, Dutch slavers similarly
enforced dancing and singing by the enslaved while on board slave ships
sailing to the Cape. In the following account, a Company official gives advice
on how to deal with slaves who suffer from illnesses, such as dysentery, on
board the slave vessels that sailed the east coast of Africa bringing newly
captured slaves from regions such as Mozambique or Madagascar to the
Cape of Good Hope: “[t]he best way to cure this disease, is to separate those
who suffer from those who are healthy, and to minimize the confining of the
sick, but to let them do light works or dance to keep them moving.”27
While there is no mention of singing or music, the reference to dance,
in this context evokes the songs that accompanied the dancing. Such forced
performances are described by European settler Samuel Hudson on witness-
ing the arrival of slave ships in Table Bay at the beginning of the nineteenth
century:

They [the enslaved] are brought on deck to dance, to amuse themselves

and to dress their faces in smiles tho’ beneath a broken Spirit and a
breaking heart. Yet such is their fear of their inhuman Masters and the
idea of the Cats28 that they bow obedient to their Tyrants’ wills and dance
and laugh and sing and appear perfectly contented with their wayward
fortune.29

Diasporic memory in seafaring songs

Such slave ship performances were not only demanded from the enslaved
to ostensibly ensure their physical (and perhaps mental) wellbeing, but,
as historian Genèvieve Fabre has pointed out for the Atlantic world, such
performances also served to hide the dehumanizing effect of slave voyages
on the enslaved.30 At the same time, such slave ship performances have also
been viewed as evidence of ships being the carriers of memories and dias-
poric identities. Scholars such as Patrick Manning and Edward Alpers argue
that musical performances during the middle passage were instrumental
in forming a diasporic culture of the enslaved community. In Recollecting
Africa: Diaspora Memory in the Indian Ocean World, Alpers argues that “the
 “hoera , dit skip seil uit oos” 239

principal vehicle for African [or Asian] memory and identity in the Indian
Ocean World are music, song and dance; religion and healing; language and
folkways”.31
What enslaved people on board the slaving vessels bound for Cape Town
sang is unfortunately not recorded; however, a set of lyrics that reappears
frequently in the slave song repertoire at the Cape is the verse “Na Batavia,
Na Batavia” (To Batavia, To Batavia), which serves as a repetitive bridge
connecting several different slave songs. Batavia (present-day Jakarta) was
the capital city and central port of the Dutch colonial presence in the Indian
Ocean world, and whereas most enslaved at the Cape were not originally from
Jakarta or the Indonesian archipelago, the port functioned as the central hub
in the (slave) trading network of the Dutch East India Company, connecting
the different (slave) markets along the shores of the Indian Ocean. The ref-
erences to “Batavia” can thus be read as symbolic of the middle passage, or
perhaps a representation of a longing for the East and a life before bondage.
A longing to sail “East” rather than “West” can be detected in other
songs, as for instance in “Hoeral, hoeral, die wind waai oos!” (“Hoorah!
Hoorah! The wind blows East”),32 cited above, and “Hoera, dit skip seil uit
Oos” (“Hoorah, this ship sails from the East”). Whereas this longing is not
always for a specific geographical location in the East such as Batavia/Jakarta,
several songs mention the unspecified area named Oos (East) which could
be read as a reference to the Indian Ocean world and a place free from the
chains in colonial South Africa. The particular freedom which life as a sailor
represents becomes apparent in the following lyrics.

Hoera, dit skip seil uit oos Hoorah, this ship sails from the East
Wil gy teken vir ene matroos Do you want to sign up as sailor
[…] …
Veel van matrosies leven Many sailors live
Aan dit gal moes in hem gaat vergeven This bile within him, we should forgive
Sterwen wy op dit zee If we die at sea
Dis beter als op dit land This will be better than on land
Veel van matrosies leef al in ons Several sailors already live in our
vaderland33 fatherland.

The “freedom” of which this song speaks is not moral freedom—detachment

from family, wives, responsibilities, etc.34—but a specific detachment from
land (the Cape) and a preference for the freedom of the open sea. The call
240 beingbbbbeing

of the sea and the calling to the profession of sailor or fisherman is clearly
expressed in this song, as in other songs such as Wy moes die See bevaaren
(“We have to sail the sea”).35 The sea, which was omnipresent in the lives
of the enslaved and their direct descendants, as they worked either on or
near the water, thus seems to have symbolized to them their separation from
their countries of origin, but also the “connecting tissue to memories of a life
before and outside of slavery”.36
Contrary to this view of the sea as a representation of a life outside bond-
age, Sowande’ M. Mustakeem has argued that the “middle passage” (and
as such the sea as a symbol) should not simply be seen as an intermediate
stage in the process of becoming enslaved, but rather as a crucial part in the
dehumanizing process of enslavement. She states that “the middle passage
comprised a violently unregulated process critically foundational to the insti-
tution of bondage that interlinked slaving voyages and plantation societies”.37
The middle passage should therefore be predominantly seen as a site of loss,
and the sea as a “site of slavery”.38 There is certainly a duality in the symbolic
power of the sea, as both a barrier and a memento of loss, as well as a symbol
of freedom.
Lodewijk Wagenaar’s experimental attempt to give a voice to the enslaved
Boenga van Johor39 who was imprisoned on Robben Island off the coast of
Cape Town, allows us to speculate on possible negative associations enslaved
had with the ocean. In an imaginative letter, Wagenaar allows Boenga to
speak to the past and present and reveal how enslaved were traumatized by
the sight of the sea as it became a reminder of the horrors experienced on
route to the Cape. In the gripping, speculative but very plausible illustration
of Boenga’s passionate plea to the Governor of the Cape, she vouches, “I can-
not stand anymore to see waves threatening to grasp me, to carry my helpless
body and kill me”.40 That Boenga’s potential plea to be transferred to the
mainland away from the sight of the ocean remained unheard and misun-
derstood is the most likely scenario, as Wagenaar shows that no records have
been found which indicate that Boenga ever left Robben Island. Moreover,
that the voyage across the Indian Ocean was a traumatic experience for the
enslaved usually went unnoticed and unacknowledged by colonial adminis-
trators and settlers. Civil governor at the Cape, Lord Macartney, for instance
wrote in 1797 in defence of the slave trade that “the slaves of this colony are
brought from the short distance of Mozambique and Madagascar, they have
encountered neither the hobglobins of the [Atlantic] middle passage, nor the
scramble of a west India market”.41 Yet the account by Samuel Hudson of
 “hoera , dit skip seil uit oos” 241

the forced slave dances on deck indicates that the suffering of enslaved on
board was clearly observable for all who wanted to see. Similarly, Lady Anne
Barnard recorded in her diary in 1800 how she had observed the landing of a
slave ship in Cape Town harbour and had been appalled by the sight of such
a great number of enslaved (around 600) that had been kept below deck.
When asking about the conditions on board, she was surprised to be told that
“not many had died … only 50”.42
That the sea can also be a site of terror and danger becomes apparent
from several Dutch sailors songs such as “Verschrikkelijke Storm” (“Terrible
Storm”)43 and “Omstandig Verhaal, van het verongelukken van de agt Oost-
Indische Retour Schepen”44 (“Detailed story of the perishing of the eight
East-India return ships”) as well as the “seafaring songs” which are part of
the so-called “Nederlandse liedjies” genre of the Cape Coloured community,
such as “Wy moes na dit see bevaaren” (“Why must you sail the seas”) 45
which all relate the Cape’s stormy reputation. Such songs about storms and
good helmsmanship can also be found in more recent folk songs of the Cape
Coloured community. For example, a song entitled Boeta Gila46 which speaks
of a storm preventing fishermen from sailing out and catching fish. Or the
following song “Ankers op” (“Anchors up”) which eloquently speaks of the
havoc-wreaking storms that can hit the Cape peninsula.

Hoor hoe brul ou Leeukop! Listen how old Lion’s head47 roars
Die wind spring op Llandudno, The wind slams into Llandudno48
Hy gryp en skud die huise, He grabs and shakes the houses
Hy druk die bome plat. He presses down on the trees
Ankers op, die vis is weg, Anchors up, the fish is gone
Die duikers skiet die skeure in. The duikers49 hurl into the cracks
Ankers op, die seevoëls waai Anchors up, the seabirds fly
Soos wit papiere na die land. Like white papers towards the land.
Breekwater toe, Bakoven regs, Breaking waters, Bakoven50 on the right
Met ronde brode van die dood. With round breads of death.
Ankers op, al langs die kus, Anchors up, passed the coast
Die water klim-klim in ons skuit. The water climbs-climbs into our vessel
Die Twaalf Apostels staan nog pal, The Twelve Apostles51 are still standing tall
Maar almal het hun mantels aan. But all with their cloaks on.

The sea as site of terror and trauma is thus clearly present in the song rep-
ertoire, and challenges the association of the sea as site of freedom, but does
242 beingbbbbeing

not per se connect the terror of stormy seas to that of the terror of slavery.
Nevertheless, when one considers the fact that several seafaring songs in
the Cape Coloured song repertoire are of Dutch origin,52 images of coercion
and psychological enslavement surface and it becomes harder to identify
the seafaring songs, and the image of the ocean, as sites of memory of a
life before or outside slavery. Yet, following Gilroy’s argument that the Black
Atlantic was a space of contact and hybridity, and that the exchanges across
the ocean led to the emergence of a counterculture of modernity and Creole
culture, the adoption of Dutch songs by the Cape Coloured community
should not be read as a sign of subjugation but rather as a sign of exchange.
As Isabel Hofmeyr has noted, port cities such as Cape Town functioned as
funnels of “concentrated exchange” that were not only limited to the cultures
and traditions of the East and East Africa, but also incorporated the cultures
and traditions of the “West”.53 Enslaved and free black fishermen working
in Cape Town harbour would have been well positioned to pick up seafar-
ing songs from passing sailors on board VOC ships bound for Batavia or
Amsterdam. In parallel, the many taverns in this port city were frequented by
the enslaved and sailors alike, and on such occasions musical traditions must
have been exchanged and intermingled. Historian Victor de Kock has noted
that music, in particular, was the universal language that enabled social con-
tact between such diverse communities.54 These musical borrowings were
not unidimensional, nor were they a sign of cultural imperialism, but rather
this “interracial [musical] cooperation” should be regarded as “opposition to
racism and segregation”.55
The so-called Nederlandsliedjies—the genre of Dutch songs that covers most
seafaring songs—are among the favourites in the Cape Coloured song reper-
toire. They are seen as a repertoire “which is endowed with a sense of historicity
and a strong feeling of belonging to Cape Town and South Africa, because it
is rooted in slavery and has been the result of a series of creative acts”.56 The
lyrics evoke memories of this community’s past and present connections to the
ocean. Additionally, the performance highlights the hybrid origins of the song
tradition, as the lead vocalist demonstrates his melismatic singing technique
with its obvious Eastern tone scales, and the choir—which swerves back and
forth as if to the rhythm of the waves—sings the backing vocals in a clearly
Western tone scale. Together, they sing songs on themes such as the high seas,
the life-giving nature of the sea, and life as a sailor. As such, the performance of
such (Dutch) seafaring songs signifies most vividly the presence of a “Brown
Indian Ocean consciousness” in the Cape Coloured memory culture.
 “hoera , dit skip seil uit oos” 243

Conclusion

In the song lyrics of the Cape Coloured community one encounters the
image of the sea as an open and free space, the image of sailors and, more
specifically, the image of the ship as a vehicle with which to sail towards free-
dom. But, more importantly, the ocean and the ships that sail on it represent
a zone of contact, and act as carriers of ideas and memories. Paul Gilroy
reminds us that “ships were the living means by which the points within that
Atlantic World were joined”. The symbolic power of the sea and of ships is
that “they were mobile elements that stood for the shifting spaces in between
the fixed places they connected”.57 In Adam Small’s poem, Vryheid, the couple
longs for the sea but also for the boats that are the vehicles with which one
can sail towards freedom. In what is often described as the most famous and
popular folk song of the Cape Coloured community, Daar kom die Alibama
(“Here Comes the Alibama”),58 the image of a ship and the sea as connecting
tissue is used to represent not a route towards freedom per se, but rather a
debate on what slavery and freedom mean. The song celebrates the coming
of an American ship to Cape Town’s shores. It speaks of the arrival of the
American confederate warship, CSS Alabama, in Table Bay in August 1863
in the midst of the American Civil War.59

Daar kom die Alibama Here comes the Alibama

Die Alibama kom oor die see The Alibama comes over the sea
Daar kom die Alibama Here comes the Alibama
Die Alibama kom oor die see The Alibama comes over the sea

The arrival of a warship which could be spotted from Cape Town harbour
created quite an uproar at the time. Apart from the excitement and novelty
of this sighting, it is apparent that the ship was also seen as the bearer of
news and ideas. The continuing popularity of the song, predominantly
within the Cape Coloured community, is sometimes attributed to the fact
that it commemorates the American Civil War, a war fought over the abo-
lition of slavery.60 To the members of the Cape Coloured community, who
themselves had been emancipated only one generation before the warship’s
arrival, the ship and the song commemorating its arrival in Cape Town could
have evoked memories of their own struggle for emancipation. Like the
Dutch sailor songs with their references to sailing East, and the fishermen’s
songs and the sea shanties which allude to the early fishing communities
244 beingbbbbeing

consisting of free blacks and the enslaved at the Cape, the image of the ocean
in this song seems to function as a space for memories of the slave past.

Notes

1. Translation from Afrikaans: “Do I hear the sea sing, sing? Do I hear the seagulls
sing? No! No! I hear freedom, yes freedom sing!” from Adam Small, Vryheid,
Kitaar my kruis, 42. 2nd edn., Cape Town: HAUM, 1962.
2. “Cape Coloured” refers to a mixed-race community living mainly in the
Western and Northern Cape in South Africa, who are the descendants of the
enslaved community in South Africa. The use of the term is highly debated as it
is a reminder of the racist ideology and segregationist policies of the apartheid
regime. See Louise Viljoen, “Displacement in the Literary Texts of Black Afri-
kaans Writers in South Africa,” Journal of Literary Studies 21, no. 1–2 (2005): 95.
However, other labels such Cape Malay, Brown Afrikaner and “Bruin mense”
evoke other uncomfortable associations. The term “Coloured” thus is still an
official term, recognized and used by the South African state to designate this
community.
3. Small, Vryheid, 42.
4. In Adam Small’s poetry, the theme of liberation from oppression (during
apartheid) is often addressed using the metaphor of Moses leading his people
out of slavery in Egypt. In so doing, Small connects the struggle against slavery
with the struggle against apartheid. See Michael Cloete, “Language and Politics
in the Philosophy of Adam Small: Some Personal Reflections,” Tydskrif vir
Letterkunde 49, no. 1 (2012): 127.
5. Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthum, “Introduction. The Sea is History,” in
Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean, edited by Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mack-
enthum, 2. New York: Routledge, 2004.
6. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double-Consciousness, 15. Cam-
bridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
7. Isabel Hofmeyr, “The Black Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean: Forging New
Paradigms of Transnationalism for the Global South—Literary and Cultural
Perspectives,” Social Dynamics 33, no. 2 (2007): 13.
8. Hofmeyr, “The Black Atlantic,” 14.
9. Gabeba Baderoon, “The African Oceans—Tracing the Sea as Memory of Slavery
in South African Literature and Culture,” Research in African Literatures 40,
no. 4 (2009): 91-93.
 “hoera , dit skip seil uit oos” 245

10. The term “folk memory” refers to popular expressions of the cultural memory
of a community.
11. Baderoon, “The African Oceans,” 89.
12. A.M. van der Wal, “Singing of Slavery, Performing the Past. The Folk Songs of
the Cape Coloured Community as Cultural Memory of the South African Slave
Past, 1657–present” (PhD diss., Utrecht University, 2016).
13. Sampie Terreblanche, A History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652-2002. 9.
Scottsville: University of Natal Press, 2002.
14. Wayne Dooling, “In Search of Profitability: Wheat and Wine Production in
the Post-Emancipation Western Cape”, South African Historical Journal, 55:1
(2006), 88.
15. Vivian Bickford-Smith, “Black Ethnicities, Communities and Political Expres-
sion in Late Victorian Cape Town”, Journal of African History 36, no. 3 (1995):
445.
16. Gilroy, The Black Atlantic, 74.
17. Carl Peter Thunberg, Travels at the Cape of Good Hope 1772–1775. Cape Town:
Van Riebeeck Society, 1986, cited in Nigel Worden, Slavery in Dutch South
Africa, 39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
18. Robert Percival, An Account of the Cape of Good Hope, 43. London: C. & R. Bald-
win, 1804, cited in Karel Schoeman, Portrait of a Slave Society: The Cape of Good
Hope, 1717–1795, 489. Pretoria: Protea Boekhuis, 2012.
19. Nigel Worden, Elizabeth Van Heyningen and Vivian Bickford-Smith, Cape
Town. The Making of a City, 62. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 1998.
20. Schoeman, Portrait of a Slave Society, 207.
21. Worden, Van Heyningen and Bickford-Smith, Cape Town, 64.
22. Hoera is Dutch for “hoorah”. However, in this written version it says hoeral
instead of hoera. This implies it might not mean hoorah, but perhaps hoor al,
translated as “listen everyone”.
23. Izak David du Plessis, Die Bijdrae van de Kaapse Maleier tot die Afrikaanse Volk-
slied, 162. Kaapstad: Nasionale Pers, 1935.
24. du Plessis, Die bijdrae van die Kaapse Maleier, 131.
25. Izak David du Plessis, Kaapse Moppies, 18. Kaapstad: Nasionale Pers, 1977.
26. Geneviève Fabre, “The Slave Ship Dance,” in Black Imagination and the Middle
Passage, edited by Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates and Carl Pedersen, 34-35.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
27. Cape Archives, Council Resolution, C. 181, 2–88. Dinsdag den 13 Jan 1789.
Original text: “de beste middelen om deeze ziekte in desselvs loop te stuiten,
zijn het afzonderen der Lijders aan dezelve Laboreerende van de gesonde
246 beingbbbbeing

Slaven; deeze zo min mogelijk te kluijsteren, maar integendeel door ligt werk
en danzen in eene gestadige beweeging te houden”.
28. A whip made out of several knotted cords.
29. Robert C.H. Shell, “Introduction to S.E. Hudson’s ‘Slaves’,” Kronos 9 (1984), 48.
30. Fabre, “Slave Ship Dance,” 34–35.
31. Edward A. Alpers, “Recollecting Africa: Diasporic Memory in the Indian Ocean
World,” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (2000): 90.
32. du Plessis, Bijdrae van die Kaap Maleier, 162.
33. M.A. Gassiep, Nederlandse Volksliedjies soos deur die Maleiers gesing, 20. Johan-
nesburg: Ivan Joffe, 1942.
34. This stereotypical image of an unattached and free-spirited sailor does,
however, appear in some “seafaring songs” of the Coloured community; for
instance, in the songs Wat ly daar een seeman (“How does a sailor suffer”), Ons
Erfenis, ‘n versameling van die gewildste Kaapse-Nederlandse Liedere (Beit-ul Aman:
Kaapstad), and Nieuwe Seemanslied (“New Sailor’s Song”), in du Plessis, Bijdrae
van die Kaap Maleier, 78.
35. Wy moes die See bevaaren (“We have to sail the sea”), from Gassiep, Nederlandse
Volksliedjies, 12.
36. Baderoon, “The African Oceans,” 95.
37. Sowande’ M. Mustakeem, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle
Passage, 3. Chicago IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016.
38. Mustakeem, Slavery at Sea, 5.
39. In this edited volume’s chapter entitled “Boenga van Johor. My forced journey
from Batavia to the Cape of Good Hope”.
40. Yang Mulia Tuan Jan de la Fontaine, Gubernur dan Kepala di Cabo da Boa
Esperança (“To the right honourable Jan de la Fontaine, Governor of the cape of
Good Hope”). Retrieved from the past by Lodewijk Wagenaar for the “Being a
Slave” workshop at Leiden University, 29–30 May 2017.
41. Macartney: Private letter, 24 July 1797, cited in Margaret Lena, “Speaking for
the Slave: Britain and the Cape, 1751-1838,” Literator 20/1 (1999): 108.
42. Diaries of Lady Anne Barnard: 10 March 1800, cited in Lena, “Speaking for the
Slave,” 109.
43. Anonymous, “Verschrikkelijke Storm Voorgevallen aan Kaap de Goede Hoop.”
Lbl Meertens 15002 ([1870 ca.]).
44. “Pertinent en Omstandig Verhaal, van het verongelukken van de agt Oost-In-
dische Retour Schepen, de Flora, Westerwyk, Paddenburg, Ipenrode, Duinbeek,
Roodenrys, Goudriaan en de Buis, dewelke op den 21. Mey 1737. door een
verschikkelyke Storm of Orcaan uit den Noord-Westen aan de Caap de Goede
 “hoera , dit skip seil uit oos” 247

Hoop zyn geleven” (translation: “Pertinent and detailed story of the disaster of
the eight East-India return ships, the Flora, Westerwyk, Paddenburg, Ipenrode,
Duinbeek, Roodenrys, Goudriaan and the Buis, which on 21 May 1737 perished,
because of a terrible storm or hurricane from the North-West at the Cape of
Good Hope”), published in the “De Schiedamse Jeneverstoker” songbook
(1730), 72.
45. Wy moes die See bevaaren (“We must sail the sea”), from Gassiep, Nederlandse
Volksliedjies, 12.
46. Batoe derives from the Malaysian word Batu which means stone or rock. Batoe
Gila could thus refer to some of the visible large boulders just off the coast of
Cape Town.
47. Lion’s head (Leeukop) is a 669-metre high mountain between Table Mountain
and Signal Hill in Cape Town.
48. Llandudno is today a rather posh seaside suburb of Cape Town. It was desig-
nated as a township in the Cape Town vicinity in 1903, but had in the more
distant past already been settled by Khoikhoi clans.
49. The duiker or “common duiker” is a small antelope found throughout South
Africa.
50. Bakoven is the name of a seaside suburb of Cape Town, probably called after
a boulder in the shape of a smelting chimney: Peter E. Raper, Dictionary of
Southern African Place Names. Internet Archive (1987) 63.
51. The Twelve Apostles are a mountain range on the Cape Peninsula.
52. du Plessis, Bijdrae van die Kaapse Maleier, 19–20; Denis-Constant Martin, Coon
Carnival. New Year in Cape Town: Past and Present, 27. Cape Town: David Philip
Publishers, 1999; Armelle Gaulier and Denis-Constant Martin, Cape Town Har-
monies: Memory, Humour and Resilience, 77. Cape Town: African Minds, 2017.
53. Isabel Hofmeyr, Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie and Preben Kaarsholm, “Durban and
Cape Town as Port Cities: Reconsidering Southern African Studies from the
Indian Ocean,” Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 3 (2016): 382.
54. Victor de Kock, Those in Bondage: An Account of the Life of the Slave at the Cape in
the Days of the Dutch East India Company, 91-92. London: Allen & Unwin, 1950.
55. Denis-Constant Martin, Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South
Africa, 248. Somerset West: African Minds, 2013.
56. Gaulier and Martin, Cape Town Harmonies, 81–82.
57. Gilroy, Black Atlantic, 16.
58. The popularity of this song is confirmed by most choir captains I interviewed
during my fieldwork in South Africa in 2008, 2010, 2013 and 2015. See also
Martin, Coon Carnival, 84.
248 beingbbbbeing

59. Edna Bradlow and Frank Bradlow, Here Comes the Alabama. Cape Town: Westby
Nunn Publishers, 1958.
60. Colin Howard, The “No-Persons”: An Investigation Into Aspects of Secular Popular
Music in Cape Town, 33. (Master’s diss., Goldsmiths College, University of
London, 1994).
 10

The Materiality of Indian Ocean Slavery

and Emancipation
The Challenges of Presence and Absence

Sarah Longair

Barely visible in a photograph of the Peace Memorial Museum in Zanzibar

in 1926, a year after the museum’s opening, are a set of slave stocks, objects
which speak tangibly of the punitive experience of slavery. These politically
charged objects were displayed in the historical section of the museum at
ground level, resting on the bases of the wooden stands displaying photo-
graphs of historic sites around Zanzibar. Their exact origin is unknown,
although during the institution’s creation a colonial official on Pemba
island suggested that slave stocks could be acquired there for the museum.1
The legacy and memory of slavery was a delicate issue in British colonial
Zanzibar. The British were proud of the humanitarian mission of abolition,
but some members of the Arab community, the ruling elite alongside the
British, blamed the end of slavery for a downturn in their economic fortunes.
Emancipation gradually transformed Zanzibari society, as the formerly
enslaved renegotiated their identities and communities within colonial
Zanzibar.2 Within this sensitive situation, the curators may have discussed
the location of the stocks in the museum display, and significantly they are
not mentioned in the various museum guidebooks. Their display at foot level
allowed for an ambiguous interpretive path to be trodden. In the absence of
documentation, one can only speculate as to the justification for their posi-
tion. Perhaps the curators decided that the stocks could easily be ignored or
highlighted by a museum guide as necessary. Such an uneasy compromise
reflected the British approach to dealing with this inflammatory issue.
The question of representing slavery resurfaced in the Museum in 1957,
at a time of increasing political tension between representatives of the Arab
community, many descended from slave-owners, and of the Afro-Shirazi
250 beingbbbbeing

Party, which sought to cohere the interests of the African community includ-
ing the Swahili majority, former slaves and their descendants, and more
recent migrants from the mainland.3 C.H. Thompson, then archivist-cura-
tor, recorded that “the opinion has been expressed in Arab circles that the
Museum, through its exhibits relating to the slave trade, is a subtle political
weapon to keep African and Arab apart and so consolidate the position of
the European”.4 Five years later in August 1962, as the political situation
intensified still further, a member of the colonial government requested that
“during these days of party tension, no pictures should be on show which
might tend to exacerbate racial feelings”.5 Some months later, a letter from
Thompson’s successor as curator reveals the ultimate fate of the stocks:

Two pieces of wood at Museum about 25 ft. long each, with holes in them.
These were used for fastening legs of slaves (slave fork). As they were too
big they could not be put in any store; therefore they were kept outside
at the entrance of my office rather at a conspicuous position. With your
permission I should like to destroy them. The wood is not good and has
holes. Therefore they have no cash value; I shall split and dump them
into the sea.6

The Zanzibar government approved this action the following month.

Objects of such potency, which made palpable individual suffering and
simultaneously represented the atrocities of the slave trade, were deemed
too sensitive for retention in the tense climate of decolonization and ethnic
identity politics. The destruction of the stocks, however, is a significant loss
to Zanzibar where few genuine remnants of the island’s slave history and
heritage remain.7
This example highlights numerous issues with recovering the materiality
of slavery. It is the story of deliberate destruction of significant objects, but
it simultaneously reveals how material things retain their power and signifi-
cance within the museum setting and can become politicized. The legacy of
slavery loomed large over the Zama za Siasa (Time of Politics) of 1957–1963 in
Zanzibar.8 As we have seen, the Zanzibar Museum first chose to manage this
contentious issue by placing objects out of easy eye-view, at floor level, then
chose the heavy-handed solution of destruction. What is singular about this
particular story of loss in the wider picture of the material culture of slavery is
that we know the reason for this object’s absence. The decision to acquire the
object in the first place is also noteworthy, especially given the challenges it
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 251

presented in display and interpretation. As this chapter will demonstrate, the

material record of the experience of being a slave in the Indian Ocean region
is subject to the forces of colonial collecting practice. The few possessions of
enslaved people were rarely deemed worthy of acquisition by Europeans whose
priority in these regions was an ethnographically-driven project to collect
material from indigenous populations. These lacunae reflect Wayne Modest’s
observations about Caribbean collections – these island cultures were “not
ancient enough yet not modern enough” for collectors.9 Enslaved peoples and
their societies before and after emancipation defy simple categorization and
hybridity is often present through their material culture. As Sujit Sivasundaram
has identified in relation to Sri Lanka, Europeans overlooked the “creole and
hybrid” in preference to the “indigenous”.10 This paucity of material evidence
then influences how Indian Ocean slavery and its legacies are presented in
museums. As Jones has noted in this volume in relation to the Netherlands,
histories of slavery are now permanent features in several museums in Britain
and are the subject of temporary exhibitions. However, the Atlantic story
tends to dominate. John McAleer has highlighted how public histories of the
slave trade in the Indian Ocean “have been mediated by the collecting and
representation of objects and attendant knowledge relating to them”.11
The limits of British collecting practice forge particular views of Indian
Ocean societies and seriously constrain our ability to recover their material
worlds. Archival studies of the Atlantic world reveal that the enslaved them-
selves owned and consumed a variety of material goods.12 Higman lauds
these efforts but highlights that “we lack a general model to guide our under-
standing of the relative presence and absence of evidence”.13 Yet, as is widely
acknowledged, patterns of slave trading and slave cultures differed greatly
between the two oceans. Archaeology offers another possibility for recover-
ing items or objects not collected at the time, although this is a challenging
task. As Wynne Jones reminds us, “slavery tends to leave little archaeological
trace”.14 Concerted efforts are being made to reveal these traces in the Indian
Ocean world.15 Donley-Reid, for example, identified the areas in which
enslaved people lived and the role played by enslaved women in households
in Lamu.16 Kusimba has examined rockshelters in south-east Kenya to
explore the impact of the slave trade on migration patterns and the economic
and political upheaval wrought by slave and cattle raiding.17 Croucher’s
excavations of clove plantations in East Africa offer evidence from buildings
and objects to complicate our understanding of gender and slave identities.18
Research has also been conducted in the island destinations of many East
252 beingbbbbeing

African slaves, the histories of which are discussed by Christiansë in this

volume. Excavations have taken place in the Le Morne Cultural Landscape, a
UNESCO World Heritage site in Mauritius. In the Le Morne “Old Cemetery”,
the burial site of a community of maroons and later freed slaves, Seetah has
established the ethnicity of these individuals and material culture which was,
though European in origin, used in an African or Afro-Malagasy manner
in the burial site.19 In combination these sites speak of resistance of the
enslaved and the development of their own cultural practices. These various
projects continue to provide new interpretations of sites, material evidence
and data that fill some gaps in the material record, offering new possibilities
for museums and heritage sites.
This chapter explores evidence of the Indian Ocean slave trade in muse-
ums in Britain and how we might interpret them to reinsert the story of the
enslaved into these objects’ histories. Françoise Vergès has demonstrated
that there are alternative ways of presenting histories of complex island soci-
eties and memories in the absence of objects in a post-colonial museum.20
My intention in this chapter is not to propose that objects should hold a
privileged position in museological interpretations of the Indian Ocean expe-
rience of enslavement, but I seek to investigate the few material remnants to
expose slave narratives and understand the logics of collecting that have led to
their preservation. As with archives, the perspectives of the enslaved are often
silenced in museum collections. Edward Alpers’s 2007 study of the “other
middle passage” based on British records shows how we can expose elements
of the Indian Ocean slave experience using these British sources.21 Similarly,
Christiansë in this volume shows how we can tease out the narratives of
the enslaved through an imaginative close study of archives. This chapter
will first examine objects associated with the explorer David Livingstone and
collected to promote the cause of abolition. It will also examine objects and
images of the Bombay Africans, emancipated men who supported British
exploration in East Africa.22 Finally, it will look at objects amassed by colonial
officers in post-abolition Zanzibar. These objects are currently housed in the
David Livingstone Centre, the British Museum and the Royal Geographical
Society. This limited selection of objects exposes the self-interest of British
collectors and their priorities, but I seek to demonstrate that further study
of their histories and the archival record can highlight the agency of the
enslaved and their experiences. By looking at objects and seeing the slave in
museum collections, museums can find alternative ways to interpret their
collections and defy the colonial intentions of collectors.
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 253

Collecting in the name of abolition: David Livingstone

By the mid-nineteenth century, Britons were principally interested in the

Indian Ocean slave trade in pursuit of the cause of abolition. Christiansë
gives detailed accounts of this process in her chapter in this volume. The
expeditions and publications of David Livingstone were the most influential
of these endeavours and exposed the British public to the continued pres-
ence of slavery in the region. Supported by the abolitionist lobby in Britain,
Livingstone brought eastern Africa to the attention of politicians and the
public. The Slavery Abolition Act came into force in the British Empire only
in 1834, and abolitionists, hitherto focused upon the Atlantic, then turned
their attention to eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean. Livingstone was
critical in propagating first-hand accounts of the East African slave trade,
describing its horrors in detail, which the newly self-righteous British public
lapped up. He campaigned for intervention in the region with his powerful
rhetoric proposing “Christianity, civilisation and commerce” as the keys
for eradicating the slave trade in the interior of eastern Africa. Livingstone,
however, was not an enthusiastic collector or particularly drawn to material
culture.23 Of the objects amassed on these expeditions remarkably few relate
directly to slavery.24 This scarcity contrasts with how loudly this narrative
speaks within Livingstone’s writings and in his self-identification as an
anti-slavery campaigner.
One of the few objects attesting to Livingstone’s anti-slavery mission is a
yoke or goree, now in the David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre in Scotland.
These wooden forks, placed around the neck of slaves to restrain them,
graphically illustrate the plight of enslaved people as they were forced to make
arduous treks from the inland to the coast of East Africa. A small illustration
of a goree features in the first part of Livingstone’s Narrative of an Expedition
to the Zambezi and Its Tributaries: And of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and
Nyassa when he briefly mentions an encounter with a slave party which they
did not free as they did not know what to do with them afterwards.25 It is pos-
sible that this object was collected during an episode described later in this
book when Livingstone and his party met another slave coffle. Livingstone
was incensed by what he saw, particularly noting the drivers who, “bedecked
in various articles of finery, marched jauntily … They seemed to feel that
they were doing a very noble thing, and might proudly march with an air
of triumph”.26 At the sight of the white men, the slave drivers fled and their
leader, before himself bolting from the scene, admitted that these slaves had
254 beingbbbbeing

not been bought but captured in war. Livingstone’s party then set about free-
ing the captives who “in their way of expressing thanks, clapped their hands
with great energy”.27 The women and children were easier to free as they
were bound by rope, but releasing the men was more challenging “as each
has his neck in the fork of a stout stick, six or seven feet long, and kept in by
an iron rod which was riveted at both ends across the throat”.28 A saw carried
by Bishop Mackenzie was used to cut through the yokes. Livingstone was
told by the slaves of earlier attempts by two women in the party to untie the
ropes which bound them, but they were shot to deter others, an important
reminder of the regular attempts by enslaved people to resist.
Livingstone retained a goree, which became part of his personal collec-
tion, much of which was transferred to the David Livingstone Centre. We
later learn in the Narrative, however, one reason why few such remnants
survive. After being released from their bonds, the women of the party
were told to cook the food they had been carrying. At first they took some
coaxing – they “seemed to consider the news too good to be true” – but then
they “went at it with alacrity, and made a capital fire by which to boil their
pots, with the slave sticks and bonds, their old acquaintances through many
a sad night and weary day”.29 The enslaved women immediately took this
opportunity to burn the objects of their confinement. Livingstone interpreted
this deliberate destruction as a symbolic celebration of the women’s freedom.
The preservation of such material within British collections proclaims
the role of Livingstone and his party in the abolition of slavery. As with many
such narratives, the abolitionists, their sacrifice and their cause sit at the
heart of the story. This focus is evident in the caption in the catalogue for the
Livingstone exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1996 in which the
yoke was displayed: “[w]ooden yoke removed by Livingstone from the neck
of the slave”.30 This brief description clearly marks out Livingstone’s benign
action as the central point of interest of the object rather than the experience
of the enslaved wearer confined and punished by it. This was, naturally, an
exhibition about Livingstone, yet the enslaved person exists only as an object
of the explorer’s action. Livingstone himself noted the punitive nature of the
goree later in his text. On an encounter with 30 young men and boys in
slave-sticks he noted that:

The weight of the goree seemed very annoying when they tried to sleep.
This taming instrument is kept on until the party has crossed several
rivers, and all hope of escape has vanished from the captive’s mind.31
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 255

Although Livingstone observed and recorded the cruelty of such devices,

in the exhibition devoted to the man himself the cult of Livingstone, which
began during his lifetime and endures to this day, dominates the interpreta-
tion of such objects. However, as we have seen, a closer examination of the
circumstances around its acquisition offers an alternative narrative which
highlights the agency of enslaved women in the destruction of these objects.
As Morgan Meyer has observed, absences can have their own materiality.32
The absent gorees and bonds here convey a potent message about resistance
and the response of the enslaved to their condition.
An image of slaves wearing gorees in a slave coffle was the only plate
included in the published Narrative depicting the slave trade in action. This
is somewhat surprising, given that the horrors of the slave trade and the
need for legitimate commerce were central themes of the book. To over-
come the lack of representation of the slave trade, Livingstone asked Horace
Waller – a fellow abolitionist who arranged for publication of Livingstone’s
works with publisher John Murray – to emboss a gold emblem on the cover
of the volume. He suggested, “I think a man in a slave stick with his hands
tied behind and the slaver with a hold of the other end of the goree [slave
stick] & a musket in his right hand will be best”.33 The exposure of the iniq-
uity of the slave trade, a message threaded throughout the Narrative, was
thus given visual prominence lacking within the plates in the book. The
image was drawn by J.B. Zwecker and engraved by J.W. Whymper based,
according to Tim Barringer, on a verbal description by Livingstone. He may
also have shown Zwecker the object.34 The goree in these images acts as a
potent symbol of the cruelty of the trade, with the object itself a material
counterpart to the abolitionist narrative. Handler and Steiner have revealed
that this image was reproduced in a variety of publications in the UK and the
US, rarely with any specific reference to Livingstone and sometimes errone-
ously captioned as relating to Mungo Park and the Atlantic slave trade.35 So
well did the goree and the column of enslaved people capture the essential
image of African slavery that its key reference points to the Indian Ocean,
Livingstone, and his proud moment of freeing of slaves, faded through its
reproduction.
256 beingbbbbeing

Exploration, geography and the material culture of slavery

Livingstone’s explorations were in part sponsored by the Royal Geographical

Society (RGS), and his explorations are closely tied in with the growing
stature of this institution, founded in 1830 to promote the expansion of
geographical knowledge. Livingstone’s fame in the mid-nineteenth century
played a major role in bringing prominence to exploration and the RGS in the
public and imperial eye, a phenomenon Felix Driver describes as “geography
militant”.36 The RGS also became a repository for objects, images and texts
related to exploration and currently houses numerous items associated with
Livingstone. Most of these can be regarded as Livingstone relics, including
his watch, his collar, his pocket-knife, copies of his signature, or sections
of the tree under which he was buried.37 In addition, the RGS holds a set
of slave chains and leg irons from East Africa, attached by a padlock which
has been torn apart. The RGS online catalogue speculates that they could
have been acquired during the occasion described in the previous section
when Livingstone and his party physically assisted with the removal of such
bonds.38 This online entry also states that Livingstone used these chains and
irons as props for his lectures in London during which he railed against
the slave trade. Such powerful, heavy and noisy objects tangibly brought
the punishing conditions endured by enslaved people home to his British
audiences and assisted Livingstone in bringing this story of inhumanity to
life. These objects of punishment represent Livingstone’s attempt to bring
the experience of “being a slave” vividly to his audiences in Britain, while also
enhancing the authenticity and drama of his performance.
Livingstone’s explorations were not undertaken simply in the service of
expanding geographical knowledge and the Christian mission. The Zambesi
expedition of 1858–1863 was specifically charged with bringing back exam-
ples of raw materials, commercial products and botanical specimens that
might be cultivated there to encourage “legitimate commerce” to combat
the slave trade.39 John Kirk, the expedition doctor, collected a large number
of objects and specimens including samples of cotton and basketwork,
while Thomas Baines, the expedition artist, recorded local manufacturing
methods.40 The Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, which in part sponsored the
Zambesi expedition, received the specimens and objects amassed during the
expedition. At this time, Kew was home to the Museum of Economic Botany,
an institution showcasing the economic potential of the expanding British
Empire.41 Kirk documented these items carefully, including the community
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 257

and place from which they were collected, as well as botanical information
including the type of plant from which they were made. While the specimens
remain in Kew, several of the examples of material culture collected by Kirk
were moved from Kew to the British Museum in the 1960s as curators
deemed them of more anthropological than botanical interest.
These collections link to the history of slavery in two ways. First, they
provide evidence of material cultures of various African peoples from which
people were enslaved. Whilst necessarily collected with Kirk’s particular mis-
sion in mind, their condition and documentation provide important examples
of pre-colonial African cultures, technologies, communities and traditions
which were ruptured by the slave trade. They are a material memory of
pre-enslavement lives. Secondly, such objects illustrate the British mission to
expand commerce as a viable strategy to counter the slave trade. Livingstone’s
mission was not officially one of colonization. Nonetheless, British explo-
ration and the production of knowledge about the region ultimately paved
the way for the later annexation of swathes of territory in East and Central
Africa. In this respect, these objects and their detailed labels describing
the economic potential of plants and people are an ominous sign of future
exploitation. Kirk’s personal involvement in abolition did not end at this
point. As Consul-General at Zanzibar in the 1870s and early 1880s, he was
instrumental in negotiating the treaty to abolish the slave trade with Sultan
Barghash at Zanzibar in 1873. His diaries record his meticulous observation
of the numbers of slaves traded and he shows genuine concern for their
plight.42 Kirk became a significant collector of antiquities while stationed at
Zanzibar although he seems to have amassed no objects which testify to his
central role in abolition.43 This is a telling silence, given the fervour with
which he pursued the cause of abolition and his interest in African cultures.

Exploration and emancipation: the role of the Bombay Africans

It is clear that through men such as Livingstone, British ambitions to explore

the African interior and to abolish slavery were intimately connected. While
the celebrated stories of explorers focused upon the individual as a hero tak-
ing on the wilds of the unknown, these men were entirely dependent upon
local actors. Exploration was far from being a European project. No expedi-
tion could take place without a team of hundreds of men and women to act
as porters, translators and guides. As Driver and Jones note, “Many of these
258 beingbbbbeing

intermediaries, for their part, acquired far more knowledge of exploration

than most European explorers could ever hope to attain.”44 Critical to several
expeditions were the group now known as the Bombay Africans – enslaved
boys from East Africa later liberated by the British Navy. They were then taken
to western India and educated in mission stations along the coast. When
David Livingstone was planning his explorations in India, these men were
ideal guides and assistants with their knowledge of various East African lan-
guages and regions, as well as English. Sidi Mubarak Bombay, James Chuma,
Abdullah Susi, Matthew Wellington and Jacob Wainwright are just some of
those whose names and histories have been recorded and researched.45 The
exhibition entitled Bombay Africans, 1850 – 1910, curated by Clifford J. Pereira,
at the RGS in 2007 and part of the commemoration of the bicentenary of the
abolition of the slave trade, was devoted to these men; it then toured the UK,
ensuring that their story was brought to a wider audience. It was one of the
few events in that year to focus upon the story of the Indian Ocean.
Objects related to these remarkable men are scarce. Several were awarded
special medals by the RGS for participating in expeditions. In 1873, a set
of medals was struck for those who had been with Livingstone on his final
expedition and took his body back to Zanzibar and on to England. These
so-called “faithful followers” were given medals of which two examples
exist, one in the RGS (given to Richard Rutton) and the other in the British
Museum, awarded to “Thomas (Khamees)”. Thomas was probably the
English name given to this man – whether he was a liberated slave we do not
know, although the taking of Christian names was common for the emanci-
pated who were educated in missions. John Kirk in fact donated this medal
to the British Museum in 1886 shortly before he returned to Britain from
acting as Consul General in Zanzibar. It is possible that Thomas/Khamees
died either before he was given the medal or after, and his family presented
it to Kirk. While Livingstone’s face prominently features on the obverse and
the name of the follower was merely inscribed on the edge, it is nonetheless
significant material evidence of the collaborative nature of exploration and
in some cases the close relations explorers developed with their assistants.
Photographs and paintings bring the histories of the Bombay Africans
to the fore. Tembo, an assistant to James Grant and John Hanning Speke,
appears in a painting by Henry Wyndham Phillips, exhibited at the Royal
Academy in 1864. Driver argues that in this image Tembo represents the
importance of local knowledge as evidence for exploration, along with maps,
sketches and specimens. Grant and Speke valued local knowledge, but were
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 259

criticized by men such as Richard Burton who frowned upon the reliability of
using local informants.46 Driver has pieced together Tembo’s history, noting
that he was a formerly enslaved boy, possibly from present-day Tanzania,
adopted by General Rigby, Consul at Zanzibar from 1858 to 1861, who
brought him to London in 1863. Tembo and another formerly enslaved boy
were presented at the RGS and other meetings by Grant and Speke; as Driver
explains, “their presence presumably intended to confirm the possibility that
black Africans could provide useful evidence for geographical research”.47
Furthermore, Tembo and his companion represented the success of the
British abolition movement and missionary education across the Indian
Ocean, as well as celebrating their pivotal role in British exploration.
The Bombay Africans were also captured in photographs. As seen in
Christiansë’s chapter, photography emerged as a vital technology of empire
in the mid-nineteenth century and served multiple purposes, including as a
tool of surveillance, but also, as in this case, to celebrate and commemorate
imperial achievement. What is remarkable here is that two East African boys
feature as part of this celebration. A series of images and cartes de visite made
in 1874 after Livingstone’s death are the most famous images of the Bombay
Africans. Abdullah Susi and James Chuma posed for various photographs in
the grounds of Newstead Abbey, home of William Frederick Webb, a former
explorer and friend of Livingstone. They had accompanied Livingstone’s
body back to Britain, thanks to the financial aid of Dr James Young, a
Scottish chemist and friend of Livingstone.48 The series shows different fig-
ures surrounding a table of objects and papers related to Livingstone, upon
a lion-skin rug. Chuma and Susi are dressed in sober Victorian suits.49 In
one image, Chuma and Susi kneel and sit either side of the table, with rifles
placed in front of the table alongside Livingstone’s hat, and a Union flag
prominently covering the table. In another version, Livingstone’s children
and Horace Waller, editor of Livingstone’s journals, pose on each side, with
Chuma and Susi at the centre of the composition. Waller looks up at the
two men, indicating the importance he placed upon their knowledge and
understanding, and their loyalty to Livingstone. They spent many hours
with Waller decoding Livingstone’s last journals. When they were presented
with their RGS medals in 1874, Waller stated, “The faithful companions
of Livingstone were able to give an intelligible account of every river and
mountain and village in the regions they had passed through; and such aid
as they could give was of the first importance to Mr Livingstone in preparing
the work on which he was engaged.”50
260 beingbbbbeing

Sidi Mubarak Bombay features in two portraits in the RGS collections.

His name itself explicitly speaks of Indian Ocean mobility – “sidi” being
the name in India for migrants and their descendants from Africa, while
Bombay indicates that he was educated in the Bombay Presidency after his
emancipation. The provenance of one photograph, taken later in his life, is
unknown.51 The other is a stereoscopic portrait taken by James Grant in 1860,
and acquired by the RGS on 17 January 1861. Grant’s photographs include
some of the earliest images of Zanzibar.52 Inscribed beneath the image on
the album page is the title “‘Moobarik Bombay’ who has accompanied Capt.
Speke during 2 expeditions in Central Africa”. Mubarak wears a white robe
and cap, carrying a rifle across his body. His white-robed figure stands out
prominently in front of a large dark carved wooden door, probably locating
the image to Zanzibar. He looks away from the camera and has evidently
held this pose still for some time for his figure to be captured sharply during
this early phase in the development of photographic technology. While the
caption ties his significance to Speke, echoing the constant placement of the
Bombay Africans as subsidiary to the European explorer, he was deemed sig-
nificant enough to be portrayed individually and, as his career demonstrates,
his knowledge and experience were critical to numerous explorers, including
Burton, Speke, Grant, Stanley and Cameron. Painstaking research has pieced
together Sidi Mubarak’s life story, giving this portrait, unlike so many pho-
tographs of the enslaved, a biography to accompany it. One final portrait of
Bombay no longer exists. Sir John Kirk donated five lantern slides of “East
Africa and a portrait of ‘Bombay”‘ to the RGS in 1894, but this collection was
“destroyed on 9th February 1951 as it had faded”.53 The fate of this photograph
underlines the fragility of the fragmentary records of those people enslaved
and emancipated in the Indian Ocean world.

Colonial collectors in post-slavery East Africa

While explorers largely represented the prelude to colonialism in East Africa,

the mission to abolish slavery continued to concern British colonial officials
after the establishment of British rule. Many donors to the British Museum
were involved in the anti-slavery campaigns, yet few acquired objects which
relate to this story. Sir John Kirk, for example as mentioned earlier, donated
important objects from his personal collection to the British Museum on
his return from Africa, including the earliest examples of Swahili material
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 261

culture acquired by the Museum. Yet objects relating to the slave trade are
notable by their absence from his collections. Two of Kirk’s successors in
the colonial service at Zanzibar, however, did acquire and donate sets of
slave stocks. The first was Claud Hollis who, while serving in Mombasa in
the early 1900s, collected a set of two-metre-long slave stocks and donated
these to the museum in 1909 along with other important Swahili collections.
These are the oldest examples so far located in British museum collections
and their acquisition soon after the abolition of slavery in East Africa makes
them particularly significant.
The second set of stocks were collected by William Harold Ingrams, who
served in Zanzibar in the 1920s and was a significant collector and writer,
publishing the first anthropological study of the island.54 He curated the
historical section of the Zanzibar Museum with which this chapter began.
His written work does not discuss the slave history of the islands in great
detail and his studies of the peoples of the island do not examine the former
slave communities – an omission which scholars since have been trying to
remedy.55 In 2014 his collection was donated to the British Museum by his
daughter and included a set of slave stocks with five apertures. In recent
discussion with the curator it appears that there is no physical evidence
upon them to suggest that they were ever used and they are much smaller
(at 50 cm long) than other examples. Ingrams, after all, collected them more
than twenty years after the treaty abolishing slavery in Zanzibar in 1897. One
of the apertures is distinct with an additional concentric carved circle, and
these small, possibly unused, stocks are an anomaly within his collection
which concentrates largely on the material culture of the Swahili. He may
have had them commissioned to document former practices on the islands,
although we can only speculate as he does not record these objects in his
writings. As with many objects associated with enslavement, while their form
speaks vividly of their intended use, records to bring the human element and
suffering to light remain scarce.

Conclusion

The story of the Atlantic slave trade dominates the representation of slav-
ery in British museums. The Indian Ocean rarely features and, if it does,
is commonly part of the story of abolition or exploration. Museums often
try to engage the public with personal narratives and, as this chapter has
262 beingbbbbeing

shown, the self-interest of colonial collectors has erased many of these indi-
vidual stories and material legacies. Projects such as the exhibition about the
Bombay Africans have attempted to redress this imbalance and bring these
histories and rarely heard voices to a wider public. As we have seen, objects
in permanent collections which relate most directly to the Indian Ocean
slave experience are those of punishment and confinement. While they
were collected to demonstrate the iniquity of the trade and celebrate British
humanitarian endeavours towards its abolition, they also make tangible the
harsh reality and punitive regimes of slavery. There are other methods of
recovering the material worlds of slavery. Close study of photographs and
texts reveals clothing, beads and other articles worn by enslaved people.
These objects were, in general, not collected but there is potential to find
comparable objects in ethnographic museum collections. This chapter has
focused upon objects acquired during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
to make clear how the forces of colonialism and priorities of European col-
lectors in East Africa and the Indian Ocean world impinge upon the material
record of enslavement. The focus by the many colonial collectors upon the
“indigenous” leaves cultures emerging from former slave societies unre-
corded in museums. The material that we do have makes plain the violence
inflicted upon enslaved peoples. Simultaneously, the seizure and removal
of such objects from the region indicates the British role in abolition of the
slave trade and celebrates the British humanitarian mission. The disavowal
of British involvement in the earlier Atlantic trade and a focus upon positive
British endeavours in bringing about abolition reflect criticisms levelled at
some British museums’ representations of slavery more widely.56
Museums are attempting to fill the lacunae in collections. With the sup-
port of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Maritime Museum (NMM)
in 2002 acquired the Michael Graham-Stewart collection, which comprised
over 450 items, many of which related to Atlantic and Indian Ocean slave
trades and abolition. The creation of the permanent Atlantic gallery in the
NMM, opened to coincide with the bicentenary of abolition in 2007, means
that much of this material is on display while the numerous photographs of
Atlantic and Indian Ocean slavery from the Michael Graham-Stewart collec-
tion are now easily available online.57 This example is typical of how special
exhibitions and celebrations offer museums the opportunity, and in many
cases the budget, to enhance their collections in these areas. Nonetheless,
McAleer notes that even after the acquisition of this collection, the NMM
“remained very weak in objects that could illustrate the lives and cultures
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 263

of the enslaved, and convey their agency and resilience”.58 Considering the
growing concentration of archaeologists on the issue of slavery, discussed
at the start of this chapter, the material record and our understanding of
the sites of slavery and the experience of the enslaved in the Indian Ocean
through material culture will continue to grow.
Close examination of objects, museum archives, photographs and associ-
ated texts can reveal hidden stories to fill the gap in the material record and
offer opportunities to highlight the agency and cultures of enslaved people.
Collections associated with explorers have the potential too to reveal the crit-
ical role of the emancipated as mediators and enablers of British exploration
of Africa. Recent exhibitions have brought these “hidden histories” to light.
While such displays have focused on their role as explorers, in this context
I propose that they can also be considered as part of the material record of
abolition and emancipation. I have also highlighted occasions where we
know why objects are now absent. Such stories of the deliberate destruction
of objects of punishment by enslaved people demonstrate how absent objects
can speak as powerfully as those that are present.

Notes

1. Zanzibar National Archives (ZNA hereafter): DF 7/1, History General file,

Letter from Theodore Burtt, 17 June 1925.
2. See Laura Fair, Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in
Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890 – 1945. Athens OH: Ohio University Press,
2001.
3. Jonathon Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in
Colonial Zanzibar, 63. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.
4. ZNA: DF 9/5 Museum Policy 1956 – 1963, Curator to Chief Secretary,
27 July 1957.
5. ZNA: DF 9/5 Museum Policy, 1956 – 1963, Permanent Secretary (Education
and Welfare) to Archivist/Curator, 31 August 1962.
6. ZNA: DF 9/5 Museum Policy, 1956 – 1963, Archivist/Curator to Permanent
Secretary (Education and Welfare), 8 February 1963.
7. Stephanie Wynne-Jones, “Recovering and Remembering a Slave Route in
Central Tanzania,” in Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, edited by Paul
Lane and Kevin C. MacDonald, Proceedings of the British Academy 168, 327.
Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
264 beingbbbbeing

8. See Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones.

9. Wayne Modest, “We Have Always Been Modern: Museums, Collections, and
Modernity in the Caribbean,” Museum Anthropology 35, no. 1 (April 2012): 85.
10. Sujit Sivasundaram, “Ethnicity, Indigeneity, and Migration in the Advent of
British Rule to Sri Lanka,” The American Historical Review 115, no. 2 (2010): 428.
11. John McAleer, “‘The Slavery Question in Eastern Africa’: Representations of
Indian Ocean Slavery and Its Suppression in Nineteenth-century Britain from
the Collection of the National Maritime Museum,” Journal for Maritime Research
10, no. 1 (2008): 25.
12. For example, Sophie White, “Geographies of Slave Consumption: French
Colonial Louisiana and a World of Goods,” Winterthur Portfolio 45, no. 2/3
(2011): 229–248. See also special issue of Slavery and Abolition 35, no. 3 (2014)
on “Material Cultures of Slavery and Abolition in the British Caribbean,” edited
by Stephan Lenik and Christer Petley.
13. B.W. Higman, “Survival and Silence in the Material Record of Slavery and
Abolition,” Slavery & Abolition 35, no. 3 (3 July 2014): 528.
14. Wynne-Jones, “Recovering and Remembering a Slave Route in Central Tanza-
nia,” 319.
15. Jonathan R. Walz and Steven A. Brandt, “Toward an Archaeology of the Other
African Diaspora: The Slave Trade and Dispersed Africans in the Western
Indian Ocean,” in African Re-Genesis: Confronting Social Issues in the Diaspora,
edited by Jay B. Haviser and Kevin C. MacDonald, 246-268. Walnut CA: Rou-
tledge, 2008.
16. L.W. Donley-Reid, “The Social Uses of Swahili Space and Objects,” PhD disser-
tation, University of Cambridge, 1984.
17. Chapurukha M. Kusimba, “Archaeology of Slavery in East Africa,” The African
Archaeological Review 21, no. 2 (2004): 59–88.
18. Sarah K. Croucher, “Clove Plantations on Nineteenth-Century Zanzibar: Possi-
bilities for Gender Archaeology in Africa,” Journal of Social Archaeology 7, no. 3
(October 2007): 302–324.
19. Krish Seetah, “Objects Past, Objects Present: Materials, Resistance and Memory
from the Le Morne Old Cemetery, Mauritius,” Journal of Social Archaeology
15, no. 2 (June 2015): 233–253; Krish Seetah, “The Archaeology of Mauritius,”
Antiquity 89, no. 346 (August 2015): 922–939.
20. See Françoise Vergès and Carpanin Marimoutou, Pour un Musée du Temps
Présent: La Maison des Civilisations et de l’Unité Réunionnaise, 56-59. La Réunion:
MCUR, 2008.
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 265

21. Edward A. Alpers, “The Other Middle Passage: The African Slave Trade in the
Indian Ocean,” in Many Middle Passages, edited by Emma Christopher, Cassan-
dra Pybus and Marcus Rediker, 20 – 38. Berkeley CA, and London: University
of California Press, 2007.
22. Numerous images of slaves liberated by the British Navy in the Indian Ocean
have been examined by Doulton; see Lindsay Doulton, “Anti-Slavery and the
Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean, 1860-90,” PhD dissertation, University of
Hull, 2010.
23. Jeanne Cannizzo, “Doctor Livingstone Collects,” in David Livingstone and the
Victorian Encounter with Africa, edited by John M. MacKenzie, 141. London:
National Portrait Gallery, 1996.
24. My thanks go to Natalie Milor, curator at the David Livingstone Trust, for
confirming that the goree seems to be the only object in their collection that
directly relates to slavery.
25. David Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and Its Tributaries:
And of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864, 137. London: John
Murray, 1865.
26. Ibid., 377.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid, 378.
29. Ibid.
30. John M. MacKenzie (ed.), David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with
Africa, 138. London: National Portrait Gallery, 1996.
31. Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and Its Tributaries, 587.
32. Morgan Meyer, “Placing and Tracing Absence: A Material Culture of the Imma-
terial,” Journal of Material Culture 17, no. 1 (March 2012): 103–110.
33. Waller quoted in Tim Barringer, “Fabricating Africa: Livingstone and the Visual
Image, 1850 – 1874,” in David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with
Africa, edited by John M. MacKenzie, 193. London: National Portrait Gallery,
1996.
34. Ibid.
35. Jerome S. Handler and Annis Steiner, “Identifying Pictorial Images of Atlantic
Slavery: Three Case Studies,” Slavery & Abolition 27, no. 1 (April 2006): 52–54.
36. Felix Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. Oxford:
Blackwell, 2001.
37. For analysis of the process of fetishing Livingstone relics see Felix Driver,
“Old Hat, I Presume?: History of a Fetish,” History Workshop Journal, 41, no. 1
(April 1996): 230–34.
266 beingbbbbeing

38. RGS catalogue entry. Accessed 23 August 2019. https://rgs.koha-ptfs.co.uk/

cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=975,
39. Cannizzo, “Doctor Livingstone Collects,” 158.
40. Baines was dismissed after only a year after Livingstone accused him of stealing
from the expedition supplies.
41. Caroline Cornish, “Curating Science in an Age of Empire : Kew’s Museum of
Economic Botany,” PhD dissertation, Royal Holloway, University of London,
2013.
42. National Library of Scotland: Acc 9942, Kirk Papers – see for example notebook
28 for 1870.
43. Sarah Longair, “Kirk after the Zambesi: Diplomacy, Material Culture and East
Africa,” in David Livingstone: Man, Myth and Legacy, edited by Sarah Worden,
100-113. Edinburgh: NMS, 2012; Sandy Prita Meier, Swahili Port Cities: The
Architecture of Elsewhere, 167. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2016.
44. Felix Driver and Lowri Jones, Hidden Histories of Exploration: Researching the
RGS-IBG Collections, 18. London: Royal Holloway, 2009.
45. Clifford Pereira and Vandana Patel, “Terra Nova for the Royal Geographical
Society (with IBG): 2007 and the Bombay African Strand of the ‘Crossing
Communities’ Project”, in Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums:
Ambiguous Engagements, edited by Laurajane Smith et al., Routledge Research
in Museum Studies 3, 166-168. New York: Routledge, 2011.
46. Driver and Jones, Hidden Histories of Exploration, 17.
47. Ibid, 18.
48. Clare Pettitt, Dr Livingstone, I Presume?: Missionaries, Journalists, Explorers and
Empire, 11. London: Profile, 2007.
49. Pettitt discusses the clothing and others aspects of these photographs: Pettitt,
163–67.
50. Quoted in John Hannavy (ed.), Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography,
1217. New York and London: Routledge, 2008.
51. RGS catalogue entry. Accessed 23 August 2019. https://rgs.koha-ptfs.co.uk/
cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=162387.
52. David Killingray and Andrew Roberts, “An Outline History of Photography in
Africa to ca. 1940,” History in Africa 16 (1989): 199.
53. RGS catalogue entry. Accessed 23 August 2019. https://rgs.koha-ptfs.co.uk/
cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=218418.
54. W.H. Ingrams, Zanzibar: Its History and Its People. London: Stacey Interna-
tional, 1931.
 thetthe materiatthtthe matthe mtthe mattthetthe material 267

55. See, for example, the work of Laura Fair: “Dressing Up: Clothing, Class and
Gender in Post-Abolition Zanzibar,” The Journal of African History 39, no. 1
(January 1998): 63; Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in
Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890 – 1945. Athens OH: Ohio University Press,
2001.
56. See, for example, the country-wide celebrations of the 200th anniversary of
abolition in 2007. McAleer, ‘“That Infamous Commerce in Human Blood,”’
in Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums: Ambiguous Engagements,
edited by Laurajane Smith et al., Routledge Research in Museum Studies 3.
New York: Routledge, 2011.
57. Many of these objects are discussed in Douglas J. Hamilton and Robert J. Blyth
(eds.), Representing Slavery: Art, Artefacts and Archives in the Collections of the
National Maritime Museum. Aldershot and London: Lund Humphries and
National Maritime Museum, 2007.
58. McAleer, ‘“That Infamous Commerce in Human Blood,”’ 79.
 11

The Shadows of (Public) Recognition

Transatlantic Slavery and Indian Ocean Slavery in
Dutch Historiography and Public Culture

Guno Jones

Introduction1

Some eight years ago, I was in Amsterdam with my partner on Open

Monuments Day (Open Monumentendag). On this day historic buildings clas-
sified as heritage sites are open to the general public. One stately Amsterdam
canal house—which housed exhibits spanning art, interior design, decora-
tions and the books of the family that once lived there—was of particular
interest to us. We walked round the building, looked at the exhibited art and
strolled through the beautiful garden. Our tour, however, was brutally dis-
rupted by a certain advertisement (see Figure 1). It offered for sale “castrated,
firm Madurese or East-Java [sic] pull-cattle” and “beautiful Madurese bulls”
next to “firm, young and healthy East Javanese workers, men and women
for agricultural work and mining”, the latter for “60 Florin per adult”, by
“H. Leeksma” in “Soerabaia”. The poster was hanging on a wall, showcased
as part of the exhibition. Was I really seeing this? Typically, “postcolonials”,
in uncovering colonial violence, habitually read “Dutch heritage” against the
grain, but the violence in this advertisement was hidden in plain sight.
As I was more familiar with representations of transatlantic slavery, it
took me a while to realize that the advertisement might have been referring
to slavery in “the Dutch East Indies”, as colonial Indonesia was known in
the Netherlands. While the advertisement appeared in the Sumatra Post in
1902—in the formally post-abolition era, when those “on sale” would legally
have been contract workers and Leeksma would have received a broker’s
fee—its objectification and dehumanization of colonized people bears simi-
larities with actual advertisements of slavery from a few decades earlier. Such
continuities are testimony to the afterlives of slavery in colonial Indonesia.2
270 beingbbbbeing

Figure 11.1. Cattle and Colonized for Sale.

Source: Exhibited image of Sumatra Post, 1902 (photograph by author on location).
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 271

Since so little is known of the Dutch role in slavery in colonial Indonesia,

actual depictions of it are hard to recognize.
In the Netherlands, people do not generally associate “East Java” (Java
is one of the main islands in the Indonesian archipelago) with slavery.
Representations of the Dutch East Indies often celebrate the great “Dutch
entrepreneurial spirit”, but disavow the violence of Dutch colonialism. Paul
Bijl has argued that though there are ample traces of systemic colonial
violence in “the East” in the Netherlands, its “memorability” has remained
limited because there is no proper conceptual apparatus and “dominant dis-
courses do not produce them (the victims of colonial violence) as belonging
to national history”.3 There is a conspicuous difference between the discourse
on the “East Indies” and “West Indies” in reference to Dutch colonialism.
While the dominant Dutch discourse on “the East” has remained nostalgic,
discourse on the Dutch Caribbean colonies of Suriname and the former
Dutch Antilles (six islands in the Caribbean Sea) have notably dropped nos-
talgic articulations of the Dutch colonial past.
Decades of scholar–activist interventions have succeeded in reframing
Dutch colonialism in the Caribbean as a national shame—as such, the role
of the Dutch in transatlantic slavery is the central focus. Despite the backlash
against these efforts, the connected politics of memory has had a visible
impact in the public sphere, as I will demonstrate in this chapter. However,
visibilising the Dutch role in transatlantic slavery has rendered the Dutch role
in Indian Ocean slavery invisible, regardless of the fact that structural and
systematic Dutch military violence during the wars of decolonization has
recently entered decolonial politics of recognition and some scholarly work.4
This bifurcation of Dutch slavery is visible in monuments, debate, practices
of memory and commemoration, museum exhibitions, history-education
and media representations, and it also characterizes knowledge production.
One might even argue that slavery is, culturally and epistemologically,
“allowed” in representations of Dutch colonialism in Caribbean history, but
not in those of Indonesia. This is striking, since the use of enslaved people
was “central to the East India Companies established by various European
powers throughout the Indian Ocean world”, as Alicia Schikker and Nira
Wickramasinghe point out in the introduction to this volume. While the role
of the Dutch (and other European empires) in Indian Ocean slavery concerns
geographically dispersed locations (places such as Ceylon, Cochin, Batavia,
Cape Town and Mauritius), as Schikker and Wickramasinghe observe in
comparing Indian Ocean Slavery with Transatlantic Slavery, I will focus
272 beingbbbbeing

on the historical narration and public memory of the Dutch role in slavery
in ‘the Dutch East Indies’, as colonial Indonesia was referred to in colonial
discourse.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s conceptualization of the relationship between
power and historical knowledge production in his seminal work, Silencing
the Past: Power and the Production of History,5 has a particular and perhaps
somewhat surprising resonance for the case of Dutch slavery. The episte-
mological and public afterlives of Dutch slavery in the “East Indies” and
“West Indies” show the distinctive impact of silencing on similar histories of
oppression. The recent and partial de-silencing of transatlantic slavery in the
Netherlands, as an outcome of a politics of citizenship among an engaged
part of Caribbean Dutch citizens, has transformed transatlantic slavery from
a “non-event” into an event worthy of public debate, monumentalization,
public commemoration, exhibitions and research in the Netherlands.
Unfortunately, the frames of the politics involved in de-silencing transatlan-
tic slavery (rendering it a meaningful historical event) were not sufficiently
broad to do the same for slavery in colonial Indonesia, which is still very
much a “non-event” in the Dutch public sphere. This sharply uneven
bifurcation of Dutch slavery should alert us to unintended consequences,
incompleteness and losses in any politics of recognition. Although this
bifurcation is being cautiously addressed in discussions among members of
diasporic post-colonial communities with genealogies in different parts of
the Dutch empire, there seems to be a political and affective investment in
its sustenance. The bifurcation appears to be informed by varied experiences
of colonialism and reflects the differential positioning of the colonized and
members of post-colonial communities in present-day Dutch society.
This chapter unpacks some of the social and political dynamics in the
uneven public and epistemological afterlives of colonial slavery in Indonesia
and the Caribbean and argues why it is important to transcend the status quo.
Rather than explaining this phenomenon, I hope to sketch its complexity. I
will discuss the afterlives of both histories of slavery in the contemporary
Dutch public domain and in knowledge production, and the diverse power
dynamics and genealogies of (public) engagement involved. I will look at the
differential positioning of transatlantic and Indian Ocean slavery in knowl-
edge production, public memory and commemoration culture, and media
productions and museum exhibitions. I will also examine how inclusion
and exclusion from citizenship and nation are negotiated, articulated and
contested via public and epistemological engagements with slavery. With
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 273

regard to Indian Ocean slavery, I am interested in the nexus between the

(constitutionally and ideologically legitimized) Dutch involvement in slavery
in colonial Indonesia and the rise of Dutch racial capitalism and, specifi-
cally, how this cornerstone of Dutch colonial rule in “the East” is narrated
and remembered in post-abolition historiography and public culture in the
Netherlands. Therefore, I will not include slavery and bondage in local socie-
ties in Indonesia in this piece.

Dutch slavery in knowledge production

Author Reggie Baay, one of the few researchers who works on slavery in the
Dutch East Indies, recently made the following observation:

Slavery in the East does not exist in the Netherlands. The Dutch history
of slavery is emphatically limited to Suriname and the Antilles. It seems
as if a ballotage-commission has weighed the slave-trade and slavery in
the Dutch East Indies and deemed it as being too light. Was slavery over
there not cruel enough? Was it not extensive enough? Maybe it didn’t
meet the “definition” of slavery? … how is it possible for slavery in the
one former Dutch colony to be included in Dutch history, while slavery
in the other Dutch colony is not included in Dutch history? Why do we
think our children should learn about our colonial history of slavery and
the involvement of our ancestors with it in Suriname and the Antilles, but
not about the former Dutch East Indies? [translation G.J.]6

We should take a closer look at some of the conditions that make possible the
present status quo in historiography and history education on slavery that
Baay captures so effectively. Before I discuss these conditions of possibility,
a few words on the epistemological position that informs this chapter. My
perspective on historical knowledge-production is based on the construction-
ist premise that “the facts” do not “speak for themselves” (they cannot be
retrieved objectively), but are interpretations of events based on non-neutral
archival sources that are turned into historical narration informed by dynam-
ics in the present. From a constructionist point of view, the entire process
of historical knowledge production is a reflection of particular power for-
mations between people.7 Along this line, I will give central attention to the
power dynamics involved in the knowledge production and public culture of
274 beingbbbbeing

slavery in the Netherlands. As a consequence, this chapter differs somewhat

from, for instance, the very empirically rich chapters of Lodewijk Wagenaar
and Kate Ekama in this book that approach facts in a different way.
While nowadays transatlantic slavery is certainly more visible than
Indian Ocean slavery in knowledge production and educational material,
the present-day visibility of the former cannot be taken for granted – it is
the result of a long history of engagement and struggle. Sustained engage-
ment by activist-scholars and critical academics has played a major role in
furthering the presence of transatlantic slavery in public history, although
this recognition is highly contested and not necessarily irreversible. For a
long time only a small group of academics conducted research on Dutch
transatlantic slavery, and the phenomenon was not included in the canon of
Dutch history.8 Arguably, this situation was nurtured by the epistemological
compartmentalization of “colonial” and “Dutch” history, which excluded
slavery from metropolitan Dutch history. In 1995, Ann Stoler observed that
“the history of the metropole is structurally set apart from the history of the
colonies” in the Netherlands.9 Along the same lines, Gloria Wekker recently
observed:

… within departments of history, the discipline was centrally structured

such that there was a preponderance of majors, courses, and specializa-
tions that dealt with national history, while a small, separate minority
of the curricular materials was devoted to the expansion in the world,
meaning colonial history. … The metropolitan and colonial parts of Dutch
colonial empire are still overwhelmingly treated, both inside and outside
academia as separate worlds, the metropolitan and the colonial, that did
not impinge upon each other.10

However, even if we take the epistemological separation of “colonial” and

“Dutch” history into account, the relative silence on slavery in accounts of the
former “Dutch East Indies” is striking. Transatlantic slavery was primarily
studied within the framework of colonial history and its role in the history
of the metropole initially received only limited scholarly attention. But its
presence was and still is much more prolific (and continually expanding)
in knowledge production than slavery in colonial Indonesia.11 Several obser-
vations can be made about the Dutch transatlantic slavery knowledge field.
First, it has developed from an academic research field to a knowledge field in
which history, heritage and memory are deeply interwoven. The fecundity of
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 275

research on transatlantic slavery especially, directly or indirectly, draws from

the deep engagement with the history of slavery and its afterlives of advocates
in Caribbean Dutch communities. Moreover, scholar-activists have utilized
the existing body of knowledge on transatlantic slavery in their politics of
recognition. This is not to suggest that “traditional Dutch academic” research
on slavery is “neutral” (not situated in power dynamics), but that the power
dynamics within academia were made invisible by reigning objectivism in
Dutch historical knowledge production. Some prominent Dutch historians
of slavery have been known to be epistemological gatekeepers, systematically
supressing novel research perspectives on slavery within academia, as Pepijn
Brandon has demonstrated. This reflex has also been observed by long-time
historian of Dutch colonialism Susan Legêne.12
“Traditional” academic knowledge production on transatlantic slavery
has arguably been one of the conditions of possibility for the emergence
of a politics of public recognition, but the lively public memory and com-
memoration culture that has emerged in the last twenty years—and the
post-colonial/decolonial perspectives in which it is embedded—has also
inspired critical assessments of the earlier knowledge production and has
facilitated the emergence of new perspectives on the history of slavery.
Post-colonial critiques have revealed the politics and non-neutrality inher-
ent in “traditional” scholarship on slavery by deconstructing paradigms,
terminologies, interpretations and frames of reference.13 Second, knowledge
production on slavery is no longer exclusively done to serve the needs of
intra-academic debates; there are also “hybrid” knowledge projects that
design and engage knowledge production to match the interests of a wider
public. For instance, the emergence of publicly accessible databases on the
enslaved and manumitted have made genealogical research much easier
than it was before. And the knowledge production of the Mapping Slavery
team14 enables heritage tours for those interested in the Dutch history of
slavery. Third, the mutual constitution of colony and metropole, as has been
advocated by post-colonial/decolonial scholars, has been taken up in some
recent knowledge work. Thus, knowledge production in this area is no
longer exclusively a historiography of transatlantic slavery in the Caribbean
colonies. Instead, the afterlives of slavery are being explored in interesting
ways, and the connections between Caribbean slavery and Dutch capitalism
and main Dutch institutions presently receive more attention in research. As
regards the latter, a pioneering study authored by historians Pepijn Brandon
and Ulbe Bosma that quantifies the importance of Trans-Atlantic slavery
276 beingbbbbeing

for the economy of Holland in the eighteenth century has recently been
published.15 Whether these shifts in research have the potential to change
the epistemological compartmentalization of national and colonial history in
academic institutions is yet to be seen.
Fourth, it should be mentioned that the notion of the “knowledge field
of transatlantic slavery in the Netherlands” is somewhat problematic, since
it hides the preponderance of Surinamese plantation slavery in knowledge
production and public history. While publications on slavery in Curaçao
exist,16 plantation slavery in Suriname seems to have drawn the most schol-
arly attention so far. Much less is known about the particularities of slavery
as it existed in Curaçao, where there was no large-scale plantation economy
and the enslaved often “worked in and around the harbor as construction
workers, artisans, sailors, traders, musicians, and military personnel”.17 From
an agonistic perspective on knowledge production, this is not about some
inherent significance of “plantation slavery” as compared to “non-plantation
slavery,” but, rather, it points to the power dynamics in knowledge agendas
in the Netherlands. For a variety of historical reasons, Surinamese Dutch
citizens, who initially opposed dominant discourse at the risk of being
ridiculed, have been prominent in “de-silencing” the history of transatlantic
slavery, in particular, plantation slavery. The relative revelation of the horrors
of Surinamese plantation slavery has impacted on knowledge production and
public culture—it also reveals how a politics of recognition may unintention-
ally foster new silences. In what way does the focus on “plantation slavery” in
Dutch knowledge production of transatlantic slavery (instead of “harbor and
construction slavery”) pre-structure the kinds of questions we tend to ask about
slavery? Which stories are represented in the knowledge field, knowledge
agendas and public initiatives aimed at de-silencing “transatlantic slavery”?
Notwithstanding its contested and “incomplete” nature, knowledge
production on transatlantic slavery has grown in recent years. In contrast,
the history of Dutch slavery in Indonesia is strikingly absent. The multi-
dimensionality in the transatlantic slavery knowledge field, particularly as
it pertains to plantation slavery in colonial Suriname, is absent in the case
of “Dutch East Indies” slavery. Only a few authors have published work on
slavery in colonial Indonesia. This is not because the slavery in “the Dutch
East Indies” was, as compared with transatlantic slavery, “less serious”, as
seems to be the general perception. The epistemological divide between slav-
ery in the “East Indies” and “West Indies” is not dictated by some inherent
difference between the two—it is a consequence of the distinctive dynamics
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 277

involved in the historical narration of both slaveries after their respective

abolitions. Baay and Van Rossum demonstrate that, keeping in mind some
basic features of slavery in colonial Indonesia,18 there were many similari-
ties between transatlantic and Indian Ocean slavery.19 Both slaveries were
dehumanizing tragedies characterized by the commodification of enslaved
bodies, which implied an absolute negation of legal personhood. However,
as already mentioned, in-depth studies of the different dimensions of Dutch
East Indies slavery—let alone its connections with the metropole—are almost
non-existent. This absence is not exclusive to knowledge production, but has
shaped public debate, understandings of slavery, and the public memory and
commemoration culture in the Netherlands. Attempts to narrate and repre-
sent more “integrated”, comparative versions of Dutch slavery are scarce. The
few exceptions include work done by the Mapping Slavery team. The relative
de-silencing of transatlantic slavery has enriched knowledge production of
Dutch history. But how would our understanding of Dutch slavery and its
impact on Dutch society change if the Dutch involvement in Indian Ocean
slavery were systematically included in knowledge practices?

The disavowal of slavery and its afterlives in public Dutch culture

Before 2000 transatlantic and Indian Ocean slavery were equally absent from
public Dutch memory and commemoration culture. In 2001, historian Alex
van Stipriaan referred to this avoidance of Dutch slavery and the slave trade
in the Netherlands as a “deafening silence”.20 Van Stipriaan demonstrates that
in Dutch educational materials up to 2000 slavery was primarily associated
with “America and the negro-cabin of Uncle Tom”.21 In others words, Dutch
children were versed in the tragedy of slavery in the American South, but
Dutch slavery was no part of public consciousness and moral discourse. The
outward projection of slavery was reflected in the landscape of public memory
and commemoration—official monuments commemorating the abolition
of transatlantic slavery existed in the former Dutch Caribbean colonies of
Suriname and Curaçao, but not in the motherland that was constitutionally
responsible for the phenomenon.22 Slavery had turned into “an accepted part
of national history” in independent Suriname, but this was much less the
case in the Dutch Antilles,23 and the history of slavery was entirely absent in
metropolitan Dutch consciousness. Glenn Willemsen, the first director of the
Nationaal Instituut Nederlands slavernijverleden en erfenis (NiNsee, National
278 beingbbbbeing

Institute for the history and heritage of Dutch slavery), concluded that “until
the end of the 20th century, slavery and its legacies were non-issues in both
the public domain and the collective consciousness of Dutch society”.24
The silencing of slavery in Dutch culture was accompanied by complex
political subjectivities among Caribbean Dutch diasporic communities.
While some Caribbean Dutch citizens openly engaged with slavery, for many
others it was not the norm to speak freely about slavery and the slave trade
in the Dutch public sphere.25 These were not fashionable subjects of public
discussion, especially among privileged members of the Caribbean Dutch
diaspora. Slavery was privately recognized by many as a significant history
of pain (its cruelty is a part of subaltern historical consciousness and cultural
repertoire), but it was also regarded as a history of shame. Humphrey Lamur
observed a “taboo” associated with publicly discussing slavery until the end
of the 1980s.26
These complex subjectivities need a brief explanation. Privately, and
within Caribbean Dutch diaspora organizations, slavery was actively com-
memorated.27 In the case of the Surinamese Dutch, these commemorations
were inspired by older anti-colonial thinkers, such as Anton De Kom,
who published his seminal work, Wij Slaven van Suriname (We Slaves of
Suriname), in 1934 and explicitly self-identified as a “descendant of enslaved”
therein. This anti-colonial work (part of broader cultural, religious and social
critiques developed in response to Dutch hegemony)28 exposes the dehuman-
izing and exploitative nature of Dutch colonialism, slavery and indentured
labour in Suriname and served as inspiration for later generations and their
multifold expressions of decolonial thought and practice.
In contrast, in the Dutch public sphere in the Netherlands slavery has
long been subjected to hesitant articulation and is surrounded by political
ambiguity. Until around the end of the 1990s it would have been uncom-
mon publicly to claim genealogical connections with enslaved people as
part of a politics of public recognition, especially if one was relatively well-
off socio-economically. Even today, some people are deeply disturbed by
cinematographic representations of slavery.29 Contemporary Dutch society
may remind Caribbean Dutch citizens that racialized hierarchies (every-
day racism, racism on the labour market, racialized traditions and ethnic
profiling) are not phenomena of the past, which perhaps accounts for why
some are deeply affected by representations of slavery. Degrading events
and systemic racism in the present may “ignite” the past as a metaphor for
talking about the present. Perhaps the continuation of racialized exclusions
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 279

and hierarchies in contemporary Dutch society is what makes Trans-Atlantic

slavery a particularly resonant history for Caribbean Dutch citizens.
Whatever the case, the idea of “rising above” slavery and its afterlives
through ‘forgetting’ until the end of the 1990s still held currency as a rela-
tively viable ethos and politics (and this is possibly still true for many today).30
Perhaps the attitude could be summed up as: Yes, we know about the Dutch
involvement in slavery and its present-day racialized legacies, but we should
rise above it, work hard, and only fight when it is absolutely necessary. In any
case, demanding public recognition of slavery as Dutch heritage, publicly
discussing its racialized afterlives, or openly identifying as a descendant of
the enslaved did not occupy a central place in Caribbean Dutch politics of
identity and citizenship at the time.31 Memories of and critical perspectives
on slavery travelled with Caribbean Dutch communities to the metropole
and were kept alive among them, but it took a while for commemorators
in the diaspora to succeed in “breaking down the taboo on public discussions
of slavery”.32 Partly in response to majoritarian Dutch politics of citizenship
shortly before and after the Independence of Suriname in 1975—in which the
relocation of a significant part of the population of the former colony to the
Netherlands and their Dutch citizenship status were contested—Surinamese
Dutch organizations focused on legal, social and socio-economic dimensions
of citizenship in the 1970s and 1980s.33 The “subaltern” memories of slavery
among the Caribbean Dutch were not yet connected with a politics of equal
citizenship.
The public absence of the Dutch role in Indian Ocean slavery was even
more striking—nobody in the motherland or former colonies seemed
openly to take an interest in the trauma of slavery in the “Dutch East Indies”.
While Caribbean slavery was practically non-existent in public culture and
consciousness in the motherland, it received partial recognition in the
Dutch Caribbean and lived on as a “subaltern history” among the Caribbean
Dutch diaspora in the Netherlands. In contrast, slavery during the Dutch
colonial rule in Indonesia was (and still is) non-existent in public culture
and consciousness in the Netherlands and is absent from the Indonesian
public sphere. This is not to suggest, however, that Indian Ocean slavery
(and the Dutch role in it) is generally absent from practices of memory
and commemoration in Indian Ocean colonial societies. In South Africa
there is a cultural memory of Indian Ocean slavery through songs, as Anne
Marieke van der Wal discusses in this book; public commemorations and
exhibitionary practices also exist.34 But slavery under Dutch colonial rule in
280 beingbbbbeing

Indonesia was (and still is) essentially a “non-event”. It is as if slavery never

happened there. To date, no monuments commemorating the abolition of
slavery exist in the Netherlands or post-colonial Indonesia.35 While many
were affected by slavery in Indonesia, there is (to my knowledge) no official
engagement with this history, nor are there people identifying as “descend-
ants” of the enslaved. The existence of a subaltern community identifying as
“descendants” has been an important condition of possibility for the partial
de-silencing of transatlantic slavery. However, technically speaking, people
who could trace their lineage back to enslaved ancestors in Indian Ocean
slavery exist in Indonesia and the Netherlands. In fact, Reggie Baay’s De
njai reveals that, through the female ancestral line, slavery (as it intersected
with gender-based sexual exploitation and racism previously silenced or even
romanticised) was part of the family histories of a considerable number of
Dutch citizens of “Eurasian” background (the so-called Indische or Indo-
Europese Nederlanders).36 But tracing the lineage back to enslaved ancestors
and keeping their memories alive have not been done in connection with
slavery in colonial Indonesia. Unlike transatlantic slavery, slavery in colonial
Indonesia has not been memorialized by people identifying as descendants
of the enslaved in Indonesia and the Netherlands. This bifurcation once
more illustrates that these politics of memory and identity are not inherently
determined by the existence of lineages tracing back to enslaved ancestors
(‘the facts of the lineage’), but conditioned by evolving dynamics, questions
and politics in the present.
In short, until the 1990s the consensus in the Netherlands was that
slavery left no significant mark on Dutch society. Dominant representations
of the Netherlands centred on the idea of an entrepreneurial and innocent
nation, prone to justice, human rights and the rule of law. Scholars and
activists who dared to connect slavery to the systemic racism in Dutch society
and culture were often ridiculed, verbally attacked, physically threatened and
symbolically excluded from the Dutch nation.

De-silencing transatlantic slavery

The public recognition of slavery in the Netherlands has been a complex

and uneven process. In the last two decades (1998–2018), slavery has
transformed from a particularized sub-memory among parts of Caribbean
Dutch communities to an issue of public debate and national Dutch concern.
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 281

Slavery has become an important issue among parts of the Caribbean Dutch
diaspora, and a matter of cultural heritage for which people have sought pub-
lic recognition.37 In conjunction with a reconfigured politics of identity, in
which forerunners began to self-identify as “Afro-European Dutch” and other
variations with the prefix “Afro” while resolutely rejecting the commonly
used “negers” (negroes) because of its colonial connotation, transatlantic
slavery has become a part of discussions on equal citizenship and inclusion
in the Dutch nation. “We are here to stay. We have a stake in Dutch history
too, and slavery and its racialised legacies are a part of it.” Inclusion was no
longer simply defined as an improvement in people’s socio-economic and
legal status (residence and citizenship status), but also as a public recogni-
tion of slavery and its racialized afterlives. This Caribbean Dutch politics
of citizenship was often connected with an epistemological orientation in
which social inequalities in Dutch society were not explained by referring to
intra-ethnic particularities (as in dominant Dutch cultures of scholarship).
Instead, it emphasized the detrimental impact on Caribbean Dutch citizens
of the racialized afterlives of slavery in Dutch society. In other words, the
relationship between historic dominance and contemporary racism and
exclusion from Dutch society received central attention in these public
interventions. Hence, it is no coincidence that forerunners who pleaded for
the public recognition of slavery simultaneously criticized the coloniality
of certain Dutch traditions (for instance, the Black Pete figure in the Saint
Nicholas tradition and colonial representations of the Golden Coach and
group slurs (e.g., “neger”, “negerin” or “negerzoenen”)).
At the end of the 1990s, Caribbean Dutch organizations began to
advocate harder for the public recognition of transatlantic slavery in the
Netherlands.38 This culminated in eighteen Dutch Caribbean organizations
cooperating to form the Foundation National Monument for the history
of Dutch slavery, chaired by Barryl Biekman. The foundation’s aim was
to erect a national monument and establish an institution (NiNsee). The
centre-left government recognized the foundation, and on 1 July 2002
Queen Beatrix unveiled the National Slavery Monument in Amsterdam’s
Oosterpark. The monument commemorates the abolition of transatlantic
slavery.39 Other monuments in Amsterdam—the Monument of Awareness
(2003), Middelburg (2005) and Rotterdam (2013)—soon followed. These
monuments primarily commemorate the abolition of transatlantic slavery on
1 July 1863. In addition, the 1795 revolt by 2,000 enslaved people, led by Tula
in Curaçao, is commemorated on 17 August in Amsterdam and in the form
282 beingbbbbeing

of the slavery monument in Rotterdam. The number of municipalities that

commemorate the abolition of transatlantic slavery has grown. Apart from
those in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Middelburg, public commemorations
are organized in Utrecht, Almere, Tilburg and The Hague.40
The events leading up to the monumentalization of transatlantic slav-
ery did not happen in discursive and national isolation. While a subaltern
Caribbean Dutch memory of transatlantic slavery has long existed, the
politics that accompanied the plea for public recognition of slavery was also
inspired by African-American identity politics. Furthermore, forerunners
who advocated for the official monumentalization and commemoration of
Dutch slavery discursively connected their pleas with the wider Dutch public
memory and commemoration culture centred on World War II. They argued
that public commemoration of slavery is as important for descendants of
the enslaved as public commemoration of World War II victims is for their
relatives and offspring.41
After the establishment of the National Slavery Monument and the cre-
ation of a tradition of official annual commemorations, even general Dutch
museums—such as The National Maritime Museum (Scheepvaartmuseum)
in Amsterdam (2013) and the Amsterdam Museum (2013)—incorporated
transatlantic slavery into their (temporary) exhibitions. As of 2017, the
Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam has a permanent exhibition on slavery. Even
the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which represents archetypical Dutch
mainstream art par excellence, is planning a temporary exhibition on slavery
in 2020–2021.
Transatlantic slavery has been made the subject of media productions.
In 2011, a fiercely debated five-episode television series, De Slavernij, was
broadcasted on national Dutch television. In 2013, Tula: The Revolt, a film
based on similar historic figures and the revolt in Curaçao, was released.
Another example is the documentary, Drie Vrouwen (Three Women), which
portrays Ellen-Rose Kambel, Valika Smeulders and Marian Markelo, and
their role in promoting the public recognition of transatlantic slavery and
its present-day heritage. Important heritage work has also been done by the
Mapping Slavery team, which traces buildings, locations and historical fig-
ures in Dutch cities that have connections with slavery and records them on
(digital) maps and in books. Heritage tours, in which tourists visit locations
that have connections with slavery, are being organized—for instance, by
Jennifer Tosch and Valika Smeulders. Publicly claiming a genealogical link
with slavery is now accepted among the Caribbean Dutch.
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 283

Advocating for public recognition of slavery is about demanding inclusion

in national history and the nation, but its “economics”, broadly speaking, are
undeterminable. Engaging with public recognition of transatlantic slavery
has not been an easy process and people sometimes pay a substantial price
for it. As Markus Balkenhol demonstrates, there is an affective politics of
engagement and disengagement with slavery—one aimed at public recogni-
tion and the other at repression.42 While the former strives for emancipation
and inclusion in the Dutch nation, the latter defends the status quo and dom-
inant constructions of Dutchness. Furthermore, the de-silencing of slavery in
the public sphere over the last two decades is not necessarily irreversible. The
public recognition of transatlantic slavery has been highly contested—the
visibility of slavery is fragile and contingent upon power dynamics in the
Netherlands. While the centre-left Dutch Government that was in power at
the beginning of the new millennium granted funding for the erection of the
National Slavery Monument and the establishment of the associated insti-
tution (NiNsee), the right-wing Dutch government that was ruling in 2013
stopped supporting NiNsee.43 While “austerity” was the “neutral” justification
given for the retraction of the subsidy, the move aligned with the wishes of
the far-right PVV (Party for Freedom), which provided parliamentary support
to the government at the time. Ethno-nationalist populist parties like the PVV
and the Forum for Democracy, which tend to describe transatlantic slavery
and Caribbean Dutch citizens as non-Dutch, have gained increasing support
from the electorate and there are no signs of this changing. The monument
and annual commemoration at Oosterpark are ostensibly “national”, but their
official status in the Dutch heritage landscape is conditional.44 The recently
developed public heritage of slavery may be undone, even obliterated, if the
powers that be deem those parts of the citizenry that strongly identify with
it (or are strongly identified with it) as not belonging to the nation. In this
regard, the electoral rise of far-right parties like the Forum for Democracy,
which explicitly articulate nativist and racist ideologies, is an ominous sign.
Dutch slavery reveals multiple modalities of “silencing”, in which the
“unconscious” influence of dominant paradigms and intentional exclusion
operate in unison. To be sure, silences on slavery and its racialized afterlives
have been produced by the compartmentalization of colonial and national
history. But, in addition, the violent responses to those who have advocated
for the public recognition of slavery and its racialized afterlives also show a
conscious investment in maintaining the status quo. The history of transat-
lantic slavery has been instrumental in demands for equal citizenship, but
284 beingbbbbeing

the backlash against its public acceptance has revealed the hierarchies of
racialized belonging in the Netherlands. Advocating the public recognition of
Dutch slavery is an expression of “active citizenship”—it is about occupying
symbolic and social space, but it also exposes advocates of recognition to
the wrath of those who self-identify as “real” members of the Dutch nation.
Souls may be freed and minds liberated in public engagements with slavery,
but the impact of the backlash against these engagements on those who
identify with transatlantic slavery should not be overlooked. Given the cost
of such critical public engagements with slavery and its afterlives, a politics
of assimilation is understandable and perhaps beneficial to some, but such a
politics does not solve the problem of hierarchical citizenship.
Public recognition of transatlantic slavery has been politically and sym-
bolically significant, even when its outcomes in terms of substantive equality
are uncertain; however, slavery in colonial Indonesia has not been incor-
porated into these dynamics. Strikingly, the slavery monuments that were
erected in the last two decades, whether they commemorate the abolition of
slavery or the revolt of the enslaved people, are all dedicated to transatlantic
slavery, not Dutch slavery in colonial Indonesia. Even the National Slavery
Monument in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark commemorates the 1863 abolition
of transatlantic slavery, but not the 1860 abolition of slavery in colonial
Indonesia. The politics of recognition of slavery—anchored as it was in
Caribbean Dutch activism—and the proliferation of monuments dedicated
to transatlantic slavery in the last two decades have all unintentionally ren-
dered Dutch involvement in slavery in colonial Indonesia even less visible
in public memory and culture. The deeply uneven representation of transat-
lantic and Indian Ocean slavery is reflected in the entire Dutch cultural and
epistemological landscape,45 and the heritage dynamics in the last six years
(manifesting itself in new monuments, exhibitions and documentaries) have
made this bifurcation even more prominent.

Genealogies of slavery

As I write in February 2019, some younger members of post-colonial

diasporic communities with family links to colonial Indonesia—while
recognizing the longstanding struggle of Dutch Caribbean communities in
de-silencing transatlantic slavery—have started positioning post-colonial com-
munities “from the East” (Dutch citizens of Moluccan, “Indische”, Papuan
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 285

and Indonesian background) as descendants of enslaved people. Contrary

to what the silencing of slavery in colonial Indonesia in public culture and
politics of memory suggests, they express the view that the racialized after-
lives of slavery have deeply impacted on later generations. They aim to raise
awareness of the Dutch role in Indian Ocean slavery to ensure its inclusion
in public histories of the nation, and advocate for solidarity among different
post-colonial diasporas as a key element of decolonization. These young
commemorators of slavery in “the East”, who have not yet entered the public
sphere,46 express a novel political subjectivity that involves establishing a
genealogical link with Indian Ocean slavery, and are actively working towards
propagating Indian Ocean slavery (and its afterlives) in public culture.
Political engagements and practices of memory and commemoration by
members of earlier generations with genealogical links to colonial Indonesia
were primarily informed by experiences during World War II (especially when
Japan took control over the Indonesian archipelago between 1942–1945) and
the decolonization wars between the Dutch colonial army and the forces of
the emerging Republic of Indonesia.47 As earlier generations were assigned
and occupied an intermediary position in the Dutch colonial hierarchy, they
were deeply impacted upon by these developments, which is evident in the
politics of recognition and practices of memory and commemoration in
the Netherlands. Post-war generations of colour from the East (of Eurasian,
Moluccan and Papuan background) were represented as “loyal” to the
Netherlands in dominant discourse, but in the years immediately after their
relocation to the Netherlands majoritarian politicians symbolically excluded
them from the Dutch nation.48 Notwithstanding, no essential political subject
from the East exists. A multitude of orientations, ranging from apologizing
for Dutch colonialism to manifold critiques of colonialism and its afterlives,
are being articulated. While recently the structural and systematic nature of
Dutch war crimes during the decolonization wars in Indonesia have become
part of public and historiographical scrutiny, the violence of Indian Ocean
slavery has not (yet) become a part of the politics of recognition.
The different epistemological and public genealogies of Indian Ocean and
transatlantic slavery in the Netherlands demonstrate the dynamic relationships
between events, historiography and heritage. How can we make sense of the
differentiated genealogies? While no easy answers exist, certain possibilities
come to the fore. First, those identifying as descendants of the enslaved have
always kept memories and histories of transatlantic slavery alive, which has
been one of the conditions that made possible a politics of public recognition
286 beingbbbbeing

of transatlantic slavery in the Netherlands in the past two decades. More

importantly, these politics of memory have become closely intertwined with
combatting racism and claiming equal citizenship and belonging in the Dutch
nation. Second, Dutch involvement in the formation of colonial Suriname and
the Dutch Antilles centred around slavery, which perhaps made its memory
harder to repress following decolonization. Third, there seems to be a
mutually constitutive relationship between knowledge production, memorial
practices and the politics of recognition of transatlantic slavery which may also
have contributed to its public visibility and political efficacy.
In contrast, the Dutch role in Indian Ocean slavery has not seen similar
involvement of commemorators and descendants in the post-slavery period.
Awareness of genealogical links with enslaved individuals has not been
culturally nurtured by a living memory of slavery among earlier generations
with links to colonial Indonesia. Politics of memory and articulations of
equal citizenship were deeply informed by the violent and often traumatic
decolonization processes in which post-colonial communities from “the
East” were complicatedly entangled. For older generations, the direct impact
of these “recent histories” has not been conducive to claiming genealogical
links with the “earlier history” of slavery. This is not a necessity, however;
some members of the younger generation, self-identifying as “descendants”
and inspired by decolonial thinking, are making genealogical connections
with the “earlier history” of slavery in colonial Indonesia. Simultaneously,
they are pleading for the inclusion of Indian Ocean slavery in public Dutch
culture, while critically tracing its racialized afterlives in Dutch society.

‘Inclusion’ and loss

The emerging heritage of transatlantic slavery in Dutch society is not a sign

of widespread acceptance of this history (and the people who are identified
with it) as integral to Dutch history. It is highly contested and constantly
at risk of being obliterated. Broadening the public heritage field of slavery
in the Netherlands to include both transatlantic and Indian Ocean slavery
would further testify to the centrality of slavery to Dutch history; it could also
enable the expansion of the political community of commemorators needed
to contest the multiplicity of racialized exclusion in Dutch society. From this
perspective, recognizing that diasporas with genealogical links to colonial
Indonesia and the Caribbean are differentially racialized subjects is not an
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 287

argument against broadening the framework of the knowledge production

and public memory of slavery, but one in favour of it. A more inclusive public
culture of slavery could create the space to discuss the similarities and differ-
ences among racialized oppressions in the past and present, and to explore
how post-colonial communities with genealogical links to different parts of
the Dutch empire are differentially impacted upon by the afterlives of Dutch
colonialism in the present. Heritage is dynamic and the public (material
and symbolic) culture of slavery can easily be made more inclusive and
encompassing. New institutions, such as the as yet to be established National
Slavery Museum, should use the novel opportunity to include transatlantic
and Indian Ocean slavery in their exhibitions.
There are a few benefits of ensuring a more integrated history of Dutch
slavery. Comparative historiographical analyses would provide a deeper
understanding of the different modalities of Dutch slavery in colonial
Indonesia and the Caribbean. Second, new light would be shed on the
premise that slavery has been crucial to the rise of capitalist wealth in the
metropoles. Recently, as mentioned, a pioneering study authored by Pepijn
Brandon and Ulbe Bosma has quantified the importance of Transatlantic
slavery for the economy of Holland in the eighteenth century, thereby
invalidating earlier claims of its insignificance. What would it mean for our
understanding of the genesis of Dutch capitalism and wealth if both the
profits (direct and indirect) of transatlantic and Indian Ocean slavery were
carefully traced and researched? Furthermore, including transatlantic and
Indian Ocean slavery could help to develop a more elaborate framework
within which to analyse the varied nature of historical racism and the racial-
ized afterlives of slavery in the Netherlands. If we include transatlantic and
Indian Ocean slavery in trying to make sense of how the cultural archive of
Dutch colonialism informs hierarchies and inequalities within Dutch society,
this archive may suddenly become much more multisided.
But we should not be blinded by hope. We should also critically reflect
upon the impact of knowledge production and heritage dynamics concern-
ing (the afterlives of ) slavery for those groups which cannot, in a narrow
sense, trace a colonial connection with the Netherlands. If slavery and its
racialized afterlives are (contested) vessels for claiming equal citizenship and
inclusion in the nation, where would those residents whose memories and
colonial histories that do not easily fit into this framework be left? Perhaps
we should consider redefining existing slavery monuments as “monuments
for the victims of slavery and colonial and capitalist exploitation”? Moreover,
288 beingbbbbeing

we should keep in mind that “recognition” always produces shadows and

losses. As Lisa Lowe puts it:

I try to interpret, from the slave trader’s disinterest in the slave’s pain,
those social conditions within which there was no possible political
resolution to that pain. I try to imagine what could have been. The past
conditional temporality of the “what could have been”, symbolizes aptly the
space of a different kind of thinking, a space of productive attention to the
scene of loss, a thinking with twofold attention that seeks to encompass
at once the positive objects and methods of history and social sciences,
and also the matters absent, entangled, and unavailable by its methods.49

Lowe’s words are wonderfully insightful. I recognize “the positive objects

and methods”, but I am particularly drawn to “the scene of loss”. Impactful,
horrific stories of many millions have disappeared into black holes of
epistemological nothingness, and there is no way to retrieve them. Perhaps
“recognition” from this perspective is also about epistemological and political
humility—realizing that the stories of millions are lost forever, regardless of
the paradigm or “method” we apply.

Notes

1. I am grateful to Nira Wickramasinghe and Alicia Schrikker for the insightful

comments and suggestions on the draft versions of this chapter.
2. I thank Alicia Schrikker and Nira Wickramasinghe for pinpointing the actual
date and newspaper of the advertisement and for making the point about the
continuities with the history of slavery. Here is the advertisement: “De Sumatra
Post,” Delpher, accessed 6 April 2019, https://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/
view?coll=ddd&query=%28Leeksma+soerabaja+slagers%29&facets%5Bspa-
tial%5D%5B%5D=Nederlands-Indi%C3%AB+%7C+Indonesi%C3%AB&iden-
tifier=ddd%3A010320873%3Ampeg21%3Aa0015&resultsidentifier=ddd%3A01
0320873%3Ampeg21%3Aa0015.
For advertisements on slavery see, for instance, “Slavernij in de Oost: Een Beetje
Vergeten,” Arkhamarchivaris, accessed 6 April 2019, http://arkhamarchivaris.
blogspot.com/2014/02/slavernij-in-de-oost-een-beetje-vergeten.html.
3. Paul Bijl, “Colonial Memory and Forgetting in the Netherlands and Indonesia,”
Journal of Genocide Research 14, nos. 3–4 (2012): 441.
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 289

4. See for an interesting analysis of the recent epistemological shifts in the study
of Dutch colonialism Matthijs Kuipers, “De Strijd om Het Koloniale Verleden.
Trauma, Herinnering, en de ‘Imperial History Wars’ in Nederland,” Tijdschrift
voor Geschiedenis 131, no. 4 (2018): 657-676.
5. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History.
Boston MA: Beacon Press, 1995.
6. Reggie Baay, Daar Werd Wat Gruwelijks Verricht. Slavernij in Nederlands-Indië,
255. Amsterdam: Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2015, quotation translated
by the author.
7. See Trouillot, Silencing the Past.
8. Guno Jones, “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet). Over de Discursieve
Strijd om de Betekenis van de NTR-Televisie-Serie De Slavernij,” BMGN Low
Countries Historical Review 127, no. 4 (2012): 56-82.
9. Ann Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire. Durham NC: Duke University
Press, 1995, cited in Gloria Wekker, White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism
and Race, 25. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
10. Wekker, White Innocence, 25.
11. See, for instance, Karwan Fatah-Black, Eigendomsstrijd: De Geschiedenis Van Slav-
ernij en Emancipatie in Suriname. Amsterdam: Ambo|Anthos, 2018; Ellen Neslo,
Een Ongekende Elite. De Opkomst van Een Gekleurde Elite in Koloniaal Suriname
1800–1863. De Bilt: Haes Producties, 2017; Markus Balkenhol, Tracing Slavery. An
Ethnography of Diaspora, Affect and Cultural Heritage in Amsterdam. Amsterdam:
Ridderprint, 2014; Valika Smeulders, Slavernij in Perspectief. Mondialisering en Erf-
goed in Suriname, Ghana, Zuid-Afrika en Curaçao. Enschede: Ipskamp Drukkers
BV, 2012; Lucia Nankoe and Jules Rijssen, De Slaaf Vliegt Weg. Beeldvorming Over
Slavernij in de Kunsten. Arnhem: LM Publishers, 2013; Aspha Bijnaar, Kind Aan
de Ketting. Opgroeien in Slavernij Toen en nu. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers, 2010;
Leo Balai, Het Slavenschip Leusden. Slavenschepen en de West-Indische Compagnie,
1720–1738. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2011; Alex van Stipriaan, “De Achterkant van
Vrijheid, Gelijkheid, Broederschap,” Tijdschrift over Cultuur & Criminaliteit 4,
no. 3 (2014): 68; Alex van Stipriaan, Surinaams Contrast. Roofbouw en Overleven
in Een Caraïbische Plantagekolonie, 1750-–1863. Amsterdam: KITLV, 1993; Alex
van Stipriaan, Waldo Heilbron, Aspha Bijnaar and Valika Smeulders, Op Zoek
Naar de Stilte. Sporen van Het Slavernijverleden in Nederland. Amsterdam: KITLV,
2007; Glenn Willemsen, Dagen van Gejuich en Gejubel. Viering en Herdenking van
de Afschaffing van de Slavernij in Nederland, Suriname en de Nederlandse Antillen.
The Hague/Amsterdam: Amrit, 2006; Rosemary Allen, “In Search for Identity:
An Analysis of the Commemoration of the Slave-revolt of 17th of August 1795
290 beingbbbbeing

in Curaçao. Paper presented at the Conference of Culture”. Jamaica, 1996;

Rosemary Allen, Di Ki Manera? A Social History of Afro-Curaçaoans, 1863-1917.
Amsterdam: SWP Publishers, 2007; Kwame Nimako and Glenn Willemsen, The
Dutch Atlantic: Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation. London: Pluto Press, 2011;
Patricia Gomes, Over “Natuurgenooten” en “Onwillige Honden”. Beeldvorming Als
Instrument Voor Uitbuiting en Onderdrukking in Suriname 1842–1862. Amsterdam:
Spinhuis, 2003; Humphrey Lamur, Familienaam & Verwantschap van Geëmanc-
ipeerde Slaven in Suriname. Amsterdam: LM Publishers, 2004; Humphrey
Lamur, “The Evolution of Afro-Surinamese National Movements (1955–1995),”
Transforming Anthropology 10, no. 1 (2001): 17-27; Humphrey Lamur, “The Slave
Family in Colonial 19th-Century Suriname,” Journal of Black Studies 23, no. 3
(1993): 371-318; Humphrey Lamur, “The Production of Sugar and the Repro-
duction of Slaves at Vossenburg, Suriname, 1705–1863.” Amsterdam: Centre
for Caribbean Studies, 1987; Humphrey Lamur, De Kerstening van de Slaven van
de Surinaamse Plantage Vossenburg: 1847–1878. Amsterdam: Universiteit van
Amsterdam, Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum, 1985; Humphrey Lamur,
“Demographic Performance of Two Slave Populations of the Dutch Speaking
Caribbean,” Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 30 (1981): 87-102;
Frank Dragtenstein, De Ondraaglijke Stoutheid Der Wegloopers: Marronage en
Koloniaal Beleid in Suriname, 1667–1768. Utrecht: CLACS, 2002; Frank Dragten-
stein, Van Elmina Naar Paramaribo. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2017; Okke Ten
Hove and Frank Dragtenstein, Manumissies in Suriname 1832–1863. Utrecht:
CLACS & IBS, 1997; Wim Hoogbergen, “De Bosnegers Zijn Gekomen!” Slavernij
en Rebellie in Suriname. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1992; Gert Oostindie (ed.),
Het Verleden Onder Ogen. Herdenking van de Slavernij. Amsterdam: Arena,
2001; Gert Oostindie, Aspha Bijnaar, Alex Van Stipriaan and Valika Smeulders,
Nederland & de Slavernij, performed by Gert Oostindie, Aspha Bijnaar, Alex Van
Stipriaan and Valika Smeulders. Utrecht: VBKMedia, 2013; Esther Captain
(m.m.v. Hans Visser), Wandelgids Sporen van Slavernij in Utrecht. Utrecht: Centre
for the Humanities, 2012; Dienke Hondius, Nancy Jouwe, Dineke Stam and
Jennifer Tosch, Dutch New York Histories. Connecting African, Native American
and Slavery Heritage/Geschiedenissen van Nederlands New York. Volendam: LM
Publishers, 2017; Dienke Hondius, Nancy Jouwe, Annemarie de Wildt, Jennifer
Tosch and Dineke Stam, Gids Slavernijverleden Amsterdam/Slavery Heritage
Guide. Volendam: LM Publishers, 2014; Sandew Hira, Van Priary Tot en Met
De Kom: De Geschiedenis van Verzet in Suriname, 1630–1940. Rotterdam: Futile,
1982; Waldo Heilbron, Colonial Transformation and the Decomposition of Dutch
Plantation Slavery in Suriname (Caribbean Cultural Studies) (Goldsmiths’ College,
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 291

Caribbean Centre, 1993); Rudolf van Lier, Samenleving in Een Grensgebied. Een
Sociaal-Historische Studie van Suriname. Amsterdam: Emmering, 1977; Anton de
Kom, Wij Slaven van Suriname. Bussum: Het Wereldvenster (first published in
1934, by Uitgeverij Contact), 1982.
Some two decades ago, the knowledge field on plantation slavery in Suriname
was already substantial, as Ramsoedh demonstrates: see Hans Ramsoedh,
“Surinamistiek 1975-2000,” OSO, tijdschrift voor Surinaamse taalkunde, let-
terkunde, cultuur en geschiedenis 20 (2001), 137-139.
12. See Pepijn Brandon, “Slavernijgeschiedenis zonder polderen: observaties over
een debat vol contrast,” Beleid en Maatschappij, 46, no. 2 (2019): 258-264.
13. See Jones, “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),” 56–82.
14. The Mapping Slavery team currently consists of Dienke Hondius, Nancy Jouwe,
Wim Manuhutu, Jennifer Tosch and Dineke Stam.
15. Pepijn Brandon and Ulbe Bosma, “De betekenis van de Atlantische slavernij
voor de Nederlandse economie in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw,”
Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 16, no. 2 (2019): 5-45. The
research team that gathered the data for this publication consisted of Pepijn
Brandon, Tamira Combrink, Gerhard de Kok and Karin Lurvink.
16. See, for instance, Harry Hoetink, Het Patroon van de Oude Curaçaose Samen-
leving: een Sociologische Studie. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1958; Wim Klooster,
“Subordinate but Proud: Curaçao’s Free Blacks and Mulattoes in the Eighteenth
Century,” New West Indian Guide, 68, nos. 304 (1994): 283-300; Nolda Kenepa-
Römer, “Curaçaose Vrouwen in de Slavenmaatschappij,” in Womanhood in
Curaçau, edited by Richenel Ansano, Joceline Clemencia, Jeanette Cook and
Eithel Martis, 21-42. Willemstad; Fundashon Publikashon Curaçao, 1992;
Rosemary Allen, “In Search for Identity: An Analysis of the Commemoration of
the Slave-revolt of 17th of August 1795 in Curaçao. Paper presented at the Con-
ference of Culture”. Jamaica, 1996; Rosemary Allen, Di Ki Manera? A Social
History of Afro-Curaçaoans, 1863-1917. Amsterdam: SWP Publishers, 2007.
17. Angela Roe, The Sound of Silence: Ideology of National Identity and Racial Ine-
quality in Contemporary Curaçao (PhD thesis, Florida International University,
2016), 61.
18. Such as duration, extent of slave trade, conditions on slave ships, number of
enslaved people, racist ideologies, ferocity of the regime, and involvement of
Dutch law and of state-sanctioned Dutch companies.
19. Baay, Daar Werd Wat Gruwelijks Verricht, 255; Matthias van Rossum, Kleurrijke
Tragiek. De Geschiedenis van Slavernij in Azië Onder de VOC. Hilversum: Ver-
loren, 2015.
292 beingbbbbeing

20. Alex van Stipriaan, “Slavernijonderzoek en Debat in Nederland: Een Stand van
Zaken” (public lecture 2011).
21. Ibid., 2011.
22. Jones, “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),” 56–82; Nimako and Willem-
sen, The Dutch Atlantic, 158.
23. Smeulders, Slavernij in Perspectief. 53
24. Willemsen, Dagen van Gejuich en Gejubel, 143–153 and back cover.
25. Lamur, “The Evolution of Afro-Surinamese National Movements,” 17–27; Jones,
“De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),” 56–82.
26. Lamur, “The Evolution of Afro-Surinamese National Movements,” 17–27.
Humphrey Lamur is an emeritus professor at the University of Amsterdam.
He conducted extensive research on Dutch Caribbean slavery long before the
subject became fashionable.
27. Nimako and Willemsen, The Dutch Atlantic, 158–62. See Balkenhol, Tracing
Slavery.
28. See Johan F. Jones, Kwakoe en Christus. Een Beschouwing Over de Ontmoeting van
de Afro-Amerikaanse Cultuur en Religie Met de Hernhutter Zending in Suriname.
Brussels: Universitaire Protestantse Faculteit te Brussel, 1981.
29. Personal observation.
30. See Lamur, “The Evolution of Afro-Surinamese National Movements,” 17–27;
Nimako and Willemsen, The Dutch Atlantic, 157.
31. Lamur, “The Evolution of Afro-Surinamese National Movements,” 17–27; Jones,
“De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),” 56–82.
32. Lamur, “The Evolution of Afro-Surinamese National Movements,” 17, italics
added by the author; Jones, “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),” 65;
Balkenhol, Tracing Slavery.
33. Jones, “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),” 56–82; Guno Jones, Tussen
Onderdanen, Rijksgenoten en Nederlanders: Nederlandse Politici Over Burgers Uit
Oost en West en Nederland, 1945–2005. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2007.
34. See Smeulders, Slavernij in Perspectief.
35. Baay, Daar Werd Wat Gruwelijks Verricht, 255.
36. Reggie Baay, De Njai. Het Concubinaat in Nederlands-Indië. Amsterdam: Athe-
naeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2008.
37. Balkenhol, Tracing Slavery; Jones, “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),”
56–82.
38. Ibid., 56–82; Guno Jones, “Het Belang van Een Gedenkteken. De Discussie
Over Het Nationaal Monument Nederlands Slavernijverleden,” Kleio 42, no. 5
 thetthe shatthththe sh ththe shadows 293

(2001): 9–13; Nimako and Willemsen, The Dutch Atlantic, 158–164; Balkenhol,
Tracing Slavery.
39. The ways in which the monument is referred to in the media have shifted.
While the platform set out to erect the Nationaal Monument Nederlands Slav-
ernijverleden (National Slavery Monument of the Netherlands), it is now mostly
referred to in the media as the Nationaal Monument Slavernijverleden.
40. Natasja Gibbs, “Steeds meer gemeenten organiseren een officiële slav-
ernijherdenking,” Caribisch Network (Nederland), 26 June 2018, https://
caribischnetwerk.ntr.nl/2018/06/26/steeds-meer-gemeenten-organiser-
en-een-officiele-slavernijherdenking/.
41. Jones, “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),” 66.
42. Balkenhol, Tracing Slavery.
43. The NiNsee was responsible for organizing the annual commemoration at
the national monument, conducting research on slavery and its afterlives, and
providing educational materials to schools. It had almost become defunct after
the withdrawal of a government subsidy (almost all employees lost their jobs),
but luckily the municipality of Amsterdam provided financial support for the
commemoration.
44. In 2018, the majority of the parliament voted in favour of a motion that called
upon the Dutch Government to enquire into providing a structural subsidy for
the annual commemoration of slavery at the National Slavery Monument. The
far-right ethno-nationalists (consisting of PVV and Forum For Democracy), the
orthodox Christians and the liberals (VVD) (the biggest party in the government
coalition that provides the prime minister) voted against the motion.
45. Jones, “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet),” 56–82.
46. I received an interesting draft of an open letter from a network of members
of the younger generation of diasporic communities from “the East”. Unfortu-
nately, it was retracted and is, thus, officially non-existent.
47. See Esther Captain, Achter Het Kawat Was Nederland. Indische Oorlogservaringen
en Herinneringen 1942–1945. Kampen: Kok Kampen, 2002, and Esther Captain,
“Geen Spoortje Indisch, Geen Bamboe, Geen Prikkeldraad. Het Tweesporenbe-
leid van Indische Zelforganisaties (1946–2000),” in Binnenskamers. Terugkeer
en Opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog, edited by Conny Kristel, 325-355. Bakker:
Amsterdam, 2002b.
48. Jones, Tussen Onderdanen.
49. Lisa Lowe, The Intimacies of Four Continents (Durham NC and London: Duke
University Press, 2015), 40–41.
 Afterword
Robert Ross

In the southern summer of 1862-1863, Lucie Duff Gordon, an Englishwoman

who moved in the highest literary circles of Victorian London, found herself
in Caledon, a small town some hundred kilometres east of Cape Town. She
had come there to gain some relief for her tuberculosis. There she met a
man called Klein,1 the postmaster of the town. Klein regaled Duff Gordon
with numerous anecdotes, which she in her turn relayed to her daughter in
London. Some of them related to Rosina, who had been enslaved to Klein.
She had had two children by Klein, in addition to several others by another
free man, and also, after emancipation, by her successive manumitted
husbands. Rosina was a woman of spirit. As Klein described it, she had
the habit of reading the Statute of Emancipation under his window every
First of December.2 In addition, when they encountered each other in the
streets of Caledon, she would forcibly kiss him. On those occasions, she is
reported to have exclaimed, “Aha! When I young and pretty slave-girl you
make kiss me then: now I ugly drunk dirty old devil, and free woman, I kiss
you.”3
There are three things that need to be said about this exchange. The
first is that Rosina’s speech was undoubtedly bowdlerized, somewhere in its
transmission from Klein to the publication of Duff Gordon’s letters to her
just-married daughter. Secondly, Rosina was no longer alive, and while there
is no evidence of foul play, one wonders whether she had been punished by
the ex-slave owners taking matters into their own hands. Thirdly, however
translated, and perhaps relieved of its grammar and infantilized, Rosina’s
speech may be in the form Duff Gordon recorded, and its survival brings
into focus a very rare phenomenon. This is the reasonably authentic and
unfiltered comment by enslaved people on their bondage, either during
slavery or after their manumission. There are very few instances in which
the words of the enslaved have been recorded, except in circumstances in
which free men and women controlled the transmission—and Rosina’s
296 beingbbbbeing

outburst was not one of them. Historians have to deal with texts which are
heavily biased towards those expressions which would have seemed accept-
able to members of the master class.4 In order to understand the processes
at work, it is as well to remember one of the exchanges between Captain
Robert Fitzroy and his travelling companion, Charles Darwin. It occurred
when the Beagle was docked in Bahia. Fitzroy, an aristocratic defender
of slavery, had been on a visit to the planation, where he had heard the
slaves say, when asked by their master, if any wished to be free. When he
recounted this question and its answer—unanimously negative—to Darwin,
the latter, a fervent abolitionist, asked the Captain “if the answers of slaves
in the presence of their master [were] worth anything”.5 The result was a
rupture between the two men which threatened Darwin’s continued voy-
age on the ship, and thus the development in later years of the theory of
Natural Selection. Darwin of course was right. Even when we know what
the enslaved said, which is seldom enough, we still have to try to envisage
the pressures that the enslaved were under at that moment. Paradoxically,
it is generally the case that, in order to make some estimation of what the
enslaved thought, it is more enlightening to look at what they did rather
than what they said.
Even working out what slaves did, let alone why, can be difficult. As
before, the descriptions and events are produced with a filter imposed by
the slave owners or the political authorities. In colonial situations, particu-
larly those where the Dutch were in control, there is often a large cache
of records deriving from the law courts. The transcripts of criminal, and
indeed civil, trials have provided historians of Batavia, Sri Lanka, parts of
India and the Cape Colony with information in detail about the lives of the
enslaved which is rarely to be equalled. Nevertheless, court records have
their grave limitations. They can provide detailed descriptions of what the
enslaved were doing at a given time and place.6 Often the people who gave
testimony in a case may have been present at the moment in question just
by chance, and not by design. The result is that such sources can provide
extremely valuable descriptions of the lives of the enslaved—at least for
the day, or night, when a crime may have been committed. Against this,
however, there is one great problem. The testimony given by the enslaved
in criminal cases was often made by men and women who were in fear
of their lives, with good reason. Colonial courts rarely found someone not
guilty of the crimes with which he or she was accused. The punishment
imposed thereafter was horrific, in the literal sense as well as in the normal
 afterword 297

usage. Creating horror among the population of the enslaved was generally
the goal of the prosecutors, even more than they were concerned to uphold
the principles of the rule of law. In general, those who came to court had
already confessed to the crime. Their appearance in court was merely to
occasion the passing of a sentence, very often in some dishonourable and
very painful way. Moreover, the confession on the basis of which the court
made its decision may well have been extracted by, at least, the threat of
torture. Historians thus have to be very careful in their critical use of slave
testimony. It can be enormously interesting, but it is nonetheless neces-
sarily extracted under duress. Even those whose statements were in cases
where they were not themselves in the dock may well have been attempting
to protect their fellow enslaved.
In addition, crime is invariably in some sense exceptional. Even if those
acts which are considered crimes are part of the regular way of life of some
group, there remains the question why in this particular case individuals
were caught and tried. This may have little to do with the precise nature
of the deed committed. Historians have to make hypotheses about the
decision-making process of the political authorities, as well as about the
behaviour and values of the enslaved, in order evaluate and understand what
has transpired and how it can be interpreted.
Similar strictures to those which apply to the use of criminal records are,
mutatis mutandis, valid for most other windows through which historians
have attempted to gain insight into the lives of the enslaved. Within this book
authors have used their knowledge, and indeed their intuition, to reconstruct
something of how the enslaved managed to endure their bondage. In a
sense, though, it is those who failed to endure who are the most poignant
in the archival record. Suicide and infanticide were among the social facts of
slavery and its aftermath which demonstrate most clearly what it is to have
been enslaved, and particularly, perhaps, an enslaved woman. They give an
insight into the pressures, and the sheer terror, which slavery entailed, and
of how some at least considered death to be the only protection against the
monopolizing world of the slave owners.
At this point, it is necessary to state an obvious fact which permeates all
of the writing of history about slavery. Modern historians have themselves
never been enslaved. We have to rely on the sources which have come down
to us, partial and limited though they may be, and on the skill and imagina-
tion that we have managed to develop and, just as importantly, to discipline.
By using these skills, the authors in this book have provided major insights
298 beingbbbbeing

into the lives of the enslaved across the Indian Ocean. This has been done
through the reconstruction of what may have been no more than minutes
in the life of one of the enslaved. This micro-historical work, requiring as it
does the drudgery and the excitement of detailed archival research, cannot
simply be scaled up to give a view of society as a whole, but it can be used to
fuel a greater understanding of the lives of that great majority of the enslaved
who have disappeared into anonymity, leaving no trace except perhaps as a
constituent unit of some statistical description.
It may seem a pessimistic conclusion to argue that it is impossible for
us fully to envisage the horrors of being enslaved, but perhaps it is not. John
Dunn once memorably wrote that “it takes a real historian to extract intel-
lectual excitement from the thought that one can fail to understand someone
else”.7 In other words, people who are separated from us by time, by culture
and by thought, and who thus acted in ways which we cannot retrospectively
predict, and are therefore continually surprised by. We can learn to make our
predictions of what we will find in the archive steadily more accurate, but we
can never hope to fully succeed in this endeavour.
Nevertheless there may be one exception to the rule that historians can
never fully rethink the thoughts of the enslaved, and thus convincingly recon-
struct their actions. As Anne Marieke van der Wal has pointed out,8 in many
societies, not least in the Cape Colony, that which cannot be said can often be
sung.

Notes

1. Very possibly Willem Hendrik Kleyn, who married Anna Frauenfelder in 1816.
2. The date of the emancipation of slaves in the Cape Colony, somewhat later than
in Britain’s West Indian Colonies.
3. Lucie Duff Gordon, Letters from the Cape, edited by John Purves, 99-100. Lon-
don, Humphrey Milford: 1921.
4. This is, for instance, also the case with the autobiographies of successful
fugitives from slavery in the southern states of the US, which were generally
published by abolitionists, and probably even in the oral interviews conducted
by the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s. For Indian Ocean slavery, moreover,
there is very little which in any way approximates to these two sets of sources.
5. Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and
the Quest for Human Origins, 76. London: Allen Lane, 2009.
 afterword 299

6. See, for instance, the chapters by Kate Ekama and Geelen et al. in this volume.
7. John Dunn, “What is Living and What is Dead in the Political Theory of John
Locke?”, in his Interpreting Political Responsibility: Essays 1981 – 1989, 9-25, 10.
Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.
8. See the contribution by Anne Marieke van der Wal in this volume, above; cf.
Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York:
Vintage Books, 1972.
 Bibliography

African Institution. A Review of the Colonial Slave Registration Acts, in a Report of a

Committee of the Board of the African Institution on the 22nd of February 1820. Lon-
don: Ellerton and Henderson, 1820.
Ali, Omar H. Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery Across the Indian Ocean. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2016.
Allen, Richard B. “Lives of Neither Luxury Nor Misery: Indians and Free Colored
Marginality on the Ile de France, 1728–1810.” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer
78 (1991): 337–58.
———. Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Labourers in Colonial Mauritius. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999.
———. “The Mascarene Slave Trade and Labour Migration in the Indian Ocean
during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Slavery and Abolition, 24, no. 2
(2003): 33-50.
———. “Carrying away the Unfortunate: the Exportation of Slaves from India during
the Late Eighteenth Century” in Le Monde Créole: Peuplement, Sociétés et Condition
Humaine, XVIIe-XXe siècles, edited by J. Weber, 285-98. Paris: Les Indes Savantes,
2005.
———. “Satisfying the Want for Labouring People: European Slave Trading in the
Indian Ocean, 1500–1850.” Journal of World History 21, no. 1 (2010): 45–73.
———. European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850. Athens, OH: Ohio
University Press, 2015.
Allen, Rosemary. Di Ki Manera? A Social History of Afro-Curaçaoans, 1863-1917.
Amsterdam: SWP Publishers, 2007.
Alpers, Edward A. “Recollecting Africa: Diasporic Memory in the Indian Ocean
World.” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (April 2000): 83–99.
———. “The Other Middle Passage: The African Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean,” in
Many Middle Passages, edited by Emma Christopher, Cassandra Pybus and Marcus
Rediker, 20-38. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
302 beingbbbbeing

Anderson, C. Subaltern Lives. Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World,

1790–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Arasaratnam, Sinappah. “Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury,” in Mariners, Merchants and Oceans: Studies in Maritime History, edited by K.
S. Mathew, 195-208. New Delhi: Monohar, 1995.
Armstrong, James, and Nigel Worden. “The Slaves, 1652–1834,” in The Shaping of
South African Society 1652-1840, 2nd edn., edited by Richard Elphick and Herman
Gilliomee, 109-183. Cape Town: Longman, 1989.
Aïssaoui, Mohammed. L’Affaire de l’Esclave Furcy. Paris: Gallimard, 2010.
Baay, Reggie. De Njai. Het Concubinaat in Nederlands-Indië. Amsterdam: Athenae-
um-Polak & Van Gennep, 2008.
———. Daar werd wat Gruwelijks Verricht: Slavernij in Nederlands-Indië. Amsterdam:
Athenaeum, 2015.
Baderoon, Gabeba. “The African Oceans—Tracing the Sea as Memory of Slavery in
South African Literature and Culture.” Research in African Literatures 40, no. 4
(Winter 2009): 89–107.
Baggerman, Arianne et al., “Egodocumenten 1814–1914 (repertorium),” Onderzoeks­
instituut egodocumenten en geschiedenis, accessed 29 March 2018, http://www.
egodocument.net/repertorium.html.
Balai, Leo. Het Slavenschip Leusden. Slavenschepen en de West-Indische Compagnie,
1720–1738. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2011.
Balkenhol, Markus. Tracing Slavery. An Ethnography of Diaspora, Affect and Cultural
Heritage in Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Ridderprint, 2014.
———. “Silence and the Politics of Compassion. Commemorating Slavery in the
Netherlands.” Social Anthropology 24, no. 3 (August 2016): 278–93.
Balkenhol, Markus, Paul Mepschen and Jan Willem Duyvendak. “The Nativist Tri-
angle: Sexuality, Race and Religion in the Netherlands,” in The Culturalization
of Citizenship, edited by Markus Balkenhol, Paul Mepschen and Jan Willem
Duyvendak, 97–112. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Balk, G. Louisa., Frans van Dijk and Diederick J. Kortlang. The Archives of the Dutch
East India Company (VOC) and the Local Institutions in Batavia. Leiden and Bos-
ton, MA: Brill, 2007.
Balie, Isaac. Die Geskiedenis van Genadendal 1738-1988. Cape Town: Perskor, 1988.
Ballhatchet, Kenneth. Race, Sex, and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies
and Their Critics, 1793-1905. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.
Bank, Andrew. “Crime in Cape Town, 1890 to 1900.” BA. Hons. diss.: History Depart-
ment, University of Cape Town, 1988.
 bibliography 303

Barnwell, Patrick Joseph. “Extracts from Logs of Ships Visiting Mauritius 1697-1707”
in La Revue Retrospective de l’Ile Maurice, 3, no 3 (May 1952).
Barringer, Tim. “Fabricating Africa: Livingstone and the Visual Image, 1850-1874,”
in David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa, edited by John M.
MacKenzie, 169-200. London: National Portrait Gallery, 1996.
Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill & Wang,
1981. Bickford-Smith, Vivian, “Black Ethnicities, Communities and Political
Expression in Late Victorian Cape Town,” Journal of African History 36, no 3
(November 1995): 443—65.
Billiard, Auguste. Voyage aux Colonies Orientales ou Lettres ectrites des Iles de France et
de Bourbon pendant les Annees 1817-1820. Paris: Ladvocat, 1822.
Bijl, Paul. “Colonial Memory and Forgetting in the Netherlands and Indonesia.”
Journal of Genocide Research 14, nos. 3–4 (2012): 441–61.
Bijnaar, Aspha. Kind Aan de Ketting. Opgroeien in Slavernij Toen en nu. Amsterdam:
KIT Publishers, 2010.
Blakely, Allison. Blacks in the Dutch World: The Evolution of Racial Imagery in a Modern
Society. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Bloem, Trudie. Krotoa-Eva: The Woman from Robben Island. Cape Town: Kuele Books,
1999.
Boomgaard, Peter. “Human Capital, Slavery and Low Rates of Economic and Popula-
tion Growth in Indonesia, 1600–1910.” Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and
Post-Slave Studies 24, no. 2 (2003): 83–96.
Bosma, Ulbe. The Making of a Periphery. How Island Southeast Asia Became a Mass
Exporter of Labor. New York: Colombia University Press, 2018.
Boswell, John. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western
Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.
Bradlow, Edna, and Frank Bradlow. Here Comes the Alabama. Cape Town: Westby
Nunn Publishers, 1958.
Brandon, Pepijn. “Rethinking Capitalism and Slavery. New Perspectives from Ameri-
can Debates.” TSEG 12, no. 4 (2015): 117–37.
———. “Slavernijgeschiedenis zonder polderen: Observaties over een debat vol con-
trast,” Beleid en Maatschappij, 46, no. 2 (2019): 258-64.
Brandon, Pepijn, and Ulbe Bosma, “De Betekenis van de Atlantische Slavernij voor de
Nederlandse Economie in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw,” Tijdschrift voor
Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 16, no. 2 (2019): 5-45.
Brindley, Marianne. “Old Women in Zulu Culture: The Old Woman and Childbirth.”
South African Journal of Ethnology 8, no. 3 (1985): 98-108.
304 beingbbbbeing

Brodie, Marc, and Barbara Caine. “Class, Sex, and Friendship: The Long Nineteenth
Century,” in Friendship: A History, edited by Barbara Cain, 223-78. London: Rou-
tledge, 2009.
Bruijn, Jaap R. Schippers van de VOC in de Achttiende Eeuw, aan de Wal en op Zee.
Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 2008.
Bruijn, Jaap R., Femme S. Gaastra and Ivo Schöffer. Dutch–Asiatic Shipping in the 17th
and 18th Centuries, 3 vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987.
Burman, Sandra, and Margaret Naude, “Bearing a Bastard: The Social Consequences
of Illegitimacy in Cape Town, 1896-1939.” Journal of Southern African Studies 17,
no. 3
(September 1991): 373-413.
Campbell, Gwyn. The Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia. London:
Frank Cass, 2004.
———. “Slavery in the Indian Ocean World,” in The Routledge History of Slavery,
edited by G. Heuman, and T. Burnard, 52–63. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Cannizzo, Jeanne. “Doctor Livingstone Collects,” in David Livingstone and the Victorian
Encounter with Africa, edited by John M. MacKenzie, 139-68. London: National
Portrait Gallery, 1996.
Captain, Esther. Achter Het Kawat Was Nederland. Indische Oorlogservaringen en Herin-
neringen 1942–1945. Kampen: Kok Kampen, 2002.
———. “Geen Spoortje Indisch, Geen Bamboe, Geen Prikkeldraad. Het Tweesporen-
beleid van Indische Zelforganisaties (1946–2000),” in Binnenskamers. Terugkeer
en Opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog, edited by Conny Kristel, 325–55. Bakker:
Amsterdam, 2002.
——— (ed.). Wandelgids Sporen van Slavernij in Utrecht/Traces of Slavery in Utrecht:
A Walking Guide. Utrecht: Centre for the Humanities, Utrecht University, 2012.
Carrera, Vincent. Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man. Athens, GA:
University of Georgia Press, 2005.
Carter, Marina. “Indian Slaves in Mauritius (1729-1834).” The Indian Historical Review
15, no 2 (1989): 233-47.
———. Servants. Sirdars and Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834-1874. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995.
———. Voices from Indenture: Experiences of Indian Migrants in the British Empire.
London: Leicester University Press, 1996.
———. Unshackling Slaves: Liberation and Adaption of Ex-Apprentices. London: Pink
Pigeon Press, 2001.
———. “Slavery and Unfree Labour in the Indian Ocean,” History Compass 4,
no. 4 (2006): 800-13.
 bibliography 305

Carter, Marina, and Nira Wickramasinghe. “Forcing the Archive: Involuntary Migrants
‘of Ceylon’ in the Indian Ocean World of the 18th–19th Centuries.” South Asian
History and Culture 9, no. 2 (2018): 194–206.
Carter, Marina, and Khal Torabully (eds.). Coolitude. An Anthology of the Indian Labour
Diaspora. London: Anthem Press, 2002.
Chatterjee, Indrani, and Richard M. Eaton (eds.). Slavery & South Asian History.
Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.
———. “British Abolitionism from the Vantage of Pre-Colonial South Asian
Regimes,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, edited by D. Eltis, S. Enger-
man, S. Drescher and D. Richardson, 441–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2017.
Chinese Emigration. The Cuba Commission. Report of the Commission Sent by China to
Ascertain the Condition of Chinese Coolies in Cuba. Shanghai, Imperial Maritime
Customs Press, 1897.
Christiansë, Yvette. Unconfessed. Cape Town: Kwela Books, 2007.
Cloete, Michael. “Language and Politics in the Philosophy of Adam Small: Some
Personal Reflections.” Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 49, no. 1 (2012): 115–30.
Condit, Celeste, and John Lucaites (eds.). Crafting Equality: America’s Anglo-African
Word. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Cooper, Frederick, and Ann Laura Stoler (eds.). Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in
a Bourgeois World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997.
Cooper, Frederick, Thomas C. Holt and Rebecca J. Scott. Beyond Slavery: Explorations
of Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Postemancipation Societies. Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Cornish, Caroline. “Curating Science in an Age of Empire: Kew’s Museum of Eco-
nomic Botany.” PhD dissertation Royal Holloway: University of London, 2013.
Crais, Clifton C. “The Vacant Land: The Mythology of British Expansion in the East-
ern Cape, South Africa.” Journal of Social History 25, no. 2 (Winter 1991): 255-74.
Creese, Helen. Bali in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Ethnographic Accounts of Pierre
Dubois. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
Croucher, Sarah K. “Clove Plantations on Nineteenth-Century Zanzibar: Possibili-
ties for the Gender Archaeology in Africa.” Journal of Social Archaeology 7, no. 3
(1 October 2007): 302-24.
de Kock, Victor. Those in Bondage: An Account of the Life of the Slave at the Cape in the
Days of the Dutch East India Company. London: Allen & Unwin, 1950.
de Kom, Anton. Wij Slaven van Suriname. Bussum: Het Wereldvenster (first pub-
lished in 1934, by Uitgeverij Contact), 1982.
306 beingbbbbeing

Dekker, Rudolf. Holland in Beroering: Oproeren in de 17de en 18de Eeuw. Amsterdam:

Ambo, 1982.
Dermigny, Louis. Cargoisons Indiennes, 2 vols. Paris: Sevpen, 1959-1960.
Desai, Gaurav. “Asian African Literatures: Genealogies in the Making.” Research in
African Literatures 42, no 3 (Fall 2011): V-XXX.
Desmond, Adrian, and James Moore. Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, slavery and the quest
for human origins London: Allen Lane, 2009.
Dick, Archie. “The Notebook of Johannes Smiesing (1697–1734), Writing and Reading
Master in the Cape Slave Lodge.” Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South
Africa 64, no. 4 (2010): 159–74.
Doulton, Lindsay. “Anti-Slavery and the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean, 1860-90.”
PhD dissertation, University of Hull, 2010.
Donley-Reid, Linda W. “The Social Uses of Swahili Space and Objects.” PhD disserta-
tion, University of Cambridge, 1984.
Dooling, Wayne, “In Search of Profitability: Wheat and Wine Production in the
Post-Emancipation Western Cape.” South African Historical Journal, 55, no. 1
(2006): 88-105.
———. Slavery, Emancipation and Colonial Rule in South Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio
University Press, 2007.
Dragtenstein, Frank. De Ondraaglijke Stoutheid Der Wegloopers: Marronage en Koloniaal
Beleid in Suriname, 1667–1768. Utrecht: CLACS, 2002.
———. Van Elmina Naar Paramaribo. Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2017.
Driver, Felix. “Old Hat, I Presume?: History of a Fetish.” History Workshop Journal 41,
no. 1 (Spring 1996): 230-34.
———. Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. Oxford: Blackwell,
2001.
Driver, Felix, and Lowri Jones. Hidden Histories of Exploration: Researching the RGS-
IBG Collections. London: Royal Holloway, 2009.
Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstructions in America: 1860-1880. New York: The Free
Press, 1998.
Dunn, John, “What is living and What is Dead in the Political Theory of John Lock?,”
in Interpreting Political Responsibility: Essays 1981-1981, by John Dunn, 9-25. Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014.
du Plessis, Izak David. Die Bijdrae van de Kaapse Maleier tot die Afrikaanse Volkslied.
Kaapstad: Nasionale Pers, 1935.
——. Kaapse Moppies. Johannesburg: Perskor, 1977.
Ekama, Kate. “Slavery in Dutch Colombo: A Social History.” ResMA thesis (unpub-
lished). Leiden University, 2012.
 bibliography 307

———. “Precarious Freedom: Manumission in Eighteenth-Century Colombo.” Jour-

nal of Social History (forthcoming).
Elbourne, Elizabeth. “Introduction: Key Themes and Perspectives,” in Sex, Power,
and Slavery, edited by Gwyn Campbell and Elizabeth Elbourne, 1-39. Athens, OH:
Ohio University Press, 2014.
Elphick, Richard. “The Khoisan to C. 1770,” in The Shaping of South African Society,
1652–1840, edited by Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee, 3-40. Cape Town:
Longman, 1989.
Eltis, David, and David Richardson. “West Africa and the Transatlantic Trade: New
Evidence of Long-Run Trends,” in Routes to Slavery: Directions, Ethnicity, and
Morality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, edited by David Eltis and David Richard-
son, 16-35. London: Frank Cass & Company Ltd, 1997.
Eve, Prosper. Le Corps des Esclaves de L’île Bourbon. Histoire d’une Reconquête. Paris:
Presse de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2013.
Ewald, J.J. “Crossers of the Sea: Slaves, Freedmen, and Other Migrants in the North-
western Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1914.” The American Historical Review 105, no. 1
(2000): 69–91.
Fabre, Geneviève. “The Slave Ship Dance.” In Black Imagination and the Middle Pas-
sage, edited by Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Carl Pedersen, 33–46.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Fair, Laura. “Dressing Up: Clothing, Class and Gender in Post-Abolition Zanzibar.”
The Journal of African History 39, no. 1 (January 1998) 63-94.
———. Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban
Zanzibar, 1890-1945. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001.
Fatah-Black, Karwan. Eigendomsstrijd: De Geschiedenis Van Slavernij en Emancipatie in
Suriname. Amsterdam: Ambo|Anthos, 2018.
Filliot, J.-M. La Traite des Esclaves vers les Mascareignes au XVIIIe Siècle. Paris: CHEAIM,
1974.
Forsdick, Charles. “The Panthéon’s Empty Plinth: Commemorating Slavery in Con-
temporary France.” Atlantic Studies 9, no. 3 (2012): 279–97.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon
Books, 1977.
———. History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
Francis, Emanuel. Herinneringen uit den Levensloop van een “Indisch” Ambtenaar van
1815 tot 1851, Meegedeeld in Brieven. Batavia: H. M. van Dorp, 1859.
Garrioch, David. “From Christian Friendship to Secular Sentimentality: Enlighten-
ment Re-evaluations,” in Friendship: A History, edited by Barbara Caine, 165-214.
London: Routledge, 2009.
308 beingbbbbeing

Gassiep, M.A. Nederlandse Volksliedjies soor door die Maleiers gesing. Johannesburg: Ivan
Joffe, 1942.
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (ed.). The Classic Slave Narratives. New York: New American
Library, 1987.
Gaulier, Armelle, and Denis-Constant Martin. Cape Town Harmonies: Memory,
Humour and Resilience. Somerset West: African Minds, 2017.
Geelen, Alexander, Bram van den Hout, Merve Tosun, Mike de Windt and Matthias
van Rossum. “On the Run: Runaway Slaves and Their Social Networks in Eight-
eenth Century Cochin.” Journal of Social History (under review).
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage
Books, 1972.
Gerbeau, Hubert. “Des minorités mal connues: esclaves indiens et malais des Mas-
careignes au XIXe siècle,” in Migrations, minorités et échanges en Océan Indien,
XIXe-XXe siècle, 160-242. Aix-en-Provence: IHPOM, 1979.
Ghosh, Amitav. Sea of Poppies. London: John Murray, 2008.
———. River of Smoke. London: John Murray, 2011.
———. Flood of Fire. London: John Murray, 2015.
Ghosh, Durba. “Household Crimes and Domestic Order: Keeping the Peace in Colo-
nial Calcutta, C, 1770-1840.” Modern Asian Studies 38, no. 3 (2004): 599-623.
———. Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2006.
Giliomee, Hermann. “The Eastern Frontier, 1770–1812,” in The Shaping of South Afri-
can Society, 1652–1840, edited by Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee, 291-337.
Cape Town: Longman, 1989.
Gilroy, Paul, The Black Atlantic. Modernity and the Black Consciousness. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Ginzburg, Carlo. “Microhistory. Two or three things that I know about it.” Critical
Inquiry 20. No. 1 (Autumn 1993): 10-35.
Glassman, Jonathon, War of Words, War of Stones: Radical Thought and Violence in
Colonial Zanzibar. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011.
Gomes, Patricia. Over “Natuurgenooten” en “Onwillige Honden”. Beeldvorming als
Instrument Voor Uitbuiting en Onderdrukking in Suriname 1842–1862. Amsterdam:
Spinhuis, 2003.
Goodman, Paul. Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality. Berke-
ley, CA: University of California Press, 1998.
Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters. Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneap-
olis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
 bibliography 309

Gordon, Lucie Duff, Letters from the Cape, edited by John Purves. London: Humphrey
Milford, 1921.
Grant, Charles. The History of Mauritius or the Isle of France. London: Private Publica-
tion, 1801.
Grant, J.P. “Minute on the Abuses Alleged to Exist in the Export of Coolies,” in Hill
Coolies. Copies of Papers Respecting the Exportation of Hill Coolies, Received from the
Government of India; In Continuation of those Presented to the House of Commons on
the 11th day of February Last Vol. XVI.483, by the House of Commons. 1841.
Green, William A., British Slave Emancipation: The Sugar Colonies and the Great Exper-
iment, 1830-1865. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Grierson, George A. Report on Colonial Emigration from the Bengal Presidency. Calcutta:
Government of Bengal, 1838.
Hadley, Elaine. “Natives in a Strange Land: The Philanthropic Discourse of Juvenile
Emigration in Mid­Nineteenth-Century England.” Victorian Studies 33, no. 3
(1990): 411-37.
Haudrère, Philipe. La Compagnie Française des Indes aux XVIIIe Siècle. Paris: Les
Indes Savantes, 1989.
Hägerdal, Hans. “The Slaves of Timor: Life and Death on the Fringes of Early Colo-
nial Society.” Itinerario 32, no. 2 (2010): 19–44.
———. Lords of the Land, Lords of the Sea. Conflict and Adaptation in Early Colonial
Timor, 1600–1800. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2012.
Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination,
1830–1867. Cambridge: Polity, 2002.
Hall, Stuart, “When Was the ‘Post-colonial’?: Thinking at the Limit,” in The Postcolo-
nial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, edited by Iain Chambers and Lidia
Curti, 242–60. London: Routledge, 1996.
Hamer, Deborah. “Marriage and the Construction of Colonial Order: Jurisdiction,
Gender and Class in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Batavia.” Gender and History 29,
no. 3 (2017): 622–40.
Hamilton, Douglas, and Robert J. Blyth (eds.). Representing Slavery: Art Artefacts and
Archives in the Collections of the National Maritime Museum. Aldershot and London:
Lund Humphries and National Maritime Museum, 2007.
Handler, Jerome S., and Annis Steiner. “Identifying Pictorial Images of Atlantic
Slavery: Three Case Studies.” Slavery & Abolition 27, no. 1 (1 April 2006): 51-71.
Hannavy, John (ed.). Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. New York and
London: Routledge, 2008.
Harris, Ruth. “Melodrama, Hysteria, and Feminine Crimes of Passion in the Fin de
Siècle.” History Workshop 25, no. 1 (1988): 31-63.
310 beingbbbbeing

Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nine-

teenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
———. Lose Your Mother. A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar,
Straus, and Giroux, 2007.
Hay, Douglas, et al. Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century Eng-
land. New York: Pantheon Books, 1975.
Heilbron, Waldo. Colonial Transformation and the Decomposition of Dutch Plantation
Slavery in Suriname. Amsterdam: Centre for Caribbean Studies, 1993.
Hertgers, Sarie. “‘O! Mijn Vriendleezer het is droef gedag der dagen dat ik nooit zal
vergeten’: Over Vriendschap, Herinnering en Moraliteit in het Egodocument van
Wange Heindruk Richard van Balie.” Master’sThesis: University of Amsterdam,
2017.
Higman, Barry. W. “Survival and Silence in the Material Record of Slavery and Aboli-
tion.” Slavery & Abolition 35 no. 3 (3 July 2014): 527-38.
Hira, Sandew. Van Priary tot en met De Kom: De Geschiedenis van Verzet in Suriname,
1630–1940. Rotterdam: Futile, 1982.
Hoetink, Harry. Het Patroon van de Oude Curaçaose Samenleving: een Sociologische
Studie. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1958.
Hofmeyr, Isabel. “The Black Atlantic Meets the Indian Ocean: Forging New Paradigms
of Transnationalism for the Global South—Literary and Cultural Perspectives.”
Social Dynamics 33, no. 2 (2007): 3–32.
Hofmeyr, Isabel, Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie and Preben Kaarsholm. “Durban and Cape
Town as Port Cities: Reconsidering Southern African Studies from the Indian
Ocean.” Journal of Southern African Studies 42, no. 3 (2016): 375–87.
Hondius, Dienke, Nancy Jouwe, Annemarie de Wildt, Jennifer Tosch and Dineke
Stam. Gids Slavernijverleden Amsterdam/Slavery Heritage Guide. Volendam: LM
Publishers, 2014.
——, ——, Jennifer Tosch and Dineke Stam. Dutch New York Histories: Connecting
African, Native American and Slavery Heritage. Volendam: LM Publishers, 2017.
Hoogbergen, Wim. “De Bosnegers Zijn Gekomen!” Slavernij en Rebellie in Suriname.
Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1992.
Hotham, Charles. “Letter from Charles Hotham to Admiralty. August 17. 1848,” in
First Report From the Select Committee on the Slave Trade Together With the Minutes
of Evidence and Appendix.
Hove, Okke Ten, and Frank Dragtenstein. Manumissies in Suriname 1832–1863. Utre-
cht: CLACS & IBS, 1997.
 bibliography 311

Hovy, Lodewijk. Ceylonees Plakkaatboek: Plakkaten En Andere Wetten Uitgevaardigd

Door Het Nederlandse Bestuur Op Ceylon, 1638–1796. 2 vols. Hilversum: Verloren,
1991.
Howard, Colin. “‘The ‘No-Persons’: An Investigation into Aspects of Secular Popular
Music in Cape Town.” Master’s diss., Goldsmiths, University of London, 1994.
House of Commons. Report of the Committee Appointed by the Supreme Government of
India, to enquire into the Abuses Alleged to Exist in Exporting From Bengal Coolies and
Indian Labourers, of Various Classes, to Other Countries; Together with An Appendix,
Containing the Oral and Written Evidence Taken by the Committee and Off icial
Documents Laid Before Them. Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan
Press, 1839.
———. Blue Book Containing Reports on British Colonial Possessions for 1877, 1878, and
1879.
———. Correspondence with British Representatives and Agents Abroad, and Reports from
Naval Officers, relating to the Slave Trade. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by
command of Her Majesty. 1876. Vol. LXX. London: Harrison and Sons, 1876.
———. “Circular Despatch from Lord Glenelg to the Governors of the West India
Colonies, 15 May,” in Liberated Africans: Correspondence Respecting the Treatment of
Liberated Africans. Vol. LXX. 1840.
———. Papers Relating to East India Affairs, viz. Regulations Passed by Governments of
Bengal, Fort St. George, and Bombay, in the year 1816. Vol. XIII. 1816.
———. Report of the Royal Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Treatment of
Immigrants in Mauritius. Vol. XLVI. London: William Clowes and Sons, 1875.
House of Lords. Mauritius. Correspondence respecting the Condition of Liberated Africans
at the Seychelles. Vol. XXIX [1]. 1873.
———. Royal Commission on Fugitive Slaves. Report of the Commissioners, Minutes of
Evidence, and Appendix, with General Index of Minutes of Evidence and Appendix.
Vol. XXXV. [i] 1876.
Hunt, Lynn. Inventing Human Rights: A History. New York: Norton, 2007.
Hunt, Nancy Rose. “‘Le Bébé en Brousse’: European Women, African Birth-Spacing,
and Colonial Intervention in the Belgian Congo.” International Journal of African
Historical Studies 21, no. 3 (1988): 401-32.
Huisman, Marijke. Verhalen van Vrijheid. Autobiografieën van Slaven in Transnationaal
Perspectief, 1789–2013. Hilversum: Verloren, 2015.
Ingrams, William Harold. Zanzibar. Its History and Its People. London: Stacey Inter-
national, 1931.
312 beingbbbbeing

Isin, Engin F., and Greg M. Nielsen. “Introduction: Acts of Citizenship,” in Acts of
Citizenship, edited by Engin F. Isin and Greg M. Nielsen, 1-12. London: Zed Books,
2008.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. 1861, edited by
Nellie Y. McKay and Frances Smith Foster. New York and London: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2002.
Janse, Maartje. “‘Holland as a Little England’? British Anti-Slavery Missionaries and
Continental Abolitionist Movements in the Mid Nineteenth Century.” Past and
Present 229, no. 1 (November 2015): 123–60.
Jayawardena, Kumari. Erasure of the Euro-Asians: Recovering Early Radicalism and
Feminism in South Asia. Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association, 2007.
Johannes, Gert-Jan. De lof der aalbessen: over (Noord-)Nederlandse literatuurtheorie,
literatuur en de consequenties van kleinschaligheid 1770–1830. The Hague: Sdu, 1997.
Jones, Eric. “Fugitive Women: Slavery and Social Change in Early Moden Southeast
Asia.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 38, no. 2 (2007): 215-45.
———. Wives, Slaves and Concubines: A History of the Female Underclass in Dutch Asia.
Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010.
Jones, Guno. “Het Belang van Een Gedenkteken. De Discussie Over Het Nationaal
Monument Nederlands Slavernijverleden.” Kleio 42, no. 5 (2001): 9–13.
———. Tussen Onderdanen, Rijksgenoten en Nederlanders: Nederlandse Politici Over
Burgers Uit Oost en West en Nederland, 1945–2005. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Pub-
lishers, 2007.
———. “De Slavernij is Onze Geschiedenis (Niet). Over de Discursieve Strijd om
de Betekenis van de NTR-Televisie-Serie De Slavernij.” BMGN-Low Countries
Historical Review 127, no. 4 (2012): 56–82.
Jones, Johan F. “Kwakoe en Christus. Een Beschouwing Over de Ontmoeting van de
Afro-Amerikaanse Cultuur en Religie Met de Hernhutter Zending in Suriname.”
PhD Thesis, Universitaire Protestantse Faculteit Brussel, 1981.
Jordan, Elizabeth Grzymala. “It All Comes Out In the Wash Engendering Archaeo-
logical Interpretations of Slavery,” in Women and Slavery Africa, the Indian Ocean
World, and the Medieval North Atlantic, edited by Gwyn Campbell et al., 335-58.
Colombus, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007.
Jumeer, Musleem. “Les Affranchis et les Indiens Libres à l’Ile de France au xviiie
siecle 1721-1803.” PhD Thesis, University of Poitiers, 1984.
Jurriaanse, M.W. Catalogue of the Archives of the Dutch Central Government of Coastal
Ceylon, 1640–1796. Colombo: Ceylon Government Press, 1943.
Kanumoyoso, Bondan. “Beyond the City Wall: Society and Economic Development
in the Ommelanden of Batavia, 1684–1740.” PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2011.
 bibliography 313

Kenepa-Römer, Nolda. “Curaçaose Vrouwen in de Slavenmaatschappij,” in Mundu

Yama Sinta Mira: Womanhood in Curaçao, edited by Richenel Ansano, Joceline
Clemencia, Jeanette Cook and Eithel Martis, 21-42. Willemstad: Fundashon Pub-
likashon Curaçao, 1992.
Killingray, David, and Andrew Roberts. “An Outline History of Photography in Africa
to ca. 1940.” History in Africa 16 (1989): 197-208.
Klein, Bernhard, and Gesa Mackenthum. “Introduction: The Sea is History,” in Sea
Changes: Historicizing the Ocean, edited by Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthum,
1–12. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Klooster, Wim. “Subordinate but Proud: Curaçao’s Free Blacks and Mulattoes in the
Eighteenth Century,” New West Indian Guide 68, nos. 3-4 (1994): 283-300.
Knaap, Gerrit J. “Europeans, Mestizos and Slaves: The Population of Colombo at the
End of the Seventeenth Century.” Itinerario 5, no. 2 (1981): 84-101.
———. “Slavery and the Dutch in Southeast Asia,” in Fifty Years Later: Antislavery,
Capitalism and Modernity in the Dutch Orbit, edited by Gert Oostindie, 193–206.
Leiden: KITLV Press, 1995.
———. and Heather Sutherland. Monsoon Traders: Ships, Skippers and Commodities in
Eighteenth-Century Makassar. Leiden: KITLV Press, 2004.
Koolhof, Sirtjo, and Robert Ross. “Upas, September and the Bugis at the Cape of Good
Hope: The Context of a Slave’s Letter.” Archipel 70 (2005): 281–308.
Kruger, Loren. “Black Atlantics, White Indians and Jews: Locations, Locutions and
Syncretic Identities in the Fiction of Achmat Dangor and Others.” South Atlantic
Quarterly 100, no. 1 (2001): 111–43.
Kuipers, Matthijs. “De Strijd om Het Koloniale Verleden. Trauma, Herinnering, en
de ‘Imperial History Wars’ in Nederland.” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 131, no. 4
(2018): 657–76.
Kuitenbrouwer, Maarten. “The Dutch Case of Anti-Slavery: Late Abolitions and
Elitist Abolitionism,”iIn Fifty Years Later: Antislavery, Capitalism and Modernity in
the Dutch Orbit, edited by Gert Oostindie, 67-88. Pittsburgh, PA: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1995.
Kusimba, Chapurukha M. “Archaeology of Slavery in East Africa,” The African Archae-
ological Review 21, no. 2 (2004): 59-88.
Lach, Donald F., and Edwin J. van Kley (eds.). Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume III:
A Century of Advance Book 3: Southeast Asia. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1993.
Laqueur, Thomas. “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative,” in The New
Cultural History, edited by Lynn Hunt, 176-204. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1989.
314 beingbbbbeing

Laffan, Michael. “From Javanese Court to African Grave: How Noriman Became Tuan
Skapie, 1717–1806.” Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies 1 (2017): 38–59.
Lamur, Humphrey. “Demographic Performance of Two Slave Populations of the
Dutch Speaking Caribbean.” Boletín de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe 30
(1981): 87–102.
———. De Kerstening van de Slaven van de Surinaamse Plantage Vossenburg: 1847–1878.
Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam, Antropologisch-Sociologisch Centrum,
1985.
———. The Production of Sugar and the Reproduction of Slaves at Vossenburg, Suriname,
1705–1863. Amsterdam: Centre for Caribbean Studies, 1987.
———. “The Slave Family in Colonial 19th-Century Suriname.” Journal of Black Stud-
ies 23, no. 3 (1993): 371–81.
———. “The Evolution of Afro-Surinamese National Movements (1955–1995).” Trans-
forming Anthropology 10, no. 1 (2001): 17–27.
———. Familienaam & Verwantschap van Geëmancipeerde Slaven in Suriname. Amster-
dam: LM Publishers, 2004.
Legêne, Susan. Spiegelreflex: Culturele Sporen van de Koloniale Ervaring. Amsterdam:
Bert Bakker, 2010.
Lena, Margaret. “Speaking for the Slave: Britain and the Cape, 1751-1838,” Literator 20,
no 1 (1999): 103-17.
Lenik, Stephan, and Christer Petley (eds.). Slavery and Abolition 35, no. 3 (2014) spe-
cial issue “Material Cultures of Slavery and Abolition in the British Caribbean.”
Longair, Sarah. “Kirk after the Zambesi: Diplomacy, Material Culture and East Africa,”
in David Livingstone: Man, Myth and Legacy, edited by Sarah Worden, 100-13.
Edinburgh: NMS, 2012.
Lovejoy, Paul. E. “‘Freedom Narratives’ of Transatlantic Slavery.” Slavery & Abolition
32, no. 1 (March 2011): 91–107.
Lovett, Richard. A History of the London Missionary Society, 1795-1895, 2 vols. London:
Oxford University Press, 1899.
Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham, NC, and London: Duke Uni-
versity Press, 2015.
Ludlow, Elizabeth Helen. “Missions and Emancipation in the South Western Cape:
A Case Study of Groenekloof (Mamre), 1838-1852.” M.A. diss.: University of Cape
Town, 1992.
Machado, Pedro. Ocean of Trade South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean c.
1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Mann, Michael. Sahibs, Sklaven und Soldaten. Geschichte des Menschenhandels Rund um
den Indischen Ozean. Darmstad: WBG, 2012.
 bibliography 315

MacKenzie, John M. (ed.). David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa.
London: National Portrait Gallery, 1996.
Margana, Sri. “Caught between Empires: Babad Mangkudiningratan and the Exile of
Sultan Hamengkubuwana II of Yogyakarta, 1813–1826,” in Exile in Colonial Asia:
Kings, Convicts, Commemoration, edited by Ronit Ricci, 139–64. Honolulu, HI:
University of Hawaii Press, 2016.
Martin, Denis-Constant. Coon Carnival: New Year in Cape Town: Past to Present. Cape
Town: David Philip Publishers, 1999.
May, Todd. The Political Thought of Jacques Rancière: Creating Equality. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
McAleer, John. “‘The Slavery Question in Eastern Africa’: Representations of Indian
Ocean Slavery and Its Suppression in Nineteenth-century Britain from the Col-
lection of the National Maritime Museum.” Journal for Maritime Research 10, no. 1
(2008): 23-49.
McPherson, James. The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War
and Reconstruction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964.
Mbeki, Linda, and Matthias van Rossum. “Private Slave Trade in the Dutch Indian
Ocean World: A Study into the Networks and Backgrounds of the Slavers and
the Enslaved in South Asia and South Africa.” Slavery & Abolition 38, no. 1 (2017):
95–116.
Meier, Sandy Prita. Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 2016.
Mentzel, Otto Friedrich. Geographical and Topographical Description of the Cape of Good
Hope. Translated by H.J. Mandelbrote. London: 1785. Cape Town: 1925.
Meyer, Morgan. “Placing and Tracing Absence: A Material Culture of the Immaterial.”
Journal of Material Culture 17, no. 1 (1 March 2012): 103-10.
Miers, Suzanne, and Igor Kopytoff (eds.). Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropolog-
ical Perspectives. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977.
Milbert, Jacques-Gérard. Voyage Pittoresque à l’Ile de France, au Cap du Bonne Esperance
et l’Ile de Teneriffe. Paris: Nepveu, 1812.
Miller, Joseph Calder. Slavery: A Worldwide Bibliography, 1900–1982. White Plains, NY:
Kraus International, 1985.
Modest, Wayne. “We Have Always Been Modern: Museums, Collections, and Moder-
nity in the Caribbean.” Museum Anthropology 35, no. 1 (April 2012): 85-96.
Moree, Perry J. A Concise History of Dutch Mauritius, 1598-1710. London: Kegan Paul,
1998.
Mustakeem, Sowande’ M. Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage.
Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016.
316 beingbbbbeing

Nagapen, Amédée. “Les Indiens à l’Ile de France: Acculturation ou Deculturation?,” in

Historical and Cultural Relations between France and India, XVIIth-XXth Centuries,
25-49. Réunion: Université de la Réunion, 1987.
Nair, Adoor K.K.R. Slavery in Kerala. Delhi: Mittal, 1986.
Nankoe, Lucia, and Jules Rijssen. De Slaaf Vliegt Weg. Beeldvorming Over Slavernij in
de Kunsten. Arnhem: LM Publishers, 2013.
Napal, Doojenraduth. Les Indiens à l’Ile de France. Mauritius: private publication, 1965.
Neele, Arno. De Ontdekking van het Zeeuwse platteland: Culturele Verhoudingen tussen
Stad en Platteland in Zeeland 1750–1850. Utrecht: Waanders, 2011.
Neslo, Ellen. Een Ongekende Elite. De Opkomst van Een Gekleurde Elite in Koloniaal
Suriname 1800–1863. De Bilt: Haes Producties, 2017.
Niehoff, Arthur and Juanita. East Indians in the West Indies. Milwaukee, WI: Olsen
Publishing Co., 1960.
Niemeijer, Henk. Batavia: Een Koloniale Samenleving in de Zeventiende Eeuw. Amster-
dam: Balans, 2005.
Nimako, Kwame, and Glenn Willemsen. The Dutch Atlantic: Slavery, Abolition and
Emancipation. London: Pluto Press, 2011.
Noyes, John K. Herder: Aesthetics against Imperialism. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2015.
Oliker, Stacey. “The Modernization of Friendship: Individualism, Intimacy and
Gender in the 19th Century,” in Placing Friendship in Context, edited by Rebecca G.
Adams and Graham Allan, 18-42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Oostindie, Gert (ed.). Fifty Years Later: Antislavery, Capitalism and Modernity in the
Dutch Orbit. Leiden: KITLV, 1995.
———. (ed.). Het Verleden Onder Ogen. Herdenking van de Slavernij. Amsterdam:
Arena 2001.
Pardue, Jeff. “Africa Squadron,” in The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, edited
by Junius P. Rodriguez, 20-21. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1997.
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2018.
Peabody, Sue. “Microhistory, Biography, Fiction. The Politics of Narrating the Lives of
People under Slavery.” Transatlantica 11, no. 2 (2012): 1–19.
———. Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France’s Indian Ocean
Colonies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Penn, Nigel. “Casper, Crebis and the Knegt: Rape, Homicide and Violence in the
Eighteenth-Century Rural Western Cape.” South African Historical Journal 66,
no. 4 (2014): 611-34.
 bibliography 317

Percival, Robert. An Account of the Cape of Good Hope. London: C & R Baldwin, 1804.
Pereira, Clifford, and Vandana Patel. “Terra Nova for the Royal Geographical
Society (wit IBG): and the Bombay African Strand of the ‘Crossing Communities’
Project,” in Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums: Ambiguous Engage-
ments, edited by Laurajane Smith et al., 164-74. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Pettitt, Clare. Dr Livingstone, I Presume?: Missionaries, Journalists, Explorers and Empire.
London: Profile, 2007.
Putuma, Koleka, “Water.” Pen South Africa, last modified 15 June 2016, https://pen-
southafrica.co.za/water-by-koleka-putuma.
Raat, Alexander J.P. The Life of Governor Joan Gideon Loten (1710–1789): A Personal
History of a Dutch Virtuoso. Hilversum: Verloren, 2010.
Raben, Remco. Batavia and Colombo. The Ethnic and Spatial Order of Two Colonial
Cities 1600–1800. PhD diss., Leiden University, 1996.
———. “Round about Batavia. Ethnicity and Authority in the Ommelanden, 1650–
1800,” in Jakarta-Batavia. Socio-Cultural Essays. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk
Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 187, edited by Kees Grijns and Peter J.M.
Nas, 91–118. Leiden: KITLV Press 2000.
Rafael, Vicente. “Confession, Conversion, and Reciprocity in Early Tagalog Colonial
Society.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, no. 2 (April 1987): 320-39.
Ramsoedh, Hans. “Surinamistiek 1975-2000”, OSO, Tijdschrift voor Surinaamse
Taalkunde, Letterkunde, Cultuur en Geschiedenis 1 (2001): 137-39.
Rancière, Jacques. Dis-agreement: Politics and Philosophy. Translated by Julie Rose.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
———. The Method of Equality: Interviews with Laurent Jeanpierre and Dork Zabunyan.
Translated by Julie Rose. Cambridge: Polity, 2006.
Raum, Johannes. “The Development of the Coloured Community at Genadendal
Under the Influence of the Missionaries of the Unitas Fratum, 1792-1892.” M. A.
diss.: University of Cape Town, 1952.
Reddi, Sadasivam. “Aspects of Indian Culture in Ile de France between 1803 and
1810,” in History, Memory and Identity, edited by Vijayalakshmi Teelock and
Edward A. Alpers, 33-44. Mauritius: Nelson Mandela Centre, 2001.
Reid, Anthony, and Jennifer Brewster (eds.). Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in
Southeast Asia. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1983.
Representation of the State of Government Slaves and Apprentices in Mauritius; with obser-
vations. By A Resident, Who has never possessed either land or slaves in the Colony.
London: James Ridgeway, 1830.
318 beingbbbbeing

“Resources.” Bookkeeper General Batavia/Boekhouder-Generaal Batavia, Het goeder-

envervoer van de VOC in de achttiende eeuw. Accessed 20 March 2019. http://
resources.huygens.knaw.nl/boekhoudergeneraalbatavia.
Ricci, Ronit, Anand A. Yang and Kieko Matteson (eds.). Exile in Colonial Asia: Kings,
Convicts, Commemoration. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2016.
Roe, Angela. “The Sound of Silence: Ideology of National Identity and Racial Inequal-
ity in Contemporary Curaçao.” PhD thesis, Florida International University, 2016.
Rose, Lionel. Massacre of the Innocents: Infanticide in Britain, 1800-1939. London:
Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1986.
Ross, Kristin. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French
Culture. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1998.
Ross, Robert. “The Occupations of Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Cape Town.” Studies
in the History of Cape Town 2 (1980): 1-14.
———. Cape of Torments: Slavery and Resistance in South Africa. London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1983.
Sachs, Albie. Justice in South Africa. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973.
Saunders, Christopher. “Liberated Africans and Labour at Cape of the Good Hope
in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century.” The International Journal of African
Historical Studies 18, no. 2 (1985): 223-39.
Sayles, Jane. Mission Stations and the Coloured Communities of the Eastern Cape, 1800-
1852. Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1975.
Schapera, Isaac. The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa. Reprint, London: Routledge and
Keegan Paul, 1960.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “Culture, Society, and Maternal Thinking: Maternal Detach-
ment and Infant Survival in a Brazilian Shantytown.” Ethnos 13, no. 4 (1985):
291-317.
Schoeman, Karel. Portrait of a Slave Society: The Cape of Good Hope, 1717–1795. Preto-
ria: Protea Boekhuis, 2012.
Schrikker, Alicia. Dutch and British Colonial Intervention in Sri Lanka C. 1780–1815:
Expansion and Reform. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2006.
Schrikker, Alicia, and Dries Lyna. “Threads of the Legal Web. Dutch Law and Everyday
Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Asia,” in The Uses of Justice in Global Perspec-
tive 1600–1900, edited by Manon Van der Heijden, Griet Vermeesch and Jaco
Zuijderduijn, 42–56. London: Routledge, 2019.
Schrikker, Alicia, and Kate Ekama. “Through the Lens of Slavery: Dutch Sri Lanka in
the Eighteenth Century,” in Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History, edited by Zoltàn
Biedermann and Alan Strathern, 178-93. London: UCL Press, 2017.
 bibliography 319

Scully, Pamela. “Criminality and Conflict in Rural Stellenbosch, South Africa, 1870-
1900.” Journal of African History 3, no. 2 (1989): 289-300.
———. “Narratives of Infanticide in the Aftermath of Slave Emancipation in the
Nineteenth-Century Cape Colony, South Africa.” Canadian Journal of African
Studies 30, no. 1 (1996): 88-105.
———. Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural
Western Cape, South Africa, 1823–1853. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997.
Seetah, Krish. “Objects Past, Objects Present: Materials, Resistance and Memory from
the Le Morne Old Cemetery, Mauritius.” Journal of Social Archaeology 15, no. 2
(1 June 2015): 233–53.
———. “The Archaeology of Mauritius.” Antiquity 89, no. 346 (August 2015): 922–39.
Seijas, Tatiana. “The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish Manila: 1580–1640.” Itiner-
ario 32, no. 1 (2008): 19–38.
———. Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014.
Sens, Angelie. “Mensaap, Heiden, Slaaf”: Nederlandse Visies op de Wereld rond 1800.
The Hague: Sdu, 2001.
Shell, Robert C.H. “Introduction to S.E. Hudson’s ‘Slaves’.” Kronos 9 (1984): 44–70.
———. Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good
Hope, 1652–1838. Hanover, NH, and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1994.
———. From Diaspora to Diorama: The Old Slave Lodge in Cape Town. Cape Town:
NagsPro Multimedia, 2013.
Shell, Robert, and Archie Dick. “Jan Smiesing, Slave Lodge Schoolmaster and Healer,
1697–1734,” in Cape Town. Between East and West, edited by Nigel Worden, 128-52.
Johannesburg: Jacana and Verloren, 2012.
Singh, Anjana. Fort Cochin in Kerala, 1750–1830: The Social Condition of a Dutch Com-
munity in an Indian Milieu. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2010.
Sikka, Sonia. Herder on Humanity and Cultural Difference: Enlightened Relativism.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Siteur, Ron. “Beschrijving van de levensgeschiedenis van Wange van Bali,” last modi-
fied September 2009, http://www.wangevanbali.nl/.
Sivasundarum, Sujit. “Ethnicity, Indigeneity, and Migration in the Advent of British
Rule to Sri Lanka.” The American Historical Review 115, no. 2 (2010): 428-52.
Sleigh, Dan. Islands. London: Secker & Warburg, 2004.
Smeulders, Valika. Slavernij in Perspectief. Mondialisering en Erfgoed in Suriname,
Ghana, Zuid-Afrika en Curaçao. Enschede: Ipskamp Drukkers BV, 2012.
Sonnerat, Pierre. Voyage aux Indes Orientales et à Chine fait par ordre du Roi, depuis 1774
jusqu’en 1781. Paris: Private Publication, 1782.
320 beingbbbbeing

Smith, Laurajane et al., (eds.). Representing Enslavement and Abolition in Museums:

Ambiguous Engagements. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Spillers, Hortense. “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” in
Black, White and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, by Hortense
Spillers, 203-29. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2003.
Stanziani, Alessandro. Sailors, Slaves, and Immigrants. Bondage in the Indian Ocean
World, 1750–1914. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014.
———. Bondage: Labor and Rights in Eurasia from the Sixteenth to the Early Twentieth
Centuries. New York: Berghahn Books, 2014.
Steedman, Carolyn. Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives. New Brun-
swick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
Stoler, A. “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance.” Archival Science 2, nos. 1–2
(2002): 87–109.
———. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Imperial Rule.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.
———. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Stuurman, Siep. The Invention of Humanity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2017.
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. “Slaves and Tyrants: Dutch Tribulations in Seventeenth-Cen-
tury Mrauk-U.” Journal of Early Modern History 1, no. 3 (1997): 201–53.
Sulivan, George Lydiard, Dhow Chasing in Zanzibar Waters and on the Eastern Coast of
Africa. Narrative of Five Years’ Experiences in Suppression of the Slave Trade. London:
Sampson Low, Marston, Low, & Searle, 1873.
Taylor, Jean Gelman. “Belongings and Belonging: Indonesian Histories in Inventories
from the Cape of Good Hope,” in Exile in Colonial Asia: Kings, Convicts, Commemo-
ration, edited by Ronit Ricci, 165-92. Honolulu, HI: University Press, 2016.
Tegally, S. “Social Mobility among Indians in Mauritius”, BA thesis, University of
Mauritius, 1996.
Telfair, Charles. Some Account of the State of Slavery at Mauritius, since the British
Occupation in 1810. Port-Louis: Allet and Asselin, 1830.
Terreblanche, Sampie, A History of Inequality in South Africa, 1652-2002. Scottsville:
University of Natal Press, 2002.
Tieken, Herman. “Letters Dealing With the Slave Trade from Ceylon. The Ondaatje
Correspondence, 1728 to 1737,” in Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South
Africa 67, no. 3 (2013): 113–22.
 bibliography 321

———. Between Colombo and the Cape. Letters in Tamil, Dutch and Sinhala, Sent to
Nicolaas Ondaatje from Ceylon, Exile at the Cape of Good Hope (1728–1737), Dutch
Sources on South Asia C. 1600–1825. Delhi: Manohar, 2015.
Thunberg, Carl Peter. Travels at the Cape of Good Hope 1772–1775. Cape Town: Van
Riebeeck Society, 1986.
Toussaint, Auguste. Le Mirage des Iles Le Négoce Français aux Mascareignes au XVIIIe
siècle. Aix en Provence: Edisud, 1977.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston,
MA: Beacon Press, 1995.
van den Boogaart, Doreen, and Harkirat Singh. “Being a Slave: Indian Ocean Slav-
ery in Local Context,” in The IIAS newsletter 78, 2017. https://www.iias.asia/
the-newsletter/article/being-slave-indian-ocean-slavery-local-context
van de Pol, Lotte, Het Amsterdams Hoerdom: Prostitutie in de Zeventiende en Achttiende
eeuw. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1996.
———. De Burger en de Hoer: Prostitutie in Amsterdam. Sociaal-Historische Studie
naar de Prostitutie Door Vrouwen in Amsterdam Tussen ca. 1650-1750. Amsterdam:
Wereldbibliotheek, 2003.
———. The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
van der Chijs, Jacobus Anne. Nederlandsch-Indisch Plakaatboek 1602–1811,. Batavia:
Landsdrukkerij, 1889.
van der Spuy, Patricia. “The Involvement of Women in Violent Crime as Processed
by the Institutions of Justice in Cape Town, 1860-1879.” B.A. Hons. diss.: History
Department, University of Cape Town, 1989.
van der Wal, A.M. “Singing of Slavery, Performing the Past. The Folk Songs of the
Cape Coloured Community as Cultural Memory of the South African Slave Past,
1657–present.” PhD diss., Utrecht University, 2016.
van Dijk, Cees. “1600–1898: Gezanten, slaven, een schilder en enkele scholieren,” in
In het land van de overheerser: Indonesiërs in Nederland 1600-1950, edited by Harry
A. Poeze. 1-22. Dordrecht: Floris, 1986.
van Hoëvell, W.R., Slaven en Vrijen Onder de Nederlandsche Wet. Zaltbommel: Joh.
Noman en Zoon, 1855.
van Lier, Rudolf. Samenleving in Een Grensgebied. Een Sociaal-Historische Studie van
Suriname. Amsterdam: Emmering, 1977.
van Oostende, Matthijs, “Amok in Batavia. Over Amok in Nederlands–Indische
rechtszaken.” Acta Historica (Special Issue) 3, no. 4 (2014): 11-15.
322 beingbbbbeing

van Rossum, Matthias. Werkers van de wereld. Globalisering, arbeid en interculturele ont-
moetingen tussen Aziatische en Europese zeelieden in dienst van de VOC, 1600–1800.
Hilversum: Verloren, 2014.
———. Kleurrijke Tragiek. De Geschiedenis van Slavernij in Azië Onder de VOC. Hilver-
sum: Verloren, 2015.
———. “The Dutch East India Company in Asia, 1595–1811,” in A Global History of
Convicts and Penal Colonies, edited by Clare Anderson, 157–83. London: Blooms-
bury, 2018.
van Stipriaan, Alex. Surinaams Contrast. Roofbouw en Overleven in een Caraïbische
Plantagekolonie, 1750–1863. Amsterdam: KITLV, 1993.
———. “De Achterkant van Vrijheid, Gelijkheid, Broederschap.” Tijdschrift over Cul-
tuur & Criminaliteit 4, no. 3 (2014): 68–80.
van Stipriaan, Alex, Waldo Heilbron, Aspha Bijnaar and Valika Smeulders. Op Zoek
naar de Stilte. Sporen van het Slavernijverleden in Nederland. Amsterdam: KITLV,
2007.
Vatuk, Sylvia. “Bharattee’s Death: Domestic Slave-Women in Nineteenth-Century
Madras,” in Slavery and South Asian History, edited by Indrani Chatterjee and
Richard M. Eaton, 210–33. Bloomington, IN: University Press, 2006.
Vaughn, Meghan. Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Vergès, Françoise. “Postgace de Françoise Vergès,” in Nègre Je Suis, Nègre Je Resterai.
Entretiens avec Françoise Vergès, by Aimé Césaire and Françoise Vergès, 71-136.
Paris: Albin Michel, 2005.
———. “Les Troubles de la Mémoire: Traite Negrière, Esclavage et Écriture de l’His-
toire.” Cahiers d’Études Africaines 45, no. 179/180 (2005): 1143–77.
Vergès, Françoise. “A Museum without Objects,” in Iain Chambers, Alessandra De
Angelis, Celeste Ianniciello and Mariangela Orabona (eds.). The Postcolonial
Museum. The Arts of Memory and the Pressures of History. London: Routledge, 2014.
Vergès, Françoise, and Carpanin Marimoutou. Pour un Musée du Temps Présent: La
Maison des Civilisations et de l’Unité Réunionnaise. La Réunion: MCUR, 2008.
Viljoen, Louise. “Displacement in the Literary Texts of Black Afrikaans Writers in
South Africa.” Journal of Literary Studies 21, no. 1–2 (2005): 93–118.
Vink, Markus. “‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the
Indian Ocean.” Journal of World History 14, no. 2 (2003): 131–77.
“VOC Opvarenden.” Nationaal Archief. Accessed 1 January 2000. http://www.gahetna.
nl/collectie/index/nt00444.
Wagenaar, Lodewijk J. “Het Eiland Onrust Bij Batavia als Onderdeel van het VOC–
Scheepsbedrijf in de 17de en 18de Eeuw.” Antiek 25, no. 2 (1990) 65-80.
 bibliography 323

Walkowitz, Judith. Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Waltz, Jonathan R., and Stephen A. Brandt. “Toward an Archaeology of the Other
African Diaspora: The Slave Trade and Dispersed Africans in the Western Indian
Ocean,” in African Re-Genesis: Confronting Social Issues in the Diaspora, edited by
Jay B. Haviser and Kevin C. MacDonald, 246-68. Walnut, CA: Routledge, 2008.
Wanquet, Claude. “Violences Individuelles et Violence Institutionnalisée: Le Régime
Servile d’Ille de France à la fin du XVIIIe Siècle à la Lumière des Dossiers de
Procédure Criminelle,” in Esclavage et Abolition dans l’Océan Indien, 1723-1840,
edited by Edmond Maestri, 2-3-226. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002.
Ward, Kerry. Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Warren, James Francis. The Sulu Zone, 1768–1898: The Dynamics of External Trade,
Slavery, and Ethnicity in the Transformation of a Southeast Asian Maritime State.
Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981.
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics, and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800. Lon-
don: Longman, 1981.
Wekker, Gloria. White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2016.
White, Paul. “Geography, Literature and Migration,” in Writing Across Worlds: Contem-
porary Writers Talk, edited by Russell King, John Connell and Paul White, 1-19.
New York: Routledge, 1995.
White, Sophie. “Geographies of Slave Consumption: French Colonial Louisiana and a
World of Goods.” Winterhur Portfolio 45, no. 2-3 (2011): 229-48.
Wickramasinghe, Nira. Slave in a Palanquin. Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri
Lanka, New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.
———, and Alicia Schrikker. “The Ambivalence of Freedom: Slaves in Jaffna (Sri
Lanka) in the 17th–19th Centuries.” Journal of Asian Studies 78, no. 3 (2019): 497-
519.
Willemsen, Glenn. Dagen van Gejuich en Gejubel. Viering en Herdenking van de
Afschaffing van de Slavernij in Nederland, Suriname en de Nederlandse Antillen. The
Hague/Amsterdam: Amrit, 2006.
Worden, Nigel. Slavery in Dutch South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, African Studies Series 44, 1985.
———. “New Approaches to VOC History in South Africa.” South African Historical
Journal 59, no 1 (2007): 3–18.
———. “Strangers Ashore: Sailor Identity and Social Conflict in Mid-18th Century
Cape Town.” Kronos 33 (2007): 72-83.
324 beingbbbbeing

———. “Public Brawling, Masculinity and Honour,” in Cape Town Between East and
West: Social Identities in a Dutch Colonial Town, edited by Nigel Worden, 194-211.
Sunnyside: Jacana, 2013.
———. “Cape Slaves in the Paper Empire of the VOC.” Kronos 40, no. 1 (2014): 23–44.
———. “Indian Ocean Slaves in Cape Town, 1695–1807.” Journal of Southern African
Studies 42, no. 3 (2016): 389–408.
—— and Gerald Groenewald (eds.). Trials of Slavery: Selected Documents Concerning
Slaves from the Criminal Records of the Council of Justice at the Cape of Good Hope,
1705–1794. Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2005.
——, Elizabeth Van Heyningen and Vivian Bickford-Smith. Cape Town: The Making of
a City: An Illustrated History. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers, 1998.
Wynne-Jones, Stephanie. “Recovering and Remembering a Slave Route in Central
Tanzania,” in Slavery in Africa: Archeology and Memory, edited by Paul Lane and
Kevin C. MacDonald, 317-42. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Yang, Anand. “Indian Convict Workers in Southeast Asia in the Late Eighteenth and
Early Nineteenth Centuries.” Journal of World History 24, no. 2 (2003): 179–208.
 Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures

abolitionism, 149, 152, 153, 166, 175- archive, 16, 19, 33, 35, 100, 116n10,
156n3, 253, 296; in Dutch Empire, 144-151, 205, 298; British colonial,
32, 189, 201; image of, 34, 254, 255; 33, 149-151, 164; colonial state, 24;
publications, 188, 201; and slave Dutch colonial, 25-26, 45, 51, 106,
autobiographies, 24, 284, 188, 201, 109, 113, 125-126, 130, 184, 287;
298n4 French colonial, 26, 43, 48, 53;
abolitionist movement, 24, 32, 188; silences in the, 72, 106-107, 113, 115,
feminist movement, 188; and labour 123-124, 252, 263, Western Cape, 27,
movement, 188 45, 61, 63, 65, 131, 133, 138
admiralty fleet, 31, 153-154, 167 August, Elizabeth, 206, 213, 215, 218,
Aïssaoui, Mohammed, 54, 139 220-222
Alexanders, Wilhelmina, 206, 213-214,
216, 217 Baay, Reggie, 184, 273, 277, 280
Allen, Richard, 22, 26, 46, 178n21 Baderoon, Gabeba, 33, 234
Alpers, Edward, 238, 252 Balkenhol, Markus, 35, 283
Amber, 29, 35, 101-104, 106, 114-115 Batavia, 18, 19, 22, 25, 27-28, 30, 66, 68,
Anderson, Clare, 25, 30, 130 70-71, 76-81, 91, 100-101, 106, 111,
Andries, 29, 101-104, 106, 114-115, 113-114, 123, 126, 128-129, 131-138,
118n32 239, 242, 171, 296
apprenticeship, 31, 120n57, 149, 150, 152, Bengal, 26, 43-46, 48-53, 66-67, 69, 99,
154-157, 160-161, 166, 169, 171, 174, 158, 178
178n21 Bight of Benin, 153, 176-177n8
archival sources, 17-19, 100, 107, 128, Bombay Africans, 177n11, 257-258, 261-
173; judicial, 25, 77-78, 125, 138, 262; and British Museum exhibition,
222-223, 296; limits of, 18, 24, 78, 258, 262; in photographs, 252, 258-
111, 123, 273, 296-297; petitions, 24, 259; in portraits, 252, 260; and Royal
157, 186, 239; VOC, 26-27, 45, 51, 77, Geographic Society, 257-258; Sidi
100, 109, 114, 125-126, 138-139 Mubarak Bombay, 258, 260
326 beingbbbbeing

bondage, 15, 20, 21, 61, 76, 100, 101, Chatterjee, Indrani, 20, 23, 44
113-115, 170, 184, 235, 239-240, 273, China, 21-22, 26, 43, 132, 158, 167,
295, 297; and commodification, 20, 178n21
21, 22, 45, 167, 227; and free wage Christiaan, 104-106
labour, 30, 152, 156, 165, 167, 218 citizenship, 175, 186-188, 198, 272, 279,
Bosma, Ulbe, 22-23, 175, 187 281, 283-284, 286-287
Bourbon, Island see Reunion Cochin see Kochi
Brandes, Jan, 127 collecting, 33-34, 51, 260; colonial
Brandon, Pepijn, 275, 287 practices of, 19, 47, 251-254, 256-257,
British East India Company, 23, 45, 158 262-263; in post-slavery East Africa,
British Empire, 18, 23, 32, 45, 130, 157, 34, 251-253, 256, 258-263
206-207, 220, 256; and the abolition Colombo, 18-19, 22, 27-29, 99-115, 104-
of slavery, 18, 23, 30-31, 51, 152-154, 105, 125-126, 135, 138, 149; Council
160, 168, 175-176n3, 179n30, 249, of Justice, 106, 132-133; and Nicholas
253-254, 259, 262; and the colonial Ondaatje, 61, 64, 66-68, 70-71,
archive, 18-19, 150-151, 252; and colo- 72n2; slave lodge, 29, 101-102, 104,
nialism, 18, 19, 158, 221, 223-224, 106-108, 119n49; taverns 102-103
260 colonial state, 24, 31, 32, 120-121n65,
British Slavery, 23, 46-47, 51, 152, 166- 206-207, 219, 221-224; rituals of
167, 256 rule, 32, 205, 206, 221, 224
community, 33, 51-52, 55, 74n12, 113-
Cape Coloureds, 33, 233, 244n2; and 114, 157, 234-235, 237-238, 241-243,
emancipation, 234-235, 237, 243; and 244n2, 249, 250, 252, 280, 286;
folk songs, 234, 241-243 in Van Balie’s memoir, 183, 184,
Cape of Good Hope, 18, 22, 27-29, 187-189, 192, 198-200, 201; and
33-34, 53, 100-103, 106, 108, 111, 125, missionaries, 208, 210-211, 215-217,
131-132, 154, 156, 220, 271, 295; and 223-224
archives, 63, 65, 133, 138; and Cape Constantia, 156
Coloured community, 235, 236, 239, contract, 21, 51-52, 102, 143n31, 156-161,
240-243; Nicholas Ondaatje’s exile 166, 168, 170, 269
at, 61-65, 68-69, 71, 73n6 Cooper, Frederick, 17, 26, 115
Caribbean, 34, 150, 153, 157, 159, 167, Coromandel Coast, 48, 67n27, 99
192, 252, 271, 277-284, 286, 287. Cruz, 29, 35, 75, 82, 91, 92n3, 102
Carter, Marina, 25-27, 160 Curacao, 276, 277, 281-282
caste, 20, 21, 44, 48-49, 50, 72n2, 74n12,
87-88, 92n1, 100, 143n32, 170 De Boot, 68
Central Africa, 216, 257, 260 Deidamie, 113-114
Chandernagore, 18, 46-47 De Kom, Anton, 278
 index 327

De Wangso, Troena, 29, 35, 101-104, equality: acts of, 32, 183-184, 186, 188,
106, 114, 115, 117n15, 118n32 190; and abolitionism, 188-190;
Diana, 29, 108, 110 in Lynn Hunt, 187-188, 192, 195,
Dias, Domingos, 67, 69, 70 197; political, 187-188; in Jacques
Douglass, Frederick, 24, 189 Rancière, 186-187, 189; in slave
Durban, 31, 154 narratives, 184, 188-189, 196, 201
Dutch Colonialism, 271, 273-275, 278, Equiano, Olaudah, 24, 124, 189, 196
284-285, 287; cultural archive of, ethnicity, 26-27, 29, 43, 48-50, 52, 54-55,
287; and violence, 28, 34, 89, 106, 100, 115, 133, 250, 252, 278
113, 119 n49, 269, 271, 285
Dutch East India Company, 26-29, Filander, 85, 87-90
61, 77, 74, 81, 109-115, 131-133, 137, Flemming, Francis, 158-161, 169, 170,
141n15, 242; archive, 26-27, 45, 51, 173
77, 100, 109, 114, 125-126; crime French Empire, 18, 45, 61; and abolition
and punishment, 28, 29, 80, 87-91, of slavery, 34, 56-57n22, 152, 176n4;
107-109, 131, 138; employees, 19, 22, and slavery, 16, 18, 23, 26, 43, 45-50,
110, 132; and the Malabar Coast, 77, 53-54, 139
81-85, 87-88; ships, 33, 128, 242 Furcy, 25, 27, 54
Dutch Empire, 78, 79, 188, 272, 287;
and slaves, 189, 190, 201 Galle, 27, 61, 64, 99, 106, 128-129, 131-
Dutch knowledge production, 271; on 132, 135-137
slavery, 34, 272, 273-277, 286-287 gender: ideas of; 31-32, 48, 50-53, 121-
Dutch slavery: in public domain, 34, 271- 120n65, 190-191, 210-211, 222, 224,
273, 278-279, 283, 285; silencing of, 226n14, 251, 280
33, 34, 115, 272, 274, 276-278, 280, Ghosh, Amitav, 54, 180n38
283-285 Ghosh, Durba, 48, 53, 55
Gideon, Dorothea, 206, 214, 216-218
East Africa, 34, 153, 155-156, 159, 242, Gilroy, Paul, 15, 205, 233, 242, 243
251-253, 256, 258-262 Grant, J. P., 160, 171
ego documents, 124-125, 128, 130, 139, Gulf States, 150, 153, 167
140n6, 184, 186, 193, 198
emotion, 15, 18, 26, 30, 34-35, 123, 130, Hartman, Saidiya, 26, 30, 123, 206
184, 195, 197 historiography, of Indian Ocean slavery,
enslavement, 15, 16, 18, 20-26, 29, 33, 17, 22, 24-25, 44, 76, 101, 150,
35, 64, 77, 92, 128, 183, 187, 190, 178n21, 273, 285, 287
192, 194, 205, 240, 242, 252, 257, Hofmeyr, Isabel, 33, 233-234, 242
261-262 Huisman, Marijke, 124, 189
328 beingbbbbeing

identity, 18-19, 26, 35, 43, 48, 49, 54, Jones, Eric, 28, 79, 81, 101, 106
109, 112, 124, 128, 130, 157, 172, 200, Jordan, E. G., 52, 53
239, 279, 280, 281, 282; politics, 34,
250, 282 Kenya, 153, 251
indenture, 16, 23, 25-26, 30-31, 51, 149- Kersse, Gerrardus Cornelis, 111-112,
151, 156-161, 164, 166-168, 170-173, 120n63
175, 178n21, 180n38, 181n44, 229- Ketel, 135, 137, 145n47, 146n62
230n49, 278 Kirk, John, 256-258, 260-261
India, 23, 27, 38n27, 43, 55n1, 56n16, Kochi, 18, 22, 18, 28, 56-57n22, 77-78, 81,
66-67, 72n2, 78, 81, 121n66, 135, 137, 84-92, 85, 95n22, 102, 246n59, 271
149, 167, 177n11, 177n12, 179n29, Kolkata, 46, 47, 52, 160
258, 260, 296; immigrants from,
31, 168, 171; slaves on Mauritius, 26, Lea, 206, 212, 215, 218, 220
34, 45-48, 50-54, 158-160, 170-172, Liberated Africans, 31, 154-159, 162, 164,
178n21 166-169, 174-175, 176n6, 178n21,
Indonesia, 20, 21-23, 32, 34, 76, 108, 181n44; register of, 162-163, 168,
126, 183-184, 189, 192, 193, 198, 169, 171-173, 179n30
200, 201, 239, 269, 271-274, 276- Livingstone, David, 177n11, 157-258; and
277, 279, 280, 284-288 anti-slavery mission, 253, 256-257;
infanticide, 31-32, 205, 230n54, 297; and and collecting, 252-255, 257, 259;
authority, 206, 219-221, 223; and free- goree, 34, 253-255; Zambesi expedi-
dom, 206, 207, 220, 224; and guilt, tion, 256-257
207, 214, 220-221, 225n2, 229n43; Lizarde, 104-106
and humanitarian discourse, 207, Loten, Joan Gideon, 19.
219-221, 224; and motherhood 206, Louw, Franscina, 206, 212-213, 215-216,
212, 216, 219, 220; narratives of, 207, 218, 220, 222
208, 212-215; reasons for, 215-219;
and sexuality, 206-212, 218, 220, 223- Madagascar, 16, 22-23, 150, 178n21, 238,
224; and conception of state power, 240
216, 218-219, 224; trials, 206, 209, Madras, 44, 55
213, 217, 219-221, 223 Mahé Island, 56-57n22, 149
Isin, Engin, 186-188, 198 Maldives, 99, 132
Makassar, 18, 19, 107-108, 110
Jacobs, Harriet, 24, 124 Mapping Slavery, 275, 277, 282, 291n14
Jaffna, 21, 99, 132 Maria, 83, 90
Java, 25, 29, 64, 73n6, 77, 79, 101, 105, material culture, of African peoples in
113, 117n17, 132, 193, 202n16, 269, British museum, 33-34, 252, 257,
271 258, 261-262
 index 329

materiality, absences in, 33-34, 251-252, Noordbeek, Joan Bernhard, 61, 62, 73n4
257, 262-263
maritime courts, 153 objects: British Museum, 33-34, 252, 257-
Mascarene Islands, 21, 23, 46, 172 258, 260-262; at David Livingston
Mauritius, 16, 18, 22, 25, 43, 111, 149, Centre, 252-254; Royal Geographical
154, 155; and Indian slaves, 26, Society, 252, 256, 258-260
34, 45-48, 50-54, 158-160, 170-172, Ondaatje, Nicholas, 27, 60-72, 62-63,
178n21; and Liberated Africans, 31, 73n3, 74n13
171, 181n44 Ondaatje, Philip, 67, 69, 70, 71
Mbeki, Linda, 22, 44-45, 50
McAleer, John, 251, 262 Peabody, Sue, 25, 27, 30, 139
Meerlust, 128, 131-132, 135, 137, 141n16, Pemba, 149, 249
142n27, 146n62 Pondicherry, 18, 43, 46-48, 52
memory, 24, 173, 193, 245n10, 275, 285, Portuguese Empire, 18, 21, 45, 57n27,
286; and sea, 233-235, 238-243; of 99, 153-154, 156, 175-176n3
slavery, 32-34, 205, 249, 257, 271-272, Prideaux, W. F., 154-157, 169
274, 277, 279-280, 282, 284, 287
Middle East, 22, 150, 167 racial inequality, 201; and Enlight-
missionaries, 15, 31-32, 152, 156, 165, enment ideas; 184, 189, 190-191,
166, 206, 207, 218, 227-228n25; 196-197, 201
missionary, 167, 209-210, 213, 215, register, 26, 28, 43, 49; of Indian immi-
217, 221-223, 227n17, 259; Moravi- grants, 31, 168, 171; of Liberated
ans, 208, 209, 217, 221, 223-224, Africans, 31, 162, 164, 168, 169,
226n14, 227n21; Wesleyan. 209, 171-173, 179n30; and photography,
210 162, 163, 172-175; purpose of, 31, 35,
missions, 31-32, 214, 215, 218, 221-222, 179n30
258; and morality, 32, 208-212, Reunion Island, 16, 18, 46, 54, 149
227n21 Ricci, Ronit, 25, 27, 63
mobility, 18, 26, 35, 61, 65, 75-80, 82, Robben Island, 126, 128-132, 141n15
86, 88-91, 100, 102, 106, 171, 175, Rosetta, 112, 114
260; labour, 28, 30; social, 49, 51, 53,
55, 101, 111 sea, 31, 35, 128, 132, 137; and slavery, 15,
Modest, Wayne, 44, 251 33, 141n19, 133, 233-235, 238-243
Mombasa, 149, 177n11, 177n12, 161 Sebastian, Anna, 206, 214, 218
moral autonomy, 32, 184, 187, 188, 190, Seychelles, 31, 154, 156, 157-164, 169,
192-195 171-175
Mozambique, 16, 149, 138, 240 Sierra Leone, 154
Mustakeem, Sowande M., 33, 240
330 beingbbbbeing

slave: descendants, 16, 30, 33, 43, 131, and claims for equal citizenship, 175,
150, 233-235. 240, 244n2, 250, 278- 187, 188, 279, 281, 283, 286-287;
280, 282, 285-286; diaspora, 26, colonial, 20, 272; commemoration,
43, 235, 238-242, 272, 278-279, 282, 34, 258, 271-272, 275, 277-279,
284-286; emancipation, 24, 31-32, 282-283, 285; debt, 21, 22, 23, 76,
52, 123-124, 132, 151-152, 160,-161, 119n55, 160, 170, 184; and exile,
176n6, 183-184, 189, 191, 207-208, 25, 27, 54, 61-64, 67-72, 100-101,
210-212, 223, 234-235, 237, 243, 249, 114; genealogies of, 272, 275, 278,
251-252, 257-258, 260, 263, 283, 295; 284-286, 287; material evidence of,
labour, 79, 138, 154, 156, 158; lodge, 130, 251-252, 257-258, 261; memory,
29, 65, 68, 134; manumission, of 32-34, 205, 249, 257, 271-272,
29, 51-53, 66, 68, 70, 99, 105, 107, 274, 277, 279-280, 282, 284, 287;
109-112, 114, 119n55, 120n62, 131, numbers, 22-23, 46, 79, 116n5, 241;
143n37, 153, 176, 275, 295; markets, representation in British museums,
20-22, 30, 79, 108, 177n12, 239; 33, 252, 258, 260-262; transatlantic,
narrative, 24, 25, 124, 166, 183-184, 15, 24, 26, 33-34, 92, 154, 233, 235,
188-189, 192, 200-201, 252; origin 240, 242, 253, 280-283
of, 22, 26, 29, 43, 47-48, 50, 52, 54, slaveholders, 48-53, 141n14, 152, 174,
101, 133, 184, 240; songs, 16, 29, 33, 187, 192-196, 249, 295-297; in
150, 166, 233-244, 279; trade, 16, 17, British Empire, 206-207, 211; At
20, 21, 23-24, 26, 31-32, 34, 43-48, 51, Cape of Good Hope, 31, 70, 108;
54, 61, 69, 77, 99, 152-153, 155, 160, in Colombo, 51, 102, 107-110; in
172, 176n6, 240, 250-253, 255-258, Dutch Empire, 80-83, 86, 89, 183; in
261-262, 273, 277-278, 288, 291n18 French Empire, 25, 49
slavery: afterlives of, 16, 18, 34, 272, Small, Adam, 233-234, 243
275, 277-280, 283-287, 293n43; songs, 16, 29, 30, 150, 166; and freedom,
Abolition Act of 1833, 23, 152, 153; 234, 239-241, 243; origin of, 33, 234,
abolition, 18, 23-25, 30-32, 34-35, 47, 242; of slaves, 236, 239; as vehicle
51, 149, 152-153, 156, 158, 160-161, for identity, 239, 243
164, 175-176n3, 188-189, 201, 205, South America, 153, 157
234, 237, 243, 249, 252-255, 257, 258- Southeast Asia, 43-45, 69, 76, 108, 158,
259, 261-263, 277, 280-282, 284; 167
archaeological traces of, 16, 33, 251, Sri Lanka, 18, 23, 27, 30, 51, 61, 63-69,
263; bifurcation in representation of 72, 101, 110, 114, 128, 129, 131-133,
transatlantic and Indian Ocean, 26, 135, 137, 138, 271
34, 44, 54, 192, 251, 261-262, 269, Stoler, Ann Laura, 17, 274
271-272, 274-277, 279-280, 284-287; Stuurman, Siep, 190-191
captive, 22, 23, 45, 153-154, 238, 254;
 index 331

Suriname, 189, 192, 271, 273, 276-279, Van Palembang, Ontong, 80, 134
186 Van Rossum, Matthias, 22, 27, 44, 50,
Swahili coast, 23, 250, 260, 261 78, 101, 277
Swellendam, 205, 214, 220, 225n1 Vergès, Françoise, 17, 34, 152, 252
Vink, Markus, 22, 100
Tanzania, 149, 153, 259 VOC see Dutch East India Company
Thoothukudi, 135, 137, 145n57 Von Herder, Johan Gottfried, 198-199
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph, 34, 272 Vrijgezel, 85, 87-90
Tuticorin see Thoothukudi Vuyst, Petrus, 62, 73n4

United States of America, 153, 243; Ward, Kerry, 25, 27, 64, 100, 114, 139
and abolition of slavery, 32, 152-153, women: freed, 31, 32, 51, 52, 110, 205,
175-176n3; and slavery, 24, 26, 76, 208, 211-212, 224, 295; as reposito-
177n9, 184, 188, 191, 277, 282 ries of virtue, 208-211; and sexuality,
32, 107, 206, 209-212, 224
Van Balie, Wange, 32, 140-141n13, 183- Wekker, Gloria, 17, 33, 274
201, 185, 202n16; descendant of, 183; Western Cape, 31-32, 62, 63, 131, 205,
and empathy, 32, 184, 187, 195-198; 206, 208, 209, 210
memoir of, 32, 183, 184, 186-192, Wickenburg, 131-132, 135, 137, 142n25,
195-196, 199; and life on Magarij 146n62
island, 183, 190, 198-200, 201n2 Worden, Nigel, 25, 28, 34, 100, 102, 125
Van Domburg, Diederik, 70, 136
Van Hoëvell, W. R., 32, 189, 191 Zanzibar, 33, 249, 151, 154, 257-260;
Van Johor, Boenga, 30-33, 35, 123-139, legacy of slavery, 250, 261; Peace
127, 240 Memorial Museum, 249, 250, 261
Van Makassar, Apollo, 29, 107-108, 110 Zose, Louisa, 103-104, 114, 118n32